The Motorcycles

While I was living in Eugene, I decided that having a little motorbike to get around on would be just the thing. The allure of not having to worry about parking, the excellent gas mileage, and the coolness factor convinced me to spring for an old Honda trail 90.

This motorbike proved to be the perfect thing to learn on, and I drove to class every day for wuite a while on it. Eventually though, it developed serious issues, and I drove myself just about crazy trying to fix it. One of my biggest weakenesses is that when I'm "in the flow" of a project, it can be really hard to  recognize when it's time to disengage as my work goes from productive to damaging.

I managed to keep the bike working quite a while, but after a while, the lack of space to repair it, and the lack of time to work on it during my studies made me decided to sell it.

I used the proceeds to purchase a bike that I made sure to get a guarantee on--another old Honda--this time a CL175, that the owner vouched for or my money back. The pattern repeated itself, but this time the downfall of the bike wasn't my frustrated tinkering, and as I returned it to the seller for my money, I realized that if I wanted an old Honda, I was going to need to accept that I would have to tinker to make it work.

So, when a great deal came up, I got a slightly smaller bike, a honda cl100, and I prepared for the struggle of making it work, and what a struggle it has been. First, the kickstarter shaft snapped under normal condidtions, then idling issues, battery issues, high speed issues, basically everything that could go wrong did. However, I stuck it out, and made it really work properly with a new carberator, battery, rectifier, and some replaced gaskets, alongside a welded and bolted kickstarter shaft.

Everything was idyllic, right up until about a week ago, it suddenly died, and upon replacing the battery, ran like a different bike, then promptly the kickstarter shaft broke again. Despite the innumerable frustrations I've had with motorcycles, I can now competently repair small engines (though I have no love for doing so), and I think that I've learned a great deal of patience.