That would have been a nice ride.
In 1984 I rode an already well worn out Yamaha 750 triple cylinder to central Australia on a 10,000km run over 16 days, camping on the side of the road. Considering the number of close calls, crashes and broken stuff which happened along the way, I'm amazed we made it back home. It was one of these:
My ride buddy had a new (at the time) Honda VF750:
I had a ride on it, 235km/h on the
Barkly Highway was enough for me. No cattle fences up there.
A friend had the 850 custom version of that yamaha. No issues.
Ive ridden the 500 interceptor, it was heralded for its handling but the 750 would have been a better fit for me.
Before I had that FJ11, I had this abomination:
![Honda-CX500-Turbo-Right-Side.jpg Honda-CX500-Turbo-Right-Side.jpg](https://diysolarforum.com/data/attachments/82/82210-0138c1f63fc630d694fcecd8928d59b6.jpg)
The purchase of which was motivated because it was a deal and Id wanted one since I saw its side view in a magazine. Thats its only good side, any other angle is just weird.
But looks arent that big a deal. It was scary to ride even with very accurate inputs.
It was very top heavy, initiating a turn was slow then it fell deep into a lean. It was an early shaft drive, jacking made the ground clearance hit or miss.
All that compounded the worst of it, the engine suffered from typical of its time long turbo lag, but this was worse than turbo bikes from the other mfrs because it was small displacement and heavily boosted. So it was a pig off the line, you gave it a little more throttle, nothing, a little more.... Then whoosh more than you asked for. Add the shaft jacking and high CG and it was a suicide machine. Honda improved on it with the 650 but by then word had gotten out how bad it was.
Thus stepping over to the FJ11 was so easy, it was forgiving, its strengths were the CX turbos weaknesses, by the end of the first day riding it it felt like an old shoe, or an extension of my mind. I looked at where I wanted to go, the FJ went there as if there was nothing else between us.
After riding it several years I parked it one day under a tree in our yard and never got on it or a motorcycle again, to this day, I guess 34 years later.
I rode with a crowd here in san diego that made a ritual of racing out on highway 94 on sunday mornings. I wasnt nearly the best but had 100k miles on bikes by then. Speed was adreniline, got me high. One rider who I was close friends with had an FJ11, same year. He was a bit older and did less stupid things than most of us. He was a manager at Tunecraft. Thus we were surprised when a week after he traded up to the new FZR1000, hed been in a head on accident on the way home from work. He and the car that crossed over the line each going 70+, he had all the gear on.
It was at least 3 months later when he wanted visitors at the hospital, what I saw made it difficult to hold down my lunch. Left arm and leg were gloved, that is stripped of skin and muscle down to the bone. He spent almost a year as impatient as they did about 20 surgeries grafting things from the rest of his body on to the two sticks dangling on the left.
I knew wrecks happened, guys died, I had wrecked and been hurt before. But the really bad stuff always happened to other guys. They were squids, or drunk, or didnt have the skills I believed I had.
But this guy was a good friend, a good rider, never rode drunk, had the same machine I did... and wasnt taking the chances I was. I was dusting cops at least once a month. Often on purpose.
I couldnt just say he was somebody else.
If it happened to him, it would happen to me, and I was going to get married in the near future.
Sorry for the long tome, it was asked why I sold it.
Its funny now but I wrecked a few cars and bikes in my crazy days, was lucky no scars were left you can see today.
When youre close to age 60 you realize its pretty cool to have all your appendages intact, no facial disfigurations, etc.