I am currently staying with friends in a farming community several hours away from my home town and last week while having our regular morning chat before heading out to the tractors we started to talk about motorbikes and stuff, my friend has a 2016 gsxr1000, its his 6th gsxr1000, he's been a lifetime rider, i however only have a learners permit (here in New Zealand its a graduated system of learners, restricted then full class motorcycle license) i got my learners like 10 years ago with the goal of getting a bike and being able to ride with my older friend, my first "bike" to get me through the learners period was a brand new suzuki ts50 xkr, i know, a joke, it was small, looked like an anorexic dirt bike, under-powered but it was fun, cheap to run and it was mine. i used to ride it back and forth to friends houses and around on errands..always replaying that scene from terminator 2 where john conner is being chased by the t1000 in the storm drain on his 2 stroke.. wide open accelerator, not letting off to change gears, (yes even at 50cc it had 5 gears) after a while of riding i needed something bigger... more power... but i got bored and money was tight so i sold it for 75% of what i paid for it.
About a year went by with no bike...then by chance hanging out with the same friend he mentions that someone he knows has a 1991 suzuki gsxr250 it was unregistered, not road legal, had been sitting in a garage for months maybe years but it was in working condition and cheap..i hadn't been on a bike for at least a year or had any gear accept the helmet i got the same time i got the ts50 so i borrowed some gloves and we went and got it, i rode it home and around for several months getting it road legal and riding every where i could because i loved it.. i even got to realize a dream i had as a kid of riding with my older brother, then one day i was riding home from somewhere and i queue jumped to the front at a red light and when the lights changed green i took off going a little faster than i should have, quickly getting up to around 90km/h in a 50km/h zone (i know that's nothing on a big bike but this was a small bike) and just my luck at that same time coming the opposite direction at the worst possible moment was a cop and he pinged me and turned to pursue, i didn't see him at the time, but down the road when he caught up i couldn't pull over when he first started flashing his lights as the road i was on was a main road with a broken yellow line on the side (no stopping or parking) so the next opportunity was about 500meters up the road in a entrance driveway to a cemetary, i stopped and was berated by the cop for trying to run from the police, i got ticketed for speeding, and because i was on a learners permit i was required to have a "L" plate displayed which i didn't so i got ticketed for as well, all up the tickets came to $900 which i couldn't afford.. so i advertised the bike for sale.. within a week i had sold it to a kid for twice what i paid for it, paid the fines, and forgot about it for a month when i got a knock at the door, it was a government licensing rep here to confiscate my license as the tickets came with demerit points that put me over my limit.. therefore i lost my license for 3 months.. i was bummed.. but it had the intended effect and to this day 10 years or so later i never sped again..no license no car no self reliant transport sucked... never again..
so anyways, 10 years or so have passed, i still have my learners (having just renewed my car and truck license i was told that recent law changes mean that i now have 5 years to progress to the next class (restricted) or i would lose the motorcycle learners license and have to start again, screw that i thought... so i said to myself maybe i should look into doing that... and forgot about it until about 3 weeks ago i saw a youtube video and had an itiching to get back on the road on a bike...it was a rumbling in my soul... i wanted to ride... so a week and a half ago i was chatting with a friend before work and i mentioned that the style of bike i want to get was a cruiser... more specifically an old school looking one.. i knew about triumphs bonne revival and i wanted one of those.. but here in nz they cost aroujnd 10-13k and i dont have that much free cash, but also on my drive down to his farm i was driving and beside me came a old looking bike that looked awesome.. it was just my style... looked like a 50's bike, i got a look at the badges and tank and saw what it was and made a mental note.. when talking of it i remembered the name and looked it up on my phone, went to a trade website to see what the cheapest listing was and saw less than 15 mins drive from my friends house was a dealership that had there demo for sale..and it was cheap.. unbelievably cheap.. it was fate!, by coincidence it was the dealership my friend had his gsxr1000 being serviced at, he knew the team so he called and said we were on our way to look.. and within 20 mins i was signing the sale agreement and being handed the keys..
A 2016 Royal Enfield Classic 350 in Lagoon Blue... i love it... the farm refrigerator is never empty of milk as i do milk runs whenever i get the chance... and yesterday i rode it from the Farm in Hamilton NZ to Auckland NZ (about 125kms) in torrential rain, its by no means a fast bike, but its fun to ride i have been questioned about it and been approached by many people in the past week, all saying how cool it looks, even an old school tattooed up dude at a gas station came over and talked to me saying he liked the style, he originally thought it was a bonne cause it looked and sounded similar.. it is awesome fun. and although i am a big guy (too big for this bike admittedly) it still gets me around nicely.. i originally bought it for the style and because its engine size was under the limit for learners license but i have since learned that those rules have changed and i can now get a bigger bike as long as its on the approved list... and under 600cc (formerly 250) so i am in talks with the dealership i got it from to trade it back + cash for the bigger 500cc version..
as an added bonus i am a huge ww2 nut, i love reading & watching anything about ww2 and the Royal Enfield is the bike Commonwealth (Australian,NZ) soldiers used in the war... so if i don't get the Royal Enfiled C5 military edition ill be Plasti-Dipping whatever color scheme i get in Battle green and modding it to look like this
so i am now back on a bike! i missed it...
even my brother, who gave up riding and sold his gsxr1000 when he started his family 10 years ago liked it and said he wants to get another bike now...
what do you guys think?
Submitted April 06, 2017 at 03:33PM by DinaDinaDinaBatman http://ift.tt/2odTVUn motorcycles
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