Trail Rider Magazine

the Duct tapes H THE MISPLACED SURVEY By Ed Hertfelder ere we are at the end of a Presidential election and we have surveys flying in all directions. We got your Republicans surveying Democrats and Tea Party surveyors surveying the Peace Party surveyors. And none of them, probably, will come up with the right answer. Well, I remember a survey by the eminent Honda motorcycle folks that they went to great lengths to get the right input. And then just plain ignored the whole thing! I was just about the middle of my ten year 'run' at the wonderful B to V, Barstow to Vegas, cross-country desert extravaganza where me and Jim (Nasty) Pilon were co-master of ceremonies at the finish end at the ballroom of the Tropicana Casino. The year was 1986 and Honda had followed Yamaha and Kawasaki in the bidding to slide a motorcycle under my ass for the two-hundred mile crossing of the driest desert in the States. I think they loaned me their motorcycles because, unlike some journalists who believe that finding fault with any new motorcycle somehow improved their journalistic standing for extreme honesty, I was always under the impression that any motorcycle that could suffer past my usual too fast, or too slow, crashes, crossing two-hundred miles of land that God had somehow overlooked, and gotten me to the Tropicana still able to make the audience laugh a little was a super piece of machinery. I notice that the journalists who excelled in "trashing" prototype motorcycles don't seem to be around much any more. One really honest magazine tester complained mightily of his ride 'throwing' the drive chain over and over. He obviously didn't have the basic 'know how' to spend two minutes lining up his rear axle with the witness lines underneath the paint on the swingarm. The last time I noticed his name on a masthead was in the early '90s. District 37, which never seemed short of volunteers, had a long table on the east side of the Tropicana ballroom where finishers could check their names off the master list of starters and finishers. At the end of the table a very tall Honda rep. passed out nicely printed survey forms requesting input for proposed new models. . I took one for myself and another for Pilon who was already up on the bandstand lining up the many factory giveaways (We had to be careful with who got some of these things because I almost started a riot the year before when I refused to hand a case of chain lube to a rider running a two cylinder B.M.W. which had a geared final drive, no chain. I re-thought the situation when he grabbed my ankle and almost pulled me off the stage.) The Honda survey was multiple choice and one concerned the choice of starting: A: kick start, B: electric start and C: both. And everyone I spoke to, and myself, had chosen BOTH. For myself it was because a bad crash could crack a battery open like an egg making an electric starter as useless as tits on a boar hog, as we say in Tucson. Now I want you to 'fast forward' in your minds to a few years later when they had a motorcycle gathering at an Ohio college. It was at a time when the students were all gone so they could rent the good size dorm facilities to tired old folks like myself. Honda laid on a trail ride led by a National champion whose name I've forgotten starting from a college side road where all the new Honda models were lined up nose to tail. I picked out one of the, at the time, new GB 500 models. I picked it out because it had a larger than life kick-start lever on its right side (where it belongs as far as I'm concerned. I rode a Bultaco for many years and always thought it was facing the wrong direction when I used the left side starter). When the trail ride leader showed up I began waffling the kick starter on the GB, which was said to indicate Great Britain. The Honda leader walked up to me and said; "Ed, you're wasting your time, use the button to start it". I knew the 500 was primed and ready to go so I gave it another kick and it roared to life. "I never saw that before" our leader said as he shook his head. Then he walked to the head of the line and took us all on a nice ride in the Ohio countryside. As we retuned to the well manicured Ohio University grounds, I went over in my mind the Honda survey sheet I had filled out in the Tropicana ballroom. What I had either circled on the survey or written on the 'notes' section I was now riding: BOTH BATTERY AND KICK STARTER, check - LOW, WIDE FLAT BARS, NOT THOSE BARS THAT GO BACK THEN DOWN THAT MAKE YOU THINK YOU'RE STEERING A SEARS ROEBUCK GARDEN TRACTOR, check -NO BELLS OR WHISTLES AND DAMN LITTLE CHROME, check - FUEL TANK LARGE ENOUGH FOR 220 MILE RANGE WITH RESERVE PIPE, check - (Pipe, because that is what constitutes the reserve fuel, but you all know that already, right?) AND FENDERS WIDE ENOUGH TO KEEP RAIN THROWN OFF THE FRONT TIRE OFF YOUR FACE SHIELD and PASSENGER PEGS STRONG ENOUGH TO HOLD THAT LADY COUSIN WHO WORKS AT THE CHEESECAKE EMPORIAN AND ORDERS CLOTHES FROM OMAR THE TENTMAKER. I remember the GS 500 had a side stand but I never looked underneath to see if it had my suggested BOTH SIDE AND CENTER STANDS. So there I was actually riding a motorcycle built to my, and a few hundred desert racers designs and every one of those guys, me included, had our tongues hanging out and shaking with anxiety to get bellied up to the bar we could hear tinkling in the next room. As I remember it Honda dealers almost had to give away the GE 500 models because no one would buy them. Production stopped before the end of the first year. Maybe that GREAT BRITAIN moniker brought back too many memories of the Lucas Glimmer lights. Ed Hertfelder P. O. Box 17564 Tucson, AZ 85731 Ducttapes@yahoo.comEd's latest book, 80.4 Finish Check now available on Amazon.com!!…or send $29.95 post paid with suggested inscription to the address above) January 2013 73

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