Motorbikes

I've been riding bikes for almost ten years now, and it's something I truly enjoy. I started out with a couple of small capacity learner bikes, firstly a Suzuki GP100 and then a Honda H100. Both were lots of fun, in a 12bhp two-stroke kind of way, but after having an accident on the Honda I decided it was time to get some proper training and get something else.

I passed my bike test second time round and soon found myself the proud owner of a Honda CBX250RS. This was something of a strange beast, having one cylinder, two carburettors, two exhaust pipes and four valves. As far as I can tell it was something of a concept bike for Honda who were thinking of it as a replacement for their tried and trusted Superdream 250, but it never really got developed any further. It was actually quite a nice little machine, happily carrying me all around the country, more than capable of breaking the speed limit if necessary (even two-up) and fairly economical.

Eventually the CBX started to give me grief and spares were difficult if not downright impossible to come by. I was also hankering after something bigger, and a couple of weeks' searching through Loot soon turned up a VF500-FII for sale locally. A quick test ride and I was smitten, and well and truly hooked. I finally had a bike that really went; it might have been mid-80s technology and not everyone's cup of tea, but with sticky tyres and a bit of bravado it could keep up with almost anything around the twisties. It was also the first time I'd ever owned a bike where people would come up to me on the street and start talking about it.

The VF gradually developed a few minor faults which then gradually became more and more like major faults, and eventually I came to the conclusion that it was going to need something close to a complete stripdown and rebuild to get it back on form. Not wanting to be bikeless while all this was going on, I decided to go and get my first ever brand spanking new vehicle -- a parallel import Suzuki Bandit 600.

I've still got the Bandit and it's a wonderful bike. I admit that the vast majority of my 10,000 miles a year are racked up commuting in and out of central London every day, and the Bandit's flickable enough and more than powerful enough to do this. I've also taken it round large parts of the UK, and it also was used on my first ever international road trip, during the week of the eclipse in 1999, when me and a friend went to five countries and over 1,000 miles in one week. At some point I'll write up that trip somewhere on here!