Bultaco 350
# 3 and #7 are the same bike.
Terri and I had been married a couple of years. We lived on Riley Creed Road in Tullahoma. We had a single car garage the depth of the house, so I had room to piddle on things.
I asked James about the old Bultaco, and he said it was right where we left it. I asked him if we could look at it and maybe get it running again. He said go ahead. So I loaded it up and took it to our house. The carburetor was easy to take off, and I cleaned it as best I could. There was a fuel line that needed to be replaced, and I put in a new sparkplug. Over the course of a few days I cleaned it up and put it back together. I kicked it till I was tired of kicking, with no luck. Then one night about 10:30, I was messing with it. I took the spark plug out one more time, dipped it in gas/oil mix, and put it back in. It was sitting on a milk crate pointed towards the back corner of the garage. One more kick. It started. The idle was where it was when it stopped in the field ten years earlier, with me and Lee on it, wide open. It was loud and smoked up the garage in just a few seconds. I didn't want to tear anything up. All I could think of was to disconnect the spark plug and it would stop. So I grabbed the wire and yanked it off. The electricity traveling through the wire at 8 or so thousand rpm's lit me up. My arm and shoulder got numb and tingly. Terri heard the commotion, and when I got inside, she said my eyes were pulsating. When I could speak, I told her what happened. She was worried about me and laughing with me at the same time. But...it started! Once again it was running. I rode the back roads five miles or so from our house on Riley Creek Road to Mt. Vernon to see mom and dad and the Cole's. By now Lee was about 16, and Josh was 14. Lee learned from James, and was already a better mechanic than I was. One of the things this motorcycle taught me, was to keep a three or four inch wooden stick with me to pop that sparkplug wire off.
In the summer of 1990?, Clark Elliott, Brenda, Keith Poyner, and Jeff Parmley drove to Tullahoma on a Saturday, and we rode dirt bikes and shot guns down by Normandy Lake. Brenda had a KDX 200, and she could really ride it well!
Clark and Brenda, on her KDX 200, and Keith Poyner.
Jeff Parmley beside the old Bultaco when they came down for the day to ride.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHBR4jLyfKNjD1d-ky-7ikZ0z5UTgLBpCEvPVJ4CYeqkUOW8m_NoxFg5YvyxA_gCU-M7GgiKOeFjP73kvnELeomC2JIUEaozM9ezKzQ9ed-_WW5eyIOafMP48QoXwRPHSgNapJgslce6ZCxdYACUCeh_S_YslMzSZXT_hXpL0rv1unYtcTZdWVZxfPbw/w462-h359/clark%20and%20brenda.jpg)
Clark and Brenda
After all that riding and shooting, we went to Rutledge Falls to cool off. Clark and Brenda at the pool at Rutledge Falls.
Riding that old Bultaco again made me want another street bike. It wasn't long until I found one...
Honda Interceptor 1000
1992. Terri and I had been married almost four years. We thought we were ready to start a family. For whatever reason, it wasn't happening. So we bought a motorcycle and put having babies on the back burner. Pioneer Equipment had a used 1984 Honda Interceptor like this one for sale. Clark Elliott came down from Murfreesboro and test drove it for me since I didn't have a license, and since he knew a lot more about buying a used street bike than I did. He said it rode good and the engine sounded good, so Terri and I bought it. We paid $2400 for it. It had 2400 miles on it. The bike was red white and blue and was beautiful.
This time I got my license, and was legal. Terri worked at AEDC Credit Union, and I worked for Kraft Foods. My daily paperwork had to be mailed, so I made a habit, on nice days, of stuffing my paperwork in my jacket, and taking the Honda to a post office thirty or forty-five minutes away. Never the same one, and going a different way there and back. By the time Terri got home at 6:15, I was back, in a great mood, and had supper started.
We took several trips together to Huntsville, and other places. It was great fun. We put close to 3000 miles on it.
The Honda must have shook something loose! In the spring of 1993, we found out Terri had a baby on the way.
I cleaned the bike up and was about to put a for sale sign on it. Scott Adams, our next door neighbor, saw me outside, and came over and bought it. Karen LeeAnn Stone was born that September. Our family was getting bigger.
It would be fourteen years until we got another motorcycle.