Blue (and the rest)

I probably should introduce you to Blue, since she (as machines always are, it seems) will be a big part of this journey.

Blue is a 2006 Yamaha FJR 1300, a Sports Touring motorcycle. Like the model name says, it has a 1300 cc (well, 1,298 cc to be precise) inline-four engine. It is a big bike, to be sure, and made for the road. It is powerful, fast, comfortable, offers good protection against the elements, has a good deal of luggage space and, last but not least, it is a gorgeous machine. In fact, when all was said and done and I was down to three possible contenders, the others being the Honda ST and the Kawasaki Contour, I went with the JFR because I simply loved the way it looks.

If there are any tech heads in the crowd reading this, I am going to disappoint you, because I am not much into tech details. I like machines, and, if need be, I can work on them, but I was never one to recite displacements this and compressions that. So while I will no doubt talk about the experience of riding this bike, I am not goig to give you a technical review. For that, there are many good sites on line already, who do a much better job that I could ever do.

It took me several months to find this bike. I owned (and still do, until it sells) a 2008 Honda Shadow, a very different bike but also a fun bike. I had not ridden in a few years, and the Shadow proved to be a great way to get back on the saddle. So I was not in a hurry to find my new ride, I just knew I needed something bigger and better suited for long distance travel.

I also had a few requirements, namely that it had to be at least a 2006 model (that's when Gen 2 was introduced), with less than 20,000 miles and blue. It had to be blue. This is sort of dumb, because I could have gotten a newer model with less miles. But it was not blue, so that was that.

I have a long story of owning blue machines: I had a blue and white Cessna 150, a blue 1980 Honda CB900, a blue Miata, a blue and white 21 foot sail boat, I have a blue stone on my ring, and I dated a girl or two with blue eyes, but that is another story.

So I finally found Blue on Craigslist, in Dallas, Texas. 19,000 miles, in excellent condition, for a price I could afford, with a few extras to boot. After emailing the owner back and forth for a few weeks, I got on a plane, flew there, picked it up and drove all 420 miles back, smashing a fair deal of Texas bugs as I cut a path through the air heading East.

Despite its size, Blue is an easy bike to ride, as long as you are at least 6 feet tall, The vertically challenged may have a hard time getting their feet squarely on the ground, and since you will be straddling 600 pounds of steel and expensive plastic fairings, you don't want to drop it. It handles well, turning with you as you lean into a turn, remarkably nimble for a bike this size. Off course I was never into race bikes, so I don't really have a good base for comparison, but that is how it feels to me.

So now that I had Blue, I needed to go on " that trip" for which I had convinced myself I needed a bike like this in the first place. And so, in a typical chicken and egg scenario, I got the bike to go on a trip, and I am going on a trip because I have the bike.

Blue is ready, me, I am nervous about so much road, this being my first multi week trip, Hell, this is my first multi day trip. But the road is there, and there are places to see.