ROBERTSDALE, Ala. — “I don't want a pickle

Just want to ride on my motorsickle” — Arlo Guthrie

Like Guthrie, James Wilson of Elsanor just wants to ride his motorcycle. Trouble is, a lot of people want to come by and inspect his “new” bike. That cuts into his riding time.

But no worries. Wilson is only too happy to show off his custom-built bike with pearl and black skin complete with fringed panniers. And once he gets it on the road (He has to hook up the turn signals and horn before it’s “street legal” and eligible for registration) most drivers won’t notice anything unusual about Wilson’s ride.

Except, where’s that “heavy metal thunder?” This motorcycle is awfully quiet. It’s almost silent, even.

It should be. It has no rumbly gas-powered motor. Yet, Wilson says the bike can hit “50 mph and I can make it go faster.”

No, Wilson isn’t pedaling downhill and waiting for a tailwind. But Wilson says, “It’s like being on a bike as a kid riding downhill. You can hear the wind.”

Wilson’s “scoot” is all-electric. There are two rechargeable batteries under the driver, and two more in those fringed saddlebags. They provide all the power for the motorcycle. Wilson keeps an eye on the bike’s charge with a “state of charge” gauge from China. The numbers are the Arabic ones we’re all used to, but there are Chinese characters in the center.

That’s not surprising. Parts for Wilson’s bike have come from all over.

“I always wanted to build an electric bike,” said Wilson, flashing a shy grin.

He admits that he’s started a lot of projects and later abandoned them, but there was something about that electric bike that kept him at it.

“The price of gas got me going,” said Wilson.

And Wilson had the foundation, or rather the frame, for the project already.

“I got the frame a while ago,” he said. “It started life as a Honda Rebel.”

Then, while scanning the Internet, Wilson spotted a set of plans for an electric motorcycle.

This had been on Wilson’s mind for years.

“I have been thinking about this since the first time gas prices went up in the 70s,” said Wilson. “I got the idea for a car that ran off batteries with a small motor (to recharge the batteries) they call that a hybrid now.”

The man had the motivation and the plans.

“I decided to build one, instead of just talking about it,” said Wilson.

While Wilson had a frame, he didn’t have the components needed to make the bike. He said that he scoured eBay and other Internet sites for the parts.

“It seems that there was a UPS truck coming to the showroom everyday,” said David Wilson, James’ brother and the manager of “Cars 4 You,” the place where both brothers work. “It seems there were some very small parts.”

“The biggest challenge was finding the right components,” said Wilson. "I spent more time on the Internet researching things than working on the bike.”

Wilson says he’s been a mechanic, “Since my brother gave me a car when I was 15,” but he says the construction project “was not hard. "The hardest part was figuring out which batteries would serve the purpose without having to alter the frame.”

“I have been thinking of this since the 1970s. It’s not hard,” said Wilson.

“You have to have a basic knowledge of electricity,”

Wilson added that his father was an electrician in Toronto, OH, and he used to help him.

That gave Wilson the knowledge he needed to make his dream a reality. But, he says that any person with a fair bit of mechanical knowledge can follow the plans.

Wilson says it would be easier with a bike that had more parts than just a frame. He estimates that he spent “a few thousand dollars” to get the motorcycle into shape, and that it will cost “about $1 a day” to run his bike back and forth from his home in Elsanor to his shop in Robertsdale. He says he’s looking into solar and wind methods of recharging the batteries so it will cost very little to run the bike.

And now Wilson is looking for new challenges. He’d like to build a bike that has more than the “100-mile radius” this motorcycle has. He also says that because all the research has been done, he can get a motorcycle that has a gas motor “up and running” in a week or so.

“I think this is fantastic,” said Dave Wilson. I think he should build for other people.”

“I will if they want me to,” said Wilson, getting ready to ride his motorcycle through the parking lot., envisioning, perhaps, the wind in his hair.

And bugs in his teeth.