Bayer, The Airhead Toaster Rides Again

Seems like we all get distracted......sometimes its for so long that it becomes a Rip Van Winkle sort of thing. Well.......there was a time when I only rode a motorcycle, I owned no car, and had no other means of personal transportation. My friend Noel and I would ride 300 miles plus on a Saturday just for the fun of it. One of our favorites was the "Loop" thats all the way around the Olympic Penninsula in a day. It usually included a stop at the Humptulips tavern on the the pacific coast. It has since burned down. Well somewhere back in the early 80's came marriage and children, and along with that a little bit of white knuckle motorcycling, it just didn't have the same allur anymore. A few years later the thought of doing a 19 hour trip from Los Angeles to Tacoma seemed a thing of the distant past, and the 120,000 miles I racked up on its back started feeling like a dream.

Thoughts of long distance motocycle adventrues were replaced by the new adventure of raising two wonderful girls. As a side note Beth, the creative, and nuttier than a fruitcake, mother/wife took it upon herself to create the photo above (Susie age 3 and Maria age 8). She did this by talking the Honda shop into letting her take the new motorcycle with her to the photo studio in exchange for a finished 8 X 10 glossy of the girls.

As the old Toaster languished family activities flourished. The R50/5 Airhead Toaster sat in the garage only to moved around to get it out of the way of whatever project was happening at the time. As the years passed it sat and aged and gathered mountains of dust and grim, for 24 years to be exact.

Unitl!! In the spring of 2006 while doing some cleaning up in the garage my family suggested that this chunk of aluminum and steel outght to either find a new home (some untorid locations were mentioned) or again take its place as a viable, at this point family, vehicle. After some very serious cleaning changing of tires, installing a new battery, and changing of all bodily fluids as well as numerous tired rubber parts, the Air Head Toaster rides again

Now the fact that the photo is taken in front of the outhouse at our beach place on Hoods Canal should not detract from this momentus event.

So now beware as you might encouter this 35 year old machine hurtelling down the highway at incredible G forces. Yes it now has a GPS on board to facilitate Geo Caching.