Past bikes #1

I'm going to do a little show and tell with some of the scooters I've had in the past. They won't be in any particular order. I put these here because Lucky had never heard of an SRX and I just happened to run across the pictures a couple days ago. The first one is the first bike I ever customized. Come to think of it, it was the only one I ever customized. It was a very cool looing Yamaha RD350. It was kind of a "bitsa" as it had a '70 R5 bottom end, a '74 top end, most of it was a '74, but it had '75 body work. I put a big headlight from a Z1 on it and it had black powdercoated aluminum rims and hubs with stainless spokes. SpecII pipes, N.O.S. Guliari seat. Lots of stuff was black on this bike. It looked cool but was/is slow. I had another one that was a complete piece of shit but ran like a raped ape. It would barely idle and had a hinge in the middle but it would slam your eyeballs into the back of your skull. It left me stranded once and I sold it shortly thereafter-devil bike. Back to the nice one. Funny story-One of my buddies has a '75 RD350 that is all stock. He decided he was going to paint over that gorgeous orange paint and put on some gay custom shit (he was 16 at the time). I says to him, I says "give me that nice orange paint, and take the scratched up purple stuff from my '74 and paint it instead." I knew that someday he would want that orange paint back. Fast forward a few years. Guess what? He says to me, he says "Man, I wish I hadn't given you that orange paint. That's all that is keeping my bike from being totally original". I'm a good friend ain't I? So me and his brother in-law stole, that's right, stole the bike from his shed and swapped out the paint and did a top end job for him when he graduated apprenticeship school. I bought another set of bodywork and it was in primer when I sold it. My buddy kept the gay custom paint too. The new owner painted the bike yellow and put a tuning fork decal on the tank. It looks ok, but to me all these should be orange.

I've owned all kinds of stuff, bikewise, in my time. The Yamaha SRX-6 was far and away my favorite. 600cc four-stroke single, four valves, two carbs. This was the perfect bike for me. This one was an '86. Of course they only made it for one year so they are all 1986's. It came in red or grey. I sold mine to pay off my wedding. Yeah, yeah, I know. She's a good woman though. This bike handled really well and had great brakes. It had a big stainless Supertrapp on it and it sounded like a Hughes UH-1B when it idled. It would wake up my neighbor Bill and he'd say "Surly's riding the helicopter to work today". Oh, how I miss it. I'm broke as hell right now too so there is no chance of buying another one. If you know someone who owns one, take it for a ride.