The Moto 4 Misadventures (Part 1)

It was the Christmas of all Christmases. I was 12, my brother was 8, and our parents decided that year to change the trajectory of our childhood forever. They bought us a blue Yamaha Moto 4 80cc four-wheeler.

Christmas morning, we were at our grandparents’ house, tearing into gifts while the family watched, until Dad summoned us to the Quonset. This was serious business. We slid open the two big doors, and there it sat, front and center—a machine that we didn’t know at the time would usher in the end of our innocence.

Now, as two brothers with equal parts enthusiasm and lack of common sense, we had to come to some terms regarding the operation and ownership of this mighty little buggy. It didn’t take long before we established a simple rule: if you’re on it, you drive it like you stole it.Of course, being winter in the upper Midwest, our seat time was initially limited by snow, ice, and the occasional bout of common sense imposed by our parents. But that little reprieve was short-lived. Over the next five or six years, that four-wheeled death machine would escort us to the very brink of destruction on more occasions than we’d care to admit. Somehow, we survived it all, laughing in the face of the Grim Reaper as if we were invincible—or at least had a punch card for free passes on near-death experiences.

Where to start?

We had endless country roads, dirt trails, gravel roads, riverbanks, and fields at our disposal. This four-wheeler had no odometer, no speedometer—just a throttle that begged to be pinned. And pinned it was. Through careful and precise scientific testing I can't admit, we determined that top speed, with one of us onboard, was a blistering 44 mph. That’s fast when you're on gravel, your reflexes are powered by adrenaline and stupidity, and the only thing between you and a serious injury is divine intervention.

Did we wear helmets? I laughed just typing that question. This was the 80s. Seat belts were optional in cars, and helmets? Please. We let the wind whip through our hair as we tore through the countryside, blissfully unaware of our own mortality. Natural selection should have taken care of us, but somehow, it looked the other way—probably too entertained to intervene.

Where to even start with the near hits and dare I say, one or two haunting memories I still can't shake to this day.

We'll start out fairly mild. As you know from my last story, we ran around plenty with BB guns. Well, this little Moto 4 came designed perfectly for holding two BB guns. They straddled the front and back fenders, up along the seat, under our legs perfectly! My brother and I were riding along the river and we jumped a fox, across the river, just outside our grandparents' farm. I was driving and knew that fox would follow the river, and I knew exactly where to cut it off using the road to get ahead of it. It was a race to the bridge where we could set up an ambush!

We made better time and figured we'd carry our speed across the bridge and put the wheeler into a slide skid and drift onto the dirt road right past the wood-planked bridge. A poor decision on my part. Four little rubber wheels don’t skid across wood planks as well as I thought.

Two little boys, two BB guns, and a blue four-wheeler went flying pretty much down the same original path, past the original targeted dirt road.

I can just imagine that fox about to reach us, stopping and watching this gravel dust cloud, with random arms, legs, and guns poking out of it as all five of us came to a skidding halt. I always wondered if that fox really did see this disastrous miscalculation of inertia—or if it just went home and told its fox family about the two idiots it saw wipe out in spectacular fashion.

I'm pretty sure life threw me a lifesaver, as I don't remember anything between that skid and standing up in the middle of the road wondering what the F!

We both brushed ourselves off. My brother didn't say a word, but I knew what he was thinking. We rolled the Moto 4 back onto all four wheels, assessed the damages, and in disbelief, only saw the bent brake handle. Clicked the shifter down four clicks, green light came on, and it started right up. Found our guns and didn’t even give that fox another thought, but I'm sure it was laughing its tail off from the cover of the tall grass in the riverbank.

But wow! Not a scratch on us, which I can only conclude means our guardian angels wrapped us up somewhere in mid-flight and personally escorted us to the ground. There is no other explanation. We were meant to live another day.

More stories to come from my close-to-death experiences and other times we nearly lost a limb or digit to a badger from our crazy poor decisions and this little Yamaha Moto 4.