A Brief History of My Motorcycles, Part 2: The FJ1200 Era

           The FJ1200A – ‘A’ for ‘And the Real Fun Begins’

In April 1995 I went out for the first time in my life and bought a motorcycle on purpose.

I had somehow decided that I wanted a Yamaha FJ1200, a model whose popularity had long faded in the American market, and whose technology was antiquated alongside the last decade’s worth of improvements in other models. But an FJ was what I wanted, dammit, so an FJ was what I was gonna buy.

And, I finally went through the MSF rider’s training course and got my full-fledged motorcycle riding license. Legal at last.

I stopped in at a dealer who was advertising a used 7-year old FJ in my price range, but it was too junky for any serious consideration with its rusty pipes and furry cylinder heads. In the showroom, however, I found myself looking at a brand-new FJ1200A (A for ABS, actually) that had been languishing, unsold, for two years. The dealer had just acquired it at auction from Yamaha of California, after Yamaha had taken it back from another dealer who’d gone bust. The asking price was about double what I expected to spend, but with a quick call to my bank and I discovered the concept of financing, and then, for the first time in my life, at the age of 32, I bought a brand-new vehicle of any kind.

Actually, I left the dealer that day and went around asking all my friends what they would do. They all said the same thing, “BUY IT!”  It was about a week later that I did the deal and rode away on my new scary big bike.

If you’ve never had the pleasure, you owe it to yourself to do it someday, to put the first mile (or kilometer) on the clock, and to do the break-in yourself. It’s incomparably satisfying. You also get to be the one who puts the first scratch or dent in it, which is considerably less so.

I remember the first time I took the FJ on a trip out of the city limits, feeling that rush of uncertainty that means you’re about to have an adventure. I had seldom been out on the serpentine backcountry roads of San Diego County, and there are many, so I was more than a little concerned I might get lost. Fortunately, owing to my familiarity with the county’s geography from the air after hundreds of hours of flying over them on training flights (as both student and, later, instructor), I eventually found my way back, my chest swelling with the bravado of conquest. I started scoping out new riding roads and memorizing landmarks from the air during my daily flights while instructing. Every weekend ride I went a little further afield. It seems odd to me now that it didn’t occur to me to try to join a group or find experienced riders to show me around. I guess I liked the adventury feeling that I, alone, had discovered something special, something nobody else knew about because, after all, I hadn’t known about it.

Packed for travel

About three months after I bought the FJ, I loaded the Tourmaster soft luggage for a 4-day trip to San Francisco and to Monterey to watch the World Superbike Races (SBK) at the world-famous Laguna Seca racetrack with Rex. My new girlfriend (now wife) Sabine had to work on Friday morning, so she caught an afternoon commuter flight from San Diego to Santa Barbara, where I picked her up after threading my way through the dreadful traffic of Interstate 5 in Los Angeles and Highway 101 through Ventura.

Leaving Santa Barbara we rode Highway 101 up to Highway 1, the beautiful coast road that runs right along the Pacific Ocean, and stayed the night in San Luis Obispo. We rode the remainder of the amazing coast highway on Saturday, stopping often for photos and roadside attractions.

Unprepared for changing weather, but we look good!

We had poor riding equipment, amounting to jeans and leather jackets made more for fashion than for protection from the elements. At least I can say we wore gloves, and we did have matching Arai helmets. 

I had no idea what was available then in the away of good riding gear; I’d been given meager advice from the sales staff of the motorcycle shop and almost no help at all from a couple of guys I knew who rode police bikes for a living. They rode in short-sleeved shirts and stretchy polyester trousers. The only useful information they gave me was the name of a guy who custom-made deerskin gloves and jackets. I bought two pairs of gloves and a fighter-pilot style jacket. I still have them. They’ve held up quite well all these years, but they’ve no armor nor weather protection beyond being oiled leather. I still wear the jacket around the airport to look like a pilot and the gloves for driving the car in winter, but I’m considerably better equipped for all-weather riding these days with made-for-motorcycling apparel, including textile jackets and trousers, proper boots and gloves – all fully armored and Gore-Tex lined. Sabine too. We’ve also got stretchy neck tubes, active-fabric base layers, decent socks, and – a marriage preserver – a good intercom.

