It was the summer of 1987. Even though I had bought my Honda 550-four two years beforehand, I had never actually taken it out on a long road trip. The only place I had ever taken my bike was to and from my job and around the town because of time constraints and personal circumstances. However, one Monday morning, bright and early, my brother phoned to ask if I would like to take a road trip with him. How could I pass it up?
And just thirty minutes later there was a knock at my front door and my brother was there waiting for me. He was there looking delighted with himself, complete with leather gloves and a new pair of riding glasses covering his eyes. I was curious about his glasses and how much he had paid for them and when he told me the price, I realized that he had paid a lot more than I would have done. In turn, he warned me that riding with regular sunglasses was a bad idea; a statement which I ignored with all the smugness of a 22-year-old single guy who thought he knew everything.
But guess what? I was wrong.
Screaming down the highway at 65 mph without riding glasses was certainly an eye-opener. In fact, I should really say that it was a real ‘eye closer’. Because I only had regular sunglasses on, I found that my eyes started to dry up pretty quickly as the wind found its way over the rims. And even with the glasses right in front of my eyes, I was still getting hit with things like debris, bugs and even little pebbles. So after putting up with this for around fifty miles, I had decided that I needed my own pair of riding glasses and was searching desperately for a place where we could get off the interstate.
Needless to say, by the end of the day I had purchased my own pair of riding glasses. I made sure that anytime I was riding over 55mph, I had these riding glasses with me. When I eventually sold my motorcycle I recommended to the guy purchasing it to get a pair of glasses himself. I hope that he took my advice and didn’t find out the hard way; the way that I did.
