{"id":23986,"date":"2023-10-11T00:01:10","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T07:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=23986"},"modified":"2023-10-11T06:10:56","modified_gmt":"2023-10-11T13:10:56","slug":"so-many-bikes-so-little-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/10\/11\/so-many-bikes-so-little-time\/","title":{"rendered":"So Many Bikes, So Little Time"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Rob Morel<\/h6>\n

I have been following this column ever since it hit the blogosphere, and I noticed that nearly all of our ExNotes writers have written about motorcycles they previously owned.\u00a0 This story is about some of the motorcycles and scooters I’ve had.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s good to look back and cherish the things that have made life fun, and for me, motorcycles and motor scooters have certainly been a big part of that.\u00a0 Since I was a wee lad out on the farm, motorcycles have been my comfort, sanity and spare time hobby.\u00a0 They kept me out of the drinking and drugs my friends were getting into during high school.\u00a0 I opted instead for racing motocross in the mid 1970s when I was in high school. I was a Suzuki mechanic during high school and I loved it (despite all the teenage hormones interfering with my mind).<\/p>\n

My very first bike was a Motobecane moped, which was also known as our barnyard speedway bike.\u00a0\u00a0 With a little rain on the manure we could slide that baby around like Mert and the boys at the San Jose mile.<\/p>\n

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My next bike was a 1969 Hodaka Ace 100, and it was my first love.\u00a0 I spent many hours riding this motorcycle around the farm.\u00a0 I learned how to work on bikes on this motorcycle.\u00a0 They were great bikes.<\/p>\n

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This next one is a 1969 Maico MC125 motocrosser.\u00a0 I never got to ride or race it. A personal shortcoming is that I like to take things apart to see how they work. I took the rotary carb the off the engine to see how it worked. \u00a0I then put it back together not realizing the rotary valve needed to go on in a certain way to time it with the piston going up and down. It never ran after that and burned up in the chicken house fire. Now, 50 years later, I know how to fix it.\u00a0 They say we get smart too late.\u00a0 This bike, for me, is one of many things that proves it.<\/p>\n

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This 1974 Suzuki TM125 was my elixir through high school. \u00a0I raced it at Puyallup International Raceway\u2019s high school challenge.<\/p>\n

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The 1974 Suzuki TM250 was my other elixir through puberty. In my first race I looped it over backwards and they wouldn’t let me race again at the Starbuck track in Washington.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my 1976 Suzuki TS250.\u00a0 It was my first adventure travel bike and I loved it.\u00a0 I remember its two-stroke motor smoking down Interstate 5.\u00a0 Yeah, baby!<\/p>\n

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Then it was a series of bikes for which I have the memories but no photos. I had a Honda MT250 enduro that I traded for a Skidoo snowmobile.\u00a0\u00a0 I should have kept the bike.\u00a0 Then it was a Suzuki GN400 thumper road bike.\u00a0 It was old school cool.\u00a0 Next up was a 1978 Husqvarna OR250 enduro.\u00a0 I broke a rib on crashing that bike going less than 10 miles an hour and I suppose that makes me lucky (that rib was the only bone I ever broke, and I\u2019ve been riding a lot of years).\u00a0\u00a0I next had a GY200 Chinese enduro with a Honda-based engine.\u00a0 That was followed by a 1998 DR650 Suzuki, a nice big thumper.\u00a0 I had a Kinlon 150 road bike prototype that I later donated to the Barbour Museum.\u00a0\u00a0 They resold it at a Mecum auction a few years ago.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my 1974 Honda MT125 Elsinore project bike. I rode to the Badrock Reunion at Hodaka Days with it a few years back.<\/p>\n

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My 1986 Husqvarna WR400 was a wonderful bike, but it was too tall and too hard for me to kick start with a bad hip. I think I was over-compensating for something. But the price was good so I bought it.<\/p>\n

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I had a 1988 Honda NX250, another one that left me fond memories but no photos.\u00a0 It was a nice little enduro with a water-cooled engine and a 6-speed transmission.\u00a0 It was kind of like a CSC RX3.<\/p>\n

This was my 2006 Suzuki DR650.\u00a0 If it\u2019s a yellow motorcycle, I\u2019m a goner.<\/p>\n

