Motorcycle Journal

By - Larry (dcstrng) Forum member.

In praise of a long lost mechanical friend: a Norton P11 Ranger. The key to enjoying travel on a motorcycle isn’t how much or how little you carry, but rather making sure you carrying the right stuff and leave the rest of the crap back home, or in the trash. Experience, some reasoned forethought and a little route planning can replace bags and bags of garbage strapped on the bike.

Heck, my old Norton herself was pretty much stripped down to the essentials — and it didn’t start off with a whole lot, because it was the manufacture’s version of what we used to call a scrambler – a slightly civilized desert-sled. It was the bastard offspring of an incestuous union between a Matchless scrambler frame and the 750cc Norton Atlas engine. The Norton PII Ranger had lots of torque all hauled to a stop by a couple of dinky things the Limeys blithely referred to as brakes — what a joke!

Henry David Thoreau once said (actually the “David” part of his name is reputed to be a librarian’s invention), “A man is rich in proportion to the things he can leave alone.” If ol’ Henry David had ridden motorcycles, he’d probably have ended up with something along the lines of my cherished P11 Norton — of course, Thoreau would have described it much more poetically.

During the months of fire-roading as a young sergeant out behind Fort Benning in Georgia, I had managed to lose both of my Norton’s fenders. And once they came off the bike, I never found time to replace `em. The Norton Ranger never did have a windshield, nor proper highway pegs and the mufflers had been replaced by little shorty open-pipes, in which I eventually stuffed some smallish beer-can baffles when I decided to put her back on public roads — the cops seemed more sensitive to noise pollution back then than they are these days.

The tail light and license plate were just tack-welded to the trailing edge of a rather inhumane platform, which the English manufacturer insisted was a twin-seat. She was a bit untamed, very primitive, but quite amenable nevertheless, and when once again street legal, but only barely, I think ol’ Henry David would have felt right at home.

With a short wheelbase, light weight and 60hp, man could that Ol’Norton scoot — and if you felt the need, the she could wheelie half way across the continent. Physically, the old girl was about the size of an underfed 350cc. Although she was pretty basic, I worked on her regularly to keep all the parts singing that “ker-thump-ker-thump” cadence which is just as characteristic of Limey twins, as the celebrated “potato-potato” rhythm is to Wisconsin products. I kept her just clean enough that she didn’t usually look like a rat-bike, at least to me. That old girl was the most fun bike I ever had — maybe, that there ever was!

My last Norton a few years later, even though it was one of the more gentlemanly Commando models, never had quite the character or affability of my PII Ranger. My Ranger was more like a companion than a machine — certainly more like a living, breathing house-pet than a mere mechanical contrivance. She was a joy for short jaunts around the back roads of the South and she was also my ticket to see whatever lay over the Western horizon. Even though she weighed only a little over 400 pounds with a full tank of gas, that sweet old bike carried me reasonably reliably night or day, in rain or shine, as well over half-way across the continent and back on a couple of occasions.

I rode that old girl on the beaches of Padre Island, Texas, across Georgia one very, very foggy night in the gas-rationing days, down to the panhandle of Florida once or twice, and even around in the winter snows of North Dakota on an occasion or two, as well as through the old southern, and rather unneighborly apathy, of rural (very) Mississippi — not to mention striking out to California once or twice only to get waylaid by affectionate bar-maidens in southern Texas, as well as shepherding me through on many enjoyable day trips through old Dixie, for as far as my time, gas and imagination could take me. Of course, I was well over a quarter century younger back then. However, “simple” was the preferred method then, and today it is still the best way in my book.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 7:07 pm and is filed under Motorcycles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.