"The Widowmaker" -- 1981 Kawasaki 750 LTD

I bought my second bike in late 1980. It was about that time that I was looking for graduate schools, so I planned an elaborate cross-country trip that would take me from Baton Rouge to California and up the coast from San Diego to Humbolt. The Kawi didn't come with a luggage rack, so I spent the weekend in the LSU scene shop welding one up from steel bar with a stick welder. I was wearing a white tank top I got at Disney World. It had Mickey emblazoned on the front in a John Travolta, Saturday Night Fever sort of pose. After welding all day in that shirt I ended up with painfully sunburned armpits and the negative image of Mickey burned onto my chest. There was no way I was taking my shirt off at the beaches in California!

<====That's me, ready to depart for California, April 1981.

The trip didn't quite work out as planned. Just after crossing the Colorado River at Needles about 12:30 AM, I dumped the bike in the gravel parking lot of a campground where I was hoping to stay and separated my left shoulder. After some struggle I was able to right my bike and ride it some 15 miles to the Needles hospital. Well, there was no way I was going to ride up the coast of California with my arm in a sling. I called my brother who came all the way down from Santa Cruz to save the day. I drove his car and he rode The Widowmaker back to his house where I recuperated for a couple weeks. The 1700 mile ride back to Baton Rouge was painful--and even more so when a fellow biker would wave and I would forget and wave back. I couldn't raise my clutch hand back to the handlebars without using my throttle hand--basically riding with no hands at all. What fun!



I called the Kawi "The Widowmaker", but not for the usual reasons. Once, when checking the battery, I removed the left side cover and dropped it in a hurry when I discovered one of the largest black widows I'd ever seen, hanging upside down inside the cover, with her little sack of eggs. I assisted Mrs. Widow off this mortal coil, then moved to the other side cover. Somewhat gingerly, I removed the right side cover, and, sure enough, an even larger black widow was hanging inside. I had been riding for months with a pair of stowaways!