Motorcycling
Posted September 27th, 2008 by ghavican
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I have been an avid motorcyclist all my adult life. I bought my first bike when I was 19 years old. It was a Kawasaki 125 dual purpose bike, which I learned to ride on. that bike only lasted 6 months before I traded it in and bought my first full size street bike, a Kawasaki KZ 650, which I modified extensively.
I rode that bike for several years before it was stolen and I replaced it with a Kawasaki KZ 750. Again, I kept that bike for several years before I sold it to make the down payment on my first house.
For a long time after that, I didn't own a bike of my own, however I would borrow friend's bikes to keep my skills up.
Finally, in 1999, while living in New England, I decided that it was time to buy another bike of my own and ended up purchasing a Honda VF500 Interceptor. It wasn't long before I spotted a used Kawasaki Ninja 750R which I just had to have. When we returned to Texas, I brought both those bikes down with us.
About a year after moving to Texas, I realized that I almost never rode the Honda so I sold it. A few months later, I started having problems with the Ninja and, after a visit to the dealership and confirmation from them that it needed extensive work, I decided it was time to replace it. Later that day, I test rode a 1987 BMW K100RT at the local BMW dealership and it was love at first ride. An hour later I left the dealership on it. That was in August of 2001.
In June 2002 I realized I really need a smaller bike for around town riding so I bought a new 2002 Kawasaki ZR7S. The engine in the bike is essentially the same one that was in my original KZ 750 that I had owned many years earlier so I was already familiar with it's characteristics.
I used the ZR7S as my everyday commuter bike and the K100RT was my weekend bike and long distance touring mount until I replaced the BMW in 2006 with a Kawasaki Concours. Soon afterward, I realized that the Concours also was a good daily commuter so I ended up selling the ZR7S.
Now that I'm down to just 1 bike, I sometimes regret not keeping the ZR7S because it really was a great all-around bike for most of the year, but it's certainly a lot easier to just maintain one bike and I don't have to feel guilty about riding one more than the other throughout the year.
