23-04-14, 12:25 PM
As I mentioned in a recent posting, I got the biking bug in my mid teens in the early 80s. No idea why - riding bikes just looked awesome fun! My mum didn't approve, my dad was silent (his brother died in a bike accident in WWII). None of my mates had bikes. In a small rural town in Scotlandshire, if you had a bike (or cropped hair!) you were a nasty hooligan. Unfortunately, there is simply something about motorcycling that bites and bites very very very hard. I had to make do with buying motorcycle magazines and trying to understand what riding a bike was possibly like.
Whilst at university, I did a programming job for a lecturer and got handsomely paid around £2K. That was enough for me to buy bike gear and my first ever motorcycle: a brand new black Suzuki RG125 (from Shirlaws in Aberdeen). This was 1990. A few years later, the bike got nicked. I remember posting a huge email to the ogri email list (as it was then, ixion now) about the theft and my failed attempts to find it wandering the streets of Aberdeen in the wee small hours. After that, a friendly lecturer lent me an old CB100N. Then I trundled around on a battered hand-me-down CBR600 for a few years.
Moving on a few years and I ended up working in Surrey. Fed up with commuting by public transport, I realised it was time to get back on two wheels. There was a bike show on at Excel in the Docklands so I attended. Unbeknownst to me, the Fazer 600 had just come out. There it was gleaming on the Colin Collins stand. I didn't fall in love with its looks yet decided that was the bike for me. Took a test ride a few weeks later and bought a red one.
Moving on to 2006, the FZ1 came out so decided it was the right time to upgrade to my first litre bike.
That's how I got into Fazer land.
If I had my time again, I'd love to be employed in the motorcycle industry in a computing/maths/software engineering guise. Ho hum!
Whilst at university, I did a programming job for a lecturer and got handsomely paid around £2K. That was enough for me to buy bike gear and my first ever motorcycle: a brand new black Suzuki RG125 (from Shirlaws in Aberdeen). This was 1990. A few years later, the bike got nicked. I remember posting a huge email to the ogri email list (as it was then, ixion now) about the theft and my failed attempts to find it wandering the streets of Aberdeen in the wee small hours. After that, a friendly lecturer lent me an old CB100N. Then I trundled around on a battered hand-me-down CBR600 for a few years.
Moving on a few years and I ended up working in Surrey. Fed up with commuting by public transport, I realised it was time to get back on two wheels. There was a bike show on at Excel in the Docklands so I attended. Unbeknownst to me, the Fazer 600 had just come out. There it was gleaming on the Colin Collins stand. I didn't fall in love with its looks yet decided that was the bike for me. Took a test ride a few weeks later and bought a red one.
Moving on to 2006, the FZ1 came out so decided it was the right time to upgrade to my first litre bike.
That's how I got into Fazer land.
If I had my time again, I'd love to be employed in the motorcycle industry in a computing/maths/software engineering guise. Ho hum!