I became both aware of and obsessed with motorcycles at about the age of 10. I was interested in the kind of things most normal 10 year old boys were into at the time - baseball, football (and basically any sport), fishing, TV, and of course my bicycle. On my super cool banana seat Schwinn copy, I was as free as a bird and as cool as cool could be.
Things changed one day when my next door neighbor buddy Stu got a mini bike. Nothing special, just a beat up old green mini bike : no suspension, a friction brake on the back tire and a 3 1/2 horsepower Briggs engine. It was a cast off from one of the older kids down the block if I remember correctly, but to us it was pure magic. I can remember Stu showing me how the forks would move in a bit when you hit a bump and us thinking it was front suspension - how cool!, when in reality it was worn neck bearings and a lot of slop. Again, we didn't care or know any better - this little machine was freedom.
I immediately started my own campaign to get a mini bike, but it simply was not to be. I'd like to think that my family was not poor but we certainly were at times, and that wasn't helping matters. My grandparents would listen to me beg and tell me things like "maybe next year for your birthday," but that day never came. Regardless, I was undaunted and unstoppable in my mission.
Things really changed one day not long after Stu got that first bike. Apparently his parents took him to the local Honda dealer and he came back with what was to me the coolest little catalog I had ever seen. When I say it changed my life, I'm not kidding. This was probably late in 1973, and this is what it looked like:
When you opened it up, it looked like this:
but most importantly, this...
To make a long story a little shorter for today, I didn't get my QA50 back in 1973. I din't get one in '74 or '75 either, and although I didn't know it by '75 I was way too big for one anyway. I of course own one today, but I bought it around 2001 - still a kid at heart.
This little catalog? My original copy was lost or discarded back in the mid 70's. When my good friend Tom introduced me to eBay in the late 1990's, I immediately started a quest to find another copy. That was quite a task back then, as I consider myself to be pretty good at searching for things and these just never popped up. I searched and searched.
One day one finally did. The initial price was about 10 dollars, but I had to have it. I proxy bid $100, confident that no other mini bike junky would be willing to pay such an astronomical amount for an old piece of Honda history. No one else bid, and in the final minute of the auction I waited for those last few seconds to tick by, waiting to be reunited with a piece of my childhood. This was back when you had to refresh your browser every few seconds when you were watching an auction end, and as I clicked with about 3 seconds to go the price changed to $105 and the dreaded "you've been outbid" message appeared. I was devastated; sniped at the last second by a fellow Honda lover.
Years went by before I found another. When I finally did, I once again proxy bid some ridiculous number - maybe $250 or so, and was the high bidder at 15 bucks. I waited out that auction, no seven days ever seeming longer, and in the end got my prize for that starting bid - 15 dollars. Crazy.
Today I have 7 different Honda's out in the shop, and I love them all. This little catalog ranks right up there with the bikes, however. Taking it out tonight to snap a couple of pics brought me right back to Brookfield Ct. in 1973, dreaming of the day I'd have my own little "Honda 2." I might have to take it out tomorrow, put on an Orange metal flake Bell helmet and go tear up the neighborhood :)
