MEGAPHONE

MEGAPHONE A Life’s Worth of Adventure

BY CLEM SALVADORI

I

’ve been riding quite a long time, since 1955. In those first years there were a couple of short periods when I did not have a motorcycle, but I made sure they were as brief as possible. And I always knew there would be another bike.

This all began by bashing around in the woods on friend Dick’s very beat-up Harley 125. We were 15, so we did not have driver’s licenses, but as soon as I turned 16 I got a license and told my parents I wanted to get a motorcycle. “You earn the money, you can buy one,” was the response. My father, a college professor, was taking a sabbatical year (time off) in Italy, so I worked at a job in my hometown that summer and then took a ship to join them in Rome.

And bought a used NSU 250 Max. Then Dick wrote me a letter with a check enclosed to buy him a bike, the idea being we’d tour around Western Europe together. I bought a used

and from Europe. Bikes loaded, unloaded in New York, and we rode home. I knew that I loved seeing the world from the saddle of a motorcycle. My local motorcycle club, the Aces Up, required membership in the AMA, and I joined in 1957. Don’t think the club ever had more than a dozen members, and we had a couple of Harley 125s that we rode in local scrambles and hare ‘n’ hounds. Good people. Having a youthful need for speed, I earned the money to buy a 1960 Bonneville — which was $900 in the U.S., a hundred bucks cheaper if I bought it at the factory. Icelandic Airlines had a $100 roundtrip ticket to London. Traveling alone was no problem, because “When I got to an ocean I would my very obvious aloneness made strangers happy to find a ship that could take me and talk to me as they knew my bike to my next destination.” there were no ruffians in my saddlebags. Some 14,000 miles later I dropped the BMW R26, he showed up, and we bike off at the factory and flew home, spent some eight weeks traveling very, bike following a few weeks later. very cheaply, using youth hostels and Did the U.S. Army, then the GI camping. I imagine if parents allowed Bill paid for a Master’s degree in 17-year-olds to ride motorcycles Southeast Asian studies, which got unsupervised around Europe today, me hired by the State Department and they would be arrested for child sent to Vietnam. There I convinced the endangerment. fellow running the Saigon motorpool

Great trip, great memories, no that I needed a Vespa scooter, not a camera so no photos. We ended up great big Ford sedan. When I finished in England, with tickets on a “student my time there I turned in the scooter, ship,” a cheap way in those days for and told him my next assignment American college students to get to was Italy. He laughed; “Where Vespa made. You get same?”

Salvadori, circa 1957. No. I got a BMW R75/5. After that Italian tour, State wanted me back in D.C. Not to my liking. Afghanistan (1973) seemed much more appealing, so I handed in my resignation and started off on what would be a three-year trip around the world. When I got to an ocean I would find a ship that could take me and my bike to my next destination. Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Panama, north to a delightful year in Mexico, on to Alaska in 1976, then home to Massachusetts...flat broke.

Driving a taxi and selling articles about world travel to motorcycle magazines paid the rent and bought food. Then a magazine in California called up and asked if I’d like to be paid to ride motorcycles. Tell me more. “We don’t pay much, but you can have all the motorcycles you want to ride.” Let me think about it. Give me two seconds: one, two. I’ll be there in three weeks.

And that was over 40 years ago, during which time I’ve ridden a heckuva lot of motorcycles a heckuva lot of miles. I could not imagine a better job for a person of my inclinations. My current AMA card says I’m a Life Member Plus. And plus is right.

Clement Salvadori, AMA #77415, is a longtime motojournalist who resides in central California.