As the hands of the clock make their way toward 11.p.m., Bedell waits in quiet contemplation of the journey that lies ahead. With the media describing it as "the most spectacular long-distance motorcycle dash the world has ever known," Allan T. Bedell is ready to make history as he attempts to break the current transcontinental record, one held by living legend Erwin "Cannonball" Baker. Ahead of him lies 3296 miles of hard, unsupported riding across America. A ride that he predicts will take him nine days.

There is an eager crowd to wave him off, even if the folks back east are scornful of his attempts to wrest the record from the invincible Baker. "Where'd he dream that dope?" the papers read, but Bedell is undeterred and roars out into the night.

Seven days, 16 hours and 16 minutes after his departure, Alan T. Bedell rides triumphantly into New York to claim his record. "Dust covered, with the grime of 12 states on it, the machine looked and sounded as fit as its rider for another battle against father time."

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"My mother carried me in a sidecar between her feet when I was a baby," says Bob. "This was in Pana, Illinois, about 30 miles south of Decatur where my Dad was a blacksmith and a horseshoer. We rode around in a four-cylinder Ace sidecar rig as we couldn't afford a car then and it was our family transportation. My Dad bought, sold and traded motorcycles all his life. Our whole family including my mother and three brothers and four sisters all rode motorcycles."

At 14 Bob would ride his first bike, a 1925 Harley-Davidson JD. "It belonged to my cousin, but I worked on it so he let me ride it. I ended up buying it from him for a whopping $50. It had several mechanical indigestion problems but I sorted them out."

His next project was a four-cylinder Indian bought as a basket-case with a broken crankcase. "Dad showed me how to jig it up and we welded it with an acetylene torch." Then there was a dry spell during which he was without a bike, but that changed one day when a customer showed up at his father's blacksmith shop. He needed his plough sharpened and offered an old Harley in barter. "It was a 1915 with its engine out, but there were parts to build two bikes. I said, 'Well, okay,' and made the deal while my Dad was out at a job.

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"But, Lord," said Martha, the sister of the dead man, "by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days."

Then Jesus said, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"

So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me."

When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go." -John 11:38-44 (New International Version)

Look at this heap. What was I thinking? Well, I figured every motojournalist needed a vintage bike project to occupy his garage.

I had a stupid, romantic image of myself on a snarling, barely-tamed vintage bike, held together by baling wire, electrical tape and sheer guts.

I would be in touch with every nut and bolt on the thing, building a bond with it like the Lone Ranger and Silver.

The trouble began when I saw an ad on Craig's List for a 1976 Honda CB550 SuperSport. The ad described the bike as running, but needing work. It was set up as a Cafe racer, with clip-on handlebars and a cool solo seat. In the picture, it looked OK. Craig's List

If you have access to a computer, you've probably looked at Craig's List once or twice. It's a remarkable website that commands a huge presence on the World Wide Web, an incredible achievement for such a low-tech, low-budget operation.

Craig's List was founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark, a computer programmer in San Francisco, Calif. He originally started it as an events-related bulletin board, but it expanded to include job listings, apartment vacancies and classified ads for cars and motorcycles. More recently, Craig's List has expanded to almost every major city on Earth, with millions and millions of people looking at it every day. A feature-length documentary, http://www.24hoursoncraigslist.com/ will be in theatres soon, further boosting the popularity of this global site.

The "motorcycles and scooters" for sale listing is an amazing thing, with far more bikes listed for sale by private sellers than any other classified ad site I've seen. (Cycletrader has tens of thousands of ads, but the great majority of them are dealerships advertising new bikes.) You can find many terrific bargains in there, and I've bought many bikes there in near-perfect condition for well below Kelly Blue Book Value.

Posting ads is very simple. The old-fashioned, HTML-only site loads quickly and is easy to navigate. You just type text into the proper boxes, upload any photos, and your ad posts in minutes. There are no ads, banners or pop-ups to slow things down. The ad stays up for 10 days and is then deleted automatically.

It's not all a dream-come-true. Like any other public space, there are criminals and hustlers waiting to take advantage of the unwary. When you see a motorcycle or scooter priced so low that it's too good to be true, it usually is. An emailed inquiry to one of these ads will produce a response in badly written English informing the buyer that the motorcycle is in another country and will be airfreighted as soon as half the money is either sent to the seller Western Union or placed in an escrow account. I don't know how they get the money from the escrow account, but I do know you'll never get the bike or your money back. Scams exist to take advantage of sellers, too: fake cashier's checks in amounts exceeding the bike's sale price are sent with instructions to cash them and wire the change to someplace. The check bounces 30 days later, leaving the unfortunate (and not-so-bright, in my opinion) seller liable to the bank where she cashed it.

