my little pony
I have had two big hankerin's in the past few months: A Zelda Gamecube thing, which I bought and have only touched once in the three weeks it's been at the Perch, and a motorcycle. The latter has been a much, much harder item to find as I am being rather picky about what kind of ride best suits my needs. Usually the best place to start when looking for something is making a list of the things you know you don't want and narrowing it down from there. Here is what I knew I DID NOT want under any circumstances; New, ridiculously fast, obnoxiously big, outrageously loud, super obvious or hard/expensive to repair. This eliminated everything built before 1970 and after 1985. It eliminated what is called "custom" made, anything with storage boxes (or what I like to call, what your grandparents would ride if they didn't have an RV already). Anything painted bright yellow with lime green in it, anything with a racing number on it and practically everything European. Basically I was left with Hondas, Yamahas, Kawasakis and Susukis. All of which had to be made before 1980 in order for me to be able to find them cheap. (did I mention these are the cheapest rides?)
The world of motorcycles is very, very fickle.
Problem one with buying a motorcycle - Where to look for them. I am not "in the know" with the motorcycle set and it was going to take some doing to find a suitable ride for my soon to be chap-laden sweet ass. I had romantic images in my mind of what I wanted and I had to do this one right. I wasn't going to settle for less.
Problem two with buying a motorcycle - Cheap and fix it up or pay more and have it run from the get-go?
Problem three with buying a motorcycle - Not only do I not know where to look for a bike, I don't know one bike from the next. Mostly I have just mental pictures of what bikes look like to guide me. I need some names for these pictures.
The normal places to look for any item for sale are the paper and those weird, Wheels Deals magazines that are sold at your local gas station. These options are filled with great prospects but they did two things that didn't help my cause - They helped me by adding names to the pictures in my mind but they added numbers to the motorcycles that I didn't understand. And two - They didn't explain to me or show me what the difference is between one bike and the next. So now I have three or four names for each picture in my mind. Each name has three or four possible number combinations to accompany it. Now my head is filled with 500's, 250's, 350's, two cylinders and four valves. And if that wasn't confusing enough, I also have words like, "rare" and "vintage" added to names seemingly in a random fashion. A bike that was made in 1979 has "vintage" added and then the next ad with have the same bike with the same numbers without the "vintage" tag but be listed at half the price.
The world of motorcycles is very, very fickle.
There are hundreds of listings for an endless amount of bike types. There are "parts" bikes. Bikes without titles. Bikes without tires, without a carb or a tank. There are bikes that have only been "laid down" once. There are bikes with 4000 miles on them and there are bikes with missing cables or side covers. There are bikes that were "running when I stored it ten years ago" and "need a little love" or "would make a good starter bike". Your brain can get lost in all this variety and knowledge. What element that they listed is actually a good thing or a bad thing. If it's a bad thing, how bad is it? Should that be a bargaining chip?
Then I found Craigslist dot com. There is one in your town, if you don't believe me, type in Craigslist dot com and then click on the city nearest you. Craigslist is an online ad placement site that is completely free and very well used( in my area it is). AND, it has a format that suits a man suffering from high levels of dopamine like myself.
Craigslist has motorcycle ads and it has a lot of them. Not only does it just have ads, but it has great ads. The ads are not limited to twenty five words or less or just one photo like the newspaper and magazine counterparts. These ads can be a novel long and have a link to a whole nest of photos of the bike in question. You can respond directly to the ad if you like it or you can call the ad poster directly if they leave their number. It's a great site. I highly recommend it. I found my baby there. Wanna hear the tale?
I was hell bent on getting a 1970's Honda CB or CL 350. I just had to have one, they seemed like the bike for me. There is an endless supply of them, they are usually cheap, they are cool looking and they are inexpensive to keep up. (the biggest plus was the 70 MPG on a three gallon tank, you do the math compared to your ride). Every other ad on the site was a Honda or the comparable Yamaha 250. It seemed like it was a buyer's market. But why? Why are so many people selling these bikes all of a sudden?
Cause the market is hot and it's really a seller's market at the moment. The sellers are figuring that out and dumping off non-running bikes for more money than they paid for the bike when they bought it thirty years ago.
What I didn't know when I got into this bike search was that the market for rides had been near dead for years and it wasn't until gas prices soared to the three dollars plus a gallon level that bikes started looking like a smart deal. It would seem that everyone got the bike itch at the same time and a bike posted online wouldn't last two days. They were getting snatched up faster than they could place the ads. Sellers were posting prices that would be doubled in twelve hours based on the incoming offers. Everyone needed a bike and everyone had the same bike requirements that I did; Cheap, easy, stylish, etc.
I told my brother of my plan and he got into one for 450.00 on Craigslist. He drove 10 hours round trip to pick up a ride that wasn't even running. It's a beautiful 1973 Honda CL350. Orange, screwed up rims, clogged carbs, broken fuel lines, torn seat, dented tank, no electrical. And he got a bargain. He doesn't know how to ride. He doesn't know how to fix the bike, but he's above average smart and will have it running in no time. However, two days after he bought the bike, he left again for another two month "business trip".
