A tale of two Harleys. After I moved to Berkeley to build a world cruising sailboat and ran out of money I got a job driving a 74 cu.in. Harley with a sidecar that looked like this, sorta. The box was bright red plywood.
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This was in San Francisco driving for a film developing lab. Took finished photos out and brought back film to be developed and printed. Split shift, 6 days a week, for 3-1/2 years. I put over 100000 miles on that rig. 3 forward speeds and reverse. Talk about fun. It would burn rubber in reverse as far as I wanted to. It would beat almost anything on the street between the lights on the short city blocks.
Because of the split shift I had around 4 hours between trips. What's a young man to do? Spend a lot of time at the S.F. Public Library researching cruising sailboat designs. I couldn't afford internet.
Oh yeah, I found some old moto parts, listed in want ads I suppose. Used payphones to contact sellers I imagine. I was so poor I couldn't afford a smart phone or wi-fi. But somehow I collected a frame, an engine, a springer front end, a couple of wheels and miscellaneous nuts and bolts. Right there in my apartment in Berkeley there grew a hard tail 45 cubic inch flathead Harley with springer front end, suicide clutch and stick shift.
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I used to ride that thing on the Marin County Sunday morning breakfast run from Sausalito Heliport to Point Rayes Station where there was a diner. I think there were more than fifty bikes participating, but they were in small groups and you could choose the amount of traffic you wanted to enjoy. This was an all out road race for those equiped to do it. They were exceeding 100mph on the short straightaways. This was when the Yamaha twins were just out and the racers geared them for the twisty narrow Route 1. That bike felt like there was a large hand in your back pushing you up the road.
Me, I cruised along in stately wonder, riding the torque curve, listening to them stack up behind me in the tight esses. Briiing, briiing, ziiiiing... This must have been a thing to see from a photo drone because they could not pass me on the steep uphill climb a little north of Sausalito. I generally left old Flat Head in second gear, and using the road from shoulder to shoulder Flat Head would fend off the pack. They were so busy downshifting and upshifting thru the turns that they could not pass me until a certain straightaway. Then they would blow by, hit a ton, and jockey to get through the next esse first. This little thrill was reproduceable and no one ever got past Harley in those twisters.
For a while I had two Harleys, the one I worked on and the one I rode on my day off. Not that there is anything wrong with that!
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