My First Motorcycle and Only Broken Bone

1972

2006

Well here I am in 1972, the proud owner of a Kawasaki G4TR which had just given me my only broken bone riding a motorcycle. 

It was the summer after grad school.  I had not yet secured my first professional employment, so you can imagine how tight money was for me.  I had owned two small Honda street bikes while I was an undergraduate, but had to sell them each fall for tuition.  With the new phenomenon of motocross sweeping across the United States , I had developed a severe case of "off road envy."  Combing the newspaper ads, I found a used Kawasaki 100 cc "Trail Boss" near Middletown , Ohio .  The price was very right at $325 and I was very happy to load it into those motorcycle holding wheel hoops that were mounted onto the back of the bumper of my 1967 Plymouth Valiant.

As we all know, motorcycle ownership is fraught with mechanical peril.  The first problem I discovered, was that the prior owner had used Klotz synthetic lubricant in the oil injector.  When the tank got low, and not knowing the difference, I dumped a quart of oil based two cycle oil in the injection tank.  In case you are un-aware, please do not do not repeat my mistake.  The two lubricants react like oil and water--they separate and do not mix.  Consequently, while the engine’s  little oil injection pump was hoping for lubricant, it only got bubbles.  The piston quickly seized and my motorcycle mechanic's career began..  

As I did not know the first thing about engines, it was lucky that I knew Bob Hoover down the street.  Bob seemingly could fix anything.  He worked second shift, so he was always available to help.  Pushing the pathetically broken little bike down the street, I knocked on his door.  After taking a quick look, he encouraged me to take the cylinder off and get a look at it.  After I pulled it apart, he opined that it: "didn't look that bad, and what did I have to lose by giving it a try?"  He gave me some emery cloth and we buffed up the piston and cylinder.  After buttoning it back up and this time putting  premix in the gas tank, it fired right up. I was back in the off road business again. A few months later, the piston seized again.  However, I was ready this time!  I had bought a spare piston.  As strange as it sounds, right in the middle of the riding area, I hauled my tool box from my car, took the cylinder off, put the new piston right in.  A few kicks later, zoom! I was off again riding through an area that since has sprouted some very luxurious houses South of Dayton.  

As much fun as I was having with the little red machine, it was in reality, very underpowered, under suspended, and over-used.  Fortunately it was small framed, and by man-handling it, and riding like a maniac, I was mostly able to keep my riding companions in sight.  Soon I was ready for the "Big Time."  My buddy Dave D. and I would meet Northwest of Cincinnati at a spot that is now Brookville Lake in Indiana .  In retrospect, it was the best place we ever found to ride this side of Colorado .  It sported thousands of acres of fire roads through all types of terrain.  It also had some monster sized hill climbs.  

One fateful Saturday on the biggest hill in the place, is where I met my first and only broken bone on a motorcycle.  It was a fairly wide straight up hill that had three different grooves cut out of it.  As that little 100cc machine was so anemic, I knew I would have to get a great running start.  So I began climbing in what I thought was third gear.  Needing power, I shifted down to second at mid hill.  As I approached the top I was rapidly running out of power so I knew I would have to shift down once more if I was going to make it over the top.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  

Kawasaki 100 dirt bikes have always used a shift pattern where neutral is at the bottom  rather than between first and second like most bikes.  Unfortunately for me, I had not hit the base of the hill in third, but second gear.  My final desperate stab for a lower gear was only met by the scream of the engine as I shifted down into NEUTRAL!  Forward progress stopped instantaneously.  Not being experienced enough at hill climbing to immediately just lay it down, I tried to hold it up.  No.......... it started rolling backwards, and as the handlebars got cocked, it just flipped backwards, and so did I! 

My friends said they stopped counting at the third full back flip.  They also said that on the Olympic scale it would have been rated at least a 9.8 by any non- Eastern Block Judge!  Long before the days of U Tube, they quipped that it would have made a very good film clip.  I got up quickly and dragged the bike back down the hill.  I knew I had a problem with my right wrist.  Riding the bike back to the car with that quickly swelling appendage was not the high point of my riding career.  A trip to the emergency room got me one of the newest gadgets around-- a plastic removable cast with velcro straps for my broken wrist.

Since that time, I have logged thousands of miles of riding on nearly a dozen different off road motorcycles throughout the Western United States .  35 years later and no broken bones(knock on anything cellulose), I found this very nice little Red G4TR near Detroit   I I think you can understand why I could hardly pass it up.  Thank you Kawasaki , and thank you Bob Hoover!