This past weekend, I completed the work I'd been doing on the 1969 Triumph T100 for a customer. An old friend named Steve, himself the owner of a 1970 Bonneville, helped me fine-tune the carburetor, make a few more adjustments, and suddenly it was finished. We took turns running it up and down the long, winding road Lisa and I live on, to insure everything was set. It most certainly was.
As much of a headache as it was at times working on such an old bike, the thrill of blasting down the road on it was visceral. Kick-starting it to life, getting on that throttle, hearing those straight pipes howl, and the hard shifting up and down through the gears, on the left side no less, brought out feelings I'd never experienced on a bike before. Honestly, prior to this bike, I had never ridden a motorcycle as old as this one. My dad had a '72 Triumph TR6 when I was a kid, and that's the oldest bike I'd ever been on, prior to this. So I felt my inner "hooligan" welling up as I roared up and down the road on her.
Don't get me wrong- I love the feeling of raw acceleration on my Triumph Sprint, and the powerful torque of my big Yamaha Royal Star. But this bike made me feel like James Dean or Marlon Brando, a "Wild One" on two old classic wheels. I was grinning ear-to-ear with every run.
I used to think the old bikes were cool to look at, to hear, to see on the road, but I never wanted one for myself. Too much work to keep them road-worthy. Now, after getting this one back on the road, I'm not so sure I'd turn one down if the opportunity arose. To be sure, you need to carry a tool kit along if you ride one of these for any time or distance. But for fun around town, and down winding, country roads, I could definitely channel my inner hooligan for another chance to ride, or even own, one of these old classics.
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