The 82's

My brother-in-law Larry suggested that he and I ride from Indianapolis to Heuston Woods state park in Ohio for our family reunion.

He arrived at my house at about 10 am. We fetched his current rat from my screen porch, where he has been keeping it. His current rat, by the way, is a 1982 Kawasaki Spectre 1100cc. It is a rusty critter with blacked out exhaust, crusty carbs, and a leaky fuel valve. It's missing a side cover and has ugly yellow-orange foam hanging out of rips in the seat cover. But that rat can fly!

Despite having the fuel line pinched off with channel-lock pliers, the bike had puddled some fuel and oil on the concrete floor of the screen porch. When he sat the bike up on its center stand, fuel poured out of the airbox where it had accumulated.

"Will we even be able to get it started?" I asked dubiously.

"Sure!" he said, ever optimistic.

Sure enough, he cranked it for about 10 seconds, and VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM the Kawasaki inline 4 with 4-into-1 exhaust roared to life.

He backed it out of the screen porch and we were on our way.

We both needed to gas it up before we hit the road, so we stopped at the local convenient mart for gas. He discovered his wife had his wallet, so I bought gas for both of us.

I put 3 gallons of 87 octane in my 82 GoldWing. He sniffed and requested high octane fuel.

"It's a high compression engine, and my brother told me to put 92 octane in it," he told me.

"Huh," I mused, "My magna was a high-compression engine and it ran on 87 octane. But as you wish." I swiped my card again to pump 2.7 gallons of premium into his tank.

Our route was set. We'd slab it down I-465 then take US-52 west. We didn't really want to do the whole trip on the superslab.

He was without a windshield at interstate speeds and I remember how that felt when I made that trip on May 5, with no shield. I felt like the wind was gonna rip my head right off my shoulders.

"I'll let you lead," he said at the stop light. "I'll stay in your right mirror."

Once on the interstate, when we reached the flying interchange between I-69 and I-465, he couldn't resist flying past me, leaning, and rolling on the throttle. He pulled away from me like I was standing still.


...more to come...