I had owned two Honda bikes when I was in my teens. One was a 125 dirt bike at 14 that I ran through the woods for awhile. It was about 10 years used (I think it was a 1979) so it had it's issues but I had a lot of fun on it. I learned how to maneuver through tight places and how to jump it. My friend Jamie was able to get it around 15 feet high in his back yard. I was only willing to go around 10 feet (we had a limited area to land after the ramp). I learned quickly that a bald rear tire presented a great deal of problems in the hills and mud around where I grew up. At 16 I sold it to buy some car parts for my 1980 Camaro I was fixing up.
The second Honda I owned was a 200 road bike (I think 1982). I bought it off of Jamie when I was 17 for $200. It didn't have that much power and when I got it the thing wouldn't run very long. I tore the carb apart and cleaned it, added a new plug and remember messing with the electronics (but don't remember specifics). It ran well after the over haul. The bike was an olive green and ugly. My dad had paint left over from a car repair he had done in his garage, a metallic burgundy. I sanded the bike down, cleaned it up, and did my first paint job. This bike I sold a few months later for $400.
The next, really isn't a bike but something I bought at 21 and still have. 1998 Kawasaki Lakota 4 wheeler. I have a lot of great memories riding with friends and family on this machine. In 2000 I was riding this with a few of my closest friends in a place called Skinner Hollow. http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lon=-78.8911456&lat=42.3917283&datum=nad83 It is a ravine with sheer rock walls on both sides sometimes 75 feet or more high. It is a huge challenge just to get there. We rode there for a few hours, had a lot of fun and I took the pictures. On the way out I had an accident. My feet were wet, and I was riding over some bowling ball sized rocks when my foot slipped off. My foot was caught between a rock and the foot peg. I would have been better off if my shin bone had broke, but instead my leg twisted at the knee and snapped outward at the knee. Long story somewhat shorter, after 8 months of therapy and surgery, I lost about 45% of the crown cartilage in my knee, tore every connecting ligament and tendon connecting my shin to my thigh between 25% to 100% requiring some grafting and screws to make it usable again. This really slowed down the pace that I took on the world.
In the summer of 2007 I bought a 2003 Harley Davidson 883 anniversary Sportster. I really like the way this bike looked. I did not like the way it rode. When I bought this I had just finished going through a divorce and had the kids part time. Even though the bike didn't ride smooth, I put a lot of miles on it with my new girlfriend. It really made me feel good to get out of the house and loose my thoughts. The divorce had taken a lot out of me. Up until then I had devoted almost all of my time to the 3 kids and her, so when I realized it was over, I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. About 6 months after the divorce started I met a wonderful woman that picked me up and gave me new hope. Shortly after that I bought the Sporty and it became our thing to do when we didn't have kids around. I put a little over 3500 miles on it. One summer was very rainy so most of the miles were put on in the span of 2 riding seasons. Like I said before, the bike didn't ride that well, especially with two people so after 3 years I started looking at other bikes. I sold it for the same price I bought it for (I had put a bit of chrome on it) to someone I knew. It was an easy sell, because it was a sexy bike.
2003 883 Sporty
The bike I bought to replace the Sporty is a 2006 Nightrod and is the bike I have now. I had done a lot of research before buying this bike. Being a motor head, it had to have performance. And it had to be an American brand if I was going to invest money into it. From my experience Harleys hold the best value over time. I grew up riding my dad's Softails and I really thought I would buy one of those, but after taking the vrod for a ride, there was no doubt what I wanted. I looked at several and then found one near where I live. It needed a little TLC and the price was right so I scooped it up. I have no regrets at all. I bought it in July and put about 2500 miles on it before the riding season was over this past year. The only thing I do not like about the vrod has nothing to do with the bike, but with the lack of support it gets. I visit different Harley dealerships when I can but they usually never have parts in stock or on display. At most they have about 5 or 6 VRSC specific parts on display compared to 100s for their other bikes. And the other thing is that magazines seem to avoid this bike. I look through magazines all the time for ideas and tech tips but I think it has been a year since I found one. That is my driving force for writing this blog. Over time I would like to pull together vrod websites, forums, personal tech tips/ modifications and product reviews.
2006 Nightrod
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