Who can catch a Kawasaki?
- Fred
- Mar 24
- 12 min read
Updated: Apr 14
In September of last year, (2024) she who must be obeyed decreed we visit her youngest spawn who was living in Fort Collins, Colorado at the time over a long holiday weekend.
The highlight for me being some ATV action in Golden CO that she organized to attract me to go along.
This was a lot of fun and stirred up the now long forgotten memories of my youth when I rode various motorcycles as my sole means of transportation for a good 10 year period.
My first ever ride was an ancient red Suzuki B120P which I had to acquire from Bangor Honda when I was 17 to get me to college and back on Mondays and Fridays when it became apparent my parents would not be doing that due to financial avoidance issues.
This bike was a dire and very shit ride indeed and I crashed it into a Land Rover while trying to overtake it on the right while it was turning right in some town in Anglesey, North Wales on my fourth ever ride on the bloody thing.
I think the gods were trying to smite its ugly red and rusty ass is my theory and explanation for this accident…
I never did that particular dumb ass manuever ever again either by the way and it was rather obvious it was a stupid move - I just cannot explain why I did such a stupid thing!
This was my first of 3 car collision events I have had while on a motorcycle to date.
The second bike accident event was not my fault however, a fellow Telkom student attempting to snag a parking spot one morning just drove out in front of me from the opposite side of the road at the Telkom Training college in Silverton and I clipped the front end of his Toyota car and cracked my right tibia as I flew over his hood while screaming that he was an asshole.
He at least apologized but he fucked my beloved Monza up pretty good!
The first Land Rover accident I mentioned while piloting the Suzuki B120p certainly was my fault though.
My third accident event was me not being familiar with the (lack of) power of the TS250 2 stroke machine I was trying to sell for an Irish pal of mine which caught me out while trying to speed through a changing traffic light and I barely avoided the Audi Quatro heading my way that did run the light from his side.
I clipped the traffic light post with my left hand and shattered it as I hit the curbside and got flung 360 degrees summersault style to land flat on my back with a very broken hand.
The Suzuki was not so lucky and impacted the same light post after I went mostly past it (except for my left hand) and it did not look very pretty post merge with said light post either.
I marveled that I had not been killed in that one!
The Irish guy Brendan, who was the owner of said TS250, was not happy and tried to get me to cough for it but I told him he shoulda informed his insurance co and he took a risk, the same as I took a risk riding it.
Needless to say, he was not my pal no more after that!
He bought a Suzuki GS1000G a few weeks later and came around to my house to tempt me with it but this time he actually declined to let me crash it for him!
The irony is that he actually wrote it off himself a few years later before going back to Ireland and he was in hospital a long time in that particular mangle.
In terms of skills related to riding these dual wheeled death traps, my second ever motorcycle was what I really learned my biking skills on and that was a 1976 Honda CB200 twin (drum brake model, not the disc brake one).
I bought it from a guy at college in Bangor (Wales) I was in OND engineering classes with who went by the name of Clayton.
Clayton himself was riding a Honda 400 Dream (not the later Super Dream) and wanted shot of the CB pronto Maximus.
It was a very strong bike was that Honda. I abused it mercilessly, but I never had any accidents on it.
I banged around the side roads of Gwynedd county centered on Bala on that thing and spent all my spare cash on gas for the darn thang!
However, within 14 months of acquiring it, my father and I had a few disagreements, leading to me being sent on a one-way flight back to South Africa to stay with my mother.
This was a consequence of my father's inability to balance his drinking habits with the responsibility of providing the education he had promised my brother and I, highlighting his failure to prioritize his life responsibilities as a parent.
My dad was quite unreliable in this area and would have fit perfectly as a Gen Z Zombie in the world of today.
I personally supported five kids through four years of college, and only two of them were my own!
Actually, I experience a sense of déjà vu when interacting with typical Gen Z individuals who closely match the Cedric Beard profile!
In fact, I frequently ponder whether the bastard was reincarnated as a Gen Z-Zombie and started their entire whiny, overly sensitive routine.
It seems very Cedric Beard does all this woke namby-pamby Gen Z lark!
In any case, upon returning to good ol' South Africa, I promptly got myself a Moto-Morini 500 V twin to ride around on with my now irky self.
These machines were also unpopular in South Africa because they weren't suitable for serious highway travel and were too cumbersome for city driving due to their Cafe Racer low racing position.
Without considering the perspective of a daily commuter, I naturally opted for the racer style.
I truly ought to have purchased the Strada model, known for its upright handlebars and seating position.
Despite its shortcomings for the commuting job I used it for, it was a really good bike.
I only dropped it once while attempting to bump-start it on a wet cobblestone road at my mother's apartment in Edenvale during the summer of 1981.
As the Liverpudlians I went to school with would say, its battery was especially naff!
Considering the slick cobblestone road and the 72-degree V-twin's 11.2:1 compression ratio, attempting a bump start was a very foolish idea.
I never engaged in that kind of foolish behavior again!
