1. 1998 Sportster 1200
   
   This was the first bike I Owned. I took this thing on a ride from Central Iowa up to Superior, Wisconsin and around Lake Superior. That was a great trip.

2. 2009 Buell XB12XT Ulysses (current ride)
   
   I have put over 10,000 miles on this bike. It is just about the perfect bike for me

3. 1978 CB400A
   
   Bought it because my wife wanted to learn how to ride, had it for about a year, then she had a low speed fall over and also found out she was pregnant with our first kid, so we sold it. Fun little thing in town.

I had all three in my garage at one time. But Only the Buell remains.

I’m new to motorcycles overall. I was always generally afraid of riding them, likely because most of the bikes I’ve seen were huge heavy monsters. I also strongly dislike a lot of the culture around it prevalent in my area: specifically midlife crisis faux 1%-ers and 20-somethings on crotch rockets that descend upon a nearby town once a year for a rally that just disrupts life in general. Many locals schedule their vacations outside of town around this time to avoid it. We also have some motorcycle “clubs” here that cause a bit of trouble. I say all of that to say I’ve found I enjoy “small” bikes.

I have been a bicycle fanatic for decades and use them for both transportation and leisure. In the past I’ve also enjoyed a couple of dirt bikes for brief stints. Recent events have left me car-less and my area is sort of sprawling with a lot of dirt roads around. I didn’t really have the money for a new car so I ended up mustering the courage to go to the Harley dealership an hour away to take classes to get my motorcycle endorsement. Shortly after that I purchased a Honda XR150L and it’s been my primary mode of transportation (save for a Honda Ruckus which was my gateway drug into motorbikes in general).

It’s not been too bad. I’ve surprisingly enjoyed the little dual sport and I just picked up a service manual for it so I’ll be able to do all my own wrenching with it, too. It’s got some cheap parts on it and it’s not very fancy but it gets the job done for sure. I love that it’s relatively old technology without any computers or other garbage for me to deal with. Just a carb’ed two stroke.

The aforementioned XR150L:

And the ruckus (not technically a motorcycle but relevant):

I’m about a year into riding, although I fell in love with motorcycles when I saw the FZ-09 8 years ago. I always had an interest in them, but the MTs put me over the edge. The problem at the time was that I was 16 and I got the classic “not under my roof”. I then joined the military and an E-3/5 paycheck didn’t have room for a motorcycle while meeting my financial goals.

When I got off active duty and started making some real motherfuckin money^TM, I bought the FZ-07. I was a little worried starting out on it with it’s reputation as a hooligan bike, but if you have decent motor skills it’s perfectly manageable.

After 8k miles, I wanted something with a little more power and the bike that sparked my interest in riding. I found this lightly molested FZ-09 that had been traded into a pawn shop, and they wanted my 07 for it. ___

Been 2 months and 1k miles with the 09, and it’s been everything I ever wanted. I ended up loving riding and motorcycles even more than I thought I would, and I try to ride every chance I get.

Just two – I got started because I was moving out on my own and could no longer afford car insurance due to an absolutely horrible accident history… In retrospect, that was probably an unwise escalation, huh?

In any case, I started with a dinky little Honda CBR250. I rode that for 2 years until I got smacked off my ass at an intersection by some road genius who decided that red lights needn’t apply to him…

His sedan plowed through me going at 40mph and my body was flung 10 ft. up into the air! Through some quirk of fate I managed to stick the landing and walk away uninjured. Now, obviously luck was involved, but I can also guarantee you that I would be pushing up daisies right now if it weren’t for the modern miracle of ABS. Take it from me: do. not. cheap. out. on. your. brakes!!

That incident shook me pretty badly… but I was still too broke to drive, so I took the insurance money from my totaled Honda and bought a BMW F650GS (with ABS, of course). I was quite tired of sportbiking through cold commutes, so my F650GS’s suspension, heated handlebars, and giant detacheable hardbags practically came as a revelation!

This is a stock photo. I never really took pictures of my rides

So I rode the BMW for a while, but the joy of riding just never quite returned to me after getting grounded like that. I’d begun taking road safety more seriously and channeled that anxiety into becoming a sane, well-adjusted citizen of the road. It took another 2 years and a lot of vigilance, but I did finally age out of my insurance woes! I fondly remember celebrating by purchasing my dream car, a Prius, in cash. That was when I’d become ready to hang up my helmet for good, but life is rarely that simple…

Six months later was when my (now obviously ex) girlfriend left. She needed the car more than I did and… I guess I’m just not the kind of person who can stop loving someone? … So I gave her the Prius and got back in the saddle. Fortunately, that’s around when I lucked into professional software development, so my money problems were quickly evaporating. One year later and I bought for myself an even nicer Prius which I still drive to this very day.

