My first motorcycle was a 500cc v-twin Honda Shadow (but I don’t have a digital picture to post). I remember thinking how great that bike was the first time I rode it. It was faster, bigger and better looking than anything I’d ridden before. Of course, up until then I’d only been on the back of a beat up dirt bike and one other old 250cc Honda that I used to take the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s beginner’s course. After less than a year of riding that bike, I moved to Italy and quickly began lusting for a Ducati Monster. I convinced my wife to let me sell the Honda and buy a Ducati in no time and never really looked back.
Since then, I’ve owned one other Honda and a Kawasaki, but that’s been it for Japanese bikes. As I’ve been inundated lately with news of the big quake and Tsunami that ravaged Japan last Friday, though, I’ve thought a bit about the three Japanese motorcycles I’ve owned and the people who made them. I wonder how many of those people were affected by this event. I wonder what it will mean for the companies that made those bikes, their workers and their workers’ families.
And, as usual, I find myself itching to go buy another bike. A Japanese bike.
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