I fell in love in Spring '84. Which Bike? reported on the Laguna
Seca launch of the Kawasaki GPz900R Ninja, and I was smitten. Two years,
two CB125Ts
and a GPz550 later, in August '86 I became the proud owner of an '85 Ninja.
It lasted just six months until it was
cruelly killed
by a car driver, but she did the decent thing, and in March '87 I bought an
'86 Ninja.
which we kept (along with an FJ1200) until August '94.
Amanda cried when it went.
After a brief infatuation with the FireBlade, in June '95 we saw the
beautiful Ducati 748. We tried to buy one, but we waited, and waited,
and waited, and it never came. We even
visited the factory
to try to hurry them along. But it was not to be. We gave up ...
In November '96, after ten months waiting for our 748, we
finally gave up and bought a
ZX-6R and a '94 ZXR750.
In March '99 we traded the ZXR for a
GSX-R600,
then in August we bought a RVF400. 3 weeks later Amanda was
knocked off
the
RVF
at a trackday at Cadwell, and then in Easter 2000 I
crashed the GSX-R at the Nürburgring,
and it was 6 months before the neurologists allowed me to ride.
In June '00 we sold the ZX-6R to an ixi, and the salvage of the wrecked GSX-R to a friend. In November '00 I was allowed to ride and bought another GSX-R, then in March 2001 I sold that to a (different) friend so I could buy the new fuel-injected GSX-R. (You can tell I like GSX-Rs, can't you? :-) ).
Good as this bike is, I still managed to fall off of it twice in
'01 :-(
(worryingly, both by losing the front): First in May at
Donington
and the second, in September when my scaphoid had (finally) healed, at
the 'Ring.
In March '02 we replaced the broken RVF with an
Ixion friend's better-treated example.
