It all started after a near obsessive compulsive search on craigslist at any and all motorcycles for sale. I was living in Orange County at the time, and with rent as high as it was, I hesitated on even buying a $200 used surfboard, let alone some $2000 motorcycle. I knew I wanted a bike, any bike, and I couldn’t stop reading articles online from Iron and Air, Revzilla, and an assorted other blogs and magazines online on the latest custom motorcycle builds.

I became entranced.

My Uncle used to tell me stories about the adventures he and his buddy would have riding their Harley Sportsters in the 70's — about how they would go racing down the highway over 100 miles an hour, dodging traffic this way and that, trying to out beat each other. Those stories always stuck with me through my childhood. As a kid, my Dad’s best friend would occasionally come by and visit our house riding his motorcycle, and he’d let me ride on the back of it when I wasn’t too nervous or scared to ask.

Motorcycles have always been a kind of forbidden fruit in my family that I’d get just a little taste of, but never get to fully experience. My parents, extended family and even friends forbade it. All the time I would get the, “I had a friend who’s cousin just died on one of those things. Don’t be an organ donor. They’re too dangerous… etc.” I tucked the thought of motorcycles in the very back of my mind for a long time. But now, I couldn’t shake it.

Getting lost in youtube videos about motorcycles became a daily event. Every day, I would watch any motorcycle video youtube recommended to me. One of my favorite video series I would get lost in is called Stories of Bike. Sometimes I would watch the same damn video multiple times, and before I knew it, it was time for me to, like, eat or sleep. I was that obsessed.

I wanted a bike. I wanted to find something in myself that I could say, yeah, I did that. Learning to ride seamed like a challenge. But, if I was going to learn how to ride, I wanted my first motorcycle to have that cool, timeless, vintage cafe racer style to it.

Imagine, if you will, the kind of bike you’d expect to see Steve McQueen riding on, right before he makes out with your girl right in front of you (and you goddamn let him.) and then he proceeds to steal her on the back of his motorcycle off into the sunset — with my heterosexuality already teetering as it was, this, is the essence of a cafe racer motorcycle.

My 1979 XS750 “Bullet” at a Biltwell event in Temecula, Ca

Now, I know I’m missing some really important details, like what technically qualifies as a cafe racer motorcycle, and that technical cafe racers were British bikes from the 50's and 60's (roughly), that were cheap, fast, and fucking deadly. But honestly, I’m not going to go into that. Today, any standard bike from the 70's, whether it be british, japanese or otherwise are now categorized in the cafe racer taxonomy.

One day, I finally made the decision that I wanted to ride a motorcycle. I had no idea how they worked, let alone how to ride the things. I just knew I wanted one. After a quick search I found a riding course nearby my apartment at a nearby college called the MSF Motorcycle Safety School, which is a weekend hands on course where they let you learn on their bikes. I immediately paid for the course online, and before I knew it I was in class.

The MSF course was extremely educational. Before you even touch one of their bikes, the first day is entirely dedicated to reading their text book, taking a quiz, and learning the definite do’s and don’ts about motorcycle riding. Once you finally straddle one of their small cruisers, it’s a little intimidating, but they start you off really slow. I finished the course and passed the written test. I could not wait to get my own motorcycle. For me, at least, it became an absolute obsession.

I knew I didn’t want something brand new. They also recommended getting a “beater,” just because there is a 99% certainty that you will drop the thing. Dropping a $1500 — $2000 craigslist find hurts a lot less, both pride and pain, than dropping a shiny new $13,000 Harley. After searching for weeks calling a handful of phone numbers and sending countless emails to sellers off of craigslist, I finally found my bike.

Bringing her home. A black 1979 XS750 Triple with only 11,000 miles.

A buddy of mine agreed to help me pick it up, and before I knew it, I exchanged cash for the bike and pink slip, and I had a motorcycle sitting in my driveway. It felt surreal. Granted, she needed some work (A proverbial shit-ton of work, admittedly.) But she was mine, and I couldn’t be happier.

My first ride was a scary but thrilling, just riding around the housing tract. Getting a feel for her meant almost hitting someone’s trash cans with a couple of sketchy twists and turns. All at once, she starts to putter and my heart sinks. I end up walking the heavy machine up the hill back to my house, not knowing if I had been scammed out of $1800. I also dropped it a couple of times. Luckily, she came with an engine guard, so nothing really got damaged other than my pride.

Of course, I thought. Of course my first bike was going to be a train wreck. But at least it was mine, right? At least I had made the small step that a lot of people are too afraid to take. Or maybe this was all a terrible idea, and I was in way over my head. These were the thoughts I had trying to push the literal representation of my regrets, complete with two wheels and an apparently none functioning engine.

There were multiple things wrong with this bike. First, all of the hoses had rotted from the inside-out from sitting in someone’s garage for multiple decades. Also, the fuse box was held together with electric tape, and the hopes from the seller that someone would actually fork over $1800 for a rolling corpse (this guy.)

Also, the carburetors would flood and run over. The bike also needed new tires, blinkers and a blessing from the motorcycle gods, because a web designer who knew nothing about motorcycles, was googling every symptom this thing would throw at me.

It took me roughly six months of wrenching, cursing, drinking, googling and ebaying parts that I had no idea would still be around, since this bike was around the same era The Village People were still rocking to the Y.M.C.A.

After all the work was completed.

Once I had completed all that had to be done to the motorcycle to make her road worthy, my first destination was the local In-and-Out for some self celebration.

She ran beautifully.

After riding to several destinations, ensuring all of the work I had done to the motorcycle had indeed fixed all of her ailments, I decided it was time for her first real ride. A couple of friends hit me up on facebook, knowing that I had just fixed up my motorcycle, invited me to go riding with them to Julian, Ca. We all meet at the local starbucks. After having my bike “Ooo’d” and “Ahh’d” at from some of the guys, we set course for the freeway.

This is where my heart sinks again.

As soon as we hit the offramp, I notice my bike starts to make this terrible noise, so I flag down the other riders to pull off to the side of the road. That’s when one of the hoses (which I found out later was a breathing hose) that was not connected to anything starts spitting out oil all over the engine and my leg, and my bike starts making all of this smoke. Luckily, I was wearing thick jeans that day, so I wasn’t actually burnt by the hot oil.

Shit, I thought. It’s on fire. If I don’t get off this bike, I’ll be on fire.

The bike never actually caught on fire, but my brain jumped to the worst conclusion in a fit of panic.

I’m going nowhere. Obviously.

After some feeble but friendly attempts to figure out what happened, I tell my riding buddies to take off without me. I inevitably get it to roll to the nearest repair shop.

Luckily, that was the last of her fits. After I had that repaired, she ran beautifully for the remaining 8 months that I owned her. I really enjoyed that bike. Eventually, I sold her to a student who also wanted to get into riding.

Despite all the pain in the ass issues that came up with owning an older motorcycle, I really feel that was the best introduction to motorcycling I would ever get. Not only did I have something I could essentially play with, and not worry about dropping too much, but it gave me the opportunity to learn about all the little moving parts that a motorcycle has, and little things I can fix myself with my future bike.

I now own a 2014 Harley Davidson Seventy-Two, and I ride the thing every chance I get.