My subsequent motorcycle was a Yamaha XS750-D triple, a shaft drive powerhouse that I adored, which I acquired in Durban while absent without leave from my 2 Signals Unit in Pretoria in 1982.
We did national service in South Africa and my good mother had signed me up without my consent which is why we were not pals for around 3 years.
I eventually owned six of these Yamaha Triples because they were widely disliked and could be bought cheaply in South Africa at the time, and I absolutely adored them!
This one I bought in 1985 for R1350 and it had just 970 Km on the clock!
It featured a shaft drive rather than a chain drive, which I favored for the large cruiser bikes.
After I started living independently as a result of my sense of humor failure about the national service thang, I initially struggled with a Yamaha YB100 two-stroke emergency transport machine, followed by a Yamaha XS400 US custom twin.
After a Yamaha XS 850 triple I went back to an XJ650.
I don't understand why people were so anxious about these Yamaha three-cylinder triples; they were actually quite reliable, especially when compared to the Suzuki Katana and GS 4-cylinder models. The Honda 750, from a handling perspective, was a rather, er, poor bike.
I believe the Kawasaki HS750 and KH 2-stroke triples discouraged people from the concept of triple cylinders.
I personally owned a KH400, 500, and 750 two-stroke triple consecutively and concluded that they were all totally dreadful in the process.
I melted the middle pot in each one of them, and they were all consigned to the scrap heap with zero hesitation.
Luckily, the person I got them from was a poor poker player and an alcoholic, and I did my part to rescue him from his own habits with almost no cost to myself.
The XJ650 was both too low and too dull for my taste, yet it was incredibly reliable and also featured a shaft drive.
The second bike I collided with head-on at the Telkom training college was a lovely red Moto Guzzi V50 Monza, which was also a shaft drive machine.
I believe I might have a preference for shaft drive gear!
The splined collar in that shaft drive unit kept failing, which was my initial encounter with subpar Italian materials from the 80s.
This issue was quite significant in all Italian motorcycles from that time period.
While riding a Suzuki TS250 trail bike on the University of Pretoria campus, I did have a third head on incident with a traffic light pole while trying to avoid getting hit by an Audi Quatro, which resulted in the breaking of my left hand sometime between owning the XS400 and the V50 Monza, around the 1985 time point.
This resulted in me acquiring a rather dull but affordable Kawasaki Z400-J, which I upgraded to a Z500 by swapping the engine and changing the front fork after discovering that the 400 four engine was somewhat sluggish.
With my right leg still broken from the Monza accident, I drove it while my crutches were held by my eccentric passenger, who was my second wife at that time.
I customized the entire Z400-J in Z500 black because the Pretoria Kawasaki store had a tank, side covers, and front and rear plastics from a customer who had paid for and ordered them but was unable to collect them due to his unfortunate death in a shooting accident.
I think it was his bikes engine I bought from my local motorcycle store as well after his surviving son came off on it and it was cannibalized for parts.
I painted the wheels in signal red to complement the black adorned with subtle blue and red stripes that the parts came with.
I won a competition for that custom upgrade work, recognized as the best upgrade for a mid-range motorcycle by the Star newspaper motoring magazine that year.
I also had a signal red custom seat made for it and it looked rather splendid did that thing!
I also fit the front forks of a GPZ-550 with twin disc brakes to give it some better stopping power while I was at it.
After everything was finished, it was the most enjoyable bike to ride, and I seriously regret ever selling it.
For around two years, I owned both the Kawasaki 500 custom and the Yamaha XJ650.
After that, I had a Yamaha FJ900 with a shaft drive and a Suzuki GS850-G, which also featured a shaft drive, before my final large motorcycle, the 1988 Yamaha FJ1100, which, unfortunately, was a chain-driven machine.
I only bought it because the XS1100, which was a shaft drive machine, had the handling characteristics similar to a Pick & Pay shopping trolley that had been badly mangled by a Massey Ferguson 2.0 liter tractor.
The FJ1100 actually handled like a motorcycle!
At this stage, I preferred having two bikes so that if one became unusable for any reason, I would still have another available.
While riding the FJ1100 at over 100 mph on the main freeway between Pretoria and Johannesburg early one morning @ around 5:45 AM in 1992, the drive chain broke, dramatically damaging the crankcase.
On that otherwise fine morning, I slid the FJ down the N1 with literally no one else on the road which was fortunate as I slid across 3 lanes of freeway.
I gazed at the wreckage of the engine for nearly an hour in shock before tossing a match onto the leaking gas tank and waited for the emergency services to show up.
I personally didn't suffer much harm from sliding down the road in that spill, aside from some bruises to my body and ego.
Following that, I drove smaller cars such as a Renault 16TS, Volvo 122S, and Vauxhall Corsa D before heading to the USA, where I drove a Volvo 240 Estate, and later, larger Volvo 850 estates and cars like the Porsche Boxter and an Electric Jaguar iPace.
I stopped riding bikes full time around 1995, but when I moved to the UK to work for Madge Networks in 1996, I acquired a Van Veen 1000 rotary and a BFG Odyssey, which featured a Citroen 1300cc 4-cylinder car engine mounted in the frame with an unusual 1:1 chain drive configuration.
