Bikes Gone By

Do you dream about the motorcycles you used to own?

Yeah, me, too.  I don’t have photos of all my bikes that have gone down the road, but I have a few and I’d like to share them with you.

My first motorcycle was a Honda Super 90. I bought it from Sherm Cooper, a famous Triumph racer who owned Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in New Jersey. My Super 90 was cool…it was white and it had an upswept pipe and knobby tires.  Mr. Cooper used it for getting around on his farm (the Cycle Ranch actually started out there).  I was only 14 and I wasn’t supposed to be on the street yet, but I was known to sneak out on occasion. I liked that Honda Super 90 motor, and evidently so do a lot of other people (it’s still being manufactured by several different companies in Asia).

Yours truly at about age 14 on the Honda Super 90. What’s that stuff on top of my head?

The next bike was a Honda SL-90. Same 90cc Honda motor, but it had a tubular steel frame and it was purpose-built for both road and off-road duty. I never actually had a photo of that bike, but it was a favorite. Candy apple red and silver (Honda figured out by then that people wanted more than just their basic four colors of white, red, black, or blue), it was a great-looking machine. I rode it for about a year and sold it, and then I took a big step up.

That big step up was a Honda 750 Four. I’ve waxed eloquent about that bike here on the blog already, so I won’t bore you with the details about how the Honda 750 basically killed the British motorcycle industry and defined new standards for motorcycle performance.  The 750 was fun, too. Fast, good looking, candy apple red (Honda used that color a lot), and exotic. I paid $1559 for it in 1971 at Cooper’s. Today, one in mint condition would approach ten times that amount.  I wish I still had it.

My first big street bike…a 1971 Honda 750 Four. It was awesome. It’s a miracle I never crashed it. I rode it all the way up to Canada and back in the early ’70s. Check out the jacket, the riding pants, and my other safety gear.

There were a lot of bikes that followed. There were two Honda 500 Fours, a 50cc Honda Cub (the price was right, so I bought it and sold it within a couple of days) an 85cc two-stroke BSA (with a throttle that occasionally stuck open), a 1982 Suzuki 1000cc Katana (an awesome ride, but uncomfortable), a 1979 Harley Electra-Glide Classic (the most unreliable machine I’ve ever owned), a 1978 Triumph Bonneville (I bought that one new when I lived in Fort Worth), a 1971 Triumph Tiger, a 1970 Triumph Daytona, a 1992 Harley Softail (much more reliable than the first Harley, and one I rode all over the US Southwest and Mexico), a 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200 (the yellow locomotive), a 1997 TL1000S Suzuki (a sports bike I used as a touring machine), a 2006 Triumph Tiger, a 1982 Honda CBX (a great bike, but one I sold when Honda stopped stocking parts for it), a 2007 Triumph Speed Triple (awesome, fast, but buzzy), a 2006 KLR 650 Kawasaki, and a 2010 CSC 150.   Here are photos of some of those bikes:

My high school buddy Johnnie with a Honda 500 four I later bought from him. That sissy bar was the first thing to go. It was a fun bike.
A Honda 50cc Cub, the most frequently produced motorcycle on the planet. In China and elsewhere, this bike is still being manufactured. I bought this one in the 1960s, mostly because I knew I could sell it and make a few bucks quickly.
My ’79 Electra-Glide Classic. I called this one my optical illusion, because it looked like a motorcycle. I couldn’t go a hundred miles on that motorcycle without something breaking. And people badmouth Chinese motorcycles.
Me with my 1982 Suzuki Katana. In its day, that was a super-exotic bike. Uncomfortable, but very fast, and way ahead of its time. I bought it new and paid over MSRP because they were so hard to get. I was a lot skinnier in those days.
My ’92 Softail Classic Harley. This motorcycle was superbly reliable right up until the moment the oil pump quit at 53,000 miles. At about the time I shot this photo on a trip through Mexico, I started thinking that maybe a Big Twin was not the best answer to the adventure touring question. And I know, my motorcycle packing skills in those days were not yet optimized. That’s a Mexican infantry officer behind the bike.
My buddy Louis V and me with our bikes somewhere in Arizona sometime in the mid-’90s. I’m not sure why Louis had his shirt off…we sure didn’t ride that way. Louis had an ’81 Gold Wing and I had an ’82 CBX Six. That old CBX was a fun bike…it sounded like a Ferrari!
My ’97 Suzuki TL1000S on the road somewhere in Baja. Wow, that bike was fast.  Here’s a story about my good buddy Paul and me featuring this motorcycle.
The 1200 Daytona. I won it on an Ebay auction.  It was an incredible motorcycle and you can read more about it here.
I’d always wanted a KLR 650, and when I pulled the trigger in 2006 I was glad I did. Smaller bikes make more sense. They’re more fun to ride, too.  It seemed to me that this was the perfect bike for Baja.  That’s me and Baja John out at El Marmol.
The ’06 Triumph Tiger. Fun, but a little cramped and very heavy. It was styled like a dual sport, but trust me on this, you don’t want to get into the soft stuff with this motorcycle.
Potentially the most beautiful motorcycle I’ve ever owned, this 2007 Speed Triple was a fast machine. The joke in motorcycle circles is that it should be named the Speed Cripple. That’s what it did to me.
My CSC 150. Don’t laugh. I had a lot of fun on this little Mustang replica. My friends and I rode these to Cabo San Lucas and back.

That brings up to today.  My rides today are a CSC TT250, an RX3, and a Royal Enfield Interceptor 650.  I like riding them all.

Do you have photos of your old bikes?  Here’s an invitation:  Send photos of your earlier motorcycles to us (info@exhaustnotes.us) with any info you can provide and we’ll your story here on the blog.  We’d love to see your motorcycles.

Want to see some of our Dream Bikes?   Give a click here!

6 thoughts on “Bikes Gone By”

  1. Great story. I loved the early days, the good news is that you have not changed much, the bad news is that you looked old when you were young. Is that John Hrehus?

  2. Oh incredible, i still remember on my 13th bday my dad got me my first bike a Mini Honda 70 on 1975, my mom was crazy nuts!!!!! Told my dad to also get me a casket, Lol. It was fast and solid, I loved it and had many adventures with it with my childhood friends.

  3. Love the article. My first ride was a Honda Mini Trail 50 at the age of 8. Like you I had a Speed Triple (2015 “R” model) and yes it was fast, and yes I sold it after about a year. I loved the bike, but I just couldn’t get comfortable on it for longer than about an hour. I spend my days now on either a 2013 Harley Ultra Classic Limited or a 2017 Triumph Tiger Explorer 1200. I also have a 2013 Triumph Rocket III that gets brought out on occasion. Keep up the good work.

    1. Thanks Morris. We have similar tastes, I guess, although these days in interests run more toward the smaller displacement bikes.

      Ride safe, and we will keep up the good work.

  4. Your 92 Harley had an oil pump go south??? And the Triumph Speed Triple is the one you pranged? We need to hear those stories. As long as they don’t bring back too many bad memories.

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