Joining a Patch (Riding) Club

This year I joined the Twin Cities Motorcycle Club. I had ridden almost exclusively by myself since learning to ride 5 years ago, and was looking to try something different. I was worried about several things -

Would me and '95 Virago fit in?

Were they mostly sportbikes? Cruisers? Touring bikes?

Would the rides be too easy or too difficult?

Would it be as much fun riding in a group as it is on my own?

Would the non-ride activities be fun?



It turned out to be a great deal for me. The rides were AWESOME. They were planned & led by Don the RC, who is a professional road captain. This guy is a meticulous organizer - he plans the routes considering everything - mixture of scenery and challenge, inexpensive quirky places to eat, and even routes & times his rides to keep the sun out of your eyes. There are different "themes" and ability levels to the rides, too.

On ride day, there's the road captain, the officers, and the tailrider. The tailrider, George, is a 72 year old rider who has seen it all and done it all. The officers do things like block intersections, mark corners if the group gets split up, and generally make sure everyone is taken care of. No one is left behind. The rest of the group rides in a double line.

It took a little while to get used to having people all around me while I was riding, and I had to pay attention to keeping the right spacing. But after a while, that became second nature, and I could enjoy cornering and see the sights, and not worry about when to turn or where to stop. All taken care of.

It even made me better at taking corners. I would position myself behind a faster rider and take the corners on the same line he did, and got used to cornering faster.

Keith is the club president, and he does a great job of setting the tone for the group. It's not what you ride, it's that you ride. It's a big, diverse group, and since joining it I'm enjoying riding more than I have since I started.

So I don't know if a riding club is for everybody, or if every club is as fun as the TCMC, but it worked for me.

The bikes I've owned #2

'94 Yamaha Virago 535

It's like adding another cylinder the same size to the Suzuki. It's a V-twin, and it had plenty of acceleration. I test drove it and it had great acceleration compared to the 250, and that sold me on it. It had a shaft drive, too, which was nice for maintenance. It weighed 100 lbs more than the Suzuki, but still was easy to handle even in the parking lot. I could carry a passenger and still move at highway speeds. It was older, and there were some cosmetic defects, but it was still a nice looking bike. It barely ever needed any choke to start. The ergonomics weren't as good as the Suzuki, and I always felt a little cramped on it, and I had to adjust the foot pedals way low to get them comfortable. The wind wasn't blocked at all, either, though I eventually bought a windscreen for it. If I was a little smaller I might have stayed with this bike longer.

It was easy to twist and turn this bike on any road at almost any speed. I felt like a sport bike rider on it, and it was pretty narrow, hard to lean it over enough to scrape the pegs. I put 9000 miles on this bike before moving on, and at 50-55 mpg, they were cheap miles.

Things I liked: pretty good in turns for a 500cc cruiser bike. Great at swerving - I got in and out of more trouble with this bike than any of my others.

Think I didn't: only 120 miles before having to hit reserve. Rear brake locked too easily. Your legs get really hot so close to the engine. Gets blown around on the highway. Blew a rectifier at 15,000 miles. No easy way to mount large saddlebags without relocating the rear turn signals.

Most recent close call

I posted this in the Twin Cities Motorcycle Club blog back in October. Reprinted here by permission of the author - well, me.

