Friday December 17, 2004 – The Ride of a Lifetime

Friday December 17, 2004 – The Ride of a Lifetime

It was a Yamaha 350 motor cycle that carried me through my last two years of college, a bright, sleek orange and chrome beauty that I drove hard and it never complained. God I loved that bike for the great pleasure and sheer exhilaration it gave me. I was working at Collins Radio on Arapahoe Road in Richardson, Texas, which is the third exit north of the Central Expressway—Texas 75 and LBJ Freeway (635)—the great circular that rings three quarters of the greater Dallas metropolitan area. I needed a cheap ride from Collins to the University of Texas at Arlington, some 33 miles south and west of Collins. The Yamaha was ideally suited to the task.

There was one other requirement, some way to make the ride possible during all weather, especially during the thunderstorms that regularly sweep the Dallas area. Dallas lies near the bottom of tornado alley, which runs through the prairies of the mid-west. In the spring, Canadian cold fronts collide with the warm, humid Gulf Coast air streaming northward. These collisions over Dallas generated spectacular lightning shows, torrents of rain, large hail and, often, tornados. I needed an outfit that would take me through this and I could emerge dry as I walked into class at UT. I found my solution in a U.S. Army surplus store, which consisted of a waterproof Army-green hooded jumper and matching pants. To these I added black rubber gloves that extended up above my wrists, which I tucked inside the jumper sleeves. The same solution applied for my feet, slightly oversized rubber boots that slipped over my shoes and tucked inside the waterproof pant legs. The jumper was sufficiently oversized that I could easily put it over a backpack containing books and supplies, and the jumper was sufficiently long enough that it came below the waist of the matching pants. I would put my plastic helmet with clear faceplate over the hood of my jumper. Outfitted thus, I was able to drive at 60 miles and hour in a Dallas downpour with every tire on every 18-wheelers kicking up plenty of road water and still stay completely dry inside my waterproof cocoon.

My 33-mile one-way journey began at Collins with me turning west on Arapahoe and making the short drive to Central Expressway southbound. I left around 4:00 PM to make classes starting at 5:00 PM on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Down Central, which typically moved at the limit three exits then merging onto wide LBJ Freeway. Back then, I could merge onto 695, heading west, open up the throttle full, and accelerate into the fast lane and get up to 70 MPH with little trouble. I could haul at that speed for the entire length of the freeway, which then merges into the North Stemmons Freeway. I would take the southbound off-ramp, a long sweeping high-speed turn that gracefully swung south. I would love catching the slip stream of 18-wheelers, coming up behind then and accelerating being swung around them looking for a hole in the fast-moving traffic streaming down Stemmons. The 2-cylinder, 2-cycle Yamaha had good high-end torque and I could easily accelerate into and out of holes in the traffic. I took pride in making the run without having to use my breaks rather relying on the drag of the unthrottled engine to slow my forward motion.

I left Stemmons right after the Walnut Hill Lane exit, on the Manana Drive off ramp. At this interchange I picked up Texas Highway 12, which I rode for a mile or two further south before merging onto Texas Highway 183, eastbound. This part of the ride passes the imposing open top Texas Stadium, which sits in the triangle formed by 114 heading southeast, 12 headed southwest, and 183 intersecting both running east and west. Thereafter, 183 took me due west to the Texas Highway 360 interchange, where I took the southbound off ramp and stayed on 360 until I reached the Texas Highway 180 interchange. The huge General Motors assembly plant dominated the landscape for most of the way as I leaned into the curving right turn off 380 and onto 180. The new-car chemical smell accompanying the view gave me a visual-olfactory symphony. Three miles west on 180, which is local East Division Street in Arlington, I come to North Cooper Street where I make a left turn into the campus. Back then, Lyndon Johnson had just provided Texas with some funding to help in the expansion of the UT campus system. Considering that Lyndon had not only helped build the school I was attending but he was also paying me a pretty good stipend to attend the school, I loved that good ole boy.

The return trip was the same route in reverse but around 9:00 at night. I had to stop parking at school because some guy ripped off my headlight one night from the UT motorcycle parking lot. I found a friendly gas station at the corner of Division and Cooper to park—I filled up there all the time and the attendant said I could park the bike at the station for nothing. I really enjoyed the walk to campus as it gave me a chance to get some exercise after riding for 40 to 50 minutes and sometimes that was the only exercise I got during a day.

My adventures on the Yamaha began when I first bought it brand new from a shop in Dallas. I had traded a second-hand Jawa—the street bike not the far more popular dirt bike—in on the Yamaha. I had taken possession of the Yamaha and began the drive north on Central Expressway. I had it up to 60 miles an hour in the fast lane and had just passed the Belt Line Road Exit when the front tire blew and I fought to keep control of the bike while moving from the fast lane to the exit lane to make the exit at Arapahoe Road. The cars to my right must have seen my plight and slowed to let me move into the lane and make the exit. At the end of the off-ramp was a service station and I pulled in, the flat front tire making the bike much harder to control at the lower speed. After I limped into the station, I bought a tire patch kit from the station attendant and returned to the bike to remove the front wheel and patch the blowout. As I was finishing the job, the wrench slipped and I blooded my hand. The station attendant had come over to talk while I worked on the flat and he remarked, “now that you bled on it, the bike is really yours.” Somehow the remark made me feel better about the bike and it really had become part of me. It took me through UT and into a whole new life. I had put close to 15,000 miles on it during my junior and senior year at UT. When I graduated I traded it in on a stripped down 1973 Toyota Corolla. With a wife and two young kids, the Yamaha was no longer the ride I needed.