FIRST UP:
Back in late 2008 My wife encouraged me to spend a little money and indulge my desire to ride. I was a competitive cyclist in my late teens to early 20's so I've always liked speed on 2 wheels.

With a family I never felt comfortable taking that big of a risk so waited until my kids were most raised (late teens.)

With a little research (I'm WAY better at it now) I thought the Honda CBR 600 in copper was the ticket, but boy am I glad I didn't get it. The sales guy did his job and listened to me and hooked me up with a much more appropriate bike, the Suzuki GSX650f. It has the look of a sport bike (kind of) but half the power and a lot more comfort.

I rode it every chance I got. 30 minutes free, I was on the bike. I eventually did the MSF with Bret Tacs’s motorcycle school.

Over the first couple years I packed on the miles, clocking 22K and going through a lot of the first bike learning pains.

I saw Bret Tacs at the Progressive Motorcycle show and he encouraged me to begin doing my own maintenance and that has saved me a lot of money over the years. This education, both learning to do maintenance and learning what gear is good (from making mistakes) has served me well.

NEXT UP
Two years in and I really wanted to take a step forward and since work was going well I decided to buy a Triumph Sprint ST. It was a used 2006 with 9300 miles at a shop near Bremerton, WA. I went out there and test rode it in the rain following a young shop guy. The test ride was useless, but I bought it anyway and fell in love with the power and sound.

1050 Triple, single sided swingarm, factory heated grips and risers AND hard cases. What’s not to love? Overall this is a clearly a stunning machine and built well, but as I gave myself over to the siren song I found that I was starting to ride too fast too often. Along with the forward lean cause finger numbness and wrist pain I was not going to keep this bike for the long run.

AND THEN
With the best of intentions to have a road trip adventure before our youngest was off to the Army we began planning how to drive and ride out to Montana and back. While planning, my wife caught the bug and announced that she wanted to ride as well. Having only two bikes, neither of which she could ride, poised a problem and an opportunity.

I took her to a few motorcycle shops, thinking the Suzuki TU 250x might be good, she was unhappy about the seat height. We tried the Triumph dealer next and she was immediately drawn to the Bonnevilles.

We weren’t about to buy new so I started researching. I found an SE (mag wheel) version down in a shop in southern California. After some quick communication, a credit card down payment and airline miles I flew down, got picked up by the shop guy at the airport and started back up north. 3 Days of boring ass freeway and I was loving the ride. The Bonnie just made riding FUN.

The best lesson from that bike was that if you find yourself becoming a serious rider, you’re doing it wrong.

SOME CHANGES
We shipped the Suzuki GSX out to North Carolina for the boy and I ended up selling the Sprint leaving me with only the Bonneville for a while. I toured on it and just had a blast even with the sub par suspension and tight seat to peg ratio. I felt cool and just had a blast.

NEXT UP
My wife and I went up to the Olympic National Park and I met a guy on a r1150r and just loved the look of it and talking with him, it was clear it was comfortable and capable. I found one at a BMW dealer in Seattle, but a trip to Georgia to see the boy and the bike was bought. A couple months later the sales guy called me telling me about another one just traded in that was a little different; A r1150r Rockster!

Super comfortable, lots of torque and once you get used to the telelever it’s hard to go back. It had some issues (the ABS was based upon a servo system and it was terrible when you tried to slightly change the brake pressure.) Once I removed that, the bike was transformed.

I rode miles and miles on this thing and even did a week and half tour down to southern California and back - I have lots of pretty bad old YouTube videos to prove it.

Because of the loss of my wife’s father, I decided to sell it to find a bike that would be way more comfortable for her to ride pillion. My plan was to take her as much as possible to see beautiful things.

SO THEN I FOUND
The Versys 650 was redone for 2015 and was reported to be very comfortable for the pillion. While casually looking my brother found a great deal on a 2014 and not a month later I found a used 2015 in a shop down in Oregon. I took my wife so she could test ride it with me and I rode it home over the next couple of days, first riding with my brother a bit then staying over at my Mom’s for a visit.

I put more miles on the Versys in a shortest amount of time. I completely fell in love with this thing and rode it on many multi day trips. Lots of them down to Oregon and back but also many trips to eastern Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.

Last year I started to ride it off pavement after adding crash protection and 70/30 tires. The Versys has done quite well, but I was finding it’s limit and didn’t want to kill it being stupid.
40K miles later and I’d still be packing the miles on it if I didn’t want to do more off pavement riding.

DIRT RELATED RESEARCH
I convinced myself that a RE Himalayan would make a could companion bike to the Versys; One for the road, the other dirt. I found a few but all were over priced in my opinion for what it is. Supply and demand had make them 1K more than they should have been.

While looking I ran across an RE Intercepter 650 and remembering what I loved about the Bonneville I pulled the trigger on one that had a few hundred miles on it, priced well below what I’d expect.

I thought that if I had a classic bike to poodle around in the sun with I could take the next year or so finding out if I really wanted to ride off pavement without completely up[ending my moto garage. Thus the Versys conversion.

FINALLY MAKING THE MOVE
After riding a year, I was at an inflection point. Either try and do something like a 19” wheel conversion or get a bike made to ride trails.

Himi was just never going to work as my all rounder.
I did find a SWM Superdual and both the X and T look to be great bikes, but maybe a little overpriced and no dealers around here at all. I’d have to flay to Texas or elsewhere, which isn’t out of my realm of desire, but with the new Kawi coming out now with EFI and I decided to buy my first new bike in years - and probably my last.