I watched the purple horizon turn orange and then blue this morning, bummed that I wasn't going to school and playing hooky from work with the folks escorting Keith's niece. Got pneumonia, Virago half disassembled waiting for its new stator, Venture on its center stand with the cover off waiting for me to figure out why it was misfiring on the last ride, and an experiment to run at work. Weather wasn't that cold, either. I haven't ridden in two weeks, and I imagine like a lot of you I get a little moody when I don't ride.
Anyway, get home from work, it's so warm out, I decide to button up the Venture and ride it to my doctor appointment. Seems to run OK, it's getting dark but still warm. After the doctor (stay out of the cold, avoid dust and smoke), I figure why not take a little ride and check out the mis-fire problem? After all, it's not cold out, so I'm staying out of the cold, right? So I get on the on-ramp to 694, and try to open it up in 3rd gear, and WHOOSH, it's up to 60 by the end of the ramp! 6000 rpm, no problem! It's cured! I guess those folks on the Venturerider.org forum (and our senior rider Tony) who suggested it was a wet ignition (TCI box) were right. I can't believe it, zipping along the highway, downshifting to check it at high RPM, just as good as ever.So where to go - maybe east on 36 where I can still ride fast, and I take the exit and everthing is still great. Well how to go home? I'll turn south on Lake Elmo ave, west onto MN 5,ride back to 694 and head south to home. I don't like to ride at night on back roads this time of year because it's bambi season, so I have only about a 2 mile stretch of 17 and the rest is pretty busy. So, I turn at the light from 36 onto 17 and of course I have to open it up all the way in 2nd and 3rd gears just to check it out again. Yup, my big powerful baby is back! Shift into 4th, turn on the high beams and...
Two deer leap out of the field on the left onto the road and....start walking. One's in my lane, one's in the oncoming lane, and I'm on the linked brakes and the front brake and I'm not going to stop in time. Off the brakes, I swerve just to the rear of the first deer hoping to pass between them, and in my head the second one has to get spooked and is either going to T-bone me or run back to the left - the deer in my lane will probably leap off the road. I split the two deer and I can't believe it, neither one of them stopped walking. I could have reached out and touched either of them, and the 1000lb+ of bike and rider just zipped between them and they didn't even care. I looked in the mirror and they both just walked off the road, didn't even look at me.Well, I guess I'm to the stage of riding where the adrenaline of a near miss goes away in only about two minutes. I pat my chest and look at the stars and think it's great to be alive, and I make it home safely.
So now I'm home, and thinking, does the corn in Lake Elmo contain valium?

My first motorcycle Ride.

My first motorcycle was a 2001 Suzuki GZ250. It had something ridiculous like 200 miles on it, about 2 years old, and I bought it used before I had my license. It was a seriously cute little black thumper, one cylinder, 5 speeds, chain drive. I'm almost 6' tall, a little big for it, but it was a great bike to learn on. It was easy to pick up when I dropped it (which of course I did a couple of times). But it had great cruiser styling, a comfy seat, simple controls, and a sizzling top speed of 65 mph (unless we were going uphill, in which case it was more like 50). A cool thing that made this bike a great commuter was the 70 mpg, combined with a 3 gallon tank, which gave it outrageous range for an itty bitty bike.



Once I had my permit I took my first ride. I was nervous, it was Woodbury Garage Sale weekend, and my most dangerous task was to get out of town! I figured I would survive my first ride, after riding a bicycle for 5 years all over Northern California and the streets of Oakland. I put on the choke, turned the key, held in the clutch and thumbed the starter. This was my first experience with electric starter on a bike (the bikes I stole rides on as a kid were all kick starters). Chug, chug, chug, vroom........putt putt putt putt - the one cylinder engine did it's little idle thing, like a lawnmower on steroids. So I backed it out of the garage, pointed it down the driveway, pulled the clutch, dropped it into first, and slowly let out the clutch. And it just smoothly took off, and a we leaned gently at the end of the driveway. First gear until I went up the hill to the top of the access road to the development. Now I had to stop at the top of the hill. Had it all planned - hold the clutch in, angle to the right 'cause I'm about to make a right turn onto the street, put down my left foot, hold the bike still with my right foot on the back brake.


Well, what happened of course, is that putting on the back brake while turning right tends to drop the bike over to the right - and it did, and I had to dance my right foot to hold the suddenly heavy bike up, while putting the left foot back on the peg. And then I had to grab the front brake to arrest the bike's roll backwards down the hill. And I did it, with a little swearing and kept the clutch held in.


"OK, calm down, no big deal," I say to myself. I let out the clutch again, and we slid back just a little before moving forward. (I remembered practicing this with the Checker Marathon's clutch & parking brake when I was learning to drive in 1974). Up to the next stop sign. I was on my way! This isn't so bad.


East on Tamarak road, and the pavement opens up to 4 lanes. I manage to shift all the way up to 4th - I think - unlike a car you can't tell what gear you're in by the shift lever. Zipping along at a brisk 40 mph, with cars passing me, and one comes a little close, and I say OK, lets turn on this sidestreet coming up and take a little break. Well, I down shift, probably all the way to first, and I turn, and the bike almost falls to the inside of the turn again because I should really be in second not first. Well, I'm on to it now, and I let out the clutch before driving it into the ground and coast the rest of the way around the corner.




And I stop and get my breath and start to think "Shouldn't I wait a month - I'm scheduled for the MSF beginner class, just wait until then?" But it's a beautiful day, and the thought of leaving all the garage sale noise and traffic behind is too strong. So I pull out a map, and plan a route.

