Alan's Old Bikes

• '81 Honda GL1000 Goldwing I never officially owned this bike but I'm including it since I did have it in my yard for a long time. My friend Jason Morris moved to Australia and didn't have time to sell his 'Wing. He left it with me. I felt obligated to ride it...just to keep the carbs clean, of course. When I moved to Colorado, I left the bike with Mike Mitten (who, when he moved to New Jersey, then left it with Mike Weaver).

• '73 Honda CB750K3 which was given to me for free. To get it running I cleaned the rust out of the gas tank, rebuilt the carbs and bought a battery. Not bad for one weekend of work and $30! I've since given it a cosmetic restoration, installed Dyna electrics and given it to my father

• '82 Honda XR500R dirt bike. I bought this because it came with a spare parts bike (which conveniently has the same engine as my race bike) and because it was cheap. I thrashed it around Colorado and Utah for three seasons, trashed the engine, rebuilt it and then sold it for nearly what I paid for it.

• '82 Honda FT500 Ascot this is just a parts bike bike for the above mentioned race bike. I bought it for $200 and it ran but was so cosmetically battered I didn't intend to turn it back into a legit street bike. However, over time reverse inertia slowly replaced broken/worn parts with new ones. By the time I sold it, it was nearly perfect, with only a broken speedo left on the todo list. Its still a cheap, mid-80s, 28hp thumper but it was a perfect bike to loan friends and to get my wife back into riding. I sold it to my friend Scott so that he could use it to teach people how to ride.

• '78 Honda CB400T Hawk which was my first bike. After three years of novice rider abuse,a crank bearing started knocking so I tore the engine apart, bought all new bearings, gaskets, rings, etc then stalled out the project. After sitting in my garage for five years awaiting a rebuild, I gave it away to make room for my new BMW. The new owner eventually put the bike back on the road which was great because it had sentimental value to me and didn't deserve to end up in a junkyard.

• '77 Yamaha YZ125 dirt bike that I basically got for free. It had a siezed engine, so I never really expected to get it running, just salvage off parts for my MX100. I gave it to Mike Weaver when I moved to Colorado.

• '75 Yamaha MX100 dirt bike which I got strictly to toy around on. I'd never done any dirt riding and this bike was a cheap way to get into it. I invested lots more money in it than it was ever going to be worth, rode it around offroad a few times, used it for a track bike for two years (finally siezed it at Road Atlanta), hauled it to Colorado and then traded it to my friend Drew Schlussel for a keg of beer.

• '05 Wildfire 150 So I have this bad habit of having bikes follow me home. In this case, an abandoned Chinese scooter with a few little mechanical problems and one big title problem. I ironed out all of the mechanical problems in about two hours but finally gave up on the title issue. I gave the gutless little red terror to one of my wife's co-workers. However, for the short time I had it, it was certainly different from anything else in the garage!

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