Hi guys,
I'm 22 years old and the new owner of a 2005 GZ250, it's my 3rd motorcycle but technically my first working one :tongue: . Over the summer I was living with 2 roommmates who both rode on a daily basis (sportsbikes) and it made me finally decide to get a motorcycle myself. I've always wanted one since I was in high school but never had the money and I was never able to convince my parents that I'd b okay. But I figure now is a better time than never.
Now a little history of my motorcycle escapades. (Skip if you don't feel like reading)
After I saved up some money over the summer I went and bought a cheap ($400) 79 Yamaha IT175 dirt bike, which I took home and rode for all of about 2 minutes before it decide to crap out on me. I was originally planning on learning on the junker and then upgrading to a cruiser. But I ended up spending the whole summer fixing it up, practically changing everything on it and but it still barely ran. I only got about 5 minutes of it riding around my front yard in 1st gear (I had no motorcycle experience or anything at the time and never drove a manual, so the clutch concept was a whole new thing for me). But all in all it still has a lot of problems that makes it unsafe for riding. So I was all about ready to give up on ever riding a motorcycle, but then on a trip home to my parents my dad told me I could have the old junker he had sitting on the front porch. It was a 78 Yamaha XS1100 that had about 78k miles on it and was in really bad shape. The front wheel was locked up and the carburetors leaked gas, but the engine still ran. So I had a new spark of hope for my chance at riding, that was until I realized how much I would probably have to spend on parts to maybe have a chance of getting the XS11 to ride. I was looking at about $1-2k in parts alone, and that still wasn't a guarantee that it would work correctly. I decided that I'd rather spend that money on getting a used motorcycle.
Then I spotted the GZ250 on craigslist and I couldn't resist picking her up. I found it for $1.5k but after negotiations I got it down to $1k (I had to pay about $250 for back fees and a new battery). While talking to the guy about the motorcycle I went ahead and got my motorcycle permit at the
short lines at the DMV. It only took me 5 hours :roll: , but then again thats cause I didn't have a appointment. Then I got one of my roommates to go with me to pick up the bike for me, we got it back to the house and I started learning how to ride. First in the driveway going up and down slowly learning how to shift, come to a stop, taking off, making slow u-turns, etc, pretty much all the basic stuff. I've must've spend 2-3 hours riding the bike that first day. On 2nd and 3rd days I pushed myself to cruise around the neighborhood, and found some empty stretches of rode to shift all the way up to 5th gear and all the way back down. I think I put about 50 miles on the bike just riding in a 2-3 mile radius :tongue: . Finally I figured I was ready enough for the road. On that monday I went ahead and rode the motorcycle to school, it's a 12 mile commute each way. At first I was really scared and intimidated by the cars and traffic in general, but after 2 or 3 days I got used to it (not to mention stalling a few times at a sloped red light :sad: ). But I've been riding the motorcycle to school everyday since and it's be really fun. Plus going from about $5 a day in gas to $5 a week has really made me happy.
All that was about 3 weeks ago. I picked up the motorcycle at 5,110 miles and now it's sitting at about 5,900. When I picked up the motorcycle I changed the oil, front brakes, and lubed up the chain. Last weekend I did a 75 mile cruise around to a local lake to check out the scenery plus test myself with a longer ride. This weekend I topped that. I just finished a 325 mile ride from Riverside to Tehachapi and back , it was 8 hours long and was really cold at night. If I was able to ride on the freeway it would've been 3 hours each way, but the 250 really can't handle it. I'll post more info about that in the ride trip part.
Anyways sorry for the long write up but here are some pictures.
