As every motorcycle enthusiast knows, it’s impossible to own just one bike. Well, I added two more to the collection this weekend. Having sold a project bike about a month ago, this brings me up to five (plus the two 3 wheelers, so 7?)
This past weekend I took a bit of a roadtrip after a fellow Opponaut offered me a deal on a bike that I just couldn’t refuse. Along the way I met up with a friend who I haven’t seen in several years and ended up trading him a tote full of game systems that I’ve lost interest in, for a bike that he hasn’t ridden in years but was still paying for a garage to store it in.
1650 miles, 27 hours in the truck, and 104 gallons of gas, which is a lot, but in the end was well worth it. I brought back one awesome bike, another decent bike, spent some good time with my dad, saw a friend I haven’t seen in years, and saw some parts of the country I’ve never been to.
I didn’t grab a lot of pics of the two bikes yet as I was pretty exhausted, but the two gems I brought home are an ‘85 Honda XL600R, and an ‘83 Honda VT750 Shadow. Both will run after a little carb clean, but the Shadow needs a bit more work to be both road worthy and presentable.
Plans for the XL600 are as of yet undecided. Get it fired up obviously and ride it all over the grid roads around home and on the trails out in the Black Hills. But I’ve got a perfectly good XR600, with some better components that I wouldn’t mind swapping over before the XR600 gets sold (or traded, I’ve got a 2 stroke itch that needs to be scratched).
Plan for the Shadow is a cleanup and mild refresh, brakes, fork seals, seat cover, new blinkers, clean and polish, make sure it runs good and sell it. I’ve ridden this bike before, it’s an awesome cruiser, and a V-twin that revs to 9K is a glorious thing, but a 3rd road bike, (4th road legal bike) is not something I really need, so it’s gonna go away to fund a few other things on the want list.
If Oppo is interested I’ll try to post some updates on both bikes as I get working on them.
Random road trip side note. You Michigan and Chicago area drivers are maniacs, I’ve never seen such blatant disregard for speed limits (even though I agree they were way to low in the Chicago area, but I’m sure as hell not getting a ticket), and I’ve never seen to many accidents, and some fairly bad ones at that, with only a couple of inches of snowfall.