This thread was made with the intention that we could drink, eat, and occasionally tell a story. We had a couple of stories at the beginning, so I would like to continue that and try another one here. I wrote this here and there, now and again whenever I could find a moment to scrawl a few more lines. Please don’t grade me on things like punctuation and sentence structure, it’s been along time since high school, and this is just for fun! So get your drinks and gather round:
A (sort of) Motorcycle Story
Many years ago, when I was around 19 years old, I had this old car that I wanted to get rid of. The car had some problems, it wasn’t worth much, and I had this friend that really needed some wheels, but he didn’t have much money. We tried to strike up a deal on the car, but his offers were coming up a little short, and it seemed that we had reached a stalemate. Then he led me over to this little machine in the garage. It had two wheels, an engine, and handbrakes. “What if I threw this into the deal?” he asked.
My eyes lighted up. This could be fun, I thought. I told him we had a deal, and we shook on it. I was now the proud owner of a 1978 Honda Hobbit, which was not quite a motorcycle, it was a moped. Anybody remember those? A cross between a bicycle and a motorcycle, the engine cleverly at 49cc to bypass the motorcycle license laws. Anyone with a drivers license could legally ride one.
I took the title over to the DMV to get a license plate for it, and the lady behind the counter asked me how much I paid so she could determine my sales tax. I told her I didn’t pay anything for it, it was traded for a car. She furrowed her brow, and then asked how much money did it represent in the trade? I shrugged my shoulders at her, I don’t know, it was never determined. She gave me a dirty look and put a “0” in the tax area. She informed me, if they don’t like this without any tax they will come after you. I walked out with a half grin on my face, “they” never did come after me about it. Maybe she was just having a bad day.
So then I went out riding, and man was it fun, I zipped all over town. It didn’t go very fast, topping out at maybe 26 mph or so, and it was like riding my bike except I didn’t have to pedal. I mostly stuck to the smaller roads with the lower speed limits, and I stayed to the right like a bicycle so faster traffic could pass. But then I heard this car approaching that did not pass, in fact he was pacing me from just behind. I moved to the right a little more, and slowed down, so the car would go by, but no it stayed right there. I looked into my side mirror and saw the square jawed, authoritative profile of a Dodge Diplomat police cruiser, and then he lit me up and gave me a siren yelp to let me know he meant business.
Uh oh, my first ride, and I am already under scrutiny. So I stopped. He swaggered out of the car, checked my license, checked my new license plate, and finding everything in order (I certainly wasn’t speeding), he informed me, “you cannot operate that motor vehicle without eye protection”. Okay, no problem, I will take care of that right away, thank you sir for your concern. He let me go and I rode over to a gas station and bought some sunglasses. Now I could look cool out riding, if that is even possible while riding a moped (I don’t think that it is).
Later I rode over to my cousin Gary’s house to show it to him. He thought it was great and wanted to go for a ride on it. I told him you better wear these, and handed him the sunglasses, “so you’ll look cool”. He nodded in agreement and off he went. But it wasn’t very fun waiting for him to come back, and taking turns on it wasn’t fun for the one not riding. To fix this, he determined he must have one too, and in the newspaper he found one for sale called a FoxiGT with a little picture of a red fox on the gas tank. Soon it was his.
Now we could both ride all over town, and we sure did. Why, we were the mopeders from hell. But still, we were not quite satisfied, there was still an area off limits to us that we remembered from riding our bicycles. We were riding all around the Glenview and Northbrook area of the north suburbs of Chicago, which was where I lived at the time. There was a whole big network of bicycle trails that covered the whole area, going through the woods of the Cook County forest preserve. We wanted to ride those trails with the mopeds. But this was strictly verboten, absolutely no motorized vehicles were allowed. So we needed a plan, and the plan was to ride at night, and so we would not be detected, we needed to ride without any lights. It was a great plan.
So we took the mopeds into the garage and altered the wiring so we had these quick disconnects to black out the lights. We rigged it so when we pulled apart the connection, the headlights, taillights, and the brake lights would not function. This could all be done quickly and easily, to go back and forth between lights and no lights. We were ready, so that night we hit the trails.
We started off from the house normally, with lights on, until we came to a place where the road intersected the trail, then we yanked our disconnects killing the lights, and pulled onto the trail and into the woods. The first thing I noticed is that I couldn’t see a dang thing. Gary was ahead of me so I followed the sound of his motor, while my eyes gradually adjusted to the complete darkness. I never really could see very well in that light, but the outline of the woods became clear enough, and there was a white line on the paved trail to follow. Gary was zooming along at a good clip, so I followed right behind.
