My Motorcycle Riding

As youths, my brother Dave and I rode our bicycles all over. We loved riding around and exploring the countryside on them and especially finding big hills that we could peddle (sometimes walk) up and then turn around and ride down as fast as we could. The areas we lived in, City of Orange CA, near El Modena and then Goleta, near Santa Barbara, were just being developed, so we had plenty of room to roam. (But our mother always knew where we were…right!...lol ) I remember back then of us watching motorcycles go by and talk about owning one someday.

So both our transition to motorcycles was pretty natural.

I joined the Air Force a month after turning the ripe ole age of 18. In January of 71 I was stationed a mile south of LAX at Los Angeles Air Force Station (Now Air Force Base). My car, a 63 Chevy Impala 4 door, needed some major engine work and car insurance was very expensive for my $300 a month pay check, especially when it was costing me $125 a month for my apt. So by the following June, not being able to afford the car any longer, I sold it and put the money toward buying a motorcycle.

Just a few days after my 19^th birthday In July of 71, I bought my first motorcycle a Suzuki 50cc (more like an oversized minibike – but it was street legal). After 3 months and 3,000 miles I decided I needed something bigger, so in October I talked my dad into co-signing a loan for me to buy a '72 Yamaha 250 twin. A month later I sold the Suzuki and bought the Yamaha. I put on more than 14,000 miles on that bike. The following October I bought a car and the following January sold the Yamaha. In the first year and a half of riding and on those two bikes, I put on more then 17,000 miles.

After getting married in June of 1974, my wife, Chris and I bought a '71 Honda 450 which we rode all over the Sacramento area. I just loved riding up and down those old river roads with Chris. By November, Chris got pregnant with our first son and she quit riding. She insisted someone had to be alive to take care of our child, meaning I was going to go and kill myself on it or something. Although she went on a couple of short rides with me over the years, that pretty much ended our two up riding for a very long time, like 29 years…..)-:  

Over the years and against Chris’s wishes, I have had a number of different motorcycles. Every time I got rid of one, sooner or later I would usually have to have another bike. This little fact has caused my wife a lot of pain. But she has finally gotten use to the idea that I am going to ride a motorcycle, period!

For the past 18 years, I have been riding mid-eighties Honda "V4" Sabres (not the twin, Hardley clones of today). There were a number of factors that influenced my decision to buy a V4 Sabre: the first was: one summer day Dave and I rode out to Richmond, CA from Sacramento. Dave was riding his V45 Sabre (one of 4 that he has owned - three '82s and one '83), and I was on my ’83 650 Nighthawk (with about 20,000 miles on it at the time) . The temperature was 106F degrees and by the time we returned to Sacramento, (around 160 total miles), my Nighthawk was so hot it was sounding really bad and shifting was very hard. Yet Dave's bike was fine and didn't suffer from the heat at all!

I immediately changed my oil and it was so hot it had the consistency of water. I found out a couple of months later that my cams were toasted from that ride. (Honda replaced them under warranty!  (-:)  After that little ride, I decided when I was ready to sell my 650, I would buy a water-cooled bike.

Another major factor that happened about 54,000 miles later (August of 1987), I crashed on the Nighthawk due to the handlebar mounted Vetter Rooster fairing that caused a front-end wobble. I decided that not only would the bike have to be water-cooled, but also had to be able to have a frame mounted fairing. After going around and around with the insurance company, between settling with them on the worth of the bike and buying the bike back, turning around and selling it, I had $1,500 towards the purchase of a new bike.

By this time, I had my mind made up about buying a Lite Sabre, it was water cooled, shaft drive and frame mounted fairings were available for them and it would last from the abuse of my commute. Now, I had two choices, I could buy a new, from the Dealer, ’85 VF700S (Red stripe was all that was available for about $2,500) or look in the paper for a good used one. I chose to buy used and I found a nice ’85 VF700S, Blue stripe, which is what I really wanted. I paid $1,800 and it had 6K on it.

I soon found out that the Hondaline fairings were getting harder to find and I had to call all over to find a dealer that could locate and order one for me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a color matched fairing, but I was able to get a black one.   A few months later, I found a set of new Krauser saddlebags at a Yamaha dealer near Marina Del Rey. So, I was set, I had a water-cooled, shaft drive, bike with not only a frame mounted fairing, but I also had saddlebags! Something I had wanted for a very long time! (-:

After several years of abuse, the Krauser bags cracked and just wore out, since I had finished school, I just put the old KG rack from the Nighthawk on the Sabre. Eventually I found a pair of "NOS, still in the box", Hondaline saddlebags made for the Sabre. Now I was really set, I was all decked out with a Hondaline fairing and Hondaline saddlebags! (-:

In March of ’92 I became the "driver" of the vanpool, from Palmdale to JPL that I had stopped riding the year before. About seven months later and because I was no longer using the bike to commute with, the bike became a luxury item and not a necessity. So I decided to sell the bike.  Larry of Palmdale Honda warned me before he sold it for me, that I would be sorry.  He was right! It didn’t take long before I was missing my motorcycle because for many, once riding is in your blood, it's very hard to give up! It would be 2 ½ years before I would be able to have another bike. )-:

Around January of '95, (we had moved to San Diego by then) I really started getting the bug for another motorcycle. The problem was, I couldn’t really afford one and since I didn’t need it for commuting, I couldn’t justify getting one. In May of ‘95 a job downtown San Diego came along. This was the perfect opportunity to justify riding a bike again. It was a 44 mile commute and since a motorcycle could go down the carpool lane, it just made a lot of sense. My search started for another Sabre and shortly I found a ’83 Sabre with only 3,400 miles.

