It was the summer of 1996. the summer before my final year of college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Up until this point, my life had been-- relatively speaking-- a bowl of cherries. But now, a major event was about to unfold... I received some bad news that made me think that my life as I had known it was about to be over. My response to this life-changing event: buy a motorcycle. Because if you can't change or stop the event from happening, maybe you can outrun it on a motorcycle! For $1100, I purchased a very well-maintained 1981 Yamaha Maxim XJ550 with a fairing and radio, and under 10k miles!!! At the same time, my brother was racing motocross on the weekends and working during the week at a motorcycle repair shop in our hometown, Marion, Ohio. My brother quickly removed the fairing and the radio, and gave me a fresh new set of tires. And, I didn't even know how to ride yet!!! None of that mattered to me at all. Just the anticipation and thrill of it all set my mind free from the nonsense I was experiencing in my personal life that would affect me for at least a decade after the event.
That summer, when I wasn't working at the snack food factory during the day, or helping my dad mow yards, or attending rehearsals for my starring role in the local production of Annie Get your Gun with my good friend Katherine Smart, my brother and I would drive out to The mysteriously empty New Road, we here he taught me how to ride.
There were many crazy things that happened at New Road, but I'll tell you about those events in a future post!
So, this motorcycle represented a great deal to me. Mostly it represented a grat friendship with my brother, an escape from life's BS.
A few years after the event, I moved into an apartment in Fairfield, Ohio, where my XJ lived outside, uncovered from the elements through 2 harsh Ohio winters. One day, I noticed a small leak in the gas tank and took it to a shop to see if I could get it repaired. These days were the advent of the Internet, mind you, so I didn't have access to the information at the time that would have prevented me from needing to write this blog!!!
Long story short, I had the gas tank sealed with a red resin-like substance that was supposedly going to fix my problem. Unfortunately, it made the problem much worse, gumming up the entire gas tank and carburetor. My beloved XJ was inoperable, due to my neglect. I guess I could have thrown in the towel and simply sold her, but that would have been a terribly boring story. This story is WAY better!!!
Tune in to my next post, where I will post a picture or two of my bike in its glory days, and tell you about where the bike has been since 1998.
"This here's the story of a summer so sublime,
It didn't rain for a thousand days and it was hot all the time"
Copyright 1998 Eric Swihart
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