THE FEAR OF FIRST GEAR
by Holly Clayton
This is Holly’ s story about moving from her fear and dislike of motorcycles to enjoying the ride on the back of the custom trike she and her husband had designed and built in 2014 and featured this month here Thunder Roads Colorado Magazine.
It all started when my first husband and I were in California more than twenty years ago. We were in a church parking lot behind the small apartment building that we managed in Imperial Beach, CA. My first husband and his older brother were determined to teach me how to ride this Honda 550 that they had managed to scrounge up from somewhere. My husband was pitching the idea of buying a bike that we could not afford; he was enlisted in the Navy and stationed at the 32nd Street Naval Base in San Diego. According to his argument, a bike would“ save us a ton of money”. We were only 20 years old and had a baby girl at that time.
So there we were with the scrounged Honda 550,“ Come ooooooon!” My brother in law kept taunting me.“ Just put your feet up and go!” The parking lot was very small and I could not go very far before I would have to make a wide circle to turn around. I could not even get up enough speed to get it out of first gear. On my last pass, I went the length of the lot and slowed to a stop. I was really tired and wanted to get off the bike. The guys were talking and not facing me. In the blink of an eye, I lost my balance and the bike and I hit the ground. My leg was caught under the weight of the bike and I could feel the exhaust burning the inside of my left ankle. Unfortunately, the burns were bad enough that we took a trip to the Naval Hospital and I was treated for severe burns and an infection. I’ ll never forget the pain of the doctor scrubbing the burn and trimming away the burned skin. Anyway, my fear and dislike of motorcycles started with this incident.
Unfortunately, there were several other incidents that happened with my husband and his Honda 750 while we were in California that scared me into never wanting anything to do with motorcycles again. Like the time I got a call and had to pick him up in the middle of the night because he had just wrecked the bike on base. I got to the gate and he was sitting on the curb, slumped over and bleeding, a piece of the windshield had broken off in his lip. Somehow it just did not seem worth it to me.
Admittedly, a lot of things have changed since California; twenty-one years have passed, my husband and I divorced and I remarried to a man whose love of all things with wheels might
have been a huge red flag …. instead the flag was checkered and we won the race.
My second husband and I met at work, we both worked for the City of Westminster at that time. Bill was into racing cars. Once in a while he would send out invitations to coworkers to come out to Second Creek and watch a race. I did and after a time we started a relationship and were later married. He raced for another fifteen years with me helping out in the pits. Luckily he was never seriously hurt and I trust him behind the“ wheel” of pretty much anything.
Eventually we got into ATVs and then a UTV. After a few years we sold those off--the ATVs because our bodies could not take the bouncing anymore and the UTV because of a lack of areas to ride it. So Bill was just looking for something to do as sort of a hobby. He had ridden bikes in his youth, and was looking to maybe get another bike( even though I had vowed to never ride on a two wheel bike again).
So, we looked at the Can Am and I liked that they felt somewhat like an ATV and I was used to riding ATVs. The one thing we could not get past though— neither of us thought it was comfortable.
I also thought it was still too close to just two wheels with the two up front and only one in back where I sit and it still scared me some too.
Since my husband Bill has always liked building things, be it cars or structures, he has a true gift …… and he’ s never backed away from what he considers a challenge. Sooooo …. since two wheels will not do and we decided against the Can AM, it seemed like the three wheels of a trike might just be the right thing and Bill was off to look into building us a trike. He could drive and I would be less afraid of falling over while sitting on the back. It is a good thing I trust him.
The build process wasn’ t at all what I had expected. Granted, I knew that Bill would research every single detail, and he did … sometimes to death it seemed( just like the basement finish).
22 Thunder Roads Magazine ® Colorado February 2016 www. thunderroadscolorado. com