Molly is my 1975 CB550 four-cylinder Honda motorcycle. I bought her when I was working at Microsoft, way back when. I paid a whopping $350 for her. I was lucky; I was monitoring the online company classified ads and happened to catch the motorcycle section just as the ads were being uploaded. I saw this bike for sale and sent the guy email about a minute and a half ahead of the next person. When I went to fork over the money at lunch, the guy selling the bike said he'd had about thirty emails about the bike so far. Like I said - lucky.

When I got her, she had almost zero rust on her and ran okay - just needed the carbs adjusted. Other than that, her problems were mostly cosmetic and frou-frou. The start button wasn't hooked up, the seat had a tear in it, one sidecover was cracked, the pipes had a couple of small holes, etcetera. Well, I ran her into the ground, had a little tip-over on a slick street, and left her out in the weather for a winter (more on that below). So now she's a little rusty here and there.

I've replaced the bits I broke when I tipped her over. I got a new right control cluster and hooked it up (so now I've got electric start - woohoo!). I re-covered the seat. I patched the holes in the pipes with SuperWeld (holding up okay, so far). I found a backrest at a junkyard that didn't resemble a screen door from the 70's (unlike the one that came with her) and made a pad for it (not pictured), much to the joy of my passengers. Here's a cheesy photo of me and my pride & joy.

No, the handlebars aren't stock. They're hi-rise bars that put the throttle at about sixteen inches above seat-height, which is about ten more than with the stock bars. I bought a windshield off Ebay that I've used a few times. It was strange to use a windshield. I felt so... civilized! Keeps the rain from needling you in the neck and bugs from flying down your shirt. And where's the fun in that? So I took the windshield back off again.

A few years back, Molly suffered an extended period of nonfunctionality. She started fouling spark plugs at an astronomical rate. Sounds like a carb problem, right? Well, I took my bike in to a couple of different shops and no one was able to fix the problem. One place I took her to did several hundred dollars worth of "work" on her (I put that in quotes, since I don't know what kind of work they think they did if they didn't get her functioning) and eventually told me to just take her home and give up. Can you believe it? "Well, it is an old bike," they said. Like that's any excuse!

Most shops wouldn't even look at her... they said she's too old and they don't like to work on old bikes. And the shops that specialize in old bikes either say that she's not old enough or that they don't work on Japanese bikes. Finally, in desperation, I rented a U-Haul (my truck wasn't working at the time, either!) and brought my bike to a guy up in Everett who charged $80/hour. He worked on my bike a bit, charged me an arm and a leg and sent me off, saying it was fixed. I got about five miles down the road before she fouled her plugs so badly they wouldn't spark any more. Frustrated, I just loaded the bike back in the U-Haul, took her home and rolled her into the yard. She sat outside in the dog run for a winter, quietly gathering rust. I didn't want to ditch her, as she's my first and best-loved bike. I was at a loss.

Then, in 2003, my brother came down from Alaska to live with us and get some edjamacation at the local technical college. First thing I did was sic him on my bike, and now she runs again! Just goes to prove something I've always said: If you want something done right, get an Alaskan to do it!

Note to self: take current photos of Molly.