Honda XL 250 1974

This is pretty much exactly what my 1974 Honda 250XL Dualsport looked like then in 1975 when I first bought it. I bought it in Escondido, California and I believe I lived then in Rancho Bernardo, not too far away. The previous owner had had an accident on it and had sold it. It had a little dent in the tank likely caused by a knee hitting it hard. But, since there was no visible damage to the bike I bought it for $750 then I think they were new only about 1200 to 1500, so I got it for a good price. 

I rode this bike all over San Diego County especially on all the dirt roads then and I often put it on my father's pickup truck and hauled it out to the desert where he and I and my Mom and his friends were building a retirement home from 1968 until 1980 there. Eventually, before I was married for a second time I was a single Dad and my father welded up a motorcycle front wheel hitching post for it that fit my trailer ball space on my 1976 Toyota Longbed truck. So, I hauled it up from the desert along with my son to a job building a home  in Mt. Shasta about June 1979. My son was 4. I had a 6 pack cabover camper then in 1979 and I was 31. I lived with my son in my camper that summer while I worked and hired babysitters to stay with my son when I was working. He sometimes rode the backcountry with me on the motorcycle then. At that age I usually rode with him in front of me because he was pretty young yet and I could better protect him that way. So, we would ride and go camping and swim in lakes sometimes then. In the winter I stored it and rented a room in a home from a lady my age and my son and I slept in the camper while using the living room, kitchen and bathroom. We became sort of family with the people that lived in that house then. Through another lady that rented a bedroom there I met my next wife while cross country skiing with the two of them there. It was wonderful to have a wife that skied and liked the back country like I did. We raised my son and her two kids from her first marriage and eventually bought 2 1/2 acres in the back country with a spring and a great view of Mt. Shasta and I built an A-Frame. My father came up to lay the foundation as he had had more experience building than I and was a retired Electrical Contractor from Southern California.
This is what muffin looked like. We had to hogtie her once to remove the porcupine quills from her. Being a girl she let us do that. I'm not sure how many male dogs would let people hogtie them, hold them down and pull out porcupine quills from her face and inside her mouth. But, you can't leave the quills there or the dog usually will die because the quills eventually wind up in the brain because of the way they are designed. So, they have to come out one way or another.

At one point the whole family got on the motorcycle (5 year old son, 6 year old stepdaughter, 8 year old stepson, myself and my wife (and sometimes when she got tired of running alongside at slow speed our Australian Terrier named "Muffin" because she looked like a big muffin with brown hair going every which way. We rode that summer on dirt roads (didn't see a single person we were so remote) about 10 miles round trip up to about 9000 to 10,000 feet up to the Clear Creek Area because the 4wd roads were still open then and hadn't been block by the Forest service then in 1980.

This motorcycle was the best all around off road bike that I ever owned. It had enough power to do a wheelie (lift the front wheel off the ground into the air) and still had enough power for a freeway (60 or 70 mph) as long as you didn't get into a situation where you had to power away from danger at high speed. But it could cruise all day at 60 to 65 miles per hour if you didn't mind a little vibration.

So, I loved it the most off road where it really excelled. It was light enough (and so was I) to throw my hips and change directly quickly in tight spots where not being able to do that might cost your life or at least you might be injured if you couldn't suddenly throw your hips to go another direction in the dirt. You never know when an unexpected object like a rock, a tree limb, a bush (whatever) is going to show itself and you have to be ready for anything or you are going to be hurt.

One time I was riding on a dirt road in San Diego county that I loved to ride then but it had rained really hard the last week. So, as I was approaching the bottom of a valley suddenly I saw the dirt road was completely washed out in a way that was dangerous to my survival. The only way at that speed (about 35 to 45) that I was going to survive this was to lay the bike down so I laid it down at that speed and the left foot peg dug into the ground enough to slow me enough to survive it. Luckily the dirt was loose and I had cowboy flat toed boots on that came up to my knees under my Levi jeans. My bike was hanging over the edge of a 6 foot cliff and chasm where a little stream was now running that hadn't been there the week before because of flash flooding which is very common in southern California because a lot of southern California is either desert or near desert conditions except along the coast.

So, I really was grateful for my fast reflexes and the superb handling of this light 250 XL Honda.