Sunday, March 19, 2006

Spring Fever & Motorcycles

It's Sunday morning, the proverbial day of rest. After yesterday I need a day of rest. Spent the entire day working on the upstairs and at this point it's 95% complete. I have a couple things to tweak and then I head back downstairs to do Christopher's room next.

Anyhow, it's the middle of March and in Michigan that can mean 70° & sunny or 30° & snow. Today is somewhere in between...sunny, but only 27° currently. too cold to get the bike out even if I owned a snowmobile suit to ride in, which I don't. So....to deal with the Spring Fever I thought I'd talk about the bike.

I sold my last bike (Yamaha maxim 750) in 1989, after it sat in the garage for a year due to the fact our second child, Rianna, had come along the previous year and with 2 kids at that point and all the work that entails there just hadn't been time for a cruise. So, rather than let it sit and rot in a dark, dank garage, I sold it to a guy I worked with who promptly, from what I recall, wrecked it.

So, flash ahead to 2005. Ri is now almost 18, the oldest daugter is gone, married and with child and I have a bit of spending money for the first time in years. One beautiful warm and breezy day in June I happened upon a sales ad one of the local Yamaha dealers had put out and the thought crept into my head that boy...it sure would be nice to have a bike again. well, to shorten this story up a bit myself and the wife went up to take a look at what they had in stock and I almost immediately fell in love with a black & blue 2005 V-Star 1100 Classic. (Click on the title link for the V-Star website) We talked to the salesman awhile and then signed some papers.

After allowing the dealer a couple of days to prep it and get things ready we went back to pick it up. I drove it home and boy did I feel like a rookie after a 16 year layoff. This bike was a bit bigger and quite a bit more powerful than the old 750 was, but it felt real comfortable sitting in the seat and I realized how much I'd missed cruising around on two wheels.

I managed to put almost 3,000 miles on her last summer with the longest trip consisting of 800 miles in one weekend. Myself and my son Chris rode down to Seymour Indiana, the hometown of John Mellencamp and hung out there for two days checking out the sites. More about that trip at another time.

So, here we are now, Spring of '06 and any day now I'll be able to get the bike back out and initiate another cruising season. Needless to say, I'm ready to go, just need some of those 60° + temps to make it bearable. I guess for now I'll just head back upstairs and do that other 5%. :-(

TC

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not sure I like the part about cruising a motorcycle yet.....
there's way to much to do as you
know and once that's been completed you'll have to schedule which day(s) you want to do a cruise.

'sides - you didn't mention your newly aquired acquisition of "Mercury" (sheltie puppy) who
resembles a possum from what I've been told! :)

Thu Mar 23, 01:33:00 PM 2006  

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