I am. At 17 I got on the road with a 1980 Suzuki TS100ER, great little bike. Had it for 2years and got tempted into swapping for a 1981 Kawasaki Z250 Scorpion A2. The A2 was a lovely beast, bags of power, with an illegal (so loud) Alpha 2into1 exhuast. I worked till 4am most days, then jumped on my bike for 2 or more hours. Pity I was a few hundered folks 4.15am alarm call, when I went by! The beast developed a couple of problems and being 19, little brain power then, I Just sold the thing for near scrap value...IDIOT!
I progressed BACKWARDS onto a 1972 Motobacane (French) 49cc bicycle with what was thought to be an engine! It did an amazing 25mph, but only 300 miles later was struggling to hit 20mph and was getting harder to start.
My home from work was a 1 mile ride, the last 3rd up a slight gradient. The sparkplug lead/cap was dodgy. Instead of fixing, I used my left hand to hold it on to get home, frazzling my left arm and heart with the resulting electric shock! 10 or so times, I got fed up doing that, spotted a dirt cheap 1981 Honda C50. Great little thing, loads of MPG and 37mph! But I saw a 1979 Honda CD185 Benly going cheap too!
I had 3 bikes now and needed to lose 1.
I rode the French thing past my work at the last bit of seafront of our town. Busy area and I just left it parked up, with the key in the ignition, I say ignition, but the only key operated a lock, that enabled or disabled the starting of the thing with its peddles! I went back down that end of town after 3 weeks, to make sure the Police had either removed it or it had been stolen. The period of 3 weeks was during the carnival and all vehicles parked along there were always removed by the Police....But ofcourse my crappy little French thing was still there, key intact!!! Ijust walked the thing to a local bike place, put it on its stand, said, 'there ya go' and walked away!
Much enjoyment was had with my other 2 bikes, but the CD185 was never what I expected. Then the engine seized....gut instinct! Just by sheer luck my mate said there was another CD185, a year newer and even cheaper than seized 1. Snapped it up and man was that a real servant to me. 4 years of absolute trouble free riding/commuting! Only replaced the front tyre, 1 headlight bulb and rear brakes shoes and that was it!
I did hasten the death of that bike. I fitted a slightly different coded sparkplug, which suddenly gave me 15% more power! But it also was hitting 99mph with two thirds throttle (a bog standard 185 twin) that was only supposed to hit 75mph. I was hitting 73mph before and had now gained an extra 26mph!! The engine did make a funny buzzing sound above 80mph. Did 5 miles at 99mph and then thought it best not to again. I did another 300? miles and the piston rings shattered!
Pistons were ok...ish, so new rings, rode it again, but it seemed a little rough!
I quickly sold it to some lout. 4 weeks later, I get a visit from the Police for abandoning it in a carpark 50 miles away. My explanation of having sold it accepted. The RAT never changed ownership papers! They found the 'new owner'. Turns out he was commuting from our town to London every weekend! nearly 400 mile ride, there and back. Hmmm, guess the pistons blew then!
After 10 years biking, it was then I turned to cars as the work I was doing required it to be honest.
But 23 years later, I'm back on 2 wheels. Apart from taking it easy for a bit, its almost like I never left 2 wheels.
Really enjoying it!
