"Born to be wild"

I used to be a proud owner of a red Puch Dakota 1969 (it looked like the one in the image). Not anymore. I bought it in the spring of 1977. The price was 900 SEK (which is about 5000 SEK or $450 in today's money). I asked my father, who was a brilliant mechanic, for advice. Don't buy it, he said. It's got a lot of problems that needs to be fixed. Of course, I didn't listen. However, my father helped me innumerable times with dismounting and mounting, and fixing problems that I couldn't solve on my own (which initially meant every conceivable problem). To name a few: faulty kickstand because of a missing locking ring, faulty exhaust pipe support, missing bolts in the motor mount (quite dangerous), missing rubber on the kickstarter, which meant that you slipped and the kickstarter hit you hard on your calf. There were so much I didn't know. Clutch- and gaswires were consumables to me, until my father told me that they should be greased to avoid friction. I wasn't allowed to ride the moped initially. I was only 14 and you had to be 15 years old to ride a moped. I rode it anyway. There were two strong contenders to Puch Dakota: Zündapp KS 50 and Suzuki K50. A friend got a new Yamaha from his mother. It had blinkers. The very modern and expensive moped was scornfully nicknamed "the sewing machine" because it was silent, which was in contradiction with the very idea of a moped. I chose Puch Dakota for its looks, stylishness and roaring sound. The highest allowed speed was 30 km/h (19 mph). Speed was an obsession. How fast does is go? No one told the truth and we all exaggerated. In the small town where I grew up your unduly estimate were met by the hard and boorish phrase: "Yeah right, downhill and with diarrhea". Obsession with speed led to an obsession with souping up. There were basically five methods 1) sprocketing (changing to a front sprocket with more cogs than the original). A front sprocket with more cogs will lead to a higher top speed at the cost of quick initial acceleration, 2) jack the piston (filing a jack in the lower edge of the piston). Hereby, the motor will get more fuel, 3) removing the plug from the intake manifold. This will create a higher effect, 4) flatten the cylinder head. This will lead to better compression, 5) removing the insert plug from the exhaust muffler. There were other methods, but this goes beyond the concept of souping up according to my conservative view. Souping up meant engine wear, but we were young and lacked the basics of consequence thinking.   

In those days, riding a moped had a twofold purpose: as a means of transportation and as a vehicle (no pun intended) to impress girls (limited success). Owning a moped wasn't without incidents. One time someone had attached tin foil to the spark plug (prank). Another time someone had disconnected the fuel hose and opened the valve (evil deed). We rode all year on bald tires, which meant hard tumbles when you were riding on snowy and icy roads. I had a red seat warmer in artificial fiber which looked like the remains of a run over Afghan coat (it was the 1970s). Riding in cold winter climate meant freeezing. I've never frozen so much in my life. I still remember a tough guy who rode 10 km (about 6 miles) in just a thin leather jacket and jeans to a remote discoteque. It was minus 20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit) equivalent to a speed/wind cooling effect of minus 35 Celsius (-31 Fahrenheit). The guy had to be lifted off the moped and brought inside for defrosting. Later that night when feeling and movement had returned to his limbs he casually sat up again and rode home. Appearance is everything. There were so many peculiar Swedish slang words: "snutjag" (cop chase), "soppatorsk" (run out of gas) and "xxxxxxxxxx" (unprintable obscene word for moped seat warmer). We revved our engines. We broke all traffic rules. We were born to be wild. What we didn't know was that the popularity was about to end. A law of mandatory crash helmets was introduced 1978, which meant that the "born to be wild" vibe was gone. Anyway, I had begun upper secondary school. A moped wasn't compatible with my new preppy style. I sold the moped. To whom, I don't remember. But, I remember that it was a bad deal since prices had plummeted. I could have kept it, but I didn't. Today, you will have to pay about 25-30000 SEK or $2250-2700 for a Puch Dakota on the used market. All I have left is the lyrics: "Like a true nature's child / We were born, born to be wild / We can climb so high / I never wanna die".