(Once again, I don't have any of my old photos available and I found this, actually a 250, out on the internet.)

During the early 1980s, when I still had my R65, a guy at work told me about the old bike he had in his garage. It ran, but there was something wrong with it because it wouldn't shift. For $20 I could have it.

I went to look at it, and it did start pretty easily. The odometer only showed a few thousand miles, but it had been painted metalic blue with a rattle can. It would occasionally shift gears, but mostly the lever didn't want to move all the way. It didn't seem like a big gamble.

The former owner told me that it was a Montgomery Wards Riverside motorcycle. "Monkey" Wards was the #2 competitor to Sears for many years, and had a similar origin as a mail order catalog purveyor of nearly everything at one time or another. While Sears sold Puch motorcycles from Germany, Wards sourced their Riverside bikes from Benelli of Italy. When Wards stopped selling motorcycles, they put the last ones on sale at $1/cc, so this 350cc four stroke single was pretty cheap. He told me that it was possible to get parts from a company back east called Cosmopolitan Motors. With that, and the owner's manual and a parts booklet, I owned a Benelli.

It was an even bet that I'd never get the bike to work right. Although I had done some mechanical work on my VW Bug, I was otherwise a mechanical idiot. I actually had absolutely no idea how a motorcycle transmission worked. I took off the two sidecovers to the unit construction motor/transmission. On the left was the primary drive and the drive sprocket for the chain to the rear wheel. On the right, I found that there was a sprung mechanism on the inside of the cover, attached to a shaft that ran through the cover to the heel-toe shifter. By playing with the shifter and watching the mechanism, I could see that it was supposed to advance a segment gear. There was a pawl in the sprung part that limited the advance, and it seemed to be bent; at least, it looked bent relative to the line drawing in the parts book. I ordered a new one from Cosmopolitan, and when it came, I suddenly had a working bike!

Sort of. After reassembly and testing the shifter while on the centerstand, I took it out for a maiden voyage. All was well for just about exactly one mile. Suddenly, there was no power to the rear wheel. Even though the motor was running and the transmission still seemed to shift, there was no movement at the drive chain. I pushed the bike back home, took off the cover, and found that the nut securing the drive sprocket had come loose. I put it back together and cranked the nut down to ensure that it wouldn't come loose again. Then I took off again, confident of victory. When the bike lost power again at nearly the same place, it occured to me that someone who was smart would have brought the wrench with them...

Thus was purchased my first tube of Loctite blue.

That tube came in very handy. The Riverside was not a smooth, fast, quiet bike like my R65. It vibrated badly, had a tendency towards backfires, limited braking even for such a light bike, and although the engine was oil tight, it drooled oil out of the breather hose that hung off the back next to the fender. The owners manual suggested that every 10,000 miles the head, cylinder and piston should be removed and decoked — a term I'd never encountered before. Normally, I wouldn't have thought of 10,000 miles as being very far or very much time, but on the Riverside, that could turn out to be a very long time.

The vibration would loosen every fastener, and as I found them, I glued them back into place. In particular, I put a dab of blue on all of the little 10mm bolts and nuts that held the tail light housing and license plate bracket to the flimsy stamped steel fender. I recall vaguely that on my return trip from a Sunday picnic at the beach with the TRW club, while on the 405 freeway, there was some horn honking behind me. I couldn't see who or where it was coming from, so I returned my attention to the traffic around me. When I got home, I found that I was now the proud owner of a bobber. Apparently the bolts securing the fender had parted company and then the fender fatigued under the vibration and broke off, taking the tail light and license bracket with it. Those parts were much cheaper, however, than the cost of getting a new license, stickers and registration down at the DMV. Even when the fasteners held, there were problems from the vibration. It would put my hands and butt to sleep in fairly short order. One day I noticed that the bike was leaking gas — from the tear in the gas tank immediately next to the (solid) front mounting point to the steering head. A new gas tank was ordered from Cosmo — we were getting to be on a first name basis — and when the $50 tank arrived, I discovered it was painted and striped in the original Benelli color scheme.