And it was fantastic. The cool air of the night, gliding along fast through the dark trees, the thrill of the motion and the absence of light combined to make an experience that was exciting and scary at the same time. Dangerous? Yes. If there had been someone hiking or jogging in the dark the results could have been very unpleasant. But you do not think of these things when you are 19 years old, at least I didn’t. I was there for the thrill and the adventure, and this ride was delivering both. I hunched down, peered ahead into the darkness, and felt the wind on my face as the motor hummed along.
We rode like that in single file for quite a ways. Then the trail came out of the woods and into a clearing area of the forest preserve. It was a meadow but still surrounded by trees so there were still no houses in sight. The moon was out and that provided some light so we could see our surroundings better. Suddenly from out of the trees came bounding out two deer. Not in our path of travel though, they came out at an angle and started running along side of us, pacing our speed exactly. They started inching ahead, so we gunned our throttles to keep up with them. They were not more than fifteen feet to the right of my handlebar, pacing along, and they did not seem to be afraid of us, they acted like they wanted to run with us. Gary turned his head to flash a grin at me, and I nodded in agreement at this spectacle of nature. They ran with us until we reached the other side of the meadow, then they pulled off to the right and into the woods as we reentered the tunnel of trees.
We continued on. Whenever we came upon a road crossing we would kill the engines, make sure there were no cars coming, and ride the mopeds like a bike with the pedals until we were safely across, then start the engines again and be on our way. The trees surrounded the path like a tunnel most places, keeping us out of view, but up ahead was real tunnel. The trail went underneath the Edens Expressway, which was a big six lane highway plus a median, so you can imagine how long it was through the unlighted concrete tunnel below. Gary entered the tunnel without even slowing down, and I followed. Immediately I could see absolutely nothing at all. It was pitch black, we were only riding by ambient light anyway, and in the tunnel there wasn’t even that. I imagined what would happen if I veered even slightly and hit the concrete wall on the side. I stayed completely rigid, trying not to move my arms, trying to follow the echoey sound of the engine ahead of me. I might of even closed my eyes momentarily, since it didn’t make any difference, I was terrified. But then it was over and we were safely through the other side. Whew.
We rode for hours that night and had such a good time that we planned to do it again several nights later. Gary had told his friend Matt about the ride, and Matt told us that his brother has a moped that he could borrow, so he wanted to join us. Well, okay I guess, but what about his lights? No problem, he can unhook the lights when he gets here. Alright, I suppose. The night arrives and Matt meets us raring to go. Again, I ask, what about his lights? He doesn’t want to mess with the wiring because it’s not his bike, he can figure a way turn off the lights when we get to the trail. I’m feeling uneasy about this, but off we go.
We arrive at the trail, and we pull our disconnects, but Matt can’t get his light to shut off. There is no switch, and he thinks it’s too dark to try and take it apart to unhook the bulb. It is decided to ride the trail with lights on. I don’t like the sounds of this, but if his lights are going to be on, I might as well have mine on. Maybe no one will notice us. We start riding with all three of our lights on. I think we made it about two miles through the woods until we came to the first road crossing. Up ahead I could see the outlines of a Dodge Diplomat police car (of course he was parked with HIS lights off), just waiting for us. There was nothing we could do, here we came riding out of the woods like the three stooges, right into his trap, our lights leading the way.
He hits the red roof lights, shines his spotlight into our eyes, gets out of the car, shaking his head, holds his arms up, yelling, “What the hell are you boys doing?”
We get off the bikes, and looked at our shoes in shame. I think one of us kicked a small stone. He checked our licenses, called in our plates, talked on his radio, and made us feel guilty. He looked over our bikes, insisting they were over 49cc and needed a motorcycle license. We told him they were small enough, and I guess he took our word for it since he didn’t want to dissemble the engines and take a micrometer to them. He made us wait a long time while he sat in the car, shuffled his papers, and talked into his radio. Everyone driving by looked at all the flashing lights, and at us, the scofflaws. Eventually he approached, sighed heavily and shook his head at us, and let us go, saying very slowly like we were children, “Don’t-ride-those-things-on-the-bike-path!”
And then we were free. But that was the end of riding the mopeds on the trail.
-Rey