I kept my search going, hoping to find a good deal like my brother's. But something happened to me in my search - I got pretty savvy.
I have seen ads for well over 400 bikes in over twenty different cities. I know what the 350 in the name means now. I know what the difference is between the engines, the years, the model types and I know what all the four valve stuff means. I know what makes one bike better than another and I know a rare and a vintage model from a standard model. Knowing all of this I learned rather quickly, my old standards were much too vague and I needed to be even more particular about my requirements.
I narrowed down my desires and needs to: Any 1982-1984 Honda Ascot, and nothing else. Nada.
The problem is that in order to get one of these bikes, I had to abandon my requirement that it be inexpensive to purchase. There isn't an Ascot in good condition that is out there that isn't at least $2000.00. There were four for sale in my area and I emailed them three times a day hoping to be able to talk them DOWN to $2500. I even emailed a person in Ohio hoping to get their Ascot. I couldn't find any that were listed any closer. I looked at every Craigslist area that was within a three day drive. Practically every site that wasn't within a ten minute drive of the Atlantic. I found 38 listings. Not one would write me back or return my call. I was getting really depressed.
Then, as if by some miraculous answer to a misguided prayer, it happened - May 5 - Honda Ascot, $1300.
I was in Oregon at the time and the bike was five miles from the Perch. I was dying inside. It was so close to me and so cheap! I called, I emailed and nothing. I was ready to buy an online escort and pay them to go put a down payment on the bike for me and then have them blow the owner to ensure that I got the bike.
An Ascot. It may not be your bike of choice, but it's mine. A rare beauty of a bike.
The man called me back on my way back to the Perch from Oregon. He still had the bike and was willing to hold it for me if I could get to his house by Sunday night. I broke laws to get there.
HE, is Allan, a fifty year old motorcycle mechanic. He specializes in Ascots and has a custom made Ascot of his own that he babies. He's done some modifying on the saucy special the he is selling and it purrs. He is selling it cheap because it was given to him by the owner. Allan was the primary mechanic on this bike for fifteen years. He knows this bike.
Allan also sells wholesale helmets, jackets and other bike gear. Allan is dark, mysterious, a bit odd and quirky and I love him. He's as weird as a person gets and that makes him a rare vintage in my mind and which is just as important in the overall purchase as the bike itself. He talked for several hours about a variety of things and I could tell that he would have loved the escort.
I have no license or over the road riding talent, so Allan had to ride the bike over to the Perch. He gave me a bell to put on the bike, which he told me will ward off evil spirits. He has one on all of his bikes and he's still in one piece, so I guess that's a good thing. He explained that you can't buy one for your own bike that someone has to buy it for you. I should just buy him an escort right now. I'm sure one of the Oompa Loompas will do it, but I think a good rare escort might be better than this sludgey "Ernest and Julio Gallo" ass that graces the front stoop of the Perch.
I now own an Ascot. The bike I desired and it only cost me my relationship with Verizon, Comcast and Craigslist.
(to be continued....)
The world of motorcycles is very, very fickle.
Problem one with buying a motorcycle - Where to look for them. I am not "in the know" with the motorcycle set and it was going to take some doing to find a suitable ride for my soon to be chap-laden sweet ass. I had romantic images in my mind of what I wanted and I had to do this one right. I wasn't going to settle for less.
Problem two with buying a motorcycle - Cheap and fix it up or pay more and have it run from the get-go?
Problem three with buying a motorcycle - Not only do I not know where to look for a bike, I don't know one bike from the next. Mostly I have just mental pictures of what bikes look like to guide me. I need some names for these pictures.
The normal places to look for any item for sale are the paper and those weird, Wheels Deals magazines that are sold at your local gas station. These options are filled with great prospects but they did two things that didn't help my cause - They helped me by adding names to the pictures in my mind but they added numbers to the motorcycles that I didn't understand. And two - They didn't explain to me or show me what the difference is between one bike and the next. So now I have three or four names for each picture in my mind. Each name has three or four possible number combinations to accompany it. Now my head is filled with 500's, 250's, 350's, two cylinders and four valves. And if that wasn't confusing enough, I also have words like, "rare" and "vintage" added to names seemingly in a random fashion. A bike that was made in 1979 has "vintage" added and then the next ad with have the same bike with the same numbers without the "vintage" tag but be listed at half the price.
The world of motorcycles is very, very fickle.
There are hundreds of listings for an endless amount of bike types. There are "parts" bikes. Bikes without titles. Bikes without tires, without a carb or a tank. There are bikes that have only been "laid down" once. There are bikes with 4000 miles on them and there are bikes with missing cables or side covers. There are bikes that were "running when I stored it ten years ago" and "need a little love" or "would make a good starter bike". Your brain can get lost in all this variety and knowledge. What element that they listed is actually a good thing or a bad thing. If it's a bad thing, how bad is it? Should that be a bargaining chip?
Then I found Craigslist dot com. There is one in your town, if you don't believe me, type in Craigslist dot com and then click on the city nearest you. Craigslist is an online ad placement site that is completely free and very well used( in my area it is). AND, it has a format that suits a man suffering from high levels of dopamine like myself.
