Part One - A New Dawn

As I approach my 43^rd birthday, 33 years of riding motorcycles behind me, I see a gaping chasm in front of me. One giant pothole of ignorance. In all those years, I have never learnt how to maintain these investments that I had probably spent more on than any person. I read recently a joke which said “mummy, when I grow up I want to be a motorcyclist.” To which Mummy replies “Make up your mind, dear, you can’t do both.” But I’m really trying and part of that maturing process is acquiring an intimate physical relationship with my machine(s). Presently, if a bike dies on me then unless I open the fuel tank sway from side to side and hear no sloshing sounds, I’m pretty stuck on what the matter could be. I am sure I'm not alone in being on the brink of phoning the AA or a friendly mechanic coz my bike won’t start only to find that the kill switch is on (actually I lie and my mechanic can attest to that). So I log onto Amazon and order lots of books about motorcycle maintenance. I even clear out my garage and organise my tools and buy a few more. But what I really need is a project.

I have two bikes already. One is my pride and joy and the other is my joy and pride that my mate is borrowing for the summer. I’m going to make mistakes; some of them will probably prove to be quite costly and perhaps Italian exotica is not the best place to start a fledgling career in home motorcycle maintenance.

Now to the fun part, the part I do best: research! I can while away days sat in front of a screen looking for the right bike, I’ll log onto the owners fora (get you with our fora!) and get a feel for its triumphs and its foibles and what the going prices are. However, in the space of three weeks I change my mind three times. As I'm acutely aware that I have a very tight budget to play with and a very unsympathetic wife to negotiate, this is whittled down to two and then the deciding factor is what I can find at the right price, in the right place. Whilst I am prepared to drive the other side of the country for the right bike, it’d be much more convenient if it were within a 50-mile radius.

The one thing I am sure of is that it needs to be a Honda. The Japanese marque’s reputation for solid built quality, unrivalled reliability and thoughtful engineering meant that all other contenders fell by the wayside. I wanted something simple so an air cooled single cylinder bike seemed best. I wanted to ride all year round so something with a fairing and hand guards. I wanted to be able to spend all day on it (with the occasional pillion), so something with a comfortable riding position and saddle. So my perfect bike was a Honda NX650 or the Dominator to use its more popular moniker. Which is why I ended up with something a bit different. No matter how grown up I think I am, when it comes to buying bikes, all rhyme and reason goes out the window as soon as I leave the house with a pocketful of bank notes on my way to view a potential purchase.