The Long test ride...

Or....
Have I become the biker I thought I would become when I first started riding...

I've been riding a Honda 919 for the last few weeks.

It's one of the newer ones not the early flat black bikes.

The first time I spent any time on a 919 I came away thinking.
"YAWN" my that's a nice bike. A touch boring but nice.

It still is to some point. It's like a nighthawk 900.
It's really more of a CB900f. (and it should be that is it's official name.

As typical of most late model "naked" bikes
The seating position is set up for some weird short legged short armed rider.
While I'm really short legged I'm broad of shoulder (some might even say beam-ie)
and long of arm.
Bikes like these make me feel like my wrists are in my lap.

But stepping back from the bike and looking at it not from the foggy glasses of someone who's been on tons of bikes and been riding for nearly 20 years

I sit down and I look at it and I take myself back to my early days of street riding.
Me and my friends bikes parked in front of the cafe paradiso
It's around 11:30 and the wet Seattle streets reflect all the neon and street lights
It's a motley group of bikes.
And old CB750 sohc, a SWB BMW, Ducati 750, slab-slide GSXRrat bike
And we are talking, talking about what would be a cool new bike.
Honda just released the CBR900RR but that was a squid bike.
Ahhh what if the would just make that bike naked. Or even a small fairing.
And matte black....

But keep the gold calipers they add that touch of "works"

15 years later.
I've owned a variety of different bikes over the years
I've tried em all. Touring, super-sports, liter class, dual sports, adventure touring, supermotos,
caferacers, and many others.

But riding the 919, it puts me back to those early days. Of the kind of bike I would love to have been able to have been on then.
Power, reliability, style, function and of course speed.

It makes me want to just get on the bike and explore, enjoy riding for riding
simple no frills no pigeon hole that the bike fit's you into.
It's just a motorcycle..