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| Updated 12/12/07 |
| The Archives |
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| My first bike, a Benelli 65. Probably the happiest I have ever been and for sure the best Christmas ever!!! |
| I grew up on this 1972 Yamaha DT100 enduro. After the installing the Bassani chamber and rejetting, it really woke up!!! We named it Mean Green. |
| 1974 Yamaha YZ 250 the first year of the YZ, remember the MX? This was my high school ride. No suspension, but what a motor. It would do 80mph!!!!! |
| I sold the YZ when I went to college. My parents bought me this Honda, I forgot what exactly it was, so we could carry on the family tradition of going to the New Mexico mountains every summer to stay at my Uncles cabin and RIDE!!! I rode it one day and it seized. I remember coming all the way back down the montain coasting in neutral. Luckily my dad let me ride his bike the rest of the trip. |
| The Honda was sold as soon as we got back. The next year my parents got me this KDX420!!! My gosh, what a beast. Terrible suspension, awful brakes, but she would do 90mph!!!! When I think about it now that's scary, but at the time, I was pumped, a 90mph dirtbike!!!! This bike I kept at my parents just for visits and our New Mexico tradition. Middle picture is in Red River NM. The bottom is Dad, on his Suzuki 500, my brother on his 1976 KX250 and me. |
| After college, I moved to Santa Barbara CA. Saved all my pennies so I could get a bike. It was a 1976 Yamaha DT400 enduro. With this bike I could ride the highway to the motocross track. I even found a way to sneak it to the beach at UCSB and rip around in the surf. Outlaw!!!!! All my buddies thought I was weird, ridding a dirt bike,when thay were all on street bikes. A few came around when they saw all the fun. |
| All my friends had street bikes, and the DT400 hung with them on many a trip. When I heard about the Yamaha Maxium 650, I had to have it. It was pretty and fast for a 650. I soon found out the cruiser style was not for me, you cannot get aggressive with this ridding position. I took a 4,700mi tour of the west coast and Canada on this bike (bottom pict). When I moved back to Texas, I brought both of these bikes back with me. The DT400 got stolen in Austin. I was heart broken. |
| Having dreams of the YZ250, I got this 1981 KX250 here in Austin. I would take it to the now publicly closed Fort Hood tank trails. This bike had better suspension than the YZ, but the YZ still had the superior motor. |
| Sold the Maxium and KX, liquidating to buy a house. Once I was settled in, the motorcycle fever came back. All I could afford was this slightly rough 1978 Suzuki GS850. |
| Sold the above bike to get a slightly smaller, racer version, a GS750. Lighter, chain drive, quarter faring and some homeboy rear-sets. I loved this bike so much. I took a 4,300mi Colorado trip on it by myself. |
| I'm ready for a real nice street bike. This is what I came up with, a 1982 Honda CBX. It had matching luggage not shown. It really was not that great. Not a lot of torque, not the big hp either, very heavy and not that comfortable. I found all this out when I rode my friends 1984/85 Kawasaki Ninja 900. Four of my friends had them. WOW what a great bike that was, but I had to be a little different. |
| Looking for something a little lighter and sportier, the Yamaha RZ350 caught my attention. Soon after my purchase, a friend of mine bought a red one with a Toomy kit already installed. Stock was about 32hp, but with this kit, hp was over 50!!! |
| I remember the fun I had on the DT400 in California, and I'm spotting trails here and there. Nothing like a street legal dirt bike to take you any where. I got this 1983 Honda XL200. Totally gutless, but I felt bad on it because I could hold it wide open every where I went. The wheelies had to be all the way up balance ones, cause there was NO power to hold it up. |
| My collection. My parents brought the KDX420 down one Christmas for some much needed maintenance. Here I captured all the steeds. |
| My buddy with the Toomy RZ now wants an airplane. I buy his bike and now I have two RZ's!!! For a while I think I'll keep them both, cause I like the Yellow, but the red is almost new and tricked out. Well after a few months, I just swap the body work and sell the "old red" one. So now I have a Yellow Kenny Roberts signature, with a "RED" frame, gold wheels with the Toomy kit . So COOL!!!!!!! For more RZ picts, go HERE |
| My first Jet-ski. It was a basket case when I bought it, but it ran pretty good. Tore it all apart and painted it to match my car that I painted also. Had the cylinders ported and that really woke it up. I got the pleasure of riding these when there was not a "no wake rule", meaning you could jump the wake right off the back of the boat. Folks would trim up the bow just to make a wake for you to jump. I could never get enough of this. Challenging like a dirt bike, but nice and cool for the summer months, and no clean up and little maintenance, unlike a dirt bike. Best of all, there are bikinis where you ride!!! Nothing like that in the woods.................. |
| I got board with the XL200. Sold it and got my favorite bike of all time, a 1987 Honda CR125. This bike was so awesome, it inspired me to start racing. I raced a little motocross, but really got into the Hare Scramble. These are two and three hour races through the woods. WOW this is really what riding a motorcycle is all about, taking you and the bike to the limits. With this bike, I felt we were one, I was not riding it, it was an extension of myself, the only bike I have ever totally felt that. What an incredible feeling!!! My two all time favorite toys, having their own room in the house............ |
| I sold the RZ's and the CBX and was going to do with out a street bike for a while, cause I got my first Vette. I thought it would be a replacement for street iron, but less than 4 months later; I bought this 1986 GSXR 750. It had just gotten this cool, custom paint job, but what got me the most excited is it had a Bassani pipe, like Mean Green!!!! Now those Ninja 900s didn't seem so great. This was a sweeter ride. |
| I bought this 1984 Honda Interceptor 1000 just a few months after the GSXR purchase. There was really no reason other than it was cool. It was that. Honda only made this bike one year, before they changed the engine to gear driven cams and full body work. This bike was quicker than the GSXR with the bottom end power and good top end run out. The GSXR had the greater top speed though. This guy could pop a mean wheelie!!! These were two great bikes to own at the same time, because of their totally different personalities. If I got trired of one, just hop on the other for a completely different experence. |
