When It Became Time to Give Up Motorcycles
Riding motorcycles seemed to fit seamlessly into the ethos of being on the road through the decade of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Riders mutually giving the peace sign to one another was almost like a given in that decade full of dreams of being on the road and coming of age. Either riding by oneself or riding with a buddy fit into the experience of those days. I don’t remember too many of the noisy machines that some people ride today, but rather the smooth humming of the 4-cycle machines, many of which came from Japan.
There is a kind of freedom in riding a bike that is not possible within the confines of a car. Some might say that this glorification of burning fossil fuels is a slap in the face to the natural environment, but it did not seem that way during those years. Environmental ruin was still over the visible horizon.
I don’t know if it was fearlessness or the roads were safer in those days, but I can’t remember anything resembling road rage. What I do remember are the trips on county roads through New England and rides by the sea. I drove my bike back and forth to the first job I had out of college, to a small camp in Waterford, Connecticut. That ride was great, and travel over the Thames River before going slightly inland just seemed to fit. I remember one ride back to my camp job in Connecticut from Rhode Island, where I lived at that time, and stopping to help two people pulled over on I-95 with a flat tire and a baby in a car seat in the back of their car. Helping people in those days also seemed natural and nothing out of the ordinary.
On one weekend, I drove into a part of Connecticut with a buddy who owned a much more powerful bike, a Triumph, and we spent that day on those rural roads going as far as driving past tobacco farms.
Riding along the National Seashore on Cape Cod and then winding up the road through Rockport, Massachusetts with the tune of Tom Rush’s “Rockport Sunday” in mind was a perfect riding companion.
Roads seemed truly open in those days. I recall a trip from Long Island, through Queens, first over the Throgs Neck Bridge, then onto I-95 with my outrageously underpowered 2-cycle machine, and losing all of my belongings that had been strapped to a back rack on that bike with a bungee cord that failed. It mostly seems like a dream now, and I don’t think riding motorcycles is in my future at this point, even though I rode a bunch of bikes over the years following the early 1970s, but it never felt even close to those days with the freedom that the open road and a more open society granted and to which some held closely.
