It’s easy for me. I’ve been wearing naked standard tinted glasses since I watched old KZ900s and GS1000s roaming the earth in the late ‘70s. Personally graduating to a Laverda 1200 by the early ‘80s, after a spotty youth in England on smaller displacement dual-purpose bikes, my path to man hood also saw a stint on a Honda CBX550. (Think early GPZ550 and you get a mental image of this European import) With high unemployment and ridiculous gas prices, we had no choice but to embrace the concept of owning one bike that did it all. It certainly made for a lot of seat time, and riding this style of motorcycle is hard wired into my motorcycle soul. We raced them through the lanes, took girls out on dates, and rode them to work on the rare occasion we had a job, or we strapped our meager possessions onboard and took off traveling whenever we could. With no money for anything that came on four wheels, our motorcycles had to do it all.

The situation is, and has always been, a lot different here in the States. Motorcycles are rarely anyone’s sole transportation, and ownership typically is more focused on the hobby side of the equation than the practical. To me, this is one of the reasons that this style of motorcycle has never gained the cult status it enjoys in Europe. It’s not for lack of choice either! Triumph has the well-respected Speed Triple, Ducati the wild Hypermotards or more civilized Monsters, Yamaha the FZ1 and so on. All fantastic motorcycles but still not one of them has taken this niche to it’s full potential.

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