purchased in Genoa, Italy, where the spirited driving style provided my
baptism in road riding. Big tank, small seat, low clipons, and a small
handlebar fairing made the Mondial a young person's mount -- I'm sure
my body couldn't long survive the uncompromising riding position at age
50. I crashed multiple times, mostly due to 2-stroke engine seizures,
while covering nearly 1500 kilometers in August 1964, driving from
Santa Margherita on the west coast, to Parma and Bologna, then down the
Po River valley, and along the east coast to Ancona and Teramo, then
back across the spine of the peninsula to Rome, Pisa, and finally
Florence. Drafting behind buses and trucks helped me reach top speeds
in excess of 40 mph... The Mondial wintered in Florence in 1965, while
I attended college in Istanbul. The rider in the photo is Dennis
Fonger, brother of Robert College's librarian, who bought it from the
Mondial me in the spring of 1965, as I prepared to pick up my next
motorcycle.
another cafe racer, and my first "real" motorcycle, a 125cc twin that
was gutless below 5000 rpm, and then went like a bat out of hell (for a
125) up to 11,000 rpm, where it made an honest 15 horsepower. Not
particularly light for its size, the CB92 had an enormous front drum
brake (which would lock and dump an inattentive rider in an instant --
which it did the first time I got on, and discovered the shift and
brake were on opposite sides from my Italian bike), but decent enough
handling for an early 1960's machine with leading link forks. Honda
campaigned race-prepped versions of the CB92 at the Isle of Man. I
purchased it in Hamburg in the summer of 1965 for $400, and rode south
to Munich, Austria, Switzerland, then north through France and across
the channel to England, concluding with a 10-day ride from London back
to Istanbul, where I was attending college.
The summer of 1965 was cold and wet in most of Europe, and I spent a lot of time riding miserably in the rain, including one fun crash in central France. It was a misty day, and I was coming up on an old Citroen pickup truck, being driven by a farmer plodding along at maybe 50 km/h, when suddenly he decided to stop completely -- in the middle of the road. I started to go around him to the left, but a car was in the oncoming lane, so I bailed out, hit the brakes, and slid off the right shoulder straight into a haystack. As crashes go, it was great fun, and we all had a good laugh.
Shipped back to the USA in the summer of 1966, the little twin
took me into Canada for Expo '67, and 2 winters in Ann Arbor. A Peel
fairing from the Isle of Man provided good wind protection against
Michigan winter temperatures. The CB92 models, also called the "Benley"
are quite rare, and well-preserved examples, such as the restoration
pictured, now fetch prices in the thousands of dollars.
which carried
me from the east coast to the west coast, and more than a thousand
miles into Mexico before I crashed heavily in the mountains near
Guadalajara. Two Mexicans passed by with a pickup truck, loaded me and
the bike into the back, and took us to the nearest cantina, where two
fingers of tequila helped revive me. I left Mexico without the bike,
which was later stolen, and transported into the USA. It eventually
came back to me when the California Highway Patrol contacted me in Los
Angeles to say that I could pick it up in San Jose. I fitted a tank
from a CB450 and flat bars to produce a unique cafe appearance before
cafe was cool. Not a terribly memorable machine, with mediocre brakes
and handling, but CB350's are popular as inexpensive racers on the
AHRMA racing circuit, as they are dirt cheap and the engines are nearly
bulletproof. (Photo courtesy Troyce
Walls).
a great
lumbering 2-stroke twin that took my wife and me on many trips around
Los Angeles, into Mexico as far south as San Blas, on many trips to
Yosemite's high country, and as far north as Crater Lake in Oregon
(where it snowed in August). Handling wasn't bad for the era, (by this
time I had slowed down enough to stop crashing) and with a long
wheelbase and big seat, the Suzuki would carry two people and a lot of
gear while still keeping up with much larger machines. Five years on
the Monterey peninsula provided the best riding years of my life -- the
Laguna Seca race track was nearby, and Highway 1 along the Big Sur
coast is one of the finest riding roads in North America. I once
averaged 54 mph -- without ever exceeding 70 so as not to attract the
attention of the Highway Patrol -- along Highway 1 from Carmel Valley
to San Simeon, including a stop for gas. Not bad for a 70's bike with
skinny tires.
a 500cc four-stroke single. Think of a classic British thumper with
Japanese engineering (which means that the Ascot didn't leak oil,
didn't shake itself to pieces, started reliably, and ran even when it
rained). Honda introduced the Ascot in 1982, just as the American
economy was entering a severe recession. At $2500, with limited
horsepower, Ascots never sold well, since one could buy a four-cylinder
bike with twice the horsepower for only a little more cash. I bought my
Ascot new at a closeout sale in 1984 for less than half price. The
Ascot was the first Japanese bike I ever rode that had more chassis
than horsepower (not that the single-cylinder engine ever made enormous
amounts of power). A long-travel front fork and a handlebar fairing
made the Ascot a surprisingly comfortable solo touring bike. It really
didn't have enough room or power to carry a passenger with any comfort,
but I can't complain about 12 years and 26,000 miles of reliable
transportation. Almost as much of a cult bike as the Honda Hawk, the
Ascot elicited many appreciative glances during its time in the family,
and I sold it in 1996 for about what I paid for it 12 years earlier.