When I first bought it, it wouldn’t even idle because it had been sitting for a long time. I cleaned the carbs, gave it a good tune up with new plugs and all and got it running pretty good. I rode that bike for three years, which was longer then the job lasted. After that commute ended, and since I was never able to find a Hondaline fairing nor saddle bags for it, (this was before eBay) and since the bike was not as in the pristine condition I wanted, I sold it to Dave in June 1998 (who had worn-out three ’82 Sabres by then). I even hauled it up to Sacramento for him.

Six months later I started looking again for another bike. I had been working as a part-time consultant for JPL, which gave me some extra money. So around January of 1999, while searching the different ads on the internet, I found the bike I had wanted from the very beginning. A 1985 V45 Sabre with color matched fairing and saddlebags. Unfortunately, the bike was in Edmonton Alberta Canada. The bike had only 8,100 miles on it and it was extremely clean.  I found out that it was not even sold off the showroom floor until 1989.  What a find!

Before buying this motorcycle I told my wife Chris that I was going to ride this bike for pleasure, and not just back and forth to work. So, between July of 99 and November 2003, I have ridden the V45 Sabre up to Sacramento several times and on a number of West Coast Sabmag rides and found the V45's power was sufficient to take me along on any road I came across and any trip I wanted to take. And it kept me out of trouble from "getting it on" too hard or to often! ;-)  The saddle of course could use some work, but I even dealt with TB and VSB for those years.

In September of 2003, Chris decided to ride with me on one of the Sabmag Fling rides. On this ride, our first ride in 29 years (-: and since neither Chris nor I are small people, the little V45 had a hard time keeping up with the pace and also holding our weight. (In the 29 years we both had grown a wee bit…;-) I could tell the little 750 wasn't going to cut it. Now, Dave and his wife Gloria had experienced the same problem when they rode two up. So in the summer of 2003, Dave bought a V65 Sabre. He kept telling me how Gloria had a lot more room and the bike had a lot more power to handle the load.

So, not letting Big Bro out do me, I decided to purchase a V65 Sabre so Chris and I could enjoy the rides a little more. She kept telling me that I really didn't need to buy another motorcycle, but believe me, if "we" were going to ride together, we needed a bigger bike. After looking through eBay, I came across a 1984 that looked in good shape and had the Hondaline fairing. It had just over 26,000 miles on it.

Of course with that many miles, it wasn't as cherry as my V45 Sabre when I bought it. So I went to work on the V65 Sabre and have done a lot of rebuilding/repairing/replacing parts; getting it in a respectable condition. I have now put on about 23,000 miles on it and have really enjoyed riding it! To make it even nicer, I have added a few accessories and I added a ’85 Hondaline fairing (NOS, still in the box) with the blue stripe. Using the parts bike’s tank, fender, side covers and tail piece, I was able to transform it into looking like a Blue Stripe ’85, like my first VF700S Sabre was.   (-:

The V65 Sabre has more room, and Chris had gone on a couple rides with me and we enjoyed it a lot more then the V45 Sabre.  The only real problem with either bike, is the maintenance required to keep them up and running.

Because they are a 20+ year old motorcycles, they require maintenance that requires the person working on it, to pull all sorts of parts off to get to things like the valves and carbs. So unless you can do your own work, or unless you want to learn how to work on a motorcycle or if you don’t have a friend to work on your motorcycle, I think you get the picture, I don’t recommend you buy one. But, if you are one of the above, there is a lot of information and help out on the internet.

And this brings me to why my dear brother, Dave, went out and bought a brand new 2005 ST1300 last October. He was tired of working on his bikes. Right after buying the ST, he sold his V65 Sabre to a friend and then kept telling me how I need to go get an ST. (For the whole story, <Click Here> ) So, again, not to be out done by Big Bro,  the day after Thanksgiving 2005, I did just that, I bought a brand new 2005 ST 1300, only I got mine for over $3,000 less then Dave paid. (-: 

The first weekend in April, I rode my ST up to Sacramento for a April Fool’s Day ride. This was my first long distance ride on it and besides the saddle giving me VSB, the bike was great, even in all the rain I encountered. Then the second weekend in April (06), I hosted a ride here in SoCal with the Sabmag group. About 6 people (Dave was one of them) on five bikes came down from Northern California along with 14 other bikes showed up for riding our local roads. <Click Here>. I also talked my wife and my oldest son going on it. We had a great time and Chris really liked the room she had on the back of the ST. I liked the room she had, because when we were on the V65 Sabre, she would push on my back (due to lack of space) and my fore-arms got very tired. On the ST, we did not have that problem. And really, the only problem either of us experienced during the ride was the saddle. They are just not very good for long rides…of over about 50 miles. With that in mind, I had already ordered my Russell Day-long saddle and it is to be built soon.

I’m sure I’m going to really enjoy riding the ST, so much so, Dave and I have decided to ride them around California in September. <Click Here>  We are both looking forward to this ride! (-:

For now, I still have the V65 Sabre, which I have been commuting on. I have it up for sale ($2,500) and if someone buys it, then I’ll start riding the ST to work. In the meantime, Spring and summer are coming and I can hardly wait for the dry stuff to stick around, I just hope the heat doesn’t get too unbearable!