First Bike: 1992 Yamaha Seca II

Last night we attended a viewing of "Girl meets bike", a locally made film. The photography was done very well, the storyline was somewhat confusing, and the acting ... not so great. The core of the story was a girl, Kat, who is a horrible judge of character, including herself. She proceeds to have sex with nearly everyone who makes more than two appearances in the film, then buys a motorcycle and finds her true passion. There is a trailer in the link above if you're interested in more; there is a DVD of the movie here in Red Wing someplace.

This got me thinking about my first motorcycle. I've always wanted one. I recall my father purchased a neighbor's old motorcycle when I was about 12. It was in boxes and we didn't put it together before we moved to Norway. When we moved back to the US when I was 16 I started to study for the driver's exam but then included the motorcycle handbook as well. Once I got into cars, my interest in motorcycles was delegated to the back burner.

In the spring of 2000 I had been working for IBM in Rochester and generally bored with the status quo. Somehow I got it into my head that a motorcycle would be fun and started thinking about it. I didn't know any riders so I was on my own - creating my own rules, principles, and ideas of what it meant to ride. I think this was a blessing, because Rochester is solidly Harley-Land, and any influence I would have experienced would have been to buy a Harley, some chaps, an orange shirt with a bar and shield on it, and become a mediocre rider with the wind in my hair.

My roomate (Chuck) had a 1983 Honda Shadow 750 in storage which did not reliably start so I made a deal with him: If I get it running: If I could get it running, I could learn on it. We putzed with it for a while. In the meantime, I concluded cruisers must be the most comfortable and set my sights on a Honda Sabre 1100. But when I found out about a 1992 Yamaha Seca II with only 4000 miles on it that was for sale for not much money ($2000 I think), I decided that would be the way to go. We did do a bunch of work on the Shadow but it would never run very well until 2012. That's a different story.

So I got this Yamaha Seca II. My brother rode it from Hastings to Rochester, wearing Carharts and some sort of jacket on a VERY cold evening. This was in the early spring; it sat in the back of Chuck's garage until it warmed up.

 And then the fun began.

I started going in circles in Chuck's cul-de-sac, learning how the clutch, brakes and throttle worked. After a week or so, I had my permit and went down the cul-de-sac, across the street, and around in THAT cul-de-sac. I was riding it slow, at bicycle speeds, steering it like a bicycle. The Minnesota motorcycle manual claimed I was supposed to "push on the left handlebar to turn left" and that make no sense whatsoever. I was a proficient bicyclist. I knew that pushing on the left handlebar results in the wheel turning RIGHT and the bike going RIGHT. Duh. I couldn't believe the manual would have such a blatant mistake in it.

Eventually I got out of the cul-de-sacs and into the neigbhorhood streets. It was not easy. I was afraid letting go of the handlebars would mean the bike would crash I would die at 20 mph, just like a bicycle. I also found that motorcycles were hard to turn, nearly jumped several curbs. It must be the heavy weight of the bike on the front wheel that makes it hard to turn. So I thought about it .. and figured, ok, I'll try to make the bike lean! Next time I needed to turn left, I leaned my body to the left ... and that made the bike go where I wanted! Awesome, I got the hang of this!

I was able to leave the neighborhood, and started to ride it work, then across town, then to the local state parks, and out along the river. The wind tried to rip my helmet off, my jacket billowed with trapped air, my legs were cold, and other motorcyclists kept trying to get my attention by waving and I couldn't figure out what they needed to tell me.

I bought chaps to keep my legs warm (doesn't really work BTW) and a Harley jacket. I bought a nicer helmet which had an unscratched shield I could see out of at night, didn't smell funny, and didn't try to decapitate me at speed. I wore out the rear tire on the Seca.

At some point I discovered David Hough's Proficient Motorcycling, and started to consider the Honda Sabre again. By now I knew that cruisers weren't necessarily comfortable, and the Sabre's 1100cc had even less power than the Seca's 600cc. Hmm.... a trip to Hopkin's Honda one day had me sitting on an older VFR750. The price was right, but it had "a lot" of miles on it (12,000) so I was considering a new Bandit 1200 instead, for about $7k. I went home to think about it ... and decided to buy it! But when I called I found out someone else had put down $1400 on it. I had to find something else.

But what?