Luke...I am your father...

Riding Side-Saddled down the street

Sadly, while visiting at a friend's apartment, my bike was stolen.  It was between 11pm and 1:45am on a Friday.  I've never had more fun than riding a bike through the twisty canyon roads...Ortega Highway, Los Angeles Crest, Palomar, and even San Pedro.  These are a few pictures I have of my CBR600RR.      It was kind of a fluke that I even got the bike.  My Integra had been paid off, and I was accumulating money with nothing to readily spend it on.  I toyed around with the idea of another vehicle, because I was always worried about the Integra being stolen (ironic, isn't it?).      So, I hopped on the internet one day, just to carouse through the different motorcycles out there.  I'd wanted a motorcycle since I was 12, but my mom was (and still is) strongly oppossed to it.  I looked through all the bikes available, and nothing seemed to fit my taste.  I was about to go for the Yamaha YZF-R6 (a beautiful machine I might add) or the Suzuki GSX-R 750.  However, late one night after work, I logged into Honda's website to discover a new model coming out in 2 months.  The CBR600RR.  It was love at first site.  3 weeks later, I went down to the dealer, and bought it.  Why did it take 3 weeks?  I had to get my license first!      The licensing was easy.  The written test was pretty much common sense, and the MSF course (which I took at Cerritos College) was informative, fun, and most important, it taught me how to ride in the first place.

"If you're not crashing...you're not riding hard enough."

The bikes design was both a plus and a minus.  Because the exhaust goes right under the tail, and not along the side like most bikes, there was NO TRUNK space at all.  Just enough for the owner's manual, and registration and insurance information.      However, that undertail design looked awesome, and since I had one of the first ones for '03, it attracted a lot of attention.      It worked great through traffic, especially for rush hour.  I made it to LA from my house in rush hour in 40 minutes (what should've taken me 3 hours).  Now, that convenience is

gone; though I'm probably a bit safer now.      Perhaps I was lucky that it was stolen.  Why do I say this?  I was gettin' more and more aggressive on it, and a more than a little cocky.  There was plenty of times I was doing things I know was pushing myself, and the tires (not so much the bike, just the crappy Michelein Pilot Sports) that were on it to the limit.  A friend of mine told me that he knew if I kept riding with those tires the way I was, that I'd end up wrecking.  He said this in a good way though, since his motto is, "If you're not crashing it, you're not riding hard enough."  I took this as, I should be counting myself lucky, that I was a motorcycle rider, who had never gone down.

A friend of mine captured a video of me going 95 + MPH through a corner

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