What did you used to ride? What are you riding now? Which one did you love the most? What’s laying in a torn apart pile in your garage? Any stories behind them?
My first squidbike. Rode this thing EVERYWHERE, but then I busted the 2nd/6th gear dogs. Successfully replaced them, but it leaked oil from then on from splitting the cases.
My second less squiddy bike; I really loved the SV. Great handler after the RT prog springs and Penske rear shock were put on.
Number 3. I could never get the hang of riding this correctly. It wanted to go very fast and I didn’t.
Number 3.5 (basketcase). Rode it, like, twice. Intended to restore it, but ended up giving it away for free. It was super dangerous to ride (i.e. brakes? what are brakes?).
Current (old man bike):
I have had around 16 or 17 motorcycles since I started riding in 1983. I started with an ancient Kawasaki enduro I bought for $75 and then while I was in the USAF I bought a Honda Interceptor 700 brand new in Illinois in 1985, no license yet, and rode it from Illinois to Texas when I changed bases one winter, making my first real “street” ride a 2 1/2 day thousand mile journey through snow, mountains, and all sorts of nasty weather. Ah to be that young and stupid again!
From there I had a few bikes but settled with a Yamaha XS650, which I kitted out with a full Windjammer and hard cases and rode to work daily in Hawaii. When I moved again to Texas I shipped it in a crate to LA, flew over when it arrived, built it from the crate in the shipyard and rode it from LA to Houston across the Mojave desert. For 10 years I never had a car, sticking with bikes.
When I moved in 1996 to the very rural area in which I now live, 8 miles from the closest small town, I gave up bikes for several years. Then I got the bug again and bought a used Suzuki Katana.
This quickly let me know that I was aging and I did not like to have my weight on my wrists while hunched over in a jockey position.
So I bought a Honda V45 Magna and turned it into the Puppy Cycle, and since I now worked in that small town 8 miles from home it became something I rode to work often, splitting the time I drove in a car and rode on a bike about evenly.
A couple of years later I had the itch for something different so I picked up a Buell Blast, which I kept for a year.
My current bike is a Harley Davidson Sportster 1200 Custom, to which I have added a windshield, hard cases, sissy bar with luggage rack, etc. This bike taught me I don’t particularly like forward controls, but it is still fun to ride. Unfortunately my aged body tells me more and more that “nope!” today we are taking the car with AC to work in the 100F heat so I don’t ride it as often as I should or would like to.
Here’s a throwback to what I was riding 31 years ago, another 1200 Sportster