I had a White Moto Guzzi 850 Lemans MkIII that I still own and which is parked in a garage in Kommetjie in the Western Cape Province.
My buddy Gavin takes it for a ride every year and changes the oil and I occasionally turn up to change tires and ride it from CapeTown to Pretoria and back.
I realized pdq that both the Van Veen and the BFG would be unbearable and near impossible to pilot in typical U.K. weather, so I just gave them to some Dutch motorcycle enthusiasts I hung out with in High Wycombe gratis.
I had also grown to love being dry when it rained while driving.
Both my Dutch chums sustained severe injuries in terrible accidents on those things and wrote both off while they were at it.
However, riding a Polaris 500 ATV in Colorado in September last year and then a Kawasaki 450 ATV in Costa Rica in January 2025 made me yearn for two wheels once more.
I had initially aimed to purchase a new KLR650 ABS, but after consulting with some CHP motorcycle riders I know, I opted for a 2021 KLX300 Camo edition with 2047 miles for $3500.
With this KLX machine, I received numerous extras, such as a DOT-compliant helmet, a service stand, various oils and lubricants, tools, and a new seat.
Considering the $8100 out-the-door price for a 2025 machine, I believe I secured myself quite a bargain.
The only hitch was that I had to drive it back from Auburn to Antioch using the back roads, because my South African class 2 motorcycle license and my residency in California since 1998 required me to take the Californian Bike test and obtain a license to be fully compliant and Kosher.
I was getting ready for the California motorcycle license exam and signed up for a 2-day motorcycle training class on a 200cc Chinese bike in Pleasant Hill on April 5th and 6th.
My wife kept insisting that I register it, so I headed to the local DMV this past Tuesday morning to get it done.
While standing there, I noticed that the questions on the exams several testers were taking were incredibly easy (I could see their screens from where I was standing), so I decided to sign up for the M license as well right there and then!
However, the bastards made me do both C & M tests for a bargain $45!
I aced them both and can now legally drive it and got it insured with Geico to boot!
This left me with just the CMSP 2-day course I have to complete April 5 & 6.
I have to wake up at oh dark hundred for a 6:45 enrollment on a 7 AM start on both these days.
As I rode the KLX back along those back roads from Auburn, I quickly spanned the years from 1995 to 2025 and experienced some tough lessons as a 61-year-old returning to two wheels after nearly 30 years away.
The first was that switching from a Yamaha FJ1100 to a Kawasaki KLX300D Dual sport machine was a significant downgrade in power and the raw thrill I was accustomed to, which lingered as lasting memories in my enduring synapses.
Nevertheless, I plan to use this machine for Enduro trails in the hills of Northern California, and for this trail biking purpose, nothing fast or fancy is necessary.
I simply want to ride on dirt roads again, as I truly enjoyed that experience with my Maico 500, which I used for fun and adventure back in Africa.
My sister-in-law married a man named Dave Aspinall, who had two teenagers competing in South African Motocross in the 125cc category in the 1980's and early 90's.
I met Greg Albertyn while watching the Aspinall boys' tool around at their various events in the Johannesburg geo. Greg later became a double world champion on a Suzuki, and I gained a wealth of knowledge from these individuals about motocross, enduro, and Paris Dakar bike rallying.
I also drove through the African bush for the South African Army (12 SAI) on a Suzuki SP370 4-stroke, and that bike was definitely a nerve-wracking experience with its poor drum brakes and other bad habits.
Properly firing an R4 machine gun at various Cubans from a seated position on this thing was somewhat of an art form to master.
Nonetheless, I greatly enjoyed driving that vehicle through the bushveld with my group of mounted infantrymen (when we were not shooting at lost Cubans).
I met Willie Ireland in 1982 and witnessed his victory at the Roof of Africa on a KTM250 MXC in 1985, learning a lot of unsavory things from that troublemaker that you wouldn't want to inquire about or know!
I rode in these types of enduro events on my Maico 500, which I had also won in a poker game. Although it wasn't outfitted like the KTM bikes that the pros were using, I still had a great time riding around the Eastern Transvaal region, halfway to Nelspruit, on that thing!
I didn't push it hard or race it; it was all about gentle bush and dirt road riding for me on that machine.
It was entirely the wrong machine for this task, yet I persisted with my insanity!
The power in the thing scared me shitless in any event. You could wheelie the thing in 4th gear if you tried!
I once owned a Harley 1200 with a 1.8-gallon gas tank for a week but quickly realized that having to tip such a heavy bike every 500 yards just to slop gas for the next 500 yards wasn't my idea of fun.
Even when it ran smoothly for 400 yards, it felt more like a steam train than a motorcycle. Those 1970s Harleys were truly awful!
Once I complete my 2-day course, I'll be jumping on the KLX300 and hitting the challenging dirt trails, friends!
I'll keep you all updated on how it goes!
They claim everything could be lethal, so I decided to try something enjoyable—and I did!
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