the cafe racer that explains me

"Last week you bought a bike as a form of expression and were passed by six like it on the way home. You installed a go-fast kit and were run over by the Shriners' elephant on parade day. You paid for a whiz-bang paint job and parked under a pigeon loft. That symbol of freedom in your garage bought you a moment's ecstasy -- until a high schooler said she sold hers last year to hitch-hike to Sedalia." - Keth H. Nielsen

I ran across this article that I had cut out of one of my Dad's motorcycle magazines when I was a kid. I had a moment of clarity when I found this today. I've been trying to figure out what drives my interest in this old Honda CL450 I'm rebuilding, and this article explains it. I used to read this article during my dirt bike - pre drivers license days and I wanted a cafe racer so bad. It was the epitome of cool. The cafe racer represented the hybrid machine that put handling and speed into a super cool one-off package. The thought of building one from scratch was a mystical idea. Where would one start? How would it come together? How would someone ever have the skills to make everything mate up and work? How cool would it be to have something that symbolized the unique; the one of a kind?

I used to read this article over and over and now I find it stashed in a container of memories. It's strange how the brain works. All of these things that get tucked away eventually seep back out and find themselves acted out through our hands.