Monday, October 8, 2007

Mine for yours.

After a 2nd track day with the 2002 Triumph Thunderbird, I was completely convinced that this triple was not the bike for me. I mean, in the past year I've had alot of fun with it. It's torquey as hell, it has top-end pull, it never leaves you wanting more power...

...but it's heavy, it has just a tad too much rake (for the track, anyway), and it's tough to practice proper body positioning on it with the low seat and stock footpeg locations. It seemed that, if I wanted to progress and get the most out of my track day experiences, I needed something sportier. At least this was where I stood after our Team ProMotion track day early September, 2007.

Fast-forward to early October, and I'm now the proud owner of a 2001 Suzuki SV650S. A Triumph-lusting resident of State College, PA offered to trade his SV650S for my TBird. After some Blue-booking and decision making, we agreed to a trade: his Suzuki plus $300 for my Triumph.

We lived over 300 miles apart, so we met at a Sheetz in McConnelsburg, PA - halfway between us. M came with me on her Ninjette, and we made our way through some back-country roads to our Sunday bike trade.

Lack of cell phone reception on-site made the meet-up a little rough, but within an hour of our appointment, we were all at Sheetz looking the bikes over. Between cups of coffee to warm up (it was a brisk morning), we test drove each other's bikes and made the trade.

M and I took our last look at the Triumph, and we high-tailed it back home - this time I was on a blue Suzuki with handlebar risers and a fairing. Crazy.

It was an interesting experience - to trade. Especially when the round trip was about 260 miles. The differences between 2 bikes really jump right up at you when you spend so much time on each one back-to-back.

No comments: