My “Own Personal Potlatch”

Ms Day has known me for all but 19 of my 76 years and she, clearly, knows my triggers and moods better than me. Even as I wrote them, I knew that it would seem like my last three or four essays were self-pitying whining old man drivel. At least to me, I felt like I was expressing my confusion and disappointment in this phase of life. As I've written a few times, I'm a long ways from somebody who is rich in self knowledge. As a 1950s male, "suck it up and move on" would be pretty close to the motto I've lived by. Yesterday morning after observing my mood, Ms Day asked me, "So how was your own personal potlatch?" Almost instantly I felt pretty good about the last couple of weeks. Seriously, just that question put the entire “end of motorcycling” in a different light that made me appreciate not just my lucky past but the enjoyment I got from passing my treasures on to people who will also enjoy them.

If you are looking for a guy filled with white pride, you'll need to keep moving . . . a long ways from me. Mostly, I think European males have been a plague on the planet and Mother Earth will be glad to be rid of us if she finds a neutron bomb-way to get the job done with minimal damage to useful lifeforms. The best and most honest thing I've heard about my race (and species) is Ms Day's reminder, "Beware of the Ice Age Hunters." We may not be smart, creative or inventive, pretty, industrious, or reliable, but nobody is more ruthless, brutal, and efficient when it comes to making war. Whatever you can build, we European males can break, destroy, steal, and claim for our own. European immigrants to North America upped that game so dramatically that the Nazi’s studied our Civil War for tactics and Hitler’s version of Jim Crow.

When I was in my early 20s, I got seriously interested in North American Native religions, culture, and government. We were living in Dallas and the downtown Dallas library was the kind of intellectual wonderland that I had never expected to discover. The North American Pacific Northwest Coast tribes (Haida, Nuxalk, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Coast Salish, and Kwakiutl) practiced various forms of the potlatch ritual and I have tried to honor that whenever possible in my own life.  Wikipedia says, “During a potlatch, the host may lavishly distribute gifts or even destroy property to demonstrate wealth and generosity. These gifts can include real property like food, blankets, copper shields, canoes, and carved items. . .” There is a lot more to the potlatch custom, but that bit fits my feeling as my equipment and motorcycle was leaving my garage.

While I was piling everything from weird motorcycle parts and paraphernalia to the Aerostich gear that has been my copilot for several hundred thousand miles onto my buyer/guests, I was weirdly happy to see my things go for very affordable prices to people who might appreciate and use them. Some of those things had been nearly gifted to me by friends, vendors (when I was a magazine columnist), and simple good fortune discovering great products early in a company’s start-up stage. I don’t think I’ve ever gone through this ritual to “demonstrate wealth,” but I can be accused of deliberately trying to demonstrate generosity in an attempt to “pay it forward.”

Since leaving my father’s home when I was 15 and when Ms Day and I joined forces when I was 19 and she was 17, I (then we) have moved 31 times. Every time I have moved, lots of stuff was left behind. Sometimes those things were precious but too bulky to be kept. Sometimes things were accidentally left. Often, we knew people who might put our excess to better use. Rarely, we made the effort to sell off our excess. My father used to have a tennis rule, applied ruthlessly in his later years, “When in doubt, out.” I modified that to “When in doubt, throw it out.” For a lot of years one of my personal goals was to own no more stuff than I could fit into a well-packed utility van (I always visualized a 1970’s Econoline E150). Being an electronics engineer in the 1970s and 80s meant chasing our floundering manufacturing economy as it deteriorated from the center out to the coasts. The 80s were particularly hard on my kind of “skilled labor” since Reaganomics moved capital from work (manufacturing) to idle money (investment and speculation). My poor kids probably thought getting to know anyone was a waste of time, since we’d be moving soon and, pre-internet, staying in touch with friends at a distance was a complicated project.

Since retiring and having taken part in dissolving the estates of my father-in-law and my own father’s property, I have tried to constantly re-evaluate my own stuff looking for things I no longer use to sell, give away, or throw out. Ideally, the day Ms Day and I no longer need “stuff,” there won’t be anything to fool with that our daughter’s don’t want to keep for themselves. And I hope to continue enjoying passing on this potlatch tradition to the end.

How do you love a riding suit?

This is one of my favorite pictures of me, from 2018, and one of my all-time favorite motorcycles (my 2004 Suzuki 650 V-Strom). All of this stuff and me spent just short of 100,000 miles together. This past weekend, the last of those things surrounding me went out of my life. Knowing that my old age infirmities had got the best of me, I let my two Aerostich Darien suits go to a new owner.

The Darien suit I’m wearing in this picture is a prototype AD1 HiViz jacket and a pair of AD1 Darien pants. You can’t tell from the picture, but I am armored to the max with every piece of TF3 armor Aerostich sells for that gear: hip and knee pads, elbow, shoulder, and back pads. I also have a pair of Aerostich elkskin gauntlet gloves, a Shoei X1 helmet, and my Gaerne Goretex boots. Along with every other piece of riding gear, special motorcycle tools, and my last motorcycle (a Suzuki TU250X) every thing connecting my 60+ years on a motorcycle found new homes this past week.

I am finding it difficult to choke down how emotionally attached I had become to my riding gear; even more than the motorcycles. In late 2020, I had sold my two all-time favorite motorcycles and clung to the unlikely possibility that I might find my way back on to a motorcycle. I hadn’t let go of any of my gear, which turned out to be more precious to me than the actual motorcycles.

My physical problems were compounded this summer and I could no longer justify pretending that a comeback was possible. I failed my baseline test and, worse, found myself riding with almost no confidence when I lost the feeling in my hands at the end of a piddly 20-mile ride. When our water heater began to leak and I started looking at the opportunity to replace it with a heat pump unit, I had to clear out the storage shelves surrounding the water heater to do that work. That was when I decided it made no sense to put all of that stuff back in the same place. It was time to do some Swedish Death Cleaning. Unlike the characters I met during my Cheap Bike Challenge hunt, I was not going to be clinging to my stuff hoping for some fantasy price. I was emptying the basement shop, my two garages, and my closet of everything I will never use again.

I would be lying if I said that was a fun exercise. It was almost as painful as I imagine giving away a favorite pet would be (something I have not yet had to do). I have pictures, memories, stories chronicled in this blog, and friends to reminisce with, so nothing is really gone as long as I am alive and my tiny brain still works. I lived in and with my Aerostich gear for so many years, miles, and hours that my relationship with that clothing became very personal. I hope the new owners get as much fun, satisfaction, protection, and adventure from my equipment as I have had.

My Pace, My Path, My Objectives

For more than 60 years, the ONLY time I have been in total control of what I’m doing, how fast I’m doing it, and why I’m doing it have been on a motorcycle. I came from a fairly large (5 brats and two semi-adult parents) family and I was the oldest and designated babysitter, cook and bottle-washer, and the official family black sheep. When I abandoned my father’s nuthouse the summer I turned 16, I went from that over-complicated situation to even crazier 1960’s rock-and-roll bands, marriage at 19, and the next 40 years of occupational and parental over-stimulus non-stop; unless I was on a motorcycle.

Other that a few trips with close friends and one decidedly wrong start to the trip of a lifetime with someone Ms. Day had picked to babysit me and one anniversary trip with Ms. Day and a small portion of my 2008 Nova Scotia Canadian tour, I have always traveled alone by motorcycle. Even when I have been on a ride with a friend, my preferred plan is to designate a general time and specific place to meet at the end of the day and for each of us to find our own way to that location at our own pace.

For almost all of my 76 years I have been the poster boy for failing at “to thine own self be true” because I had no idea who I was. In the early 80s, in a “Career Planning” class at OCC, I took the Myers-Briggs Personality Test. Say what you will about how obsolete that test is, but when I received my dot-matrix printout of my personality results (INTP) it was all I could do to keep from crying during the class. It was the first time in my 35-years that I felt anyone actually “knew” me and that “someone” was an 8-bit, IBM mini-computer.

I am not just “a little” INTP, either. Those measurement bars were pinned to the far end of each characteristic. The intended outcome of that test was for us to plow through a 4” thick book of occupations and find jobs that were suitable for our personality types. INTPs are fairly rare (not in a good way) and, at that time, that giant book of occupations recommended only four occupations. Not helpful, especially for me since “engineer” was not one of the four and I had been making a living as an electronic engineer for a dozen years by 1984.

Worse, everything about being a 1950s kid ruled against the “I” characteristic in my personality type. When I grew up, in the age of How to Win Friends and Influence People, “introversion” is old psych-jargon for homosexual or worse. Giving in to my natural inclinations was the fast route to unemployment and social stigma. So, for the next 40 years I ignored the “I” and concentrated on making the best of “NTP” (my Intuitive, Thinking, and Prospecting traits). And that, occupationally, worked for me right up to when I retired, mostly. It kept me employed, anyway.

For my family and friends, however, ignoring my introversion meant that i spent a lot of my “off-camera” time suffering from an “introvert hangover”: “a metaphorical state of emotional and mental exhaustion. It occurs when an introvert has spent an extended period interacting socially, leaving them drained and depleted.” “Drained and depleted” enough that I would rather risk being bitten by a rattlesnake backpacking alone in the Texas desert or left injured and stranded anywhere from Baja, Mexico to Alaska to the empty backroads of Newfoundland and New Brunswick to Montana or Wyoming’s empty, abandoned wastelands than talk to one more person, no matter how much I loved them. And that is where motorcycles came into my life in a dominant way from around 1969 until a few years ago.

I had been backpacking the wilderness of every place I’d lived, from Kansas when I was a kid to California when my daughters were teenagers, but backpacking usually required a lot of prep time and energy and, often, I didn’t have those resources in any quantity. At the most hectic period of my life, when we lived in California and our daughters were teenagers, I would often have to escape for a weekend or a day or two more and my trip “planning” involved stuffing camping gear into saddlebags along with a couple changes of clothing and flipping a quarter while I sat on my motorcycle to decide if I was traveling north or south out of Huntington Beach: often as far as well into Baja, Mexico or right up to the Canadian border on PCH. Sometimes, I’d make the same trip (with the same planning) in my ‘73 Toyota Hilux with a kayak tied to the rack and a bed full of scuba gear. (“Fuck a lot of ‘dive buddy’ crap, I need to go where nobody else ever goes.”)

If you peruse this blog, you’ll see “reports” of my solo travels that cross about 50 years of my life. I have never had a job that didn’t generate substantial “introvert hangovers” and busting out of my life alone and mostly directionless has been the cure until I retired in 2013. When I retired, two friends gave me copies (one paperback and one eBook) of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, And I thought, “Why the fuck do you guys think I need a book about introverts?” Seriously. After being trapped in a screwed-up VW camper for several months in a New Mexico campground waiting for parts, information, or shop time I started to read the book. By the time I had that crap VW Eurovan back in running condition and we’d relaxed into our original driving and camping

In 2018, myasthenia gravis put an end to that hangover cure, but being retired also diminished the requirement. It got a lot worse before it started to get better and, assuming it wouldn’t get enough better to matter, I sold my beloved 2004 Suzuki V-Strom and my even more precious Yamaha WR250X. Thinking that the worst was past, I gambled on a Suzuki TU250X in late 2019, but it didn’t get better as the eyesight problems were soon replaced with hands that refuse to function usefully or reliably and riding skills that had deteriorated to the point of no return.

Bicycling, my primary transportation for as many Minnesota months as I can stand it, is not the same.

Thinking about Things I Will Never Do Again

This morning, I drug myself out of bed around 6:30AM (I know!), poured a cup of coffee, and waddled out to the garage to change the oil in my wife’s car before a trip to the cities later today. As I assembled the usual culprit tools, drug the floor jack to the front of the car, organized the oil and filter for easy access while I was under the car, I flashed back on 60 years of motorcycle maintenance. A few days ago, I emptied a large milk crate full of assorted motorcycle parts, tools, and accessories into a grocery bag and, now, most of that stuff has been claimed by the various people who bought my more expensive gear over the past week. I am, apparently, one demented Boy Scout. I was still prepared to do an oil change on at least a half-dozen motorcycles that I’ve owned over the past 30 years. But I will NEVER do that again.

A few weeks ago, when I decided to sell my Suzuki TU250X, I did a ceremonial last round of maintenance. I changed the oil and filter, checked the valve clearance, adjusted and lubed the chain, checked the tire pressures, and did a thorough detailing job one last time. As I did that job, I recalled a moment when I thought I might be passing on my motorcycle experiences to my grandson, Wolf. I about to do a pretty serious rework of my Kawasaki KL250 Super Sherpa after coming back from a 2010 North Dakota Ghost Town tour (that I’d planned on doing on the Kawasaki before the idiot shifter oil seal design dumped all of the bike’s oil on my boot during a pre-trip shakedown ride).

My idea was that Wolf might enjoy knowing something about how a motorcycle worked before I ran him through the MSF Basic Rider course and helped him get a motorcycle endorsement (and a driver’s license). He lasted about as long as it took for me to demonstrate chain maintenance and the beginning stages of an oil change before deciding that kind of grubby work was not for him. I wish I could say, “I get it,” but I don’t.

While I was going through the steps of the Honda’s oil change, I had flashbacks of doing that kind of simple-minded basic maintenance on everything from my first car through my last motorcycle. I’m too lazy to count either the number of cages or bikes I’ve worked on, or to even think about that hard, but as long as I have the right tools for the job I kind of love that work. I have a hard time understanding why everyone doesn’t, in fact.

I am a rapidly retreating introvert and as I’ve learned more about that personality characteristic post-retirement I realize that one of many things that I’ve appreciated about vehicle maintenance is that working on, around, and under a vehicle is a really effective people-repellant. If I go into my office to write, play music, or read, Ms. Day feels totally free to pop in, ask me questions, drop another honey-do project into my lap, or just ask “What’ca doin’?” If I am working on any kind of vehicle, she stays as far from that area as possible. The same went for my daughters, neighbors, and, now, grandkids. Nobody has any interest into being roped into handing me tools, holding on to a piece of metal while I weld it, being involved in a greasy, filthy project, or listening to me bitch about whatever stupid thing some factory engineers screwed up. I have never had a more isolated man cave than my garages and that has been true for almost 70 years. When I was a kid, working on my coaster brake Schwinn (or his lawnmower), my father would avoid his own garage until I rode off to test my work.

When we bought our 140-year-old “Ugly House” in Little Canada, I hadn’t seen the inside of the house until after closing, but I’d already made big plans for the 850-square-foot garage. I practically lived in that garage for 18 years and it was worth every penny of the $106,000 I paid for the house. The rest of the house belonged to Ms. Day and, for all I cared, if a tornado ripped the house out of the ground and tossed it to Kansas I’d have celebrated. Anything in the US built before 1947 should probably be scrapped for the raw materials. There was plenty wrong with that garage, too, especially the moronic drainage “plan,” but all the things that were right with it (especially after I installed a big window and skylights) made up for it. Mostly.

But today I’m down to simple maintenance on a twelve-year-old Honda CRV and my ebikes. It is highly likely that I’ll never see the inside of another motorcycle engine, reassemble another gearbox, repair or replace another non-bicycle tire, or do any of the things that gave me peace, quiet, and privacy for 60+ years. Thinking about that also reminded me of the moments in my 76 years when “the last time” passed unnoticed:

• After a practice crash that left me with a dozen broken ribs and PTSD so demented that I repeatedly hallucinated similar crashes every time I caught a few inches of off-road air, I never raced motocross, enduros, or cross-country again (age 28).
• When my youngest daughter and I returned from a wonderful trip up the coast of California in 1989, when she was 16, that would be the last time she and I ever took any kind of trip together. Three years later, my oldest daughter was visiting me in Colorado and we died a 3-day ride on my Yamaha Vision to Durango and around the mountains and that was the last time any of my kids and I would travel together by motorcycle.
• When Ms. Day and I celebrated our 40th anniversary together with a two-up ride to the North Shore, that would be the last time she would ever ride with me on a motorcycle.
• In 2018, I “celebrated” my 18th year as a Minnesota MSF instructor with a forced retirement due to double-vision and myasthenia gravis. Back then, I thought I was through with motorcycling and I sold my beautiful V-Strom and my WR250X. I definitely noticed that one, though.
• After a fantastic 2016 trip through the Colorado mountains where I met a good friend and we explored a bunch of hot springs and our peculiar style of “riding together,” (Breakfast and, then, “I’ll meet you at . . . tonight”) I would never take a motorcycle trip longer than 100 miles again.

Done and Out

Quite a few years ago, when I was still a young 69-years-old, I gave myself a set of criteria, “Creating A Baseline,”  for knowing when my physical capabilities and skills were no longer up to the challenge of riding a motorcycle on the street. (You might notice that I gave myself a slight out there.)  My skills were still pretty sharp when I wrote that article and I was being brutally critical and honest about how lame I think the Minnesota motorcycle license test is.  Today, having watched the collection of losers and fools who parade through Red Wing pretending they are big brave biker gangbangers for 9 years, it's way worse than I thought it was then.  Wobbling to a stop, wandering into a ditch, crashing into telephone poles and houses, and falling over trying to traverse a low speed intersection are unattainable “skills.”

A few weeks ago I took a 40 mile round-trip ride for lunch with a friend.  On the way there, my hands gave me some pain and aggravation.  On the way back, they were practically paralyzed by the time I turned on to my street.  It turns out—one more old fart thing—I am developing severe carpal tunnel in both hands.  It’s been severe enough that some mornings my hands hurt worse than they did when I had broken fingers.  At the end of that last ride I couldn't feel the throttle the brake or the clutch, and I was operating totally on memory.

So, after putting it off until it looked like we might start to get actual motorcycling weather, I rode over to the nearest ex-range (no longer used, due to the decline in motorcycle license applicants), warmed up for about 20 minutes, practicing the exercises I was about to run on myself, and went through the 10 exercises of the Minnesota motorcycle license test.

I failed.

I didn't fail the way you might have, given the same situation, but I failed under my 2017 standards. And that's the deal I made with myself. If I cannot ride that idiotic and easy course perfectly, I'm done. I didn't have anyone there scoring me. And I am a pretty harsh judge of myself, but by my scorecard, I picked up three points: infinitely worse than perfect.

I thought about making another pass at it. Giving myself the exact same second chance I would not give a student. Honestly, my hands hurt so badly. by the end of that practice session and the failed test, that it was just obvious to me that I'm done. I'm 76, this isn't going to get better, if I'm lucky it won't get much worse. 

My good friend, Andy Goldfine, regularly tries to encourage me with stories of his 80-and-over customers who are still knocking out a few thousand miles every year. I've looked into some of those guys and they all ride in a group. So that, if something goes wrong, they have someone to help pick up their bike, to haul their withered butts to hospitals, and even to help them  mount the motorcycle in mildly difficult situations. I'd rather walk than ride in a group.

So, after stewing in disappointment and recriminations, today I started planning up my 2012 Suzuki TU250X for sale.  And the recent past, a half dozen people have expressed interest in my TUX and I'll offer it to them before it goes up on the half dozen sale sites I'm likely to use.  The rest of my motorcycle pile—jackets, riding pants, all-weather gloves, boots, parts, accessories, and tools—will be sold or given away at the same time.

That's going to clear a lot of space in my lower garage.  For that matter, in the upper garage too.  Part of that Swedish Death Cleaning routine, I suppose.

I have been riding motorcycles since my first exposure at 15, in 1963. I am not one of those cool guys who has logged his life’s mileage so that I can brag “real numbers.” I didn’t even own a motorcycle with an odometer until 1983. By then, I’d been on (and off of) motorcycles for 20 years. That same year, 1983, I bought my first Aerostich Roadcrafter when I went through my first southern California monsoon season. I’ve been wearing helmets anytime I’m on a motorcycle since 1971 and assorted protective gear since race tracks started insisting on it in the early 70s. It will be weird not having a motorcycle and gear in my garage and basement, but I still have eBikes and that will have to do.

Putting Putting Last Things First

In it’s usual half-assed, half-cocked way, the Minnesota legislature is considering motorcycle lane-sharing/splitting in an amendment tacked on to Minnesota Statutes 2022, section 169.974, subdivision 5. The new sections are 1) “Only if the operation of the motorcycle does not exceed 40 miles per hour and is operated at no more than 15 miles per hour over the speed of traffic, a person may operate a motorcycle (1) abreast of, overtake, or pass
another vehicle within the same traffic lane, or (2) between two parallel lanes of moving or stationary traffic headed in the same direction . . . and 2) An operator of a motor vehicle that intentionally impedes or attempts to prevent any operator of a motorcycle from operating a motorcycle as permitted under paragraph (e) is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.”

I have no significant objection to the first article as it appears to be a reasonably competent copy of the California lane-splitting/sharing statutes that have been in place since the 80s. The second half is an extension of the entitled, cowardly Minnesota motorcycle attitude that it’s everyone else’s job to watch out for incompetent, reckless and careless motorcyclists. We’ve been here before in my column, many times in fact. Not only do motorcyclists imagine themselves to be free from having to bother with noise and emissions regulations, because of their incredible self-importance, they imagine that “right of way” traffic laws should always assume the motorcycle has the right of way. Lawyers are going to have a field day with this nonsense, but motorcyclists are risking everything putting this horse before the cart.

I love splitting lanes, even though I have rarely done it since I left California in 1991. I feel confident that I would be able to continue that practice, even in less-skilled and passive-aggressive Minnesota traffic. However, I have experienced the aftermath of following one of our many grossly illegal biker gangs in both Cities’ traffic and on rural roads. After those clowns have passed a few motorists (or the motorists have suffered the risk of passing them) most everyone on the road is in a mood to swat a motorcycle. Recently, a friend tried to justify this nonsense by claiming a weird relationship, “loud pipes, which many riders find naturally enjoyable, same as playing a musical instrument loudly, which many musicians naturally enjoy.” I suspect I might find it enjoyable to take potshots at noisy vehicles, but I suspect my enjoyment ends when the bullet hits the target? Who cares what 1% of 1% of the population “enjoys” if that impinges on the peace and quiet of the majority of the people in hearing distance? Not to mention the fact that it is illegal in Minnesota and most states to modify either the exhaust of intake of a modern vehicle. The fact that cops are too lazy and/or cowardly to mess with that crowd does not justify the noise or make that behavior legal. The idiotic “road captain” nonsense is making enemies for motorcyclists every time that privilege is exercised on top of the noise that always comes with that crowd.

But mixing pointless hearing-damaging noises and anti-social behavior with a driving tactic, that is as risky and depending on tolerant behavior as lane splitting, is gambling with lives (on both sides of the obvious crashes that are going to happen soon after this law goes into effect). I admit some of those lives are dirtbags, but too often the dirtbags bring down useful and decent people, which is where the “operator of a motor vehicle that intentionally impedes or attempts to prevent any operator of a motorcycle from operating a motorcycle as permitted under paragraph (e) is guilty of a petty misdemeanor” portion of this law is going to do damage in the best of cases. Since many traffic cops are going to default to assuming the cager caused the crash, even though statistics makes that pretty unlikely, ordinary drivers are going to punished for motorcyclists’ bad and/or incompetent behavior. After that happens a few hundred times, the majority of road users are going to object to being responsible for the irresponsible crowd.

Attracting the attention of the majority of road users and taxpayers is likely to backfire on those to imagine this law is going to be a good thing for Minnesota motorcycling. When taxpayers realize that absolutely nothing about allowing motorcycles on public highways can be economically justified, they will likely start considering the obvious and logical solution: relegating motorcycles to the “recreational vehicle” category and removing the damn things from public roads. And I am here to say “I told you so.” If we made the slightest effort to reduce the public nuisance aspects of motorcycles before introducing lane splitting, I think it might be possible to introduce the practice to Minnesota highway users. If whoever is driving this dumb idea ignores that fact, there will be blood.

Getting A License in 1992

After I left California in late 1991, I spent exactly one month in Indiana working for the dumbest company I’ve experienced in my long life. After I’d given up that experiment as a loss-leader, I flew a bunch of resumes in westwardly directions and landed my first medical devices job in Colorado. The company moved me and all I had to do was get my lazy unemployed ass from Elkhart, IN to Denver in 60 days, when I’d start my new job. I’d shipped my two motorcycles ahead with the moving van, outfitted my 1984 Toyota Van as a marginal camper, and I was starting my westward meander with a dinner in Chicago with an old friend. He and another of his friends spent a good bit of energy arguing out a safe place for two black guys and a goober from Kansas for a late night dinner. We settled on a pizza place in western Chicago and, mostly, that worked out well. I didn’t have to pay for anything and didn’t realize until I stopped in Springfield, MO and realized that someone had lifted my billfold in the restaurant’s hatcheck back in Chicago.