| Owning the CR125, jet-ski, GSXR and Interceptor was not enough. There was still a nitch not filled. That of course is a street legal dirt bike. After the anemic XL200, I went as big as they made at that time. This 1986 Honda XR600 was so fun, that's if you could get it started. Wheelie king for sure. I got to take it to Ouray Colorado a couple of times with my brother and friends. The middle picture is us all loaded up for one of those trips. |
| I thought long and hard to find another nitch I could fill. A touring bike is what I came up with. I bought this 1981 Suzuki GS1100E and took just one trip on it, then sold it. It had some weird electrical problem I could not diagnose. I hear this was a common problem with these bikes. |
| In 1991 Kawasaki came out with their first reed valve motor on the SX550. I busted the drive line out of the 440 from all the jumping. So I bought this baby new and had a local racer port and polish the cylinders, and this created a monster. It was almost too radical to ride. I think I would have had more fun on it stock. |
| There is still that nitch to fill, with the GS1100 gone. I bought the ultimate touring machine, a 1989 Honda Goldwing, new from the dealer. They had it left over from a few years earlier. I went to Big Bend a couple of times and one Smokey Mountain / Blue Ridge Park Way tour (top pict). Didn't ride it much after that. |
| There was actually a time when these "sit down" jet-skies were not cool. When they became fast, sporty and racing classes emerged, I thought it might be time to give it a try. I bought this 1992 Kawasaki 750, the biggest "boat" at that time. I slowly converted over to this new "sit-down" sport, but we really rode them standing up like a dirt bikes. My best friend, Iceman, bought a Sea-Doo at the same time. We competed for top speed honors for several years. There was a point I was at the lake 3-4 days a week. Tweaking then testing, we had quite a competition going on. My boat would do 42mph in the beginning, and at the end she was doing 53mph!!!!!!!!!!!! |
| There was no other nitch to fill: seven bicycles (I won't even go there) two jet-skies and five motorcycles, I guess I had to start up grading. Having success on the CR125, I thought it was time to move up to the big plastic. Sold the 125 and got this 1991 Honda CR250. It was sooooo fast!!! I never had that "we are one" feeling with this bike. The ProCircuit suspension was too harsh for the woods. I wound up breaking my wrist. I tried to race afterwards, but my hand would go numb and I couldn't hang on. I pretty much gave up racing after that. I got to where I would only ride every once in a while. Then when I went, I would scare myself to death, cause I thought I still had that edge, a dangerous situation. Iceman and I swore we would keep them even if we just took them to Amarillo (my old stomping grounds) once a year. We did that for a while, then I was the one to break our deal and sold it. |
| Kawasaki 900s came out and these things were doing 56mph. My old 750 could no longer hang. I traded it in on this 1995 Yamaha 1100. 58+mph and with a good impeller, almost 60!!!!!! I became so infacuated with speed, it started to dominate my life. After much research a found a company that would guarantee me 65mph. With this speed, just a flick of the finger, there would never be any doubt who ruled the water ways, I thought. I personally drove this boat out to California and dropped it off with $1,800 to start my fantasy. I picked it up at the end of one of our Moab 4X4 trips a few weeks later. Bottom picture is at lake Havasu for the first ride on the new beast. To make this a short story, it probably would go 65, but for not very long, it keep seizing!!!! Eventually the company refunded all my money and returned it to stock. I never again had 65mph dreams. This boat served me well for almost 6 years of being the king. It was only when the second generation Yamaha GP1200 came out that this boat got beat. That is not counting the Polaris1100, cause the water had to be perfect glass for it to take me and this is a rare case. When she finally got beat, she got sold and she has not been replaced............Yet |
| Looking for something a little different after wearing out the street bikes, dirt bikes and jet-skies. I purchased 103 acres and this Polaris Sportsman 500. I had the acreage for almost 2 years, but keep the Polaris for much longer. I used it mostly for our traditional Canadian River trip once a year and Big Steve's corporate hunting lease. This lease was 6000ac that I was invited to every now and then. It was the most fun place I ever had the Polaris, plus you could corn 1200yds of sendera and roads in just a couple of minutes. Pour the bag of corn out on the front tire and it goes flying every where, what utility This thing would do almost do 60mph!!!! |
| This was too many toys. I spent more time maintaining them, than riding them. It became a chore trying to keep up with it all. I started selling them off one by one. Each time I sold one, I it felt so relieved not to have to deal with it any more. TOY BURN OUT. I got down to the Interceptor and the Polaris and thought that would be fine. Well they eventually go sold also. I went almost two years with out, probably because I was into building up my Jeep. Then I made the mistake of riding my brothers R1150RT BMW while visiting him in Sacramento. I got the bug again!!! I wanted something like the Interceptor and yes, it probably was a mistake getting rid of that bike. I got it down to either the Bandit 1200 or the ZRX. I think the water cooling and the classic good looks are what swayed me toward the ZRX. When I layed my eyes on this 2000 black one, I knew this bike was the bike I was looking for. |
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| Getting old and ready for something cool. What could be cooler than this. My almost totally restored 1980 FLH Shovel. Bought it off eBay. Still have the ZRX for when I really want to RIDE. The FLH for just putting around.................. More Picts HERE |
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| We purchased this to help out around the place, but it is turning out to be more for fun than work. Two up riding, really twice the fun. |
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