Not long after my father got me started riding in '68, he bought a CT70 for my mother to learn to ride on (at age 44). Once the three of us were doing some trail riding and a little hill climbing we started going camping with another family (the husband/father of the family worked with my father). Since we didn't have anything to sleep in overnight, the two fathers together built toppers for their pickup trucks so we could get started. Instead of the typical combination of a stock truck tailgate and half-height access window on the average topper, they built a full-sized removable rear wall for the back of the topper with a smaller door in it. The interior was 3 removable pieces built from wood that slipped over the wheel wells with the 3rd section across the front of the truck bed ahead of the wheel wells, making up 3 bed areas on which we put small foam mattresses. We took our bikes with us on a 3 rail trailer and spent entire weekends camping and riding in a wildlife preserve that, ironically, I now live less than 5 miles from but at the time was about 45 miles or so north of where we lived. I dug through all my pictures, found and scanned a few more from my mother's photo album and assembled as many from that period as I could find.
First, a closer look at the topper on my father's F-100 at the time (sorry Mom, we're looking past you in the second pic)
Unfortunately, no pictures were taken of Mom's CT70 but she only had it for a couple months. She learned to ride well enough that my Dad traded it in on an SL100 for her, then the clutch learning curve took a bit longer but she probably rode it more than any of her bikes overall.
Meanwhile when we were first getting started with our weekend fun, I had the amalgamation that was nicknamed Sparkplug by my Dad (old racehorse term I guess) cobbled together from a Sachs (maybe 125?) 2 stroke with a clapped out set of forks and a tired engine. It got to me like this and though I don't have any pictures of it later after the grafted Ducati 250 street bike front end (steering head from the frame included) and a tranplanted C200 engine, it shows up often in the two parts of Super 8 video taken during our weekends before the purchase of my first new bike (Candy Red SL175K0) and later while the bike was in the Honda shop I no longer worked for to get a warranty crankshaft replacement.
and leaning on a block on the left in this front yard picture
Later that year we all had nice new bikes and we were still sleeping in the truck under the topper.
First, a closer look at the topper on my father's F-100 at the time (sorry Mom, we're looking past you in the second pic)
Unfortunately, no pictures were taken of Mom's CT70 but she only had it for a couple months. She learned to ride well enough that my Dad traded it in on an SL100 for her, then the clutch learning curve took a bit longer but she probably rode it more than any of her bikes overall.
Meanwhile when we were first getting started with our weekend fun, I had the amalgamation that was nicknamed Sparkplug by my Dad (old racehorse term I guess) cobbled together from a Sachs (maybe 125?) 2 stroke with a clapped out set of forks and a tired engine. It got to me like this and though I don't have any pictures of it later after the grafted Ducati 250 street bike front end (steering head from the frame included) and a tranplanted C200 engine, it shows up often in the two parts of Super 8 video taken during our weekends before the purchase of my first new bike (Candy Red SL175K0) and later while the bike was in the Honda shop I no longer worked for to get a warranty crankshaft replacement.
and leaning on a block on the left in this front yard picture
Later that year we all had nice new bikes and we were still sleeping in the truck under the topper.
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