I
found my Hawk on consignment in the spring of 1996 at Cycle Nuts &
Bolts, a specialty shop in Clarkston, Georgia (outskirts of Atlanta).
It belonged to a woman from Decatur, who was a 9th grade English
teacher (really!). 
The bike was in immaculate condition, already
equipped with a cafe fairing, saddle bags, a Corbin seat, and headlight
and brakelight modulators. Like the Ascot, The Hawk was another
marketing failure for Honda, with perhaps 10,000 sold 1988-1991. As
with the Ascot, it cost only slightly less than the more powerful
four-cylinder CB600, also introduced in 1988. Perhaps the concept
(small, light V-twin sportbike) was just ahead of its time, as Ducati
has been so successful that other major manufacturers are now
introducing bikes of the same basic design (albeit far more powerful,
with one liter engines developing more than 100 horsepower).
After purchasing the Hawk, I discovered that it is even more of a cult bike than the Ascot, with many sources of information on the Internet, and an owners group, which publishes a newsletter, "HawkWorks". By sharing knowledge with 400 other Hawkheads, I managed to transform the Hawk over the course of a year, smoothing out the carburetion, and significantly improving the already good handling. For a bike with a small chassis, it's remarkably comfortable as a solo tourer, including a 1400-mile ride to Vintage Days 1997 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in July 1997.
Hawkheads maintain numerous sites on the world wide web, including:
1999- Honda Pacific Coast, "The Batcycle." What can I say? My wife had been giving me doleful looks whenever I went off alone on the Hawk, and I was feeling guilty about not being able to take her along (let alone any luggage) on the Hawk's minimalist seat. So, when a 1990 PC800 came on the market I jumped on it. Sometimes you need a sports car; others a minivan is the only thing that will do the job. The Pacific Coast is a two-wheeled station wagon. This was the first time we had ever had two motorcycles in the garage at the same time. Alas, poor Bubba had a short life, snuffed out in a T-bone collision with a Ford Explorer on February 27, 1999. I found the Batmobile, a black and silver 1994 model with 11,000 miles, two weeks later via the Internet, and brought it home on March 24.
Another
cult bike (I seem attracted to them like a moth to flame), the
PC was manufactured from 1989 through 1990, then a three year hiatus in
production, resuming 1994 through 1998, when production finally (?)
ceased because sales never met Honda's expectations. The 1989 models
had several minor design problems that were corrected with the 1990
model, and remained essentially unchanged until 1997, when a smaller
front fender and other minor design changes were introduced.
Under all that plastic, the PC is powered by an 800cc 45° V-twin, a cousin to the Hawk's engine. At 640 pounds, with 50 hp, it's not a speed demon, but a PC will haul two people and their luggage comfortably well in excess of the speed limit, and no other motorcycle has such an elegant luggage system as the PC and its "trunk." I completed an Iron Butt SaddleSore 1000 ride on this bike on November 13, 1999, and neither rider nor motorcycle was much the worse for wear at the end of 1044 miles. Handling is better than one might expect, aided by a very low center of gravity. Add Progressive springs, HH+ brake pads, and Works shocks combined with a Bridgestone Battlax radial on the front wheel, and the humble PC becomes a sleeper capable of surprising many an unwary sport bike rider in the mountains. Motorcycle Online reviewed the PC in 1998, and didn't quite know what to do with it, but they agreed that the trunk made it a great commuter, especially in inclement weather. Want to know more about this oddity? Check the Internet Pacific Coast Riders Club. The PC suffered an untimely death in October of 2007 when it was struck by a Georgia deer. The deer also died. I survived with a broken little finger.
2000- Honda VTR250 aka "The Barbie Bike."
After looking at the back of my helmets for 30 years, my wife decided
she wanted to learn to ride. I acquired this 1989 Honda VTR250 as a
Christmas present for her in August, 2000. It was somewhat neglected,
with several cracks and scrapes in the bodywork, a torn seat, and a
rusty gas tank. Six months later, after an infusion of several hundred
hours of labor and several hundred dollars in parts, Barbie rides
again. Unlike Kawasaki's Ninja 250, which is still in production, the
VTR250 was imported only in 1988-1990. A decade later, it remains a far
more competent motorcycle than either of Honda's current offerings in
this niche, the Nighthawk and the Rebel.
999 BMW R1100RT. After a suitable period of mourning
and physical and emotional recovery from the demise of the Pacific Coast, I
started looking for a replacement in early 2008. The Atlanta Cycle World show was a bust; nothing currently manufactured
thrills me, or fits my relatively small frame. Everything has been "supersized," which seems to be the norm in the USA.
Selden Deemer
Atlanta, GA