The Bikes
Somewhere on our 2005 trip through the
California Deserts,
I started thinking about ways to extend the range of our travels.
The Van, with it's two wheel drive and low ground clearance is
not made for off-road use, and increasingly, especially in the desert,
we kept coming across interesting places that we wanted to explore,
that were inaccessible to us. So when we got back home I started looking
at a variety of options that would get us more off-road capability,
including expensive 4x4 campers, ATV's, amphibious 6x6s, and even used
tracked military vehicles. It's amazing what you can buy on ebay!
Perhaps someday the switch will be to a 4x4 vehicle of some type,
but we are so in love with the Roadtrek that I did not want to change
that part of the formula. And I didn't really want to haul a trailer
around, because that would change the whole Roadtrek driving experience,
taking more attention while driving and subjected to 35mph speed limits
and vehicle restrictions in many areas. So I hit upon the idea of carrying
a couple of small motorcycles on the back of the Van, kind of like mini-toads
for our mini-RV! (fyi a toad is the name given to the extra vehicles
towed around by RV owners).
In the end, we settled on a pair of 1972 Yamaha LT2s and a hitch mounted
dual bike carrier from Joe Hauler. The bikes have 100cc two stroke
motors, and are street legal and even though they are antiques, they're
capable of
hauling us on most any trail we are likely to find. Since getting them and riding
them has been so much fun, we have affectionately named them the Yellow and Green
Hornets! (The Van btw goes by the tried and true name of 'Bessie'). Below are the
original photos from the ads that I bought the bikes from.
Getting the Bikes
The idea of getting some small bikes calls back my adolescence.
When I was 14 or 15 (Around 1971), I had a blast riding around the back hills of
Santee on a 1969 Kawasaki 90 my parents had given me after relentless badgering.
I think my dad thought it would be a good technical learning experience,
fixing the bike and so on, and our next door neighbor was constantly fixing
up bikes (old Nortons, Bultaco's, and stuff), so they finally caved in
and forked out the $200 to buy the bike. I loved that bike, riding it
every day after school, taking it apart and putting it together several times,
before we moved and had to sell it. I never got another motorcycle as
issues like money for college became tantamount.
Here at 47 years old, now retired, I realized I could have any bike I wanted.
And the great part was that, as opposed to when I was 14, I could legally
drive them on the street (instead of ducking the cops like when I was 14!).
And if it's street legal, it can ride in all of the places we tend to go,
including National Monuments and Parks, that ATV's and dirt bikes can't go,
as well as the many forest roads and OHV parks open to off road vehicles.
They call bikes that are street and off-road capable "dual sport" machines,
and I started researching them.
When I started looking at what dual sports were currently available, I found
that the smallest ones being manufactured were all 200cc or bigger 4 stroke
bikes. They were expensive (on the order of $4000 new) and heavy (over 250 lbs).
I didn't want to carry two full sized motorcyles on the back of the Van, and
I had to teach Trish to drive bikes for the experiment to work, and was really looking
for something smaller. As far as it goes, Trish had only one motorcycle driving experience
in her past, when some idiot put her on a 500cc street bike in the middle
of a cow pasture and told her to rev it up and pop the clutch!
The bike shot out from under her and she had no interest in driving motorcyles
after that. All she remembers is a big heavy dangerous machine.
But as I discussed it with her, and recalled the fun I had as a kid, she picked
up on my enthusiasm and started to understand that the small bikes I was
talking about were very unlike the behemoth that she had fallen from.
They could be fun and relatively safe, and significantly increase the
amount of ground we could cover. So she voted to proceed, and incrementally
we got the bikes, she learned how to ride, and we put the whole Van-Bike
thing together.
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