There is another thread in this section about breaking in a new pair of boots, it brought to mind an article I wrote a few years back about my experience starting an old BSA I rode as a kid :
Yesterday when I got my bike out to go for a ride, I turned the key on, pulled the choke button and hit the starter, the bike was up and running before I could get my finger off the button. Back in the early days before the electric leg, getting a bike started was none too easy. Some of the early Sportsters and Brit bikes had magneto spark, and if all the planets were in the right formation, the bike would start on the first or second kick. My old BSA 500cc thumper street bike was one of those bikes. Likely as not, an afternoon's ride would start out with me holding my knee and rolling around on the ground spewing profanity and inventing new curse words aimed at the old BSA. The starting ritual was like this: I would push the bike to a spot where I could get good footing, flip the petcock to on, adjust the manual spark advance on the handlebar to the retard position, and then tickle the carb. The carb had a little button or plunger on the top that held the carb float down until raw gas filled the intake manifold. After the carb had been tickled, the trick was to get the big 500cc piston just past top dead center and give a mighty kick. If you failed to do this procedure just right, the end result would be the kicker coming back up up against the bottom of your foot at an alarming rate. Now if you had your leg held stiff, the kicker would hurdle you right off the bike or over the handlebars, if you held your leg limp, the kicker would put your knee against the end of the right twist grip inducing pain and agony. If in fact your foot slipped off the kicker, the kicker would come up and put a knot on the front of your shin bone. It was two years after the old BSA was gone before the arch on my right foot had normal feelings. Long pants and engineer boots were not a fashion statement back then, they were a form of self preservation. I don't think you would ever see someone riding an old kick start Harley or Brit bike with shorts and flip flops back in the day, if someone tried it, he only tried it once. The old joke about being able to spot early motorcycle riders by the size of their overly developed right calf muscle has a lot of truth to it.
Yesterday when I got my bike out to go for a ride, I turned the key on, pulled the choke button and hit the starter, the bike was up and running before I could get my finger off the button. Back in the early days before the electric leg, getting a bike started was none too easy. Some of the early Sportsters and Brit bikes had magneto spark, and if all the planets were in the right formation, the bike would start on the first or second kick. My old BSA 500cc thumper street bike was one of those bikes. Likely as not, an afternoon's ride would start out with me holding my knee and rolling around on the ground spewing profanity and inventing new curse words aimed at the old BSA. The starting ritual was like this: I would push the bike to a spot where I could get good footing, flip the petcock to on, adjust the manual spark advance on the handlebar to the retard position, and then tickle the carb. The carb had a little button or plunger on the top that held the carb float down until raw gas filled the intake manifold. After the carb had been tickled, the trick was to get the big 500cc piston just past top dead center and give a mighty kick. If you failed to do this procedure just right, the end result would be the kicker coming back up up against the bottom of your foot at an alarming rate. Now if you had your leg held stiff, the kicker would hurdle you right off the bike or over the handlebars, if you held your leg limp, the kicker would put your knee against the end of the right twist grip inducing pain and agony. If in fact your foot slipped off the kicker, the kicker would come up and put a knot on the front of your shin bone. It was two years after the old BSA was gone before the arch on my right foot had normal feelings. Long pants and engineer boots were not a fashion statement back then, they were a form of self preservation. I don't think you would ever see someone riding an old kick start Harley or Brit bike with shorts and flip flops back in the day, if someone tried it, he only tried it once. The old joke about being able to spot early motorcycle riders by the size of their overly developed right calf muscle has a lot of truth to it.
