Modern Vespa

This afternoon, I fired up my '81 CB900C and rode it to the consignment power sports dealership in Rapid City to show it to Brian, the owner.

He has a bunch of old Honda and Yamaha bikes in a corner of the shop, and he really liked this good-looking old example of this Honda model and offered to buy it from me.

It only took a few minutes to arrive at a satisfactory amount for both of us, a check was issued, and I was then given a ride home by one of his young employees.

This Honda was my most recent motorbike purchase (from last year) and was my seventy-second machine since it all started in 1966.

'I love them, but I don't marry them' has been my motto for decades, they come and they go.

So....what's next?

Twin turbo Hayabusa with nitrous injection.

It feels to me that you guys who flip bikes - and I recognize, a lot of people do this - are hardly getting to know them! We keep everyday driver cars through about 175k miles and my wife's convertible is a 2000. I seem to mate for life with my toys. I've had my almost impossibly-old sailboat since 1991 (it is now 56 years old) and the only scooter I've sold in my life went when I graduated from college. I will keep the three scooters I have now until I don't use them any more, or they are unusable to anyone.

I'm not passing judgement at all, it's just a different mindset. I bought my favorite scooter, the Scarabeo 500ie, from a flipper who put 18 miles on it while he owned it for 9 months. I've put 15k miles on it.

I think that the longest I've ever kept any motorcycle (or in the case of a scooter, our handful of Burgman 650's) is three seasons, and more often just two.

Perhaps of note however, is that I've now owned my Vespa GTS300 and Triumph Rocket 3R for three years, and have felt no desire to sell or trade off either of them, probably because they are both quite unique machines, and there just isn't much out there that can 'fill their shoes'.

I have no real desire to buy a new GTS when I'm so pleased with my current one, and about the only bike that I might replace the Rocket with would be a 2nd generation Yamaha V-max or Ducat Diavel...and I have zero interest in any Ducati machine, especially where I live, with nobody to service or tweak that brand of bike within 400 miles.

I would absolutely love a 1700 V-max, but not enough to sacrifice that magnificent monsterTriumph for.

Selling or trading off machines as frequently as I do is a product of having a much higher desire for different motorbikes than I do the funds to acquire them without some sacrifice. I would hang on to many of them much longer if I didn't need to loosen the resources for something else that pops up, both planned or unexpectedly.

The consignment dealer that I sold the Honda to a couple days ago has one of those 'unexpected finds' on his sales floor right now, and it has my interest starting to percolate a bit.

It's a 2006 Kawasaki 1600 'Mean Streak' cruiser that just arrived from California.

Other than the noisy-ass aftermarket mufflers(?), it's perfectly stock and super minty, with about 1100 miles on it. I'm not a 'cruiser guy', but they do have a certain relaxed charm about them and have truly enjoyed almost all of that type that I've owned in the past. I expect it to be priced between $3500 and $4500.

One can ask why on earth would anyone have bought that motorcycle new to then do only 1100 miles in 19 years. It makes no sense.

I don't understand that either. As a rule, whenever I buy a bike of any sort, new or used, I can't stay off of it.

Though there is always an intense 'honeymoon period' in the first few weeks of ownership that inevitably cools down to some degree, I almost never allow a machine to collect a lot of garage dust and will continue to load a respectable number of miles on them.

My 2020 GTS300 had only five hundred miles on it when I bought it in August of '22, and has just under 10,000 on it now, so considering that my annual MC mileage is split up between three or four machines, it gets a good share of my total yearly riding miles.

I have a wondering eye when it comes to PTW's

Although I have had my T5 from new in '91 (it will get handed down if I haven't busted it), all my others come and go.. and most of them I then go on to regret selling but the sale of one always enables the purchase of the next

I get to know them enough to either miss them when they are sold or traded, or have a celebratory beer to commemorate their moving on to someone who may appreciate them more than I did, but that's rare.

If I could afford to, I'd have a solid collection of bikes that would have permanent residency status, probably around twenty machines, but that just isn't to be, so I have to be satisfied with sampling them on a 'here today, gone tomorrow' basis.

My GTS300 is currently 'safe', and nearing the three year mark, so it's set to beat my ownership average by quite a bit, and the reason for that is because it definitely fills a unique niche, and performs, overall, well above my initial expectations. It's down-and-dirty 'fun rating' also gets it a lot of points.

Unlike a generic motorcycle type, It is not easily replaced with anything similar.