motor

After a few years of racing and getting banged up pretty seriously a couple of times, I decided to hang up my knobbies and stick to the road. I’m waiting for the comments about how dangerous street riding is compared to off road, etc, etc, etc…save your typing fingers. I loved my dirt bikes but I wasn’t racing much and they were collecting more garage dust than desert dirt, so an ad in Cycle News West sent a couple of nice bikes off to a new home and my Kawasaki H2 got new tires, new handlebars and a trip to Colorado and New Mexico. A fair trade in my book…at the time.
My riding buddy Bud, rode every weekend, dirt or street, rain or shine..except in the winter when he was skiing every weekend. Bud didn’t have kids. One Saturday morning Bud called and asked if I could come help him with some house project and maybe go for an afternoon ride. Sure. When I got there, sitting in his driveway was a brand new Husky WR390. Bud was really taking this ‘oneupmanship’ game with his dirt bike friends a bit far! As I took my helmet off, the first words out of his mouth were “wanna buy my old 250?”.
We finished his house project, had a great ride up Angeles Crest and then it was home to my own house projects. Bud’s parting words to me were “I’ll give you a really good deal!” The 30 minute ride home was spent thinking about getting dirty again. When I got home my wife told me Bud called and wanted me to call him back as soon as I got home. “You still got your dirt gear? Good. Come riding up in Texas Canyon with me tomorrow, I want to ride my new bike…you can ride the 250″. This was playing dirty, no pun intended. I agreed to go knowing what would happen.
Lucky for me, my wife wasn’t home when I got back from riding so getting my ‘new to me’ Husky into the garage was easy. I didn’t have to work too hard to hide it because she never, I mean never, went into the garage or what she called ‘the black hole of motorcycling’…it wasn’t that bad? However, it would have helped if I had closed the garage door so that when she drove up, a bright red gas tank with chrome sides wasn’t staring right at her. Oops. You can imagine our dinner table conversation.
Over the next couple of years I did a lot of trail riding and camping with that Husqvarna, even rode a couple of low key enduro’s. My son’s first riding experience was on that bike, funny thing though…started him early I thought, but he didn’t get into motorcycles until he was 18?
Cruising ebay each day I see all types of dirt bikes that look fun to ride and some even get me thinking about off roading it again, but then the picture of all the bikes I already have that need love comes into my head and, well… Today though, I found a bike just like the one I had and it brought back all the memories of years ago. It’s a 1976 Husqvarna WR250. These are great motorcycles no matter how old. They are reliable, easy to ride, they won’t beat you up, parts (if you do need them) are available and there are all kinds of resources on the net for anything you might want to know. Considering how old it is , this WR250 will be a great trail bike, good for Vintage Enduro events (you’d have to put all the enduro equipment on but that’s easy) and great in vintage desert races. This one for sale is described as “seems to run and shift good”…that’s all the description you get so, that should help keep the price down. These WR’s were darn near bulletproof so if it is running decently now, a little going over should be all it needs? Click on the pics for more pictures of a really fun dirtbike.