The difference in the July climate of California from Santa Barbara south and the central California coast from Santa Barbara north is the difference of sweltering hot and rather cool. You go from trying to let all the air flow through your clothes to trying to keep it all out. Mark Twain said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was one summer in San Francisco,” and he wasn’t even riding a motorcycle. The Pacific Ocean runs cold and deep, and it keeps the coastal air chilly and damp. Ride a motorcycle on the coast highway in porous clothing and the damp-cold goes right through to your bones. You quickly learn about wind chill factor, and tricks like stuffing the front of your girlfriend’s fashion jacket with old newspapers from the diner to block the penetrating wind.

We arrived at Rex’s house in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco, mid-afternoon on Saturday, and warmed up with hot tea and homemade soup. For that afternoon’s ride, Rex lent Sabine a powder-blue ski overall to battle the cold. She looked comical, but she was quite a bit more comfortable as we explored the wilderness areas and coastal roads in the cool breezes of the Pacific.

We rode all over the mountains between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, over Woodside and La Honda and down to Pescadero, through Big Basin Redwoods, and spied on the elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Park. Sunday morning we rode down to the Laguna Seca Raceway and watched the World Superbike races. If I remember right, Anthony Gobert and Troy Corser each won a race.

Sabine proved herself to be durable and uncomplaining of discomfort, able to enjoy the adventure of motorcycle travel as well as the drama of a major racing event – a keeper. I hadn’t consciously meant for the trip to be a test of any kind, I just wanted to have a fun trip and bring her along. But by the time the trip was over, I was pretty sure I wanted to share a lifetime of adventures with her. All thanks to the FJ.

She flew back to San Diego on Monday morning, while I headed south in the stifling heat and straight-line boredom of Interstate 5 through the Central Valley.

In one section of the I-5, they were repaving the northbound lanes, while the southbound lanes had recently been repaved. I counted four CHP cars (California Highway Patrol, the state highway police) doing traffic management on the other side from me, and reckoned that there very likely were no officers left over to do speed control on the southbound lanes, and that this was my chance. New pavement. Sunny and dry. Mid-day traffic lull. No cops. The road was mine.

There wasn't nearly this much traffic when I risked it all for guts and glory

I ducked behind the windscreen and rolled open the throttle, and watched as the speedo needle swept the dial. At 145 mph there was more to come, but I held it at 145 for a minute … and then … chickened out, and dropped back down to my usual cruising speed of about 90, staring with paranoia into the mirrors, waiting for my pursuers to appear. There’s no story beyond that, no cops, crash or other drama. Just that I’d seen the fastest speed on two wheels of my life to date.

That 145 mph (233kph) stands to this day, even though I can now go as fast as I want on the German Autobahns. The FJ was simply a faster bike than anything I’ve ridden since. I haven’t eclipsed that one-time maximum, but I’m pleased to report that I do go more than 100 mph (160 kph) on the Autobahn – legally! – every week in my car, just because I can. I feel it’s my duty, for all you poor bastards who mustn’t. When I take the bike onto the Autobahn, which is rare, I generally get it up to 120 mph (200 kph), but that’s all there is on tap with the GS’s I’ve owned here. So it’s legal here for me to break my previous record, but I can’t overcome the laws of physics to do so.

We kept the FJ for five fun years of travel and adventure, exploring southern California’s many backroads, and journeying north to visit Rex every July for the SBK races. And what a golden era for SBK! We got to see both Troys (Bayliss and Corser), King Carl (Fogarty), Frankie Chili, James Toseland, Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden, among many other famous racers of the day. Now we watch and keep up with the whole of the MotoGP season, as the TV coverage of that series is very good here, but not so good for SBK.