Epilogue, or perhaps, the punchline?: It’s been around 2 years since my last real ride. I do still technically own the BMW, but I’d been leaving it with my father on account of my move into parking-limited inner Atlanta. Well… just a few weeks ago, my old man passed, so now I very much need to get rid of the bike. Letting go should be easy – I really didn’t enjoy the majority of my rides! Yet somehow I’ve gotten sentimental despite myself. I suppose I needed some distance from the toil to really appreciate what I had? More likely I’m just some kind of weird twisted moto-tsundere…

Well, either way: if anyone in the Atlanta area happens to be interested in scooping my ratty yellow BMW, you should absolutely PM me! I’ll happily cut you guys a good deal.

1981 Honda XR80. This was my first and favourite bike. It was slow and lagged on serious hills. If you dropped into a rut, you weren’t getting out. I broke my collar bone after flying off of it. But it was so much fun. 10/10 would repeat.

Had a couple of other bikes later, but you’re only ever twelve once.

I don’t have pictures of them all, but I have a few…

My first “big” bike, a 1981 Honda CB750C. I put twenty-five thousand miles on it the first year. It had an annoying habit of cooking the regulator/rectifier and I was stranded more than once. After two replacements and no money, with my uncle’s advice I bodged it with a generic one for a truck and had no problems.

When my father stopped riding for health reasons I bought his 1991 Honda CB750 Nighthawk and kitted it out for touring on the cheap (remember JC Whitney?). The picture was taken at Marcus Dairy next to my friend’s much more interesting Triumph.

This is my 1991 BMW R100-GSPD in flash green and black. I loved that bike but life wasn’t aligned with motorcycling. I sold it after a few years when I realized I was putting more miles on it moving from one side of the garage to the other than on the road.

This is my current ride, a 2018 KTM 1090 Adventure R. It’s awesome on the road and on fireroads, I’m currently running Dunlop Trailmax Missions rather than the OEM TKC80’s (regardless, it’s a real handful off-road and on trails for my skills and, frankly, age).

I have had around 16 or 17 motorcycles since I started riding in 1983. I started with an ancient Kawasaki enduro I bought for $75 and then while I was in the USAF I bought a Honda Interceptor 700 brand new in Illinois in 1985, no license yet, and rode it from Illinois to Texas when I changed bases one winter, making my first real “street” ride a 2 1/2 day thousand mile journey through snow, mountains, and all sorts of nasty weather. Ah to be that young and stupid again!

From there I had a few bikes but settled with a Yamaha XS650, which I kitted out with a full Windjammer and hard cases and rode to work daily in Hawaii. When I moved again to Texas I shipped it in a crate to LA, flew over when it arrived, built it from the crate in the shipyard and rode it from LA to Houston across the Mojave desert. For 10 years I never had a car, sticking with bikes.

When I moved in 1996 to the very rural area in which I now live, 8 miles from the closest small town, I gave up bikes for several years. Then I got the bug again and bought a used Suzuki Katana.

This quickly let me know that I was aging and I did not like to have my weight on my wrists while hunched over in a jockey position.

So I bought a Honda V45 Magna and turned it into the Puppy Cycle, and since I now worked in that small town 8 miles from home it became something I rode to work often, splitting the time I drove in a car and rode on a bike about evenly.

A couple of years later I had the itch for something different so I picked up a Buell Blast, which I kept for a year.

My current bike is a Harley Davidson Sportster 1200 Custom, to which I have added a windshield, hard cases, sissy bar with luggage rack, etc. This bike taught me I don’t particularly like forward controls, but it is still fun to ride. Unfortunately my aged body tells me more and more that “nope!” today we are taking the car with AC to work in the 100F heat so I don’t ride it as often as I should or would like to.

Here’s a throwback to what I was riding 31 years ago, another 1200 Sportster

Hi guys, nice thread 👍

I’ve owned quite a lot bikes.

Now I joined the dark side, riding a Voge 500 DS:

That last one is similar to my first! Mine was a Suzuki, a TS 185. I’d love to have that back, it was so easy and fun to ride. My current R110RS is… not.

I hate how all ‘dual sport’ bikes are huge displacement now. I guess it’s because the speed limits are so much higher everywhere.