My five-minute commute

It was 50 and overcast, and the 30 mph winds were blowing back the water I was spraying, all over me. But I didn’t mind. In my oversize Penn State sweatshirt — yes, even in these times of JoePa dismissed and riots and revelations of young lives ruined, it is comforting and comfort I need as much as ever — in that sweatshirt and soaked jeans I was crouching and spraying off three decades of grease and dirt from Arkansas, New York and Pennsylvania.

The 1974 Kawasaki F7 was starting to show some metal, at last.

A memory: I am sitting on its fuel tank, my legs straddling it like a horse. My little feet are propped up on a makeshift bar added just for me. I am 6 years old, and just behind me my dad is on the seat, his arms wrapped around me to the handle bars, my back against his chest, and we’re riding. We each have helmets on, and we’re in Arkansas, I think along the levee that guards against the Mississippi River. It is the era of Evel Knievel, a hero with a Captain America jumpsuit and the kind of daring showmanship that children mistake for courage. I have a wind-up toy that sends an 8-inch Evel speeding across my living room carpet and down my hallway and ramping up curbs, from which he flips in the air, lands upright and keeps going 100 mph (to scale). I feel like life-sized Evel sitting on the fuel tank of that Kawasaki, the vibrations and the rush, the wind and the mirrors, and I know what button to push for the horn.

And now, decades later, I am cleaning those mirrors and that button. It followed us from the summers of Arkansas to the blizzards of upstate New York. From there, the bike had found its way to my grandfather’s cabin, where it sat in a garage unless one of us cousins took it out to gallop across the fields and through the trail in the woods on the side of a Pennsylvania mountain.

From that cabin, after my grandfather’s death, it came to my garage, where it sat for more years, turning the two-car garage into 1 1/2, gathering more dirt and dust. The proverbial coat rack for whatever passes for a coat in that smelly, unkept place.

Two days ago, I finally got a manual for fixing it. I’ve never so much as changed the oil in my lawn mower, but here I was, undoing bolt after bolt, four of them, and removing the seat and carrying it to a shelf. Next to go would be the fuel tank. I unscrew the cap, which is a little tight. The foul smell of rust and Clinton-era gasoline pushes me back. If this thing will ever run — and it’s been probably a decade since it last started — this fuel and rust will be the first things to go. And if I can’t get the tank off, there’s no point in thinking I can do anything else.

My manual says to loosen a bolt, undo a rubber strap. I find the strap and pull it off, but there is no bolt. I look above and under, through and across. Still no bolt. Without the bolt, I am derailed before I really start. I nudge the tank back and forth, rocking the bike, trying to find the pivot point that will reveal its location. But there is no fulcrum. 15 minutes of gentle rocking, and the tank lifts off the frame. I start to admit this is possible for someone like me.

Another memory: I am Evel Knievel, or may as well be. Reckless, alone and 14 years old on the Kawasaki in that Pennsylvania field. I speed across a level path to the opening in the woods. The giant U-shaped path will funnel me around to the top of the field, but not until I’ve dodged pine branches, jumped tree roots and pulled a hairpin around to my right, just at the edge where the mountain drops off to the road below. Private property, no helmet. Just me. I come out at the top of the field and open the throttle, speeding across 100 yards until another tree line, this one with no path.

I coast down the bumpy hill and creep toward a rise in the ground, the remnant of a long-gone above-ground pool. It rises at an angle maybe 60 degrees, and as I creep up it, the front fork rises above me, the front wheel spinning in the air. As I bring the rear tire up the rise, the front continues its counterclockwise arc, hitting its summit and falling back. I jump out from under the bike just before it falls on me and watch it hit the ground. I look down toward the cabin. No one has seen. I pick it up and ride on.

A neighbor stopped by this morning as I soaked myself for the sake of this bike. The water had made him think rain, which made him run for his car’s sunroof. But it was just me. He’s fixed up bikes before and thinks this one is in very good shape for its age. He pointed to parts I couldn’t identify, telling me their names like a birder with a group of schoolchildren on a field trip — patient, knowledgeable and happy to reveal the mysteries of this new language to a potential new member of the tribe. He promised more help as the project goes along. He doesn’t think I’m far from having it running.

Tags: 1974, adventure, DIY, kawasaki, life, memories, motorcycle, nostalgia