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My current Bike interest:

2003 Yamaha FZ1 Bee

I recently bought a bike after many years of not riding.  Here it is!

2003 Yamaha FZ1 Bee

I got a great deal on an almost new rare Yamaha FZ1 Bee model from a member of the FZ1OA Web site.
What a great site.   So much info in there and so many nice people.  This bike is called the Bee because you guessed it, the yellow and black paint scheme. 

Mods so far:

15 Tooth Front Sprocket
Frame Sliders
1 Inch Risers
Mirror Mod with PJ's amazing mirror bracket.
Napolean Copy Superbike GP Long Stem Mirrors
Yamaha Mirror Thread Reverser
Black Rizoma Mirror Covers
Yamaha/Corbin seat with Backrest
Gustaffson FZ1 Steve Wells Dark Smoke Windscreen Wide Model
(Currently the mirrors contact the screen at full lock.  I will try Napolean TourMaster mirrors next)

Except for the mirror/windscreen contact all the mods have worked out great so far.....

Next Mods:

Holeshot low black Slip-On with street baffle
Holeshot Jet Kit
Holeshot Air Pump Kit

My very cool FZ1 reminds me so much of my old Kawasaki Z1.  
After a while I found myself feeling like riding a long distance was a bit of a prospect of torture. 
Maybe it's me because so many like this bike for light touring.  But the vibration really gets to me,
the seat is not all that comfortable, and most of all I find myself wanting ABS after going down
stupidly on some wet grass.

After painstaking Web research I decided that Sport Tourer was the category of bikr for me. 
I narrowed this choice to the Honda ST1300 ABS.  But I soon found out this was a fairly expensive
bike and dealers would bargain some but not much.  I spent some time going around and wasting my time.
So much time in fact that my Sport Touring dream bike. the Kawasaki Concours 14 had been released
and was somewhat available.  My quest was on.  The biggest problem was I wanted an ABS model and
they were very scarce.  After several blind alleys I found a C14 ABS where the dealer would actually knock $1K
off the list.  This was dirt cheap compared to the ST1300s I was looking at.  Sold.

2003 Kawasaki Concours 14 ABS

This is the actual Bike.  This is the best bike I have ever owned.  I have owned bikes with more sentimental
meaning but we always look at our past with rose colored glasses.  This bike does it all.  It can stay with the
sport bikes and tour with the tourers.  It can scare you or just let you enjoy the passing scenery.  It is also as
reliable as a refrigerator (well even better I hope).

Mods so far:

1" Helibar risers
GPS RAM mounts
Cee Baily Ultratour Windshield
Holeshot slip on (Directly from the FZ1)
JC Whitney Top Box ($40 free shipping!)
Spencer seat mod
Improved passenger pegs

Next Mods:

Power commander
Flies out!

And that may be it.  This may be the perfect bike.  I no longer want to buy and restore a Kawasaki Z1.  What for?

My far distant Bike past (A Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away)...:

This got me to thinking about all the bikes I have owned over the years.
Nostalgia can make you do weird things, like buy old bikes and waste a ton of money fixing them up.
Short of that I decided to list them here with Pics I find on the web. 
Later maybe I can replace these Web pics with some of my own.

To go way back my first bike was a Honda  (1969) CT70

1969 Honda CT-70

Minitrail

I was too big for the Honda from day 1. 
After saving my pennies and with a little help from my understanding parents I graduated to a Yamaha Enduro 125 AT1-B.

1970 Yamaha AT-1B

What fun I had on that bike.  But it all ended with me in traction for two weeks with a near brush with death.
I painted the tank pink (it looked like candy Apple Red on the can!) and sold my first Yammie! :-(

Several years later after quitting college and striking out on my own I realized that I was now master of my own destiny.  I sold my car and went back to the Yamaha store.  A Yamaha XS500 called to me on the showroom floor.
Well not really, it was the only "big" bike I could hope to afford and the dealer was dealing.  But the bike was the extra fast Blue color!  I was living a dream. The one in the picture is a bit beat up.  Mine was perfect!

I rode that bike for a year or so and enjoyed it very much.  Then I got a big raise at work, our shop moved and I joined a union.  I was flush.  The siren song of the speed demon in me was drawn to the very hottest bike on the planet.  The Kawasaki Z1.  The fast blue one. Growl.

1975 Kawasaki Z1B

A year or so later I was laid off from that job and decided to go back to school.  Good move.  My beloved Z was worth too many sheckles for me to keep it.  I downgraded my bike to an older dream bike but a cool one none the less.
A black 1970 Norton 750 Commando.

1970 Norton 750 Commando

The Norton was a bike you could not help but take apart over and over.  Sometimes it needed to be taken apart and sometimes it didn't.  One time it came apart once too many and was stored in boxes for posterity.  There it stayed.  Meanwhile my friend (a very generous one I might add) sold me his 1971 Honda CB750 for $800 as I remember. 

1971 Honda CB750

At one point while riding to school I fell while braking on an oil slicked road.  I was going straight at the time and it was the first time I ever fell (while moving) on the street.  Now I was thinking of moving to another apartment and I had no income.  All these things added up to selling the Honda.  Goodbye Honda.  What a high quality, smooth running bike.  But I still had my Norton-in-a-box.

Norton-in-a-box

Years later after I married my understanding wife Eileen, I had moved the boxes of Norton parts many times.  My friends were revolting, the boxes were too heavy!  They had to go.  I had no idea what the Norton was worth and I put in a classified ad in the paper, setting the price at $500.  The first day I got a call right after work and the guy seemed really anxious to come over and see the boxes.  He was at my door minutes later and spent all of 5 minutes looking the boxes over, peeling off 5 crisp $100 dollar bills, loading up his car and off he went.  I was ecstatic.  "See" I exclaimed to Eileen triumphantly.  That bike was worth something.  It sure was, it was worth about 5 or 6 times what I got for it at the time.  All the parts were there, there was almost nothing wrong with it, and it only had 5,000 miles on the odometer.  Only a couple of times in my life did I have an opportunity to make money on something with an engine, and I missed this one.

Doh!

Good Bye Norton, Good Bye bad boy biker, Hello family life......