This extends to the many bikes that I've ridden and owned over the years. Very few images were taken and even fewer of those can be found. I recently dug up a couple shots of bikes gone by and thought that they deserved their own place of recognition.
Okay, what do we have here. This, my friends, is a Silver 1982 Yamaha Virago 750. It is also the first motorcycle I purchased new from a dealer. It is shown here sitting in a living room which was under complete reno at the time. They were out of town for a couple weeks and I was house sitting, so I thought, maybe I'll bring my bike in from the garage...
See, at that time, this bike made sense to me. Way back when, my best friend was riding a spanking new 1981 Yamaha XS 400 Special; all black and gold trim and pretty cool. So in 1982 when I got my first real job and some pocket money, it was my intent to get a similar type of bike.
We took our 400 & 750 2-up to Maine. I used to ride around with my feet on the highway pegs, catching air like I was a barn door and thinking it would be cool to own a leather vest. I want to slap myself now when I think about that.
Thing of it was that I had another friend I began riding with at the same time, and he had just traded a 1980 Kawasaki KZ-freakin'-1300 (it's got how many cylinders?) for a 1981 GPz1100. After a month riding with him, I had scraped not only the pegs, but gouged the case on both sides. I began to ride with my feet on the passenger pegs. My eye began to wander...
My epiphany came one evening as I was in my car, headed home. I stopped at a light on a divided highway and noticed that in the second lane, ahead of me and diagonal on my left, was a guy on a Suzuki GS1100E. The light changed and we all pulled away, and I watched him riding. He was not riding a couch like I did, he was in a sporting posture like my GPz pal. His brown leather jacket did not flap in the wind; he did not move around on his seat nor did he make exaggerated motions with this arms or legs. He did not weave in his lane. He simply appeared to think "I'd like to go faster now" and moved away from us. At that moment, I was done with cruisers and ready to make a change.
In 1983, Kawasaki reworked the GPz line and introduced the new GPz1100. It was the hot bike of the year and came only in what one mag called "Arrest me red". I was immediately in lust over this bike, and in 1984 I bought this silver one. It was a huge bike: 62.5" wheelbase as I remember and weighed a ton, but most bikes did at that time. It was fuel injected and went like hell, and I had to practically sit on the tank to move it along a tight, twisty road.
I had many great rides on this bike over the years, and one particularly bad day, but maybe I'll recount that episode another time. This bike made a trip 2-up to Mystic Seaport and a few other overnight rides. These were the years when Scott and I used to meet at 7AM on Sunday morning and ride until it was dark. I ended up selling this bike after my daughter was born, as the money was needed for other things. But it was a wild ride while it lasted.
Shown above with the lowers that I added, parked next to my 1981 Turbo Trans Am, replete with screaming chicken hood decal . A happy garage indeed.
One morning in 1984, Scott gave me a ride to the dealer where I picked up my new GPz1100. That afternoon I gave Scott a ride over to the dealer where he picked up his new '84 Virago 920. Bad Ass to be sure. However, he now got to experience chasing me around on my "sportbike". The following year, the Virago was replaced with this 1985 GPz900.
Here's a pic I found of the bike when it was pretty darn new. I think he may have over 40K miles on this bike now and it still comes up occasionally in the riding rotation. Sure, you can just swing by his garage and see the bike today, since he still has it on the road, but this is a shot of history. So that's better.
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