Martin's Homepage

Motorcycling

My motorcycling career began a week before my 16th birthday when I became the proud owner of a Suzuki GP125 road bike.

Much to my mother's horror, her little boy was now at the start of a motorcycling career & fascination that is still with me.

At about the same time, my good friend Grant also brought himself a motorbike, a Yamaha 100cc (I can't remember the model).

A couple of years later, I had my full licence and was ready to move onto bigger bikes, so after looking around, I settled for a Kawasaki GPZ400II. This is an unfaired model and was quite stable up to 160km/hr, although a little tiring!

This bike lasted for a while before I wrote it off by crashing into a traffic island at night. (It's a long story so I wont bore you with it). I was very lucky not to be run over by a car after being thrown onto the road and only suffered bruised ribs and grazed knees.... (thats what happens when you wear jeans!).

I managed to flog it off to some guy who was going to rebuild it as it wasn't worth claiming insurance on it.

My next bike came a short time later in the form of a Honda CBX750F2 Bold'or, a fully faired sports tourer.

This was a great bike and I had this for about 6 years until I had to sell it so I could move out of home.

After my police training in Wellington, I moved back to Auckland where a while later, I heard my cousin was selling his RF900. With only 11,000 kms on the clock and in mint condition, I brought it off him and it was my pride and joy until I sold it in March 2001 to get some money for a new computer. Every now and then I do regret selling it but hope one day to again have a personal road bike in the garage.

At the moment, I do have a bike to ride - my Honda ST1100 Police Special. While I can't take it for rides around the countryside, it does allow me to ride a bike during most days at work and can be a lot of fun.