In Which The Author Goes Musclebike Shopping, For Sentimental Reasons
Gonna die with a little help from my friends
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an autowriter in possession of zero writing or driving talent, must be in want of a motorcycle. Apologies to Jane Austen on that, but it’s painfully true. Over the past decade I’ve watched countless ass-clown autowriters FALL IN LOVE WITH TWO WHEELS, usually because they’ve been given a press loaner. Usually this ends in some sort of low-comedy low-speed crash and/or a series of cringey purchase posts.
Your humble author is an awful motorcyclist, but I came to the game honestly and on my own dime twenty-nine years ago, paying $1600 for a high-mileage 1986 Ninja 600R in the “Top Gun” color scheme. It was the third streetbike I’d ever ridden; the first was my friend Woody’s YSR50, and the second was a stolen ZX-7RR temporarily possessed by an East Side (of Columbus, Ohio) hustler and car thief named Sherman. I paid him fifty bucks to ride it, a fortune at a time when I made about two grand a month selling cars. On Joyce Avenue I let the clutch out in first, cranked the throttle, and lofted the nose down the center turn lane past a line of stopped cars. Two days later I signed a $1400 loan with American General Finance and became a Ninja owner.
Right now I’m a little short on bikes, having sold my VFR800 Anniversary and Danger Girl’s Yamaha R3. That leaves me with Kellee, my round-tank CB550, the 2014 CB1100 I bought as a leftover in 2015, and the ZX-14R my wife bought for me in an effort to collect my life insurance while the premiums were still cheap. Oh, and I own a GL1200 Aspencade that is currently up in Traverse City. I think I own it. My pal and former writer Kyle Smith has it, and possession is nine-tenths of the law.
This should be enough — but it is a truth universally acknowledged, than a man in possession of a 40x80 barn must be in want of a motorcycle collection. (Even if he is not in possession of a job.) And I want it to be a proper collection, as defined by Miles Collier, not an accumulation. So I need a theme.