Wheeler convinced me to buy my first motorcycle. Pretty much exclusively rode UJM’s, and always had a story of his dad riding an old BMW which I loved to hear about. We were fast friends in tech school, and upon graduation we lived together for a while. As friends do, he would always try to get me into other things that he enjoyed as well. One of those things was golf, which I hated, but I went a few times because driving the kart and drinking turned out to be right up my alley. It was on one such golf trip that we ended up driving past the Harley dealership on our way home, and that’s how it all started.
“Man, turn around. Let’s go into Tilley’s and just see what they got on the floor.” He didn’t even answer me. Just slammed on the brakes, jerked the truck into the first parking lot we came to and headed back up the highway with a pace of someone who wanted to commit to my words before they lost their half-hearted seriousness.
We had already been to the Greensboro dealership the past week looking at a Speed Triple. I really wanted that bike, but the salesman wasn’t in the negotiating mood. He got all the way down to $202/mo, but my budget was $200, and the bastard wouldn’t meet me there. I still think about that bike, and how I may be very well living a different life right now if he had.
Tilley’s is a legend of a dealership. Countless Outlaws, Racers, Engineers, and everyone else in between have had their lives altered by Don Tilley and the team over in Statesville NC. Lucifer’s Hammer was built in that service department, and Don worked closely with Kevin Drum to help KDFab build what I consider the best exhaust system you can have on an XB. I had all the intent of simply looking. No plans to buy at all. Then I saw it. The black and silver clad XB9S that you are seeing in the pic. I fell in love with it immediately. About a weeks worth of hemming-and-hawing with the petite little saleswoman and I was set to pick it up one day after work.
Now just to be clear; I had ridden before, but I did NOT know how to ride. I cut teeth in my teens on a 1981 Yamaha QT50, and had ridden a buddies ZX6R up and down a straight road, but a Motorcyclist I was not. I laugh at it today, but these guys straight gave me a helmet and turned me loose. Hell, I didn’t even have my endorsement. The service guy that prepped the bike begged me to let them tow it to my place, but I was adamant about riding it home from the dealer, and by miracle of God, that’s what happened. Stiff-armed, helmet & jacket both too big, but man I was Riding!!
I was not prepared for the effect riding motorcycles would have on my life. I had always been a HotRodder, but this was something totally different. I was enamored with it. It changed me immediately. Over my next few posts, I’ll tell you about it, and about this bike that has fundamentally altered the course of my life.
