Offered a GSX-R1100 cheap by a dealer because it had a scratch on the swingarm, I entered Nirvana. Even for a rider of my mediocre talent the Gixxer crushed all comers - you could sweep up behind anything (GPz900's especially) and pass it before an impossible turn: next time you looked in the mirrors they were gone. Checking the speedo before a turn usually involved around 150mph - this was always going to end badly. Getting home late one night I left in on the front path, rather than ride to the lock up and risk the ridicule of pub homecomers pointing at the dolt on a bicycle in full leathers. Next morning the 1100 was was gone.
The insurance money went on another magazine reviewer's must-have - a Honda VFR750L, the first of the single-sided swing-armers. By now I'd met Dr. Girlie Nice-Smile, and endless commutes to see her in various hospitals and homesteads meant the Honda racked up the miles including a track day organised by the RICS a few days before our wedding. But I didn't get the Honda, and it languished in the back garden all winter because (a) I couldn't be bothered to ride it 500 yards to the lock-up and (b) the scrotes who lifted the Gixxer felt the same way. One ad in MCN proved that I'm the only person on the planet who feels ambivalent about Sochiro's V4: inundated by calls I sold it to some Tynesiders who rode on to Cornwall (200 miles away) because "it seemed a shame to come so far south and miss it."
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