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Even the bike's latest iteration, the ZZR-1200, has come in for punishing prose along the lines of "Ho-hum, not much new here." Well, bollocks-n-buggery! Fact is, thanks to the robust aftermarket (and that in turn to the loyalty of ZX-11 Fans), the original 1989-1999 ZX-11 Ninja still has a lot to offer. A quick browse through cyberspace says it all. Several very active 'sites are devoted to the bike, examining just about every stressed bolt, layshaft and oil pan - stock and modded. Just search Google for "ZX-11" and see for yourself.

My big buddy is an early "C" model, with a middling 45,000 miles (I know of 80,000+ mile examples). Most of that's from touring and commuting, with the odd sidewall-scuffing mountain workout thrown-in, to avoid boxy tires and squidlet derision. So what, if it gets put away wet from time to time? Sometimes it even gets a little air under the (front) tire when we're feeling spunky. However, respect for the bike's and my own age, means that I ride it like the sporty tourer it is - not the "sport bike" that the factory press kit proclaims - and yeoman service it has delivered, too.

The cases have never parted and the Do-Not-Mess quotient remains high for my Black Torpedo. Still, with the miles adding up, restorative work was indicated. The OE suspension was getting thwacked to death, compliments of the moonscape that passes for "roads" in Washington DC and environs. The measure was the bodywork, which creaked ever louder over the landscape's various whoops-n-ruts.

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Motorcycle restoration is in many ways the perfect hobby, melding an interest in things mechanical, the joy of craftsmanship, the satisfaction of collecting, the excitement of riding and the value of investment. Deciding where to start is the hard part.

A traditional approach has been to concentrate on English bikes of the 1950s and 1960s, especially sporting or racing 500cc singles like the Manx Norton, BSA DBD34GS Gold Star or Velocette Thruxton. At the very top of the desirability heap are Vincents-the 500cc Comet, the 1,000ccRapide and the 125mph-capable Vincent Black Shadow.

Problem is, the prices of these classics have been rising rapidly in recent years, and they are now out of sight for all but the most well-heeled motorcycle investor. Not to worry, the second rank of English bikes - mostly 650cctwins - are both more numerous and more economical. The best of these are the twin-carburetor Triumph T120 Bonnevilles from 1966 to 1970, any 650 Norton from 1960-1970 and the standard BSA 650, dubbed the A10. More available, if a little less desirable, are the later Bonnevilles, Norton Commandos and BSA Lightnings.

After this, the list of desirable classic motorcycles gets a lot more confusing, but certainly no less interesting. That's because, as prices have risen, greater attention has been paid to motorcycles that, while reliable, innovative or a pleasure to run, never created the same cult following.

On this side of the world, a thriving restoration movement exists for pre- and post-war Harley-Davidsons and Indians.

"Bathtub" Triumphs

This list is a lot longer than the ones above, but it would certainly have to include the delightful Norton ES2 single, the enclosed "bathtub" model Triumph Speed Twin or T110, Ariel's fully-enclosed 250 Leader, the Matchless G80CS desert racer, Benelli 750 six, BMW R69S, Ducati Desmo singles; and even early Vespa scooters. On this side of the world, a thriving restoration movement exists for pre- and post-war Harley-Davidsons and Indians. Large clubs are active, much help can be found from enthusiasts and parts are surprisingly plentiful.

Before you decide what make and model you'd like to work on, take some time to review the field. The best way to do this is to attend meetings of your local vintage bike club. In British Columbia there's the Classic Motorcycle Club of B.C., or any section meeting or rally of the Canadian Vintage Motorcycle Group.

Go to Daytona

For an instant immersion course, go to Daytona (USA) for Bike Week and take in the classic racing on Monday. There you'll be able to walk through the infield pit area and see hundreds of classic and vintage bikes, many being prepared for racing just as they were thirty years ago. Daytona also attracts dealers and individual sellers who show off their bikes at an official auction, various flea markets and outside numerous watering holes.

