Finding My First Street Bike
I didn’t arrive at college fresh out of high school. By the time I rolled into Cobleskill, New York as a freshman, I was 21 — a non-traditional student back when that term still needed explaining. Most of my classmates were younger, but a few of the friendships I made through my classes would shape far more than my academic career. A couple of them rode motorcycles. Loud, fast, unapologetic motorcycles. And they never missed an opportunity to tell me I needed one too.
When one of those friends decided to part ways with his bike – a 1982 Kawasaki GPz 550 – it was game on.
Learning to Ride (the Hard Way)
The GPz wasn’t just any bike. Cycle World would later call it the launchpad of the middleweight revolution, and for good reason. Light, quick, with a surprisingly advanced Uni-Trak rear suspension and a racy attitude that felt bigger than its 553cc displacement. It was still in great shape by the time it came to me in the spring of my junior year, and it had pure potential. I took out my first-ever loan – a princely sum of $1,100 from Wilbur National Bank – and bought it outright.
Permit in hand and plates affixed, I did what any rational, safety-conscious new rider would do: I proceeded to teach myself how to ride on the street, mostly alone, ducking campus police and the local PD at every turn.
Responsible voice here – this is not the recommended process for any new rider, ever. But somehow, I survived, without contributing to local municipal revenue, and passed my full license test the summer of 1994.
📚 New Rider Tip
Thinking about getting your first bike?
Learn from the pros — not from parking lot crashes.
The Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) offers fantastic beginner courses to help you start the right way.
Exploring the Catskills and Beyond
The GPz became my passport to everything beyond the map’s edge. Schoharie County’s back roads. Hidden corners of the Catskills. Southern slices of the Adirondacks. Every weekend, and plenty of weekday evenings, I’d be out somewhere new – chasing sunsets down empty roads and turning left when the road got rougher instead of doubling back.
Somewhere along the way, I developed a theory about telephone poles:
If you see all three services – power, telephone, and cable – you’re still safely tethered to civilization. When cable lines disappeared, you were on the fringe. When the telephone lines vanished, you were truly off the beaten path. And when even the power lines disappeared, well… you were probably about to find yourself on a goat trail.
“The GPz wasn’t perfect. It didn’t need to be. It was the perfect bike for then : raw, real, and just reckless enough to keep my wanderlust alive.”
It was perfect.
Learning to Ride (Even Faster)
Most often, I rode with my friend Dave. His bike was twice the displacement of mine, so if I wanted to keep up – especially when passing slow-moving farm trucks on country two-lanes – I had to get creative. Downshift twice, pin it wide open, duck back in line, grab a handful of brake. Repeat. Fast hands and faster reflexes became second nature, burned into muscle memory by necessity (and adrenaline).
We rode everywhere. Americade rallies in Lake George. Pilgrimages to Syracuse for Dinosaur BBQ to get pushed around by the waitresses. Sweeping loops through the Adirondacks just to see where the roads would lead. Once, he even talked me into joining a toy drive ride – a slow, cruiser-clogged procession of chrome and leather inching down the highway. I eventually forgave him for those miles but only because he heartily agreed to bail on the procession before we hit the halfway mark.
Dave also introduced me to Christman’s Honda dealership in Palatine Bridge. One day, he handed me a brochure for something new – a freshly updated Honda VFR for 1998. It was causing quite a stir in the motorcycle world, he said. But that’s a story for another chapter.
To this day, I’m not sure he understands the impact that single act had on the rest of my life.
A Crash, a Meeting, and a New Beginning
Of course, the path wasn’t all smooth. In 1995, not long after buying the GPz, I managed to crash it – spectacularly – in a parking lot, of all places. A showboating maneuver gone wrong, a sudden stop, a forward launch over the handlebars. I broke my collarbone for my trouble.
It was in that sling-armed, humbler-than-usual state that I first met Karolyn – now my wife – hanging out in my dorm RA’s office where she happened to be that evening. Life’s funny like that.
We started dating later that year. It didn’t take her long to fall for riding, too. Even the short runs for ice cream became mini-adventures, quick rides that still somehow felt like crossing into another world. She quickly took to the joy of the road, spending countless miles pinned to my back, hands on the tank, eating up the miles and sharing the smiles.
She learned the art of being the perfect pillion – becoming one with the machine, leaning seamlessly into curves, anticipating the acceleration, and doing her best to stay put when it was time to get hard on the binders, preserving my ability to eventually reproduce.
It’s a subtle language, riding two-up, but we spoke it fluently.
Saying Goodbye to the GPz
The GPz saw me through all of it. After I healed up, I repaired the bike and kept riding it hard until 1997, when it found a new home with a fellow VFR enthusiast who wanted a hooligan bike to complement his more polished machines. The old GPz still wore its battered Kerker exhaust – now affectionately dubbed the LASP (Loud Ass Squid Pipe) – and probably scared a few squirrels out of the treetops on its way to its next chapter.
It was never the perfect bike. It didn’t need to be.
It was the perfect bike for then – raw, real, and just reckless enough to keep my wanderlust alive.