I love smoking (be forewarned-this is long)

Yes, you read it correctly, I love to smoke!

When I first entered the world of motorcycles in the early 70’s, it was by way of a clean, repainted 73 Honda CB350. Sky blue and lots of power for a brand new rider. Top speed was somewhere around 90mph but I honestly can’t ever remember stretching it out as far as it would go. I loved riding that bike and I rode it everywhere. Sometimes, sitting inside my home I would suddenly get the urge and off I’d go, just to be riding. I also developed a condition where I would feel the need to gaze at my motorcycle. Not really an urge to ride it as much as just needing to look at it. This happened with every bike I owned. I should have recognized that feeling for what it was but being young; I just chalked it up to enthusiasm for a new hobby/sport.

I wrote the entire story of my CB350 is a separate paper so I won’t repeat too much here about it. A year and a half later it was time for the beloved Honda to go. I had the means and desire to get a larger motorcycle and I began to comb the want ads. Soon, I came upon an ad for a 1972 T500 Suzuki. I didn’t know anything about two strokes back then other then my friend Dale’s RD350 would absolutely kill my Honda in any race, from dead stop to a turning war. I asked around about the Suzuki and a couple of my friends knew what it was. They told me it was a twin cylinder two stroke that was as reliable as a stone but with worlds more power then my Honda. That was enough!

I sold the Honda to a friend then got my best friends girlfriend (thanks Sue) to give me a ride down to Camp Springs MD to look at the Suzuki. She had let Roger, my best friend drive her car and he nearly got us all killed when he exited RT 301 too fast in a drizzle trying to get on RT 4 and we ended up in the field/median next to the exit ramp. We managed to get the car back on the blacktop and made it to the guys’ house in one piece.

My first look at the bike depressed me. I remember to this day the way that my heart sank. The bike had been painted a dark, drab green and looked nothing like the pictures I managed to find in a couple of magazines. It also had a front fairing with windshield and rear top case making it look like an old man’s bike. I managed a smile though and the guy started the bike. It fired up on the very first kick and emitted the strangest but most intoxicating sound I’d ever heard from a bike until then. It was a low, syncopated rhythm with odd pops and gurgles but steady and relaxed. I paid him the grand sum of $500 and began the slow if unsure ride home in a dismal drizzle. As I rode I began to appreciate the torque and wide powerband. It also rode much nicer then the Honda, probably due in part to the additional weight of the bike.

I soon fell in love with that bike as I had with the CB350 and loved its relaxed method of gaining speed. If anyone reading this knows that engine they will remember that it wasn’t a speed demon like the Kawasaki triples but had a low redline, somewhere around 5500 or 6 grand. It had a small “hit” of a powerband at around the 5000 mark on the tach but nothing to fear. This was primarily built as a touring bike and at that time, I had no appreciation for the power that could have been unleashed had I possessed the skills at the time. I would however get another later in life and proceed to make a complete animal of the engine.

In keeping with my cycle, another year or so passed before I was stopped by the local police department for a turn signal infraction and had the bike towed since it became known to the constable that I did not possess a motorcycle license. Being that I couldn’t afford to retrieve my bike, I ended up losing it to the tow company. It broke my heart but I was in a bad way financially and of course losing my only transportation only made things worse.

A year or so later my luck had changed brought about by the steady application of work on a daily basis and I began to shop for another bike. The gods were smiling on me because upon opening the local “Want-ads”, I soon found a basket-case H1 500 Kawasaki two stroke triple for only $100. I snapped it up after speaking with the owner and finding out that he originally took the engine apart because he had heard what he thought was something loose in the engine. He had never reassembled it and now was just trying to get rid of the clutter in his garage. As I listened to him it was obvious to me that being a four stroke guy, he didn’t realize that nothing was wrong with his H1 and he had disassembled a perfectly good engine. We loaded the boxes and frame into my friends truck and brought it back to my apartment. There, I proceeded to reassemble the engine after raising the exhaust a ¼” or so (which didn’t seem like much at the time) and scrounging a set of expansion chambers from other friends shed. I replaced the rings and hand honed the cylinders since my budget did not include honing stones.

Amazingly, the engine started on the second or third kick almost instantly filling the living room of the apartment I then shared with my girlfriend, my best friend and his girlfriend. I opened the sliding glass door and the front door but that did little to disperse the deep blue cloud that had filled the entire apartment. Soon afterwards all three of them returned from a trip to the store and all stood agape as they entered the smoke filled apartment while I stood smiling at them with a huge smile of triumph on my face!

This was my first experience at working on an engine completely by myself and I immensely enjoyed learning how to port and reassemble the engine. Even though, looking back, I had done a “hack job” on the porting; the feeling of accomplishment inside upon hearing the engine come to life was as indescribable as it was satisfying.

Boy did that bike fly! It wasn’t much on handling and had very little power below 4000 RPM but once I had dialed in the jetting, in a straight line, it almost couldn’t be beat by anything else on the local streets at the time. Again, that had been my first experience at jetting an engine and after receiving some great tips from a local master mechanic, it was actually quite simple, abet time consuming. It was well worth the effort though as the carburetion was crisp whether off the line or cracking the throttle open at 5000 RPM. That engine plain screamed with fury! I had heard all the horror stories of the flexi-flyer frames of the H1’s and I can confidently tell you today, that they are all true!

