I had an old Victor 441 back in the dinosaur ages. I ran it through the woods and back trails in Ulster county NY. I would load it with camping gear and take it fishing in some really out of the way places. It alsways ran. It never failed. It was a real fun scoot and as I bought it cheap when I sold it I made out like a thief and I bought a HD full dresser. What a pig. Fun on the straight roads but parts were always falling off and the repairs got tiresome after a while. Sold that one off and bought a Trophy 650. Now that was really a fun bike and I kept it for many years and sold it for more than I paid for it in '77. I was a young dad with responsbilities etc and the wife talked me into getting rid of it. I shoulda got rid of her instead. In '81 I stumbled onto a Bonneville Special. The one with the black paint, gold pinstriping, single megaphone exhaust and mag wheels. That was a great bike. I put over 35k miles on the bike riding back and forth from Massapequa NY to NYC when I was a cop. Great transportation but got squirrley above 70 MPH. It was a light bike and kinda tall and even with a windshield it was a handful above 65 MPH. In '83 I let it go and I have regretted it every day since. I dumped the wife in '86 and that was a very good but expensive move. In '05 I again felt the urge for a Triumph but wife #2 put the kibosh on it. "If you get a motorcycyle, we are getting divorced" is what she said. I was looking at an Adventurer at a low price and it would have not been a good purchase anyway. In '06 wife #2 decided to divorce me and threw me out. I lived on an air mattress for two years until my finances allowed me to finally get a decent place and retreive my bed from storage. Two moves later I am finally into a Senior Mobile Home Park in an older trailer and in '07 I bought a new SM. I love it. The ex (wife #2) started to make some noises about how dangerous etc and wanted me to get rid of it. I reminded her that the days when she could demand, command, control and tell me what to do were over when she threw me out. We get along great as friends and spend time together and we enjoy our company together but we live apart. Two Alpha people cannot abide under the same roof and I ain't gonna knuckle under ever again to a female. So we will live apart but still see each other and provide mutual support to each other. She is my best friend and I am hers. I do not see other gals and neither does she have any entanglements with guys.
Triumphs are my love and I will never give them up. I have a small dog "Sgt. Rambo" who believes that he weighs 200 pounds and can kick anybodys butt. Too bad he only weighs 20 pounds and is a Chiweenie. Chihuahua mixed with Weiner dog. He is a one person dog and only tolerates the ex cuz she feeds him. It has taken a year for him to trust her and allow her to pet him.
Between the Triumph, my target shooting, reloading ammo and efforts to play the guitar my life is full and satisfying.
My goal is to get a small trailer where I can provide a safe place for Sgt. Rambo to ride and carry some camping, fishing and shooting gear and extra gas. This tiny gas tank with a range of about 150 miles gives me a queasy feeling on long rides in the desert where gas stations are few and far between.
I have even gotten the ex to enjoy riding a motorcycle with me. The new Corbin seat and pillion are both very comfortable and we will be taking some longer rides pretty soon if I can find some fellow riders to come with me.
There is safety in numbers and with the crazy cagers around here you need a group of at least 3 bikes for safety and to be seen by these nut cases. Not a week goes by in Vegas without a fatal motorcycle accident. The Motorcycle cops here average about 1 accident a month and these guys have sirens and lights and guns etc. They still get mown down but the nutcases in the city.
Once you get out of the city the traffic thins out and there are a lot of decent rides to be made outside of town. This is where most of my riding is being done. However having another pair of bikes riding with you provide a larger safety margin and a breakdown is not the end of the world if you are not alone. A solo bike broken down with a flat or whatever on a deserted desert road in 110 degrees temperatures can be fatal to the rider. Cell phone coverage in Nevada is spotty outside of the big cities. There are some roads in good shape on which you will not see one car all day long so you need to be prepared for the worst.
I love the Speedy. It has more power than I can use, is reliable, easy to maintain, looks great, rides great and was priced right when purchased. The only improvement I would like is possibly to put on a set of America handlebars. Higher, longer and more swept back would improve my comfort I believe and it would not be a big expense to go for. I really would like to see a 6th gear on this bike for those long road trips. My bike at 65 MPH is turning over 4,500 RPM and I would like to get that back down below 4,000 RMP if possible. Getting a front sprocket with more teeth could give me reduced RPM's but at the expense of acceleration etc. So as I am pondering getting a tow behind trailer for the bike I will put that off.
The next step would be to get a leather scabboard for my shotgun or my Garand so I could have those warm and fuzzy feelings on the long trips. The trailer could solve that problem and I also could possibly install a decent set of air horns with the compressor on the trailer because there is not any place to install a good set of horns on the bike.
I have no plans to sell the bike until I can no longer ride it and that ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