Map of first ride, part 1

OK, now I have a plan. Turn around and continue east on Tamarak, right at the light, all the way through Hastings to Welch. (I have fond memories of canoeing down the Cannon River to Welch when a fall colors canoe trip turned into a winter wonderland canoe trip.) So, gotta turn around in the sidestreet and get back and try to walk it around in the street and put on the brake while turning and boom! my first drop. Now I'm disgusted, and make a mental note - don't use the brake while turning - and it's easy to pick up and I go on my way.

As soon as you get above 10 mph the bike is easy to handle. So for the rest of the trip - only turn at speed, and accelerate out of the turns. That's what the books say to do anyway. And it worked. Down Washington County 19, to US 61, and I merge onto 61 by 3M Chemolite in 5th gear with the throttle wide open. Wow, I'm going 65 mph, this little bike can sure fly, I'll never need anything bigger than this! Bugs splatter against my helmet, my padded denim jacket flaps in the breeze, and the wind makes me lean forward just to keep my arms from being stretched. But look at me, I'm a biker. I'm in the right lane, and (because I'm going down hill) I'm holding my own with the traffic. You sure can see a lot through the visor (first ride, new visor). Down into the river valley, across the bridge, through Hastings, and on to Meisville. Still feeling confident, except I forgot to shift into first gear once and stalled pulling away from a stoplight. Ebarassing, but stomp on the shift lever a few times, hold in the clutch, she starts right up, and no one can see I'm turning red inside the helmet. Other bikes are sometimes waving at me and I wave back when my left hand isn't hovering over the clutch.

I make the turn down county 7 to Welch, and it's hilly and curvey. I decide to downshift into third, which keeps me at about 35mph on this bitty bike and, engine whining, I zip into downtown Welch. Well, there's about enough urban area to score a soda, so I park, drink and pull out the map. No kids this weekend, weather is fine, a little chilly at speed but gotta keep going. So here's my plan.

First ride map, part 2

Going to Cannon Falls, hope to find lunch there. I remember my Steve McQueen (The Great Escape), pull off the gas cap, swish it around, and there's so much a little spills out. Clearly do not have to worry about gas. So off I go, and it's my first experience with twisty roads, riding along Belle Creek. And, unlike maneuvering in the parking lot, this isn't scary, it's FUN. I think it's because I used to ride a 30# bicycle in traffic, up and down mountains, with shorts, a tee shirt, and a little styrofoam/ABS hat. Here I am with way more power (22, count'em 22 horses), jeans, boots, a thick jacket, and a serious helmet. And the motorcycle at 20 to 30 mph steers like a bicycle at 50 mph (the countersteer deal) And instead of little 1&1/4" tires that skid on a single pebble I have these monster tires. It feels much safer to lean way over than on the bicycle. And I can power out of a turn, while on the bike I got only what my quads are up to at the moment. On that road, that day, I became hooked on motorcycles.

First Post? My life on two wheels.

Geez, what a dumb post title. Should I be doing this?

Anyway, here's where I'm going to put stuff out there and see what happens. The title "I'm not you but I'm someone. Who?" kind of sums it up. In a lot of ways I'm not a typical person. But I move through life like lots of other people and stuff happens, and I think about it, and I'm putting it down here.

Let me talk about motorcycles. I feel Arlo Guthrie summed it up pretty well.

I don't want a pickle, just want to ride on my motorcycle.

I don't want a tickle, I'd rather ride on my motorcycle.

I don't wanna die. Just want to ride on my motorcy.....cle.

As a kid, I was interested in mini-bikes when I was about 11. I had a friend who wanted one, too, and we pooled our allowances and bought a frame. We were going to keep it at his house - my parents were not excited about the idea. Then we'd buy a motor, wheels, chain & sprockets, centrifugal clutch, etc.

Well, our dreams were ahead of our skills at the time. One day we went to mini-bike dealer, and they had a used 2 cycle minibike for sale for about $50. Chuck and I looked at what we could do. I had a 1 1/4 HP engine I used to play with - had taken it apart and put it back together a couple of times. We had the frame. We had a couple of other things. With Chuck's dad we went over to the dealer, and they offered $20 for our assorted parts. We decided to buy the bike.

I went to my parents and asked them. "Don't waste your money on that" my dad said. So, I decided what he meant was don't use any more of my money - but my share of the frame, and the engine weren't money - so I still donated that to the cause, and Chuck ponied up the rest of the money and we were minibike owners. Boy were my parents mad.