The next thing to do is to get subscriptions to Classic Bike magazine from Britain and Walneck's Cycle-Trader magazine from the United States. Classic Bike contains excellent articles on individual machines, beautiful full-color pictures and an extensive classified section for parts and fully-restored classic motorcycles. The prices that go with these ads will give a good indication of how popular-and how available-various models are. That's also the reason for buying Cycle-Trader, because Walneck's can give you an indication of what the same models are selling for in the United States. For Canadian ads, check out the Bike, Boat & RV edition of Auto-Trader at your local convenience store.

Finally, once you've decided what manufacturer and model you're interested in, you should join the club that has members with similar interests. There is a club for most popular marques, including Vincent, BSA, Triumph and BMW. In Canada, two very active clubs to consider are the Canadian Norton Owners Club and the Ducati Owners Club of Canada. There are even clubs for specific models, such as the Gold Star Owners Club.

Once in the club, you'll be able to see what bikes are currently for sale, and get the names of club members who know what bikes might be for sale. This is, by far, the best way to buy a specific model. Club members are usually pretty straight-forward when it comes to the value and true state of their machines.

A second approach is to find a motorcycle repair shop that deals with a specific model. These often have basket cases ready for restoration. They can usually be talked into doing the mechanical work, while you tackle the cycle parts and cosmetics. A good example of this kind of business is Ducati Singles Restorations run by Henry Hogben in La Salette, Ontario.

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"We started out with a 2- item Honda CB450 wish list that I made up," says Augustine. "From that, Todd picked four areas that we would work on before Daytona."

"Out of those four areas, a 16 step to-do-list was generated. All of these steps were specialized changes to the Henning Honda above and beyond the basic blueprinting which gets done to every motor that comes into Augustine's shop.

First Things First:

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This is not an unusual desire these days, not with waiting lists and sky-high prices for some of the more popular Harley-Davidson models. In Harley parlance, a "basket case" is a pile of parts in the corner of someone's farmhouse, often contained in baskets. Restoring a "basket case" is a respected way to gain admittance to the fraternity that is Harley-Davidson. However, there are only so many to go around, and since practically everyone with a shred of technical know-how is buying them up, even basket cases are now becoming an endangered species.

After searching for six months I finally found one. I live in Georgia, and when the humidity slips down to less that 80 percent, we think we're in a drought. Needless to say, this is hell on metal, especially un-loved, neglected metal. Although the old Hog was in one piece, it needed serious tender-lovin'-care. After mulling it over I decided I was going to do to this bike all the things I wanted to do, but couldn't, to the other Shovelheads I owned. I was going to tear it down to the frame and start all over again. I was going to sweat the details. I refused to surrender to greed and half-ass the job then sell it off to make more money.

I was going to do it right, even if it was going to hurt me. Thus began my pain.

Motor-vation

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Savor this simple fact: Life is short and the road is long.

This truism has sirened transcontinental wanderlust among motorcyclists for decades. Consuming the open road. But which road to take? What would you consider the best metalware for your search of destinations afar? Modern, pillow-soft full-tilt-touring land yachts? Sorry - too much luxury for me. I want to feel the road as it passes underneath.

Sport-tourers? Maybe. The new niche-market models have a lot to offer. But I'd rather not arrive at my destination feeling as though I'd been dragged behind the bike instead of having ridden it. To each his own. I prefer a simpler, more relaxed route. Why not take a different road?

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Something in human nature seems to require that we make judgments by comparison. It's not enough that a new motorcycle scores a direct hit on our senses. We can't seem to make up our minds until we've seen the superiority of the new machine demonstrated in a face-off against familiar bikes. In 1996 Yamaha set forth on a bold experiment, introducing their all-new Royal Star into the large-displacement cruiser market where retro style and image were perfected and V-twin powerplants rule. Comparison was inevitable.

But from my perspective, you cannot compare multi-cylindered motorcycles like the Royal Star and Honda's Valkyrie to V-twins. They defy comparison. Sure, even we at Motorcycle Online subjected the Royal Star to a shootout with a V-twin in our Road King vs. Royal Star comparo, but the cruiser market has evolved greatly in the past decade or so, and bikes like the 'Star or Valkyrie are fitting into a new niche where V-twins cannot hang - high-performance cruising. These bikes appeal to a different segment of the class.

I'll be chalking up over 10,000 miles in the saddle of Project Royal Star, and by the project's end this bike should be making quite a personal statement.

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