I’m feeling a little nostalgic today so I’m going to depart from my usual subject matter and speak about activities dating back to the early 1960’s. Things were much better in those days. A person was free to think and to create. Things and people mattered, there was a measure of pride in a job well done. Talent was recognized and revered. A person could make plans and dream as big as they wanted and you could, if you put in the blood, sweat, and tears, make those dreams come to fruition. When I was in high school my mode of transportation was, like most kids, a bicycle. Of course, like most kids, I sought to improve my mode of transportation in terms of speed, power, and accommodation. I saw an article in Mechanix Illustrated (that’s a magazine devoted to inventions, neat ideas, tools, and innovative thinking) that showed how to take a regular bicycle and a lawn mower engine and make a scooter. It had ten inch wheels, simple construction, and it could go about thirty mph. It was called a “Beats Walkin’.”

I built this scooter and learned many things about welding, metallurgy, sprocket ratios, calculations to determine speed, and that I had become public enemy #1 as far as the neighbors and cops were concerned. Nobody wanted to hear the lawn mower engine going up and down the street on the numerous test runs that I made. Undaunted, I continued to build more small bikes until I started to design my own. The culmination of the designs resulted in a racing minibike that I took to the dragstrip where I succeeded in beating a Willy’s jeep in the quarter mile. Now that I had a taste for speed, and by now I was nineteen years old, I purchased a series of motorcycles that led to my fastest bike, a Harley Sportster. After some motor work (It was bored, de-stroked, altered racing gearbox, custom made carburetor, custom valve lifters, custom made rear wheel. I know somebody out there is going to ask about the motor work) the bike set track records in its class. On one day I actually got Top Eliminator, meaning that I beat all the bikes and all the cars running that day. The final run was against a “rail job” (That’s a slingshot dragster. You know, long chassis of thin rails, giant engine, huge wheels with slicks on the back, loud enough to wake the dead). Initially, I had no chance of beating this car because he was turning times and speeds that no street machine could achieve. But, as the Christmas tree lights came down, and we were allowed to go, his car “blubbered” off the line, giving me a slight edge. If I did everything perfectly – no mistakes – I had a chance. It worked. The race track gods were smiling on me that day, and I came home with two trophies, one mounted on the handlebars (like Marlon Brando did in The Wild One) and the other strapped to my back. I was happy that day.

Then the Army intervened. They wanted me to go to Vietnam. The bike went into the garage to wait the two years that had to transpire before I could get back on the block. When I did come back I had a family, a cat, a dog, and a mortgage. No time for riding. I needed to go to work forty hours a week. There was a weekend gig too. Bills have to be paid and work has to be done to pay them. The bike collected dust until, finally, I sold it to a friend of mine. Parting with it was like having a member of the family move away. In time, the pains of separation waned, but I still have the memories, the newspaper articles, some photographs, and, until recently, a room full of trophies to remind me of those great days of riding and racing.

Since those good times in the 1960’s I’ve not ridden any kind of bike. Now, though, Uncle Bush has caused the gas prices to go through the stratosphere. Driving a regular car has become outrageously expensive. It’s time to revisit some of the things from my past. I’ve got ideas from back then to create minibikes with alternative fuel sources. I didn’t pursue these ideas in the past (gas was about twenty-four cents a gallon) but now it seems almost a necessity. Until I do decide to dig out my plans from the old days, I’ve made a rash decision. We will purchase 50cc scooters. This we did about a week ago. They are slow but that’s okay, the main thing is that they get great gas mileage. From my initial calculations, we should see about 135 mpg. That is very good and it will take “only” about six dollars to fill the tank (it only holds about one and one third gallons). In the old days it would take about thirty-five cents to fill the tank. As I said, things were much better in the 1960’s. So says Sam Post.