1994 Harley-Davidson XLH Sportster 1200

I bought a Sportster 1200 new after Clubman got hold of me. The yen was strong. On the road I think it was about 900,000 yen.

I wanted this bike badly enough to take the unrestricted license test at 17. In those days the test center was a one-shot exam, and the atmosphere was closer to the army than to a riding test. Skill was not really the point. It felt like hazing.

On the tenth try I walked into the examiner's room sure I had it. I failed. I was miserable, and I could not quit, because the bike had already been delivered.

The eleventh try. I was still carrying the last result, and the examiner's tone made me expect another failure. Then the board had my number on it. I looked three times.

The custom among the people sitting the test together was that whoever passed bought juice for the others. I paid up.

I went home, possibly at a run, got on the Harley I had been waiting for, and rode off to the sound of it. The torque of 1,200 cc was nothing like the middleweights I knew. A new engine smells of heat. That alone was a meal.

They took this the day the license restriction came off

The small stock tank became a Mustang tank. Plug wires were changed. The seat is a Corbin. The exhaust is a single SuperTrapp. Smaller indicators. I had wanted a dirt-track look. I did not have the money, so this was as far as it went.

XLH1200 Sportster

The first crash

One day, filtering along the left of a traffic jam on a national road, I met a car turning right through a gap. It was a factory gate. The cars had left a space so traffic could still enter, and I had not seen it.

I hit the front left corner and went over the hood. Time went slow. I clearly remember the driver with his eyes shut, looking down.

I do not remember anything until just before I landed.

The noise brought me back, and I realized I had crashed. I checked whether I could move. I had no strength. The driver did not come to help, and I shouted. Looking back, I think fear had locked him in place.

When I could move, I walked to the factory gate, asked the guard to call an ambulance, and called my parents from a pay phone. Nobody carried a mobile then.

The ambulance put me on a stretcher. The shin of my jeans was split lengthwise. The paramedic looked, and the shin was split open to the bone. Metallic paint glittered in the wound.

Watching the street through the window, with the siren on, I could not quite believe I was the person being taken in.

At the hospital the doctor said it did not look broken, and that the paint had to come out with tweezers. He picked paint and grit out of the wound, one piece at a time. It did not hurt. Then he stitched it. I thought I would be admitted. He said I could go home. My parents came for me. I know I worried them.

The scar stayed. There was no lasting damage, which was the luck inside the bad luck. I stopped filtering. The bike was a write-off in one impact. I think it took the hit instead of me.

Be careful on a motorcycle.

The insurance of the other driver treated it as a total loss, and that paid for a new bike.

In Sapporo

Straight home, at a friend's gas station

The second Sportster 1200. The plate changed. On the right, with a Cobra.

Shikoku

My father used to ride a CB750. I went to Shikoku to see him, and to tell him his son had become a motorcyclist too.

There was no navigation. A Mapple atlas, local people, and at the end a guess. From the Tohoku Expressway onto the Shuto, and somehow onto the Tomei. After that it was expressway.

Place names I had never seen, Nitto and Yoro, made it feel like a journey.

Kobe was hard. I could not find the ferry. I remember circling an industrial estate full of trucks. I made the Takamatsu ferry. I had ridden a lot of ferries as a child, and it felt familiar.

Takamatsu had changed. I rode on a fuzzy memory and found my father. He looked a little older, and well, and more interested in the bike than in me. His CB750 was still there, and no longer a runner. That was a lot of memory at once.

Honda CB750

We talked through the backlog. I was tired from the road and went to bed early. In the morning, in a big parking lot, he asked if he could ride it. I had been waiting for that. I have no idea how many years it had been. He rode it as if nothing had happened, and I was proud of him.

I remembered being a kindergartner, set between the tank and the seat of that CB750.

The good part ended quickly. On the way home a typhoon came up the Tomei with me. I got to Ashigara service area alive. The bath there is still the best of my life. I was soaked through, and the person at the desk let me in anyway.

About 2,000 km there and back. The summer I was 18, and I felt a bit more grown up.

Hokkaido

Hokkaido is the place a rider wants to see at least once. I ran the Tohoku Expressway to Aomori and took the ferry to Hakodate. A Sportster vibrates, and it is fun enough that I kept going.

I never plan. In Hakodate I had no idea where to sleep. Someone I met on the ferry said there was a cheap, good inn, and that he was staying there. They had a room. I stayed.

The next day we rode as far as Onuma, because we were going the same way, and split up. I went on to Date. A Harley rider, a friend of a friend, had a room, and I used that as a base. They fed me jingisukan. I was well looked after.

Next day, Route 230, the scale of Hokkaido, Rusutsu, and north to Sapporo.

The famous clock tower is surprisingly small. I parked wherever the bike fit and went looking for a meal.

A sign said a seafood rice bowl for 500 yen. It was a lot of food, and it was good.

Hokkaido touring means Hokuren flags. I kept seeing them stuck in other riders' luggage and wondered what they were. You get one when you fuel at Hokuren. Some bikes were covered in them. Passing another traveling bike, we threw each other the old rider's wave. The word yae did not exist yet.

I left the family in Date and rode to Tomakomai for the ferry home. The line was grim. Weather had cancelled several sailings, and the next one was a waiting list. Riders were giving up and pitching tents on the grass. I was about to get my own tent out when another rider spoke to me. A friend had decided to stay in Hokkaido, and there was a spare ticket. At that moment he looked like a god. I took it.

On the boat his group, most of whom had also just met, talked bikes. We were going the same way afterward, so we rode the Tohoku Expressway together. Somewhere along it I could see fireworks off the road. It felt like the country saying welcome back.

Home, with a lot of experience I would not have had otherwise. Another summer at 18, and another step on.

Specifications

Grade	Harley-Davidson XLH Sportster 1200
Curb weight	226kg
Seating capacity	2
Engine type	Four-stroke
Cylinders	2
Cylinder layout	V
Cooling	Air-cooled
Displacement	1198cc
Valve gear	OHV
Bore	88.8mm
Stroke	96.8mm
Compression ratio	9.0:1
Peak power	49HP
Power rpm	5200rpm
Peak torque	8.6kgf-m
Torque rpm	3500rpm
Fuel system	Carburetor
Fuel tank	8.5L
Starting	Electric start
Gearbox	5-speed return
Shift	Foot shift
Final drive	Belt
Front brake	Hydraulic disc
Rear brake	Hydraulic disc
Front suspension	Telescopic fork
Rear suspension	Swingarm
Front tire	100/90-19
Rear tire	130/90-16