Who wants a free bike? This guy. This guy right here.

The dream doesn't require anything new, expensive, or even all that nice. For me, basically anything with two wheels and an engine qualifies as the free bike of my dreams. Because for too long, my friends, I have not had a moto to call my own. For too long, all I have been able to manage was a persistent moto-themed daydream that was triggered at random by bouts of desire as other people rode by. For too long.

It has been embarrassing, but cue the interesting music. Because that's all changed now.

It was rainy and dark when my friend Joshua Thomacek pulled up in front of our house with his enormous one-ton truck and tandem axle flatbed trailer — obvious overkill for moving one old motorcycle (even if it was big-boned). It looked sad and absurd, even a little lonely up there, tied down with its tank removed and no other cargo. But overkill is kind of on-brand for Joshua.

The man is a gifted master mechanic who runs his own shop (Journey to Jericho/J2J Motorsports in Columbia, Tennessee) and can't help hot-rodding just about everything he touches. But it's not just about fixing cars and "improving" factory designs. Joshua knows by experience how life-changing it can be to turn wrenches with somebody who isn't afraid to offer help (and humble enough even to explore and learn with you), so everything they do at J2J is about service. The shop exists to bring mentors and young men into close proximity and make a positive difference in the local community.

In fact, J2J is so awesome that me and my two sons have been hanging out there a lot lately, helping with various projects and meeting some really cool people. Those people are the reason I'm even writing this story.

The free bike takes up residence in my garage

Speaking of, let's get back to that dark and stormy night. (I've always wanted to write that.)

Being a pro, Joshua backed the trailer — uphill and inch-perfect — into our driveway. With Joshua's help, my boys and I got the bike unloaded in mere moments. Handshake, title, key, have fun, big smiles, and much gratitude. Garage door down. And I was alone with my very own unicorn: a free bike.

There it sat in silence in the light of a single yellowy bulb, incomplete and soaked, its intakes sealed with painter's tape over plastic. Its tank, carbs, battery, and side covers sat on the bench somewhere deep in the bowels of our suburban two-car garage awaiting reunion with the rest of the machine.

The motorcycle in question is a Yamaha V-Star 1100 Classic. This being the 2001 vintage ('twas a good year), it really is almost a classic, depending on who you talk to. For size, weight, power output, and general vibe — at the risk of offending parishioners of the Church of the Bar and Shield — it's comparable to a bone-stock, late-1980s Evo Softail.

It once belonged to a friend of the shop whose family donated it after cancer took him. Joshua knew him pretty well and wanted more than anything to ensure that the bike had someone to care for it, someone who would actually ride it.

When I came along, it had sat for about a year, suffering a bunch of work done in sprints whenever there was a free moment for the guys at the shop to try to figure out what it needed to run again. They reported rough combustion all over the rev range and its occasionally only firing on one cylinder. They had disassembled the carbs and done some cleaning, replaced the fuel pump, diagnosed the ignition system, and more. By the time I met the machine, it was resting in pieces and collecting dust, waiting for an older moto masochist under the delusion that he had a surplus of time and passion.

Here's how it went down: I was minding my business, innocently wrapping up another volunteer day at J2J with my sons, when out of the blue, Joshua turned to me and asked, "Hey, do you want that old Yamaha?"

Time stopped. I stood outside my body. I found myself saying, "Old Yamaha?"

He said, "Yeah. That old blue Yamaha. Do you want it?"

I twitched a little. Then, just so I could be 100% clear that I understood him, I asked, "Are you combining the two words I've desired for so long to hear: 'free' and 'bike'?"

"Yeah," he said. "If you want it, it's yours."

A feature-length film of my boyhood moto dreams flickered before my eyes, and I stared in rapt bliss, munching imaginary popcorn. The phrase "free bike" echoed through my consciousness again and again, gently caressing the moto-specific folds of my pyretic, swivel-eyed brain. I saw myself on a never-ending ride. With an endless supply of fuel and perfect weather.

