Clean up

Memorial Day was the nice day of the 3 day weekend, sunny and the temps got into the 60s. Charlie spent Saturday and Sunday at the Air Guard, taking the MSF basic rider course to get his M/C endorsement, and had to suffer through lousy weather and inept students. By Monday he was ready to ride. Fred joined us on his new CBR500R. Hannah rode the Monster and I was on the VFR.

We had a mostly pleasant ride north to Jay, which is on the far side of Jay Peak Ski Resort. The road up and over the mountain has been torn up in preparation for new pavement, so it was pretty rough, but we made it through to Jay and stopped there for lunch.

After a quick stop to look at the water coming over the dam in Fairfax, we rode back to Fred's. I swapped bikes with Hannah to see what the Ducati Monster is all about. It's all about fun, is what I can tell you. A first gear roll on wheelie is ready when you want, and there's enough power to get you up to speed anywhere anytime. I don't think I'll be leaving her behind at stop signs anymore.

We got back home with plenty of time to wash and wax the bikes. Jay came over to do some maintenance on his KTM, so we wound up with a garage full of bikes at the end of the day.








Jay got lots of advice about how to change his wheel bearings.




Tucked away in the garage; KTM 300EXC, Suzuki SV650, Yamaha XT500, BMW F800 ST, Triumph Bonneville, Honda VFR800 fi, KTM 200XC, Ducati M1100

HONDA

This isn't exactly a first for me, but it sort of is. I've owned and ridden a few Hondas over the years, most notably the '86 XL600 streettracker that I've posted about, as well as an old CB125 "peashooter" project and some other dirt bikes, but this is my first modern Honda street bike.

Behold my new 2001 VFR800FI Interceptor

I say modern only because it was born this century, not last, but it's a fine distinction because it's a 2001 which is the last year of the 5th generation VFR that started production in 1998. After '01 Honda went with V-Tec camshaft technology, which some of the diehard Interceptor riders didn't really cotton to. But it is fuel injected, which was one of my priorities in a street bike.

Here's an old mechanical drawing that I lifted from Cycle World of the VF1000R Interceptor engine. Such a wicked cool design. Vee four engine with gear driven cams in an era when everybody else was putting the money into inline fours. The exception being Yamaha with their V-Max, but that was aimed at a different market segment.

I'm looking forward to putting lots of miles on this Interceptor...