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I had a 2008 Kawasaki Versys 650 (another one with no photos).\u00a0 That was my first long distance traveling big boy bike and I rode it to the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, and Yellowstone.\u00a0 It\u2019s the only bike I’ve ever crashed on the road.\u00a0 I spun out going about 35 mph in Yellowstone on the geyser snot on the road. Who would have thought that was even possible?\u00a0 I smelled like rotten eggs the rest of that day after landing in a ditch filled with geyser water.\u00a0 (Editor’s Note:\u00a0 Better that than crashing the manure-drifting moped you mentioned at the start of this blog!)<\/p>\n

I was one of the first to buy the new 2015 CSC RX3 250 and it was a fabulous motorcycle.\u00a0 It’s the motorcycle you I covered 17,500 miles with it and had tons of camping fun on rides to Baja, Hells Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Canada, Death Valley, the ExtraTerrestrial Highway, the Columbia River Gorge, and Moab. I rode an Iron Butt (baby butt) ride on the RX3, and I rode on the original CSC Western America Adventure Ride and the Destinations Deal ride.\u00a0 \u00a0I called it Donkey Hotey, and mounted a hood ornament on it.<\/p>\n

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Those RX3s were fabulous motorcycles.\u00a0 It’s hard to believe that they came out 8 years ago.<\/p>\n

Other bikes I\u2019ve owned that I don\u2019t have photos of that I owned around this time included a 2008 Yamaha XT250, a 2009 Yamaha XT250, a 2006 GY200 Chinese enduro project R&R motor that I worked on with my son.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a photo of my 2002 MZ 125SM.\u00a0 It was a cool little water-cooled motard bike.\u00a0 I had a lot of fun on it.<\/p>\n

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I bought a 1982 Kawasaki KZ440 basket case bike and put a Harbor Freight 312cc motor in it.\u00a0 It had a constant velocity belt drive. I really wanted a Rokon RT340.\u00a0 I got one of those later, and I’ll cover it below.\u00a0\u00a0I then had a 1999 Suzuki DS80.\u00a0 That was one I fixed to resell for a neighbor\u2019s kid.\u00a0\u00a0I had a 1982 Suzuki PE175Z.\u00a0 I got it running and sold it.\u00a0 It was a very nice enduro motorcycle.<\/p>\n

I owned a 2009 BMW F650GS twin.\u00a0 The BMW was a very nice bike for traveling across America.\u00a0 I rode it from Oregon to Alabama and back.<\/p>\n

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This was my 2009 Aprilia Scarabeo 200 scooter.\u00a0 I bought it to run in the 2020 Scooter Cannonball ride, but Covid canceled that run and I sold it.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s\u00a0 a 1975 Rokon RT340.\u00a0 I had one just like the one in the photo below.\u00a0 It had a Sachs 340 snowmobile motor with a CVT belt drive. I was a twist and go setup that could reach 90 mph.\u00a0 Well, not with me on it, but it could.<\/p>\n

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I had a 1985 Honda Elite CH150 scooter that had been stolen, recovered, and then sat for years out in the weather.\u00a0 I got it running and it became my daily driver. \u00a0I affectionately called it “Tetanus Shot,” because I felt like I needed a tetanus shot just by looking at it.<\/p>\n

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This is my 2008 Suzuki Burgman 400 Maxi scooter that has become my traveling bike now.\u00a0 I guess that makes me a Burg Man, too.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s my 2012 Honda NC700X.\u00a0 I did a 7000-mile Alaska trip on it. It ran like a sewing machine all the way up and all the way back.<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s a 2019 Genuine G400c Chinese thumper road bike.\u00a0 I bought it used for a good price.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fun little nostalgic bike that has a 1970s look.\u00a0 The\u00a0 same company that imports Genuine scooters imports this bike from China.\u00a0 It’s made by Shineray (they pronounce it Shin You Way in China).\u00a0 The engine is based on an old Honda design that Shineray picked up, and that engine is used as the basis for the Janus 450cc.\u00a0 \u00a0Joe Berk rode one of the Genuine motorcycles out of Barry Gwin’s San Francisco Scooter Company<\/a> about three years ago and he liked it, too.<\/p>\n

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This blog may be getting too long with all my old bikes and photos, so I will stop for now.\u00a0 Thinking about my former bikes has been fun, though, and if you have a bike you have fond memories of, please leave a comment below and tell us about it.\u00a0 And watch for a future blog about me going over to the dark side and becoming primarily a scooter rider.<\/p>\n

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