My step-brother lived in Springfield, which is why I’d taken that route, and I stayed with his family for a couple of days while I chased down credit card replacements and did the usual 1990’s routine for a stolen identity. The state of California and my insurance company were gracious enough to send me evidence that I was licensed and insured, but I did drive the rest of the way to Colorado without an actual driver’s license. Since I had no reason to be in a hurry, it took me almost a month to make it the 1,000 miles from Chicago to Denver. A few weeks after I arrived, I was living in a friend’s basement waiting for my new job to start. Not having an official license to drive meant that I had to take the whole Colorado driving test, including the driving part. After I had that, I had to take the motorcycle endorsement written and driving test at the DMV.

I had a 1983 Yamaha 550 Vision and a 1986 Yamaha XT350 to choose from for the test and I’d been spending most of my previous 5 years on the XT350 commuting in L.A. and riding offroad in the southern California and Baja deserts. I was as comfortable on my XT as any motorcycle I’ve ever owned and loved. So, it was a no-brainer; the XT350 it would be.

It was January 1992, but the weather was practically Californian and I wanted to be legal as soon as possible. The written test was easy and I’d lucked into being able to go immediately from paper to the DMV alley where the examiner gave the test. The rest range was pretty weird. Since there wasn’t much room to work with, parts of the “course” was overlaid on other parts; like the cone weave, the swerve, and the quick stop tests. The cop administering the test had to reset the course for each section of the test, moving cones as required. All of the exam was incredibly easy (as all US motorcycle endorsements tests have always been) on the XT and the last test was the quick stop. I’d never had to take any sort of test for my motorcycle endorsement, because when I got my first license in 1964 you didn’t have to do anything but ask for an “M” stamp on your cage license. I was feeling pretty cocky and sure of myself by that last portion of the test.

As I remember, the runup to the quick stop was about 50’; according to the examiner that was barely enough space for a lot of motorcyclists to get up to the required 15mph. He was a little irritated that day because he’d just flunked a couple of cruiser riders and a Denver cop for failing this part of the exam. I was having fun and didn’t take note of his mood (I’m notorious for that kind of obliviousness.) and I was absolutely convinced that getting my endorsement was a given. I squared up at the start line, gave the bike a little more gas than necessary and took off aggressively toward the stop-box. The examiner was obviously startled and as I went past him he seemed excited. A smarter guy might have played it safe, but at that moment in my life I felt more free to express myself and be me than ever before (or since). Worst case, I fail and have to come back in two weeks and do it again on the same test fee. The moment my front tire hit the stop-box line, I nailed the front and rear brakes, lifting the back tire about 2’ in a spiffy stoppie. The examiner had warned me about wheelies, but he did not mention stoppies.

Turned out, he’d never seen a stoppie that resulted in a stop that didn’t also include a crash. Earlier that week, a couple of arrogant Denver cops (not motorcycle cops) had brought their Harleys in for the exam and both had not only sailed past the stop-box but had panicked so completely that they’d put themselves in the dumpster at the end of the alley. That was my examiner’s most recent experience with dumbasses overdoing the quick stop test. Turned out that I just made him laugh. I was so pumped up that I offered to do it again for both of our entertainment, but he’d had all the laughs he wanted for the day and I left with a Colorado motorcycle endorsement.

Since then, I’ve been renewing and transferring that same endorsement from Colorado to Minnesota for the past 30 years. In late 2000, I started on the path to becoming a Minnesota Motorcycle Safety Instructor and I’ve given something resembling that same test to several hundred wannabe motorcyclists. I’ve seen a couple of stoppies, usually accidental, during the course and the endorsement test. I might shake my finger at the student and offer a bullshit warning, but who am I to flunk someone for showing a little style?