Back in the Day - Jim and Jerry

 

Jim ready for a cold and wet ride on his half of
The Gross

    

Jerry at Bass Lake w/ Loaded STICKI

Just after my Senior Year basketball season ended in 1971 my dad and two or three of his buddies went out and bought Honda Mini Trail 70s (CT70) so they could knock around the dirt fire and logging roads during their annual pilgrimage to Doc and Al’s, just outside of Bridgeport, California. He let me ride that thing to school and work. When my best friend Jim McClelland got one the two of us were off and riding. We called ourselves ‘The Gross’ because between the two of us we totaled 144ccs. We rode all over the place and made nightly forays onto the 210 and 2 Freeways then under construction.

Early in 1970 my paternal grandmother passed away and left me $1500 that I hadn’t been aware of. Early in my freshman year at Glendale Community College, my dad decided it would be safer for me to ride a real motorcycle as my primary vehicle. He told me of his scheme and the money he had sitting there for me, so we set off for Carnes Cycle Shop in Sunland to buy a Honda CB450K3 to meet the declared safety objectives. We opened the doors to the shop and were greeted by a new model, the Honda CB500 Four. It was love at first sight. I had Carnes add the engine guard (because the term “crash bars” would have scared my mom), a rack, and passenger backrest. No “sissy bar” was installed because, well, “sissy”.

Jim followed suit by purchasing his older brother’s Honda CB350 Scrambler and we started planning a summer trip for 1972. We mapped it out at around 6,000 miles that would take us out to Yellowstone, up into Canada and Banff National Park, over to the Pacific Coast and back down to home. Our kickstands were up in mid-July, me with my girlfriend on the back (for the first week), Jim and I both loaded down with backpacks, a tent, sleeping bags, etc. We could fill a book with the adventures and challenges we faced on that trip (some self-imposed). Perhaps someday we will.

We ran into intense weather nearly every other day. Snow on the Million Dollar Highway in Colorado and torrential rains here and there almost daily. Imagine how spent we were by the time we headed out of the western gate of Yellowstone, particularly Jim, vibra-massaged on his two-cylinder underpowered bike (hence, Honda’s appropriate model name of “Scrambler”). Neither of our bikes were equipped with wind or weather management gear. The storms were all coming down from Canada so we scrapped that loop. Jim headed straight home but I needed to work my way over to the California coast to stop in at Humboldt State University in Arcata so I could see what I needed to be doing to apply there after my sophomore basketball season ended in the Spring of 1973.

We had started out with a six-week plan that allowed us to spend a day or two in a few of the places we rode to and through but the weather pushed us the edge every day for three weeks before we split up.

I made my way down spent a couple of days at Bass Lake visiting my grandparents before finishing up this trip, getting home, and going back to work.

As abbreviated a trip as it was, it was epic for us and something we refer to now 50 years later, as a defining summer for us.

Off into the sunset. Or was that the sunrise? After 50 years, either way works for us.

Faithfully submitted, a near as we remember it,

Jerry White and Jim McClelland

Jerry’s note: In July of 2022 I submitted this the American Motorcyclist Magazine for their monthly section entitled, oddly enough, “Back in the Day”. They never gave me the consideration of a reply and the article hasn’t appeared with lesser entries. Their loss.