I love motorcycles. Always have. My earliest memory of this infatuation is peering out the back window of the family Ford station wagon watching the guy riding his chopper past us and wishing I could be riding with him. There were later events that solidified my two-wheeled love. The Great Escape when Steve McQueen jumped the Triumph over the fence*. Bruce Brown‘s movie On Any Sunday. ABC’s Wide World of Sports covering the Carlsbad Gran Prix. But what may have had the biggest impact was the Brian Wilson/Mike Love song, Little Honda from the Beach Boy’s All Summer Long LP. I hope the Honda family has sent Brian a Christmas card every year since. He sure sold a lot of motorcycles for them.
So Godspeed, Mr. Wilson. You will be missed but you will never be forgotten. And thank you for giving motorcycling a soundtrack in the Summer of ’64 that has never missed a summer since.
(*Steve McQueen didn’t really jump the fence. The studio wouldn’t let him. Bud Ekins, a racer, motorcycle shop owner and stuntman did the jump.)