It wasn’t a machine that you wanted to turn faster then, say 60 or 65MPH because then you were going to be flirting with disaster. I had previously experienced a high speed tank-slapper on my CB350 while trying to keep up with a Z1 on a very twisty road thinking that the tight turns would make us more evenly matched. It had happened suddenly and was as terrifying as it could be resulting in dents on both sides of my gas tank. It was a real live tank-slapper and not something I wanted to experience again. With my H1, anything over 60MPH on a twisty road always felt that I was a lot closer to experiencing another then I really wanted to be.      

That not withstanding, if kept in a straight line, it was an amazing feeling to twist the throttle wide open while in second gear, my body hunched forward as far towards the front as possible while still maintaining control of the bike as I wound that engine up to it’s redline in second, then sliding back to my normal riding position right after shifting into third and making sure the front wheel stayed planted, then fourth as the scenery began to blur then….it was usually time to back down and stay alive at that point. As was with my CB350, I don’t remember ever pegging the H1 to see how fast it was although the local police swore in traffic court that they had clocked it at over 110mph. Its pure acceleration was always enough for me to appreciate. Just like with the Honda, I found myself many times just staring at the bike. Gazing at its features and lines. Noticing how the engineers had resolved one problem or another and just enjoying taking the time to look at it. How could a machine do that I wondered to myself. It actually made me feel good just to stare at it.

By this time I had been thoroughly bitten by the smoker’s disease. No other class of bikes or engines would ever fill that special spot the way a smoker would. After all, with every stroke being a power stroke, how could a four stoke engine compete? The sheer simplicity and light weight producing fantastic levels of power has made them magical for me.

Time marched on and I enjoyed a couple of years racing locally and learning more during that time then I ever thought I would about engines. I began being the “guy” that was called when Timmy’s Dellorto carbs weren’t on his Triumph or Sammy’s GT750 needed a holed piston replaced. When Pete felt it was time to check his valves on his CBX in the late 70’s, he brought it over and we took a look. The valves were so small they looked like toys! I got the opportunity to work on lots of different bikes and on lots of different problems which only served to widen my experience base and give me the chance to meet a lot of very sharp people. I loved all motorcycle engines and was asked one day by a friend why. I remember clear as a bell my response “I hate working on cars because the parts are so big and heavy but on a motorcycle engine, everything is small and compact and only as big as it needs to be.” That statement still holds true for me. While I do all my own work on my cars and truck, it doesn’t bring nearly the same joy as working on one of my bikes.

That being said I should probably clarify that even though I enjoy working on my Vstrom 1000, it just doesn’t bring the same joy as working on one of my smokers does. As much as I love the V and enjoy riding it on all my trips over 50 miles, it just doesn’t have the same character as any of my smokers do. It’s a magical feeling that’s hidden in the two stroke smoke I’ve come to realize. I don’t say that without merit because after all, when there’s no two stroke smoke, there’s no magical feeling so they must be related.

I look back at all the bikes that I’ve owned and especially the people that I’ve met along the way. I remember so many people that were so different from each other yet all of them with a deep abiding love for motorcycles, especially smokers! Like a lot of older riders, I’ve lost some friends to that which we love so much. Big Joe Haney who used to host huge parties on his farm letting his guests pick their choice from a barn full of street and dirt bikes (some legal and some very warm to the touch) to go for a group ride in the woods. Big Joe was a gentle, very kindhearted guy that was riding his IT400 Yamaha (yes, the blue one) on his deeply rutted, long driveway without a helmet before he headed into an immovable tree lapsing Big Joe into a coma for three days before going to meet the Lord. There was “fast” Ronnie who didn’t have a self-preservation bone in his body that surprised us all by living so long when the inevitable happened. He knew big Joe and I often wonder if they see each other in heaven. There are others but there are no regrets, although I do miss them. We all know the risks that we’ve signed up for and we all accept it and they wouldn’t want me crying over their misfortune anymore that I would want my friends to regret my passing.

It’s easy now to remember back in the days when Ronnie, Sammy, I and a few guys that I didn’t even know would meet at the old Box factory loading dock on Telegraph Rd to watch Ronnie wheelie his H2 through the first three gears. Or how Sammy’s full race GT750 could blend in with my H1 and Ronnie’s H2 as we stormed to local roads. We were all avid smokers then and the sound that the three bikes made going down the road was wonderful and loud! We loved teaching the occasional sports car driver what the “deadly blue cloud” was and we would laugh and laugh as we left them back at the light covered in smoke.

So here I am now at 52 years old, nearly 37 years after my very first motorcycle ride and I haven’t seen Sammy in ten years or so. He looked very thin, sickly thin the last time that I saw him and I hope that he’s doing alright.

I thought about him and Ronnie both last night. Yes, I thought about them last night as I wound second gear to redline on the straightaway to Gibson Island knowing that he and Ronnie were right there next to me in spirit as my ’75 H2’s expansion chambers screamed, the force trying to rip me off the back of my seat, the front wheel barely skimming the surface of the road as I upshifted into third, the grips vibrating so much I could hardly hang on.

They would have been smiling too that after I returned home, adrenaline pumping through my veins as I pulled my deep purple H2 into the garage, that I just couldn’t bear to cover it without just spending a few minutes staring at it.....just because. I quit using cigarettes twelve or thirteen years ago but I’m never going to quit smoking!

jeff  
Present only:

My VStrom 1000 K7

'74 RD350 in great shape & 1975 GT550 restored&built up and a beautiful, low mileage '73 CB350(same as my 1st bike), another '75 GT550 taken in pymt for port work on an H1. All original, nearly flawless '75 H2, '74 H2-fire breather, 82 Yamaha 650 turbo running 18psi, 75 H1 restored, 75 H1 for restoration