Commemorative 20,000 visits motorcycle re-cap!

It's a little late, but I thought it would be cool to take a trip back about 15 years and have a look at all the bikes I've owned since then. I've admittedly been through quite a few of them, but that's just my typical style.. It's not that I get bored with one, I just want something else.. and usually need to sell what I have to afford the next.. So many bikes, so little time.. I've used them for different things over the years, and for each motivation, there's a bike for the job.

So here we go!

My first.. 1980 Yamaha Maxim 650. I was 16 years old and enrolled in the MSF course to get the motorcycle endorsement.

I've been into 'choppers' for a long time, and especially back then.. Inspired by Iron Horse magazine, I bought this little 1968 Honda CA77 "Dream", and tore it apart. I didn't really think I was going to "chop" it, after all I had no idea what I was doing.. But it was my first experience in motorcycle mechanics, and I loved the project.

All I really ended up doing was dumping the electric start along with a few other useless components, switching out the pipes, repainting the frame, and painting a couple other pieces flat black. But I took it from complete-bike to boxes and back to complete bike!

This is where the largest gap occurs.. I had sold the Dream when I finished it, then was off to college.. I didn't buy another on until my early twenties.. this 1981 Honda CB750C. I chopped the hell out of this bike, and it turned into a pretty bad ass chopper, although never really finished it.. It ended it's life being parted out on ebay.. Fun project though..

While the chopper project was going on, I needed something to ride.. How about a legendary Honda CB750F Supersport!? (1976) This bike was sweet.. sat in a showroom most of it's life, had a beautiful paint job, and screamin' supertrapp pipe.

About that time is when I started getting into longer rides.. we'd started riding couple-hundred-mile rides, I was commuting 30 miles round trip, and I quickly decided that I wanted something more than the 750.. and a bit more comfort. So an impulse-buy led me to this 1997 Suzuki Bandit 1200s ABS. It was a very nice bike.. very comfortable, plenty fast, and was my first huge motor. This bike took me on a lot of long rides.. including my first multi-day, long distance rides through Appalachia and the Blue Ridge Parkway. This is also the bike on which I "moved" west in 2007. I rode it from Cleveland not-so-straight-south to Lafayette, LA, then over to Tucson, Arizona...

Somewhere in there, a friend gave me this barn-fresh Honda SL100 (1971?).. the motor was seized and I didn't really have the interest in rebuilding it.. so I passed it on to someone that did, and it's on the road today.. I'll try to scrape up a picture of it for a side by side..

When I got to Tuscon in 2007, I found this 2003 BMW R1150GS Adventure... A bike I had lusted over. So, I traded the bandit in and rode away.. That was perhaps the most fun day of my life.. Tucson, AZ to Joshua Tree National Park.. smiling the whole way.. I was in love!

I rode the crap out of that GS all over California and Washington state, but when I moved back to Cleveland I wanted a little bike that I could try commuting in the snow on.. Enter the 1986 Yamaha TT350. This bike was awesome.. it started every time and saw me through a lot.. I just parted with it and was pretty sad to see it go..

Eventually I decided that I needed something smaller than the GS.. so off it went and I picked up this tricked out 2006 Kawasaki KLR650. A great all around bike, which is what makes it great, but it's purpose built for nothing in particular, which also makes it not so great..

I grew out of that quickly and have most recently decided that for now, and urban assault vehicle makes a little more sense.. This 1994 Honda XR600R is like a mix between the Bandit, the TT, and the KLR.. Super fast, light, ultra-maneuverable, reasonably comfortable and a blast to ride. The only downside of it is that it's not particularly well suited for long trips.. (not that there's any worthwhile "day rides" around Chicago anyways)... But I'll test those limits in July when I ride it to Vintage.

So what's next? Anyone want to take any guesses?