Life will lead you in all sorts of directions if you let it and in my case I sort of slid into bikes while I wasn’t looking. I was just starting work as a low life clerk and there was no way I could get a pass to park my car in the company parking lot. With some digging around however, I found out that I could get a free parking pass if I rode a bike.
Shortly after this revelation a 3 year old Yamaha 350CC appeared on the bulletin board at work. Listed as having only 1200 miles the total price was $350.00. Did I mention that this was in 1972? Even then it was a good price and I wasted no time in getting to the bank and then to a garage in the “good” part of town where I was shown a pristine bike with not 1200 miles but only 120 miles. Paying out the money as fast as my shaking hands would allow, the kicker was when the owner asked if I wanted the spares. I looked in the box and saw new pistons, cables, clutch plates and bearings. I was set for life.
And I was set for life until it took another turn for me one Saturday morning a few years later when I happened to be down at the bike shop buying more chain lube. There in the showroom was a brand new BMW with a very small fairing. Not only that, of the 100 or so bikes in the room, it was the only one painted bright orange. Lord mercy was it gaudy. Lots of people were looking at it but everyone was appalled at the price, including me. Why you could buy 2 Hondas for that kind of money. Not to mention a very nice car, or any number of other items. No one in their right mind would pay that much for a bike. So of course I just had to have it. Well now while I had advanced at work to sort of a mid-level clerk instead of a low-level clerk, it still wasn’t enough to afford a 90S, so I ended up with a 75/6. A classic in its own right and one I ran for donkey’s years. Until the Volkswagen.
For those of you too young to remember, the current beetle is based on an even older version that, at one time, was damn near everywhere. In this case, a bright yellow one pulled out of a parking spot without looking and I hit it broadside. I’m not saying I was going fast but I totaled it. The car that is. Almost totaled me as well. By that time there was a significant other and she was taking a very dim view of me and bikes especially as at that time she was feeding me through a straw.  After that we had fast cars but absolutely no bikes.
So life goes on and some years later a friend with the American Embassy in Honduras calls me and says, by the way, you know something about BMWs don’t you? Why I says? Because I just found an R69S with one of those funny front ends on it. You mean an Earl’s fork, I says? Yea, that’s it, says he. My goodness, says I. So he buys the bike and does a cheap fix up job with parts that I send him from Blue Moon. All goes well. He gets the bike together but before he can take it on the road he takes early retirement and moves to Florida. So he gets all moved in to his new house and has time to take the bike for his first real ride. Mind you this is the first bike ride for a 50 year old. And it scares him, big time. So the bike sits in his garage until this last Christmas when the wife and I go down in the pickup and pay him a reasonable amount of money and we take it home.
Where I immediately take it apart to find out what the mechanics did and did not do. Ho boy. What a surprise. New crank bearings combined with very loose rod bearings because they did not have the tools to get the crank apart. A generator rotor with bad threads in the end ( much fun to remove), etc. So now it is scattered in a million pieces all stuck in boxes and cans. And all labeled I might add.
But the big thing is that now I have a bike and it’s a BMW. And the wife is still speaking to me. And come this fall, when the paint is all done and it is all back together, I am going to be riding. Again. Life is good.

-Steve Baker.