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Review of the 2016 Kawasaki Versys 1000:A Lot Of Experience Behind This Kawasaki Versys Review! |
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Author: Kenneth Richard Ferguson, 2021-04-19, viewed 807 times. | ||||||
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I am 67 years old and have been riding since I was 15. I have been in the saddle for 52 years. I had a bone marrow transplant last year to save my life. The thing that I missed most during my transplant process was, in order of importance, my wife, my dog, and my bike. As you can see from the attached picture, I am back on the bike! My doctor calls it ´the best therapy possible´. | ||||||
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According to my parents, I
was disassembling and reassembling household appliances even before I knew what
the word “engineer” meant. Furthermore,
the appliances that didn’t work before I took them apart generally functioned
like new when I tinkered with them and put them back together, although there
were those few occasions when I turned perfectly good hardware into superb
doorstops.
At the age of eleven, I
managed to mount an old horizontal-shaft Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine
on a bicycle frame with the intent of creating a machine that would carry me at
blinding speeds through the hills of my native West Virginia. Although I never tired of starting and
revving the engine in our garage, I also never mastered the connection between
the engine and the rear wheel, and thus never achieved forward motion from my
dream machine. I did, however (although
I did not realize it at the time) achieve something much more important – I
convinced my parents that I was dead serious about this mechanical stuff, and
no matter how much they disapproved of the idea, I was going to roll about on
two wheels – with or without their blessing or assistance.
You have to understand that
my parents grew up with Marlon Brando’s “Wild Bunch”, and everything that was
evil in the world was embodied in two-wheeled vehicles – and here they had a
greasy eleven year-old kid in the basement who was trying with all his might
and mechanical ingenuity to build (and ride) the machine of their
nightmares. As a parent myself, I can
envision the spousal disagreements that preceded their eventual concession to
buy me a MOTORCYCLE. Well, it wasn’t
really a motorcycle, it was more a test of my mechanical capabilities and for
their part, it was a stopgap measure to ultimately defeat my dreams and
redirect me to something more socially acceptable like professional pool
shooting or big-game hunting (my Dad’s preference).
My dad was a mine
superintendent in West Virginia, and one of his employees had an old Honda
Super 90 that he wanted to dispose of.
Dad bought the machine for $50 and brought it home to me. The catch here is that the entire motorcycle
resided in two cardboard boxes. As Dad
shoved the boxes off the back of his pickup truck into the front yard, I
remember him telling me “If you can put it together, you can ride it.”
Well, I made innumerable
trips to the local Honda Shop (10 miles) on my bicycle to get parts and advice,
I hung all of the parts of the bike (including the T-bone frame) on my mom’s
clothesline for painting with cans of spray paint (I actually painted some of
her white sheets a beautiful canary yellow).
Needless to say, I got that bike reassembled, painted, and rode at
ridiculously high speeds through the hills of West Virginia. From that point on, my life was measured not
it years, but in motorcycles… I received my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in
Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University in 1976 and 1978,
respectively. During this period, I had
to part with my fourth motorcycle, a 1972 Suzuki GS750J “Water Buffalo” to make
some money to finance my graduate degree.
After being gainfully employed by the Gulf Oil Corporation in 1978, I managed to buy back that same motorcycle, and kept it for 15 years. Since that time, I have had over a dozen bikes - I actually found a 1945 Harley panhead (suicide clutch and all) in a barn in WV and rebuilt it from the ground up. Nothing against Harley, but I won`t try that again! But, very honestly, the Kawasaki Versys 1000 that I currently ride is the BEST bike that I have ever owned or ridden! I moved to the Versys from a Vulcan Classic - which was a bit too heavy for my taste (and bad back). The Versys is comfortable on a long ride, fantastically versatile on our Hill Country roads. My wife and I have ridden the legendary "Twisted Sisters" in central Texas, and I couldn`t ask for a better companion! In my honest opinion - backed by a lot of experience and scars, there is no better motorcycle! Keep the rubber side down, Ken |
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