The FJ was not just blisteringly fast, it was astonishingly smooth. The motor’s huge power output arrived with all the commotion of an electric rheostat being turned up. The only thing that changed between a legal 65 mph and a lose-your-license-and-go-to-jail doubling of that speed was how fast the scenery went by. No vibration in the bars, no clatter from the valvetrain, no howl from the end cans. Just a little more wind noise on the helmet. After a while, you normalize to the sensations of high velocity travel, and legal speeds seem like a crawl. It’s dangerously addictive.

I worked most days at Gillespie Field in El Cajon, a city 35 minutes east of my home in coastal San Diego, and most days I rode there (in 25 minutes). I began to notice that I seemed to be having problems staying under the ton (that means 100 mph in British slang) on the 15-mile east-west length of Highway 52 that took me there. I knew that if the CHP caught me doing more than 95 – or more than 30 mph over the legal limit anywhere – they’d be likely to charge me not just with merely speeding, but with the far more serious charge of Reckless Driving, which not only would cost me a small fortune in fines, but when reported to the FAA – as it would have to be – I’d lose my Commercial Pilot’s license along with my Flight Instructor Certificate and my precious designation as an FAA Pilot Examiner, upon which I made my living. But nothing seemed to slow me down. Oh, how the male mind can rationalize the pursuit of that which it desires most – and on the FJ I wanted speed!

Fortunately, a cure was available.

ZRX1100 in Germany

In the summer of 2000, Sabine and I went to Germany for a holiday, and went motorcycling in the Alps for the first time. I found a dealer near her mom’s house who rented Aprilia and Kawasaki. I arranged to rent an Aprilia Futura sports-tourer (anyone remember the Futura?) but the rental model had been sold just before I arrived to pick it up. So instead, they sent me out on a Kawasaki ZRX-1100, which was very much like the FJ in ergonomics, performance, power, and handling. It had the unfortunate specification of the passenger footpegs being located approximately six inches below the passenger seat. Sabine said she had no problem keeping her ears warm – with her knees. Her legs went to sleep within half an hour, and we always had to stop soon after that to let her walk around a bit and get some bloodflow back in her feet. If I haven’t mentioned it, she’s 5’11” (180 cm), with a 34-inch inseam. She clearly doesn’t fit the Kawasaki design department’s idea of what a rider’s girlfriend should be shaped like. They must have been thinking of a Japanese girl. Age 11.

So after a challenging week in the Alps, we headed back to the dealer. All he could offer us as an alternative to the Zed-Rex was an Aprilia Pegaso 650, a single-cylinder enduro-style bike with 48 hp. We shrugged, sighed, and took it.

It turned out to be a blast.

Aprilia Pegaso 650 - fun, fun fun (on the right roads)

What a revelation! The sit-up-and-beg-for-a-treat seating position with knees comfortably bent at 90 degrees – well why on earth not? You can ride all day without ever getting cramps in your knees or a strain in your back muscle – you know that one I mean, that one under your right shoulder blade that connects all the way down to your wrist when you twist the throttle, the one that after a few hours makes you understand what Caesar was feeling when he said “Et tu, Brute?”

The Pegaso’s gentle motor had enough power (well, just enough) to move one or both of us up to speed and down the road in a manner befitting a motorcycle. The wide handlebar, light weight, and 19” front hoop all made for a machine far more suited to the minor farm roads that dominate the hinterlands than the bigger, heavier, and substantially overpowered ZRX. I’d been so busy being dazzled by the stunning scenery of the Alps that I hadn’t really been bothered by the shortcomings of the ZRX, but now, on the Pegaso, I felt like I’d been unshackled and allowed to come up for air. The bike was made with these little roads in mind! (A little more power wouldn’t have been a bad thing, though.)

We enjoyed our last week of our holiday, not zooming around the Alps as you might expect, but simply puttering around the farms, fields and forests of the area called the Allgäu (pronounced ‘All-Goy’), those rolling hills on the north side of the Alps where Sabine is from. And smiling. A lot. And that’s when I decided I was going to have to dump the FJ.

Nice landscape shot of the Allgäu. Click to embiggen.

End of Part 2.