I am having a bit of a time trying to come up with all of the specs on the bike.  The specs will be added later.

I had lived here in Mesa, AZ for about a year and a half when my wife had our first child.  We both knew that when he was born that she would quit work and stay home.  With only one of us working the amount of money coming in dramatically decreased.  So my wife and I started talking about a motorcycle for me.  We figured I never carried anything to work that could go in a backpack.  So I set out hunting for a motorcycle.  I shopped and shopped but just wasn't finding what I was looking for.  One day I mentioned to my buddy at work that I was looking for a motorcycle.  He said his brother had a motorcycle that ran well, but didn't look like much.  He told me that is was a 1989 CBR 600, but that it had a ton of miles on it.  I had him ask his brother what he wanted for it.  Then next day he told me $700 and my first question was, "And it runs?"  He said it ran well, but that the paneling miss-matched and it didn't look like much.  I said sold without even having looked or ridden it yet.  Below are some of the pictures of it the day I brought it home.

I rode it that way for about 6 months, and then finally time it was time to get the bike cleaned up.  I sanded all of the plastic down, and repainted it.  I also cleaned the frame and other components as I went.  By the time I was done it looked like this:

It looked pretty good, and I was very happy and content with the bike.  Then, as luck would have it, I came out one morning to go to school, and it was gone.  It was stolen one day shy of my owning it for 1 year.  I figured it was gone and started shopping for a new motorcycle.  What I found is that to replace my well-running means of transportation was going to cost me a minimum of $3,000!  I kept shopping, hoping for a good deal.  Then one day I got a call from the Mesa PD.  They had found the motorcycle clear over on the other side of Peoria and it was sitting at a junk yard somewhere.  When they called they asked if my bike was black and red.  I told them it wasn't red when I had it!  :)  When I brought it home, it looked like below. They had stolen the side plastic, and it would have cost over $200 to add it, even for aftermarket parts.

  Since the mounts were broken off for the plastic, I just couldn't justify spending $200 on parts that I was going to take home and drill holes and zip-tie on.  So I set to work putting it back together again.  When I was done, I tried to make it look as best as I could.  It wasn't too bad . . . but I wasn't able to spend any money on the parts because I had to end up getting the carbs rebuilt at a price tag of $400+.  So it became the silver bullet.

I then rode it for another year like that before my brother sold me the R1 (see the next page for details).  By the time I moved to the R1 I had put 11,000 miles on it.  I gave it to my brother-in-law.  He wanted to pay me for it, but I told him that the little motorcycle needed so much work done to it to take it down to the shop, spend $600 or $700 on it, and that would be considered paying for it.  He waited for a little bit, and rode it how it was.  Lucky that he waited, because within a month or two of him riding it, it was stolen from his apartment complex!  However, it showed back up again, a couple of weeks later not far from his house.  So, once again, we tore it apart, and went to work on it.  Once we got the paint redone, there was still some problems with it.  So he brought it in and they adjusted the rear suspension, re-synced the carbs, rebuilt the front suspension, replaced the rotors, we replaced the brake pads, and then adjusted and lubed everything for home.  The price tag ended up being $750, but the little bike runs better then it ever has before.  She has over 52k miles on her, but she is going strong!  At present, she looks like below:

She is a great bike, and I am sure if she is well taken care of that she will run for another 30k miles. 

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