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My Bikes
This is really about bikes I have ridden rather than 'my bikes' as such. The first five have all been mine (more or less - the Katana got registered in my name but never lost its lineage to my son). Then follows three that I rode on overseas tours and one I rode for four days around the Gold Coast. Finally, there's the newest steed in the stable. I have only two now: the F800ST and the F800GS.
Suzuki GS500 As I mentioned in passing on the About the Author page, my first bike was a Suzuki GS500. Why this bike? Simple. With no idea about bikes, I had absolutely no starting point or benchmark. I was involved in those days with triathlons – both as a participant and an official. As an official, I often went on the back of one of the motorbikes as part of monitoring the cycle leg to weed out the drafters. I remember one of the riders once telling me to buy a GS500, so I did. It was great. Very versatile and efficient. I eventually upgraded, fortunately before my then 17 year old stepdaughter wrote the GS off! She was fine. You can read about this in a story under Fireside. Honda VFR800 It was just ahead of a planned trip to Broken Hill in the spring of 2006 (that’s September in Australia), that I decided I didn’t want to do the trip on the GS500. In retrospect it was not a very well-based judgement. The GS would have been fine. But I guess I was chomping at the bit to upgrade, although I was technically obliged to stay with a ‘learner legal’ bike until mid October 2006 (one year from getting my full licence). I started, at this point, to get my head around different models of bikes – just a few front line contenders for the much anticipated upgrade. I eventually settled on the VFR800.
The worst of it was collecting it to ride home. It was already dark and the first experience was to discover that when Iturned to exit her driveway, only the handle bars turned; not the dash board or instruments! Totally disorienting. Remember I had only ever ridden the GS500 at this stage, on which everything turned with the bars. Well, I made it home and got to really love the VFR. What a superb bike it is. I think I would easily succumb to having it as my No 1 bike if only it came with ABS, which it doesn’t in Australia for some unfathomable reason only known to Honda. However, in due course, the (almost) inevitable happened. I locked up the front and did some $8000 damage to it. Less to me, fortunately. But it was a timely reminder of where and how I had lost the plot. The ‘plot’ is revealed under the next heading. BMW F800ST
I actually ordered the F800ST in May 2006 – some six months before it was remotely likely to reach Australia. I joined the F800 forum at that time and ravenously devoured every comment that was made by the Europe-based new owners, for whom it became available about this time. By now, you’ve no doubt worked out where and how I lost the plot by being seduced by the VFR. In fact, I loved the VFR so much I cancelled my order for the F800 (that was probably the nadir of plot-losing). Luckily for me, the dealer never actioned the cancellation, so I was enthusiastically surprised I clocked up over 70,000km (~43,500 miles) in two years from having taken delivery of it. It now has about 95,000kms on the odometer (Nov 09).
Suzuki GSX1100 Katana Including this bike is cheating a little. But I actually owned it for a while – and rode it. It was really a sort of love child of my son. He had had it for years and, at one stage, pretty much rebuilt the engine. He affectionately referred to it as “the beast”. It was a 1981model. It seemed to have begun its life as a 750cc, but somewhere along the line had been morphed into an 1100cc bike. When I first met it, it had languished unregistered for quite some time At first, it meant nothing to me; but then I did some research on it to discover and appreciate its historical significance as a ground-breaking and almost cult motorbike. That inspired me to adopt it. It had to be trailored to Canberra and registered in my name. It was all a bit of a fiction to enable it to be registered in the ACT while paying only a token amount in stamp duty for the change of ‘ownership’. I got it serviced, adjusted where needed, re-shocked; and essentially up and running. I had fun on it and took it out on a few Wednesday rides to show it off. It all came to an end when my son was posted to Amberley air force base, initially without his family or car, so the Katana would become his only transport. In the same spirit in which a change of ownership was previously effected, it was just as easily de-effected, in effect. So the Katana went to Amberley. Kawasaki GPX250
While I had it, however, I felt an obligation to take it out every now and then – much as you might feel the need to exercise the dog. It was fun to ride, but in a very different way to the Katana. It loved to be revved; and would belt along up to 130kph without too much strain. I took it out on several Wednesday rides and used it to zip around town a few times. I was actually sorry to have sold it, but it didn’t make sense not to do so.
Royal Enfield Bullet I was introduced to this bike on my tour of Rajasthan, India, in 2007. You’ll find some thoughts on it and a photo in my essay on the Rajasthan trip. Suffice it to say, in this section, that, as one who was at the early stages of the motorcycle riding learning curve, it was quite a steepening of the curve to be thrown on a bike that had the gear lever on the ‘wrong’ side and the gearbox upside down. And then hurled into Indian traffic after an hour or so practice in the hotel car park. Kawasaki KLE500
I think I drew the short straw while on my tour of Turkey in 2008. Or maybe, because I was (so I was told) one of the last to sign up, I ended up with one of the ‘left over’ bikes! Sort of like the poor girl at the school dance that no one wanted to kiss (I’m referring to the bike; not me.) The KLE might look good in this picture, but I can’t say I enjoyed riding it all that much. The front brake was flaky, giving no confidence that it would stop you if really needed to. Fortunately, I didn’t have to put it to the test in a real situation, but it didn’t pass well in practice runs. BMW F650GS After my Turkey experience, I had my heart in my mouth as the motorbikes were being allocated at the start of my tour of Morocco in 2009. To my relief and delight, I got one of the single cylinder F650GSs. Shame they weren’t the twin version, but, hey, worlds apart from the KLE! As an owner of an F800ST and an aspirant for the F800GS, it was a welcome novelty to have three weeks experiencing the F650GS, if only in the then discontinued model, but seemingly now the resurrected, rebadged G650GS.
BMW F800GS (Dakar)
BMW F800GS
I asked about the availability of a colour-coordinated riding suit. He said, “sure, I can do that”. I felt relieved. It's important to be colour-coordinated on the road. But I didn't anticipate what he had to offer. I guess it was, at least, colour-coordinated!
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I picked up a nice blue VFR, a couple of years old, with low kms; and in great knick. It had had only one owner – a young woman, who sadly had to give it up for medical reasons. It came with a full suite of luggage extras. Although the size and weight terrified me at the start, I could hardly admit to it, given that I was buying it from a rather slightly built young woman, for whom it had been her only means of transport.
We have to go back a few steps here. It all has to do with the plot. Long before I dreamed of the VFR, in the very earliest stages of riding the GS500, when I was first introduced to The Usual Suspects, I learned about the new 800cc bike from BMW that was soon to be rolled out. I think it had been ‘launched’ and had been exposed to the usual cadre of well wined and dined bike magazine reviewers, all of whom seemed unanimous in their praise of it – in both its versions. The idea of an 800cc seemed perfect for the eventual and inevitable upgrade; and the idea of a BMW was not altogether unappealing. I was happy to rationalise that, in my retirement years, I could afford and enjoy this indulgence (that was, of course, before the global financial crisis, the world recession and the swine flu.) Not to be taken lightly, which they weren’t by me, were the benefits of ABS brakes.
and delighted to get a phone call in the December of 2006, while the VFR was still getting repaired, to tell me that my F800ST had arrived and would be ready for collection within a week or so. The rest is history, as they say.
in his shed. 
This purchase came about after much pestering from my stepdaughter to replace my written-off GS500, which she always referred to as ‘her’ bike. She rode it a bit but not consistently enough to keep it, once the novelty wore off for me and the capital became more useful as cash than as a depreciating motorbike. 
