motorcycles

so there are six (6) motorcycles in my garage. that's a bunch of toys, but only three of them are "mine." we have a Ducati, two Yamahas, a KTM, a Suzuki, and a Triumph. for now.


i've ridden motos off and on since the summer of my 13th birthday. i started on a Yamaha GT80, which was like the PW's of today. it was only 72cc in reality, but it was plenty fast for me, and i think i pushed it to its limits trying to emulate Bob Hannah & Ron Lechien around our 20 acre horse pasture. my dad took my dirt bike away about a year & a half later because i could not stay off the public roads around the house, eventually hitting some guy in a Jeep head-on one day in a blind corner. i got my first street bike in 1987 when i was 19, a Kawasaki EX500 (Ninja 500) right off the showroom floor. i was in the Navy, the financing was easy & they sold it to me without even checking to see if i could ride it. i could, just barely though, so i wrecked it on my first trip back home by crossing the double-yellow in a blind corner & stuffing it under a Ford F250. i replaced it with a GPz550 and took the MSF course. armed with a little knowledge & a too-fast bike, i imagined myself Freddie Spencer & tore up the backroads around Asheville on my frequent trips back home. i put a bunch of miles on that bike, experienced my first tank-slapper(s), but eventually lost it in my slide into chronic alcohol troubles. i think i just abandoned it after denting the front wheel in a drunken encounter with a parking-lot curb at speed in a Va-Beach apartment complex...i didn't mess with motorcycles for many years after that, and probably a good thing.

in 1999 or so, i bought my first bike in a long time - a Suzuki GS500. little side-by-side twin that sounded like an air compressor. i learned to ride again on that bike, though, as did Laura. i rediscovered the mountains around here on that little machine, alone & with groups, pushing it to its absolute limit. many times i returned home with that little half-liter smoking & ticking after several hours near redline, and still sold it for near what i paid for it three or four years later, when Laura got pregnant with the boy.

my primary ride today is a 2005 Triumph Speed Triple. in early 2007, Laura (my wife) gave me permission to get another bike after Lucas (my son) was born, and we were selling our house at the time. as i began to look at cool, exotic bikes like Ducatis and Aprilias (still gonna get me one of those), my buddy Jeff at Industry Nine told me about a Speed Triple at a local dealer. this rang a bell, as i had had an experience coming back from a dirt bike ride with some of my other buddies where just as we got on the interstate, we were passed by a bike like i had never seen, with twin headlights & a very distinctive exhaust note like the wail of a banshee. it made my spine tingle! i asked what kind of bike that was, and Bainon said he thought it might be "one of those Triumph Speed Triples."

i saw my bike and fell in love. it was destiny. i believe we attract the things we need in life, and this bike fits my personality & needs perfectly. it has a 1050cc inline 3-cylinder engine, which is unique in that it has perfect primary balance, and with the large bore & relatively low compression, what it lacks in outright horsepower it more than makes up for in torque - a flat curve around 70ft-lb from 3500 RPM up to redline! she has not remained stock.

i have a track-specific bike, a fairly mundane GSXR750. she's a 2001 model, but as i write this, she's getting a set of forks from a 2007 bike grafted on, to go with the Ohlins triple-clicker rear. the engine is stock, but may get new rings depending on the outcome of her impending compression test. after the second time i threw the Speed Triple down the track & had to spend a couple grand to put her back together, the Suzuki seemed a much more appropriate tool for the job. it paid for itself when i dropped it the first time in T3 at Barber!

my third bike is a KTM 300EXC two-stroke. it is the ultimate woods bike by the estimation of many, though i've recently lacked the time to ride it as much as i'd like. it still started on the second or third kick cold on the last snow day. another bike with an overabundance of torque. i could not get it to go in a straight line in the snow!

it would seem i have an illness, but at least i'm not the only one in the house. Laura wants to sell her Monster 750, which she has learned on, done her first trackday & now outgrown. she wants my track bike, so i'll have to get another, and she wants a dual-sport, so i'll need one of those as well so we can ride together. Lucas has his little PW50, which he got for his fourth birthday & rides infrequently. he likes it when we get out together, but he is a very cautious child, coupled with a know-it-allism that only another parent of a child this age would comprehend, so he hasn't really progressed much from riding around a big field. to be honest, i need to spend some time with him at a very slow pace, which is very hard for me.

the part of my brain that's supposed to tell me to slow down, to use caution? that doesn't seem to work in me.

next - projects past, present, future...
-fred