Supercycle Eleganza!

When I was a kid, I wanted a motorcycle something fierce. Or, at the very least, a cool mini bike. A slew of my friends had mini bikes, and my really cool friends had small off-road motorcycles, like the Honda SL-70 Motosport or Yamaha 60 Mini Enduro or Suzuki TS-90 Honcho. My folks weren't inclined to let me own anything so liable to send me to the ER, but — perhaps oddly — they never chafed about me riding other people's motor bikes. And since I had any number of generous friends, I rode them quite a lot. There were trails galore in the area, and when nobody was around to let me ride their motorcycles, I'd just ride my bicycle like a maniac through the woods.

Recently, I found online a copy of the very first motorcycle magazine I ever purchased (and I ended up a passel of them). It was the October 1971 issue of Supercycle, and when I was 12 years old, I read that thing over and over, never mind that I didn't understand half the technical and mechanical stuff the magazine focused on. I just loved the pictures and the reviews of off-road bikes, motocross races, and... the fashion?!

Well, I don't know that I really did, but when I picked up the magazine the other day, it fell open to that Eleganza ad you see up yonder. I reckon it was one thing to never end up with a motorcycle of my own, but how I survived my teen years in the 1970s without Eleganza, I'll never know. Perhaps I'll leave that to you to figure out.