Craigslist has motorcycle ads and it has a lot of them. Not only does it just have ads, but it has great ads. The ads are not limited to twenty five words or less or just one photo like the newspaper and magazine counterparts. These ads can be a novel long and have a link to a whole nest of photos of the bike in question. You can respond directly to the ad if you like it or you can call the ad poster directly if they leave their number. It's a great site. I highly recommend it. I found my baby there. Wanna hear the tale?
I was hell bent on getting a 1970's Honda CB or CL 350. I just had to have one, they seemed like the bike for me. There is an endless supply of them, they are usually cheap, they are cool looking and they are inexpensive to keep up. (the biggest plus was the 70 MPG on a three gallon tank, you do the math compared to your ride). Every other ad on the site was a Honda or the comparable Yamaha 250. It seemed like it was a buyer's market. But why? Why are so many people selling these bikes all of a sudden?
Cause the market is hot and it's really a seller's market at the moment. The sellers are figuring that out and dumping off non-running bikes for more money than they paid for the bike when they bought it thirty years ago.
What I didn't know when I got into this bike search was that the market for rides had been near dead for years and it wasn't until gas prices soared to the three dollars plus a gallon level that bikes started looking like a smart deal. It would seem that everyone got the bike itch at the same time and a bike posted online wouldn't last two days. They were getting snatched up faster than they could place the ads. Sellers were posting prices that would be doubled in twelve hours based on the incoming offers. Everyone needed a bike and everyone had the same bike requirements that I did; Cheap, easy, stylish, etc.
I told my brother of my plan and he got into one for 450.00 on Craigslist. He drove 10 hours round trip to pick up a ride that wasn't even running. It's a beautiful 1973 Honda CL350. Orange, screwed up rims, clogged carbs, broken fuel lines, torn seat, dented tank, no electrical. And he got a bargain. He doesn't know how to ride. He doesn't know how to fix the bike, but he's above average smart and will have it running in no time. However, two days after he bought the bike, he left again for another two month "business trip".
I kept my search going, hoping to find a good deal like my brother's. But something happened to me in my search - I got pretty savvy.
I have seen ads for well over 400 bikes in over twenty different cities. I know what the 350 in the name means now. I know what the difference is between the engines, the years, the model types and I know what all the four valve stuff means. I know what makes one bike better than another and I know a rare and a vintage model from a standard model. Knowing all of this I learned rather quickly, my old standards were much too vague and I needed to be even more particular about my requirements.
I narrowed down my desires and needs to: Any 1982-1984 Honda Ascot, and nothing else. Nada.
The problem is that in order to get one of these bikes, I had to abandon my requirement that it be inexpensive to purchase. There isn't an Ascot in good condition that is out there that isn't at least $2000.00. There were four for sale in my area and I emailed them three times a day hoping to be able to talk them DOWN to $2500. I even emailed a person in Ohio hoping to get their Ascot. I couldn't find any that were listed any closer. I looked at every Craigslist area that was within a three day drive. Practically every site that wasn't within a ten minute drive of the Atlantic. I found 38 listings. Not one would write me back or return my call. I was getting really depressed.
Then, as if by some miraculous answer to a misguided prayer, it happened - May 5 - Honda Ascot, $1300.
I was in Oregon at the time and the bike was five miles from the Perch. I was dying inside. It was so close to me and so cheap! I called, I emailed and nothing. I was ready to buy an online escort and pay them to go put a down payment on the bike for me and then have them blow the owner to ensure that I got the bike.
An Ascot. It may not be your bike of choice, but it's mine. A rare beauty of a bike.
The man called me back on my way back to the Perch from Oregon. He still had the bike and was willing to hold it for me if I could get to his house by Sunday night. I broke laws to get there.
HE, is Allan, a fifty year old motorcycle mechanic. He specializes in Ascots and has a custom made Ascot of his own that he babies. He's done some modifying on the saucy special the he is selling and it purrs. He is selling it cheap because it was given to him by the owner. Allan was the primary mechanic on this bike for fifteen years. He knows this bike.
Allan also sells wholesale helmets, jackets and other bike gear. Allan is dark, mysterious, a bit odd and quirky and I love him. He's as weird as a person gets and that makes him a rare vintage in my mind and which is just as important in the overall purchase as the bike itself. He talked for several hours about a variety of things and I could tell that he would have loved the escort.
I have no license or over the road riding talent, so Allan had to ride the bike over to the Perch. He gave me a bell to put on the bike, which he told me will ward off evil spirits. He has one on all of his bikes and he's still in one piece, so I guess that's a good thing. He explained that you can't buy one for your own bike that someone has to buy it for you. I should just buy him an escort right now. I'm sure one of the Oompa Loompas will do it, but I think a good rare escort might be better than this sludgey "Ernest and Julio Gallo" ass that graces the front stoop of the Perch.
I now own an Ascot. The bike I desired and it only cost me my relationship with Verizon, Comcast and Craigslist.
(to be continued....)
posted by Daniel Loomis | 10:45 AM
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