When did they start using all them safety switches?

jimmythetrucker · Full Member Joined: Mar 12, 2008 Posts: 1283

For those who want to know why Yamaha started using all those safety switches -- here's a story that explains the whole thing.

I read this in National Lampoon's "True Facts" column sometime back around 1972 or 73 or thereabouts. I can't recall the whole story after all these years, so what follows is the story as I remember it.

Sometime way back then, some guy in Florida got the itch for a new Honda 750. He'd never ridden a motorcycle before but decided he had to get one after watching too many Peter Fondle movies.

He bought his new motorcycle and rode it home from the dealership. He parked it on his flagstone patio and went inside to watch football.

His neighbor saw the bike sitting there and strolled over to look at it.

The new biker was proud of his machine. He came out of the house and showed the neighbor all the trick features the new Honda had. One trick feature, of course, was electric start. The new biker turned the key and punched the button and the engine fired right up. Too bad he forgot that he parked the machine in gear --

The bike took off across the patio. Somehow the throttle grip got inside his shirt sleeve and dragged him across the patio, CRASH! through the sliding-glass doors, and into the living room. In the living room, the bike laid down on its side and ran around in circles a few times. Of course it ran over him a few times, too. When he finally found the kill switch, he had a broken arm, a dislocated shoulder, lots of bruises, and he was bleeding heavily from some serious cuts.

The neighbor loaded him up and took him to the hospital. They splinted his arm, relocated his shoulder, sewed up all his cuts, and gave him some pain pills. The neighbor then drove him home.

While he was at the hospital, his new Honda laid on its side in the living room. Gas was dripping from the tank and soaking into the shag carpet. His wife (not knowing anything better to do) mopped up the gas with paper towels and flushed them down the toilet. By the time he got home, she'd flushed away a couple of gallons of gas.

When he got home, he walked into the living room, looked at the mess, and decided he ought to take a crap. So he went in the john, pulled his pants down, and sat to do the job. Everything was OK until he lit a cigarette -- with a match -- and dropped the match between his legs into the toilet bowl.

KABOOM! The toilet blew up. When the bowl exploded, it blew him six feet straight up. His head and shoulders went through the bathroom ceiling. He shattered two vertebrae, broke his collar bone, and suffered large, third-degree burns on both cheeks of his bum and on his family jewels.

The ambulance came to get him. They loaded him on a gurney and took him back to the hospital. While they were unloading him, they dropped the gurney and broke his hip.

When he finally got out of the hospital, the first thing he did was sell the motorcycle.

Jimmy's note: I saw that bike on e-bay, believe it or not, item number 110105305104. No s***, people. Check it out.

INXS650 · 650Rider Supporter Joined: Mar 22, 2007 Posts: 645

Very funny story. Not too sure if I believe it or not, but I have heard stranger things before.

xsleo

myth busters heard the same story and proved it couldn't happen that way.

jimmythetrucker · Full Member Joined: Mar 12, 2008 Posts: 1283

Myth Busters could surely prove that every Laurel & Hardy film is impossible, too. We already know the things they're doing are impossible while we're watching the film. Still -- we laugh at Laurel & Hardy films, and Three Stooges films, and Roadrunner cartoons and at the Keystone Cops, etc.

I never claimed it was true. I said I saw it in the "True Facts" column of the National Lampoon thirty some-odd years ago. I thought it was funny then. I think it's funny now. And that's the truth.

What Happened to 650rider.com?

Yamaha xs650