this is one of the early bikes that started the madness for me, a Suzuki TS250 dualsport. I will call this the Walt Bike as it was my brother's first motorcycle purchased from his college roommate, who moved up to bigger and faster offerings from Honda, a CB750F Supersport, I do believe. (That Honda, for the record, was the first bike that scared the beejesus out of me in a good way while riding with said roommate when I was 13.). As for the Suzook, Walt rode this thing many times from Batavia, Ill to Champaign/Urbana where he attended the University of Illinois. Dad was always worried when he'd take off with the bike loaded down with stuff for the 100 mile ride to the U of I. The bike proved far more reliable than Walt's '67 Mercury Montego which had a habit of always shitting out in some doo-hick town 30 miles from campus. Sadly, the TS250 met its demise in Michigan's upper pennisula when Walt was out blasting around on fireroads. I still remember being the one to answer the phone at home when Walt called to tell us that he crashed the bike and that he was in the hospital with a badly broken leg, which would eventually sidetrack him for more than a year. My response was, "Boy, mom and dad aren't gonna be happy about that," and "What about the bike?"
More sadly, it was 12 years ago this month that Walt passed away unexpectedly. Though he intended to get riding again, he never did having been sidetracked by life itself; marriage, a child, helping wife through medical school. So with that, let's get the 2012 riding season underway.