Ruminations in Korea

My fascination with and love for motorcycles began when I was twelve or thirteen years old. No. That’s not entirely accurate. Although I had never actually been near a motorcycle, let alone sat on one or ridden on one, my fascination with bikes began much earlier than that.

I was a child of the 1970s. For a child in my neighborhood, the 1970s meant spending a lot of time riding bicycles, and it meant Evel Knievel. Watching Evel jump cars, buses, and other things was a family event. My older brother, my father, I, and sometimes my mother, would sit in front of the television and watch his jumps when they were broadcast on programs such as ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

The next day, my friends and I would get together and talk about how cool the jump was. Evel was a god. We were only six years old, but we knew that we wanted to be Evel Knievel.

Evel and his marketing people were nothing short of geniuses. He was one of the main forces behind the revitalization of the stagnant 1970s toy industry. Every male child of every age had at least one product with Evel Knievel’s image on it. My brother had an Evel Knievel lunch box. I had an action figure. We both had one of the coolest toys ever made, the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle.

The Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle is a toy that benefited from the days before product liability lawsuits and toy recalls took a lot of the fun out of being a kid. I seriously doubt that the Stunt Cycle could exist today in its original form. It was a plastic motorcycle that carried an Evel Knievel action figure. The bike mounted onto a geared platform with a large crank on the side. To make the bike work, you would turn the crank as quickly as possible to wind the bike up. The motorcycle would emit this high-pitched whine that would increase in pitch and volume as the crank was turned faster and faster. Once you got the crank to maximum speed and volume, you hit the release button and the bike would scream away across the kitchen floor, driveway, or other hard surface. At least that is what was supposed to happen.

The commercials showed the Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle racing away, popping wheelies, jumping over other toys, and similar exciting possibilities. However, the reality was that the bike would travel about two feet before making a hard right turn and crashing to the floor. If you are lucky, you could have the pleasure of watching it spin in tight circles on its side as the wound up gears in the rear tire mechanism wound down to a halt.

Another thing that the commercials didn’t show was the blood and chunks of skin that millions of children left across the driveways of America. The crank
on the Stunt Cycle platform was about one inch above the ground at its lowest point. That mean that as you cranked away as fast as your little hand would go, if you didn’t pay close attention, your knuckles would hit the ground and scrape along the pavement leaving bits and pieces of your knuckles behind. A few bloody knuckles were never enough to make you put the toy away. However, I am convinced that the makers of that fine toy were in cahoots with the bandage industry.

My first bike accident, of which I have absolutely no memory, was me riding my tricycle off of the front porch at three or four year of age apparently in an attempt to jump some rose bushes. That accident was the source of a small, still-visible scar below my bottom lip.

From three wheels, I eventually graduated to my first two-wheeler. The first day I rode solo on my brother’s bike without dad holding on to the back was also the day I got my first black eye. I rode out of our driveway and part way down the block before turning around and in a moment of “Gee, look! I’m riding by myself” inattention, I was looking at my parents rather than the road in front of me. I rode straight into the back of our big, pink Pontiac car.

Once I got the hang of riding a bicycle, the first modification I made to the bike was to attach a clothes pin to the bike frame and insert a baseball card into the clothes pin and between the spokes of the bike. Then, whenever I rode my bike, the spokes would make a flap, flap, flap noise against the baseball card, which made it sound like a motorcycle. Just like the one Evel Knievel had.

Over the next couple of years, I watched my brother and his friends make ramps out of wood so that he had his buddies could jump over things…just like Evel Knievel. Well, monkey see, monkey do. Soon my friends and I were jumping over piles of dirt, bricks, cinderblocks, and occasionally someone who was stupid enough to lay on the ground between the take off and landing ramps, when we had landing ramps.

Helmets, pads, and jackets were unheard of when I was growing up. How I and my friends survived our childhood is a mystery to me.

Then came the fateful day when I was twelve or thirteen years old. Out of nowhere, and without warning whatsoever, my quite conservative and straight-laced father rolled up the driveway on a cherry red motorcycle. The bike was a beautiful 1975 Honda CB400. The in-line exhaust pipes and the chrome front fender looked awesome. This was a real motorcycle. There were no baseball cards in the spokes of this baby. To my eyes, it was 400ccs of pure Evel Knievel.

I didn’t even know my dad could ride a motorcycle. The question on the lips of most members of the family was “why did you buy it.” My question was, “when will you take me for a ride.”

Evel Knievel…Coolest Guy Ever!