In other words, it was a no-brainer.

Now the hard part: Making the free bike a running bike

Oddly, "no-brainer" kind of describes a lot of stuff that's happened with the bike since I've become its owner. Because what the bleep do I know about how to fix an old motorcycle? I'm just a dreamer, a returning rider, a guy who's read way too much Peter Egan.

And since I am a walking demonstration of how the Dunning-Kruger effect is real, outcomes will be unpredictable. Also, the Yamaha V-Star 1100 Classic is the exact opposite of my last bike (which was my first bike). That was a Yamaha FZR600, and it was a million years ago (or 1997, whichever you prefer). The only thing these two bikes have in common is the name on the tank.

Now, about that reunion of the bike with its sundry parts. I did manage to successfully put the whole shebang back together, but The Troubles began immediately. I reintroduced the carbs to gasoline and started cranking the engine, which was when anxiety quickly became panic. Raw fuel vomited from the intake and ran like a river from the bottoms of the carbs. The engine did try to light, though. I even got a few black chugs out of the pipes. Sounded pretty good.

Crucially, however, the bike also seemed completely open to the possibility of catching fire. And because I am a master of the obvious, I said, "That's a worry."

Listen. I have experience almost burning a vehicle to the ground. Admittedly that was years ago and involved a few too many Budweisers, a brother-in-law, and a Ford Contour. Oh, and the fire department. (Easily not one of my best moments.) My point is, experience tends to shape us. So naturally, when I saw a torrent of raw fuel collecting in the vee of my new-to-me Yamaha, I decided to remember that I don't, in fact, own a fire extinguisher yet and figured what the heck, let's call it a day.

But I also happen to know that failure can be a great teacher if we let it, so I headed back to the drawing board. Upon further research, I discovered that any carburetor will leak like a friggin' sieve if any of its innumerable O-rings happen to give up. It turns out that this Quitting of the O-Rings is a rather common event (well nigh unto being almost seasonal, in fact). And since here in the States we salt our gasoline with ethanol — which is on a mission to seek and destroy all O-rings — chances were slim that these things were gonna work anything like the way Mikuni designed them. Unless, of course, I overhauled them, preferably using O-rings made from ethanol-resistant NBR rubber (or even better, Viton). Lemmy had a great take on carb cleaning 101 back in the day that’s still a solid resource.

This bike is also not stock (it's been fitted with a Kurakyn Hypercharger intake and Cobra pipes), so it'll need non-stock jetting. Thankfully, Jets R Us has a huge knowledge base that includes recommended jets for numerous bikes, with or without aftermarket additions. As far as I can tell though, the main thing these bolt-on parts do is make the bike more embarrassing to ride. Maybe I should rearrange the letters in Hypercharger to read "Hyperbole" because, based on my research, this intake is more about posing than performing. And as for the pipes, I'm 100% certain they have no baffles, which is cause for concern in regard to my relationship with my neighbors once I actually get this thing running. (I sometimes leave for work at 5:30 a.m.) Baffles are available for purchase separately, so that's good. Anyway, whaddaya want for free-ninety-free?

And that brings me nicely round to the topic of expectations. I'm not throwing shade, least of all at the bike's prior owner (or its Hamamatsu progenitors), but it's almost a quarter of a century old. Can there be anything good here?

I happen to think so. Most of what attracts me to this moto is what it doesn't have. It has no:

• Ride modes
• Screens
• Rider aids
• Chrome eagles
• Skulls

Refreshing. At least to me. But of course I'm not normal. (This is not news, even to you by now, dear reader.) What the Yamaha promises is a rather old-fashioned experience: just the rider, the bike, and the open road. It’s a big ol' substantial thing, and I'm looking forward to throwing down some miles on it soon.

That is, once it's running. But still! It's real. Man, oh man. Sometimes the best things in life are free, aren't they?

Now, I wonder how much it'll end up costing me.