I did try to improve the bike a bit. It had what looked like a tuna can filled with lathe turnings for an air cleaner. I thought that would be sufficient to prevent pea gravel from entering, but probably nothing much finer. So, I bought a K&N oiled foam air cleaner for it, thinking how I had improved it. Naturally, I took it out for a ride. I took it to Santa Paula, enjoying the orange groves (and probably killing lots of Med flies on the way). Once there, I stopped to gas up. And get some feeling back in my hands, feet and butt. Then I kicked the starter lever, but instead of starting up, it backfired, which wasn't too unusual. What was unusual was the sort of shushing sound that followed. I looked down and saw that the brand new air cleaner was on fire! And of course it was right beneath 4 gallons of regular gas, and next to the pump. I jumped off the bike, kicked the burning mass away from the bike and the pump, ran around and stomped it out. Breathing hard, I realized that I now smelled like burnt rubber. I rode home and reinstalled the tuna can, and thought that just maybe the Italians had known what they were doing after all.

One of the reasons I bought the Riverside was that I had the idea that Heather might be able to use it as a training bike, to learn to ride. This may not have been the best idea, considering the right side, 1 up and 3 down heel-toe shifter and left side rear brake. But it seemed unthreatening to me and therefore, ought to be good to start on. We went out to big, empty parking lot, and Heather did ride it around, even doing some big figure 8s and shifting into second once. I thought she was doing rather well. I had signed her up for the MSF beginner course, and thought she'd be good to go. However, they quickly dropped her from the course and, only at this point, did I learn that a) she had been frightened to death the entire time in the parking lot and b) she had never before even ridden a bicycle.

After I got out of the cast from the accident that totalled the R65, the Riverside was my only bike. West Valley was having their monthly breakfast ride that Sunday, and I was eager to go. Their rides are usually pretty tame, and I didn't see any reason that it would be a problem on the Riverside. However, they chose a destination out in Canyon Country, which required getting on I-5 to get out there.

At the north end of the Valley, there's a grade and a minor crest to get over. I had never really paid much attention to it before, but on the Riverside I was topped out at about 60mph with the throttle WFO. The group slowly pulled away from me, but I knew I'd catch up once over the top. Even on a Sunday morning, I-5 is pretty busy, with lots of trucks, and on the little Riverside, I felt like I was looking up at their wheels. I finally crested the hill and started to pick up speed. I could see the group ahead and just then I felt something very wrong with the front end of the bike. I was pretty sure the front tire had gone flat. This would be a frightening experience in any case, but in the #2 lane on I-5 surrounded by trucks, it was truly scary. I resisted the urge to use the front brake. I slid back on the bench seat to take some weight off the front. I managed to get in behind one truck and then in front of another while coasting onto the shoulder. Because I was hanging back on the seat, a bit like Rollie Free, I couldn't use the rear brake, either. So I dragged my feet to gradually slow down to a stop. The whole time I was thinking that if I didn't die, Heather was going to kill me! So, I rode pillion to breakfast and then after the ride, Laurie and Don (her husband and the mechanic at the shop) came back and got the Riverside with their van. Apparently the high speed had turned the tire on the wheel and had torn off the valve stem from the tube.

After that, I wasn't so eager about the Riverside. As my friend Randy was looking for a bike that his girlfriend could learn on, I gave it to him. But it took me a couple weeks to find the title to it. When I brought it to him, he told me that he had already given it away to someone else. He has always been a lot smarter than I am.

Postscript: A few years ago, I happened to be perusing eBay, and for whatever reason, I did a search for a Riverside. Lo and behold, there was one that had just been posted. The minimum bid was $500. I literally laughed out loud! Naturally, I followed the auction — what kind of sucker would pay $500 for that piece of junk? I didn't do much laughing after that, however, because the bidding went up to $800 and then it finally sold for over $1100!