1979 - 1983 When I was in college one of my friends, Wayne, bought a motorcycle and that tempted me to do the same. At the time, I was going to school at RIT in upper state New York and traveling home in central Pennsylvania for breaks. The Kawasaki 100 was still running, but I needed something a bit more powerful for the 250-mile trips I would be doing. I thought that 350cc's would have all the power that I would ever need. My father introduced me to this guy who refurbished old Honda CB 350's. I fell in love with this Candy Bacchus Olive CB350K4 and bought it for $400 in the Spring of '79. That summer I noticed that the cam chain was slapping the sides of the engine casing. Now, I was a poor college student and having a shop fix it was out of the question, so I decided to do it all myself. I removed the engine from the frame and disassembled the whole upper end. I replaced the cam chain tensioner and reassembled the engine. I found that this was a lot tougher than taking something apart but eventually I had everything together. I thought for sure that I did something wrong, and was pleasantly surprised when the bike started on my first try! This taught me that I could do anything, once I set my mind to it. By the looks of the dirty bike in the above photo, I think it was taken in the Spring of 1980. Wayne and I just arrived at my parent's after driving six hours in a constant cold rain. I remember at the halfway point, when we crossed the NY - Pa. border, we pulled into a laundromat and literally poured water out of our boots. We went inside, stripped off all of our wet clothes from underneath our ponchos, with blue haired ladies looking on, and threw them in a dryer. I'll tell you, nothing compares to the feeling of pulling on a pair of hot jeans after riding several hours in a cold rain. Then it was off for a couple more hours of getting wet. Later, that Summer, I added white hard plastic saddle bags and a "bucket" seat cover from J.C.Whitney. It didn't look all that pretty but it was functional. By 1981 the Honda became infected with an electrical gremlin. The battery had problems recharging. I took it to a mechanic several times, coils and batteries were replaced, some shorts found, but nothing seemed to cure it. This, combined with starting a new job near NYC, made me lose interest in motorcycling for a while.
193? - : Indian 1971 -1973: Buffalo 1972 -1984: Kawasaki 100 1979 -1983: CB 350 1984 -1992: Shadow 750 1993 -1999: H-D FXDL 1994 -1995: Honda Hawk 1995 - 2004: Shadow 700 1996 - Present: Valkyrie
Email: motorcycle@kvrr.net