How I’m having a disproportionate amount of fun on an old, slow motorcycle

There’s a new motorcycle in my garage.

Well, it’s not really new. It’s actually quite old, even older than my Speed Triple. It’s also the slowest motorcycle I’ve ever owned. Monetarily, it’s worth next to nothing.

From that you might assume I’m not having much fun with this addition. You might wonder why I even bothered. The truth is, I’m having a ridiculous amount of fun owning this little motorcycle, half because it’s so different from anything else I’ve owned (or even ridden) and half because I have the satisfaction of preserving a family heirloom.

The bike is a 1996 Suzuki GN125, a humble tiddler if there ever was one. It may be from 1996, but technologically and stylistically, it’s straight out of the 1980s, if not the 1970s. What makes it special is that this is the motorcycle my father bought as a surprise gift for my mother’s 59th birthday.

The 1996 Suzuki GN125 my father bought in 1997 as a new leftover to give to my mother as a birthday gift.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical back in 1997 when I heard about it. I wasn’t sure my mother would take to riding. She hadn’t ridden a two-wheeler of any kind in years. My father never did ride. He was certainly not an informed consumer, when it came to buying a motorcycle, and he didn’t bother asking my advice. But in the end, he did the right thing and showed that he knew my mother better than I did. The Suzuki rekindled her desire to ride and gave her something to enjoy for nearly 20 years. It probably was even the best choice of what was on the market at that time. She never did like scooters, and there was no lighter street bike available.

With the benefit of more than two decades of hindsight, I have to say my father did well, even if I was skeptical at the time.

My mother enjoyed fair-weather rides on the small back roads around their West Virginia home on the GN125. After attending one of the AMA Women and Motorcycling Conferences (I registered her as another birthday gift), she decided she wanted to venture further afield, and I helped her buy a Suzuki GS500E that was capable of highway speeds and longer trips. She eventually sold the GS500E and bought a Suzuki GZ250 she saw sitting alongside the road with a “for sale” sign. But the GN125 was the one that always stayed, the family heirloom, the gift from my father.

About five years ago, as my mother aged into her 70s and her knees grew more wobbly, she took a ride on the GN125 one afternoon, came home, and promptly tipped it over into the bumper of my father’s pickup truck, breaking something internally in the speedometer (which has never since worked). She parked it in the shed and, though she didn’t say she was done riding, and probably didn’t know she was done riding, she was. I winterized the little Suzuki for her that fall like I did every year, but this time was different. It sat untouched for years.

Two years ago, I sold the GZ250 for her. The GN125, she told me, was mine to do with as I pleased. But I hesitated. I wanted to make sure she was really done with it before I took it away. I wanted to make sure that I didn’t deprive her of any joy she might get from just having it, just knowing it was out there if she wanted to go look at it, feel the familiar sensation of holding the hand grips, imagine riding it again, even if that became less likely and less advisable every year.

This winter, impelled by circumstances, I decided it was time. Most formidable of those circumstances was the death of my father in November. The bike was a link to him, one I wanted to preserve. Beyond that, it was clear my mother was never going to ride it again, and probably never even go out and unlock the shed to look at it.

So when we made our annual New Years resolutions at RevZilla, I said mine was to get the old GN125 back on the road again: resurrected, titled in my name, registered, on the street and running well, no longer abandoned in a dark shed.

Resurrecting the GN125

Honestly, this turned out to be so easy, I hardly have a story from it. I already knew the battery was long dead and I assumed the tiny orifices in the little bike’s carb were gummed up. I hoped, however, that a light carb cleaning and a new battery would get the bike back on the road. On a recent March afternoon, I dived in.

Ready to clean the carb. Really, it turned out to be easy.

First, I drained the five-year-old gas from the tank. When I pulled the carb loose, I was encouraged by how clean it looked, so I got cocky and didn’t even remove the bowl. I tipped it every which angle to get the old fuel out, gave it some liberal squirts of carb cleaner and reconnected it, hoping I wouldn’t have to squeeze my fingers into the tight confines of the frame to take it off again.

I need not have worried. I poured in some fresh gas, the new battery turned the engine strongly, and it soon fired. Grumbling, spitting, slow to wake from a five-year sleep, for sure. But it ran.

I aired up tires, cleaned the chain, lubed cables and it was alive. I rode it out and back the driveway, letting some of the Seafoam work through the carb. When I tucked it back in the shed for the evening, I felt like I was parking it, not abandoning it again. That felt good.

The trip from my mother’s place to my home is 99 miles by the most direct highway route. The next day, I took off on a less direct route that turned the trip into 121 miles but kept me on quiet two-lanes with speed limits no higher than 55 mph. As I found out more than a decade ago when I rode this same bike in the Lake Erie Loop, it does not like to try to stay above 60 mph. I didn’t want to get run over on my first ride in years on the bike.

Starting off in relatively warm misty rain, I arrived home in cold sunshine, taking an hour longer than I would have on any other motorcycle I own. But already, after just a gallon and a half of Seafoam-treated fresh gas through the engine, the GN125 was running better.

The GN125 gets full synthetic for the first time. Why not splurge? It only takes a quart.

At home, I gave it an oil change — pretty sure it’s the first time this bike has ever had full synthetic — and cleaned off the road grime. Since then, I’ve ridden it around the city a little, which is where it feels at its best. As one of our readers at RevZilla recently commented on our story about a small motorcycle, when we ride a big bike in the city, we always feel like everyone is just in our way, slowing us down. On a small bike, we’re less frustrated even if we’re not making better time.

It’s slow, but nimble as a bicycle, and it actually makes a good city bike.

I have to wring the throttle pretty hard to keep the GN125 ahead of city traffic, pulling away from a light. But it is so nimble, I also have to be careful not to turn onto the sidewalk, because the slightest effort is enough to initiate a turn. It’s so small and narrow, even tight traffic offers enough room. It’s so light, the weak brakes don’t matter and I never feel like it could get away from me. Riding it is just fun, never stressful.

Of course there’s a lot I could dislike if I chose to, and not just its lack of speed. It’s worth close to nothing (a nearly identical bike has been listed on my local craigslist for months by an optimistic owner asking $1,000, with no movement at all). I now own a carburetor again for the first time in years, and inner tubes. (Yes, despite the one-piece wheels, those skinny tires hold tubes.) There’s the dead speedometer that leaves me guessing, though on this bike you’re probably not speeding, anyway.

It reminds me of mysteries I had relegated to the early 1980s (or before), such as who ever thought it was a good idea to put chrome on fenders? Why do we want those to be the shiniest parts on the motorcycle? Naturally, the chrome on a small, inexpensive bike like this one was never the highest quality. The exhaust pipe is badly pitted. Those chrome fenders look OK if you don’t get too close.

But value doesn’t matter (because why would I sell it anyway?) and the flaws don’t matter because I’m having fun riding it and I’m having even more fun knowing that I’ve resurrected a piece of family history that gave my mother a lot of joy over the years and I’ve preserved a link to my late father.

I’ve found lots of ways to have fun on motorcycles over the years, from contemplative camping trips to trying to hit 170 mph on the front straight at Losail International Circuit. Now, I’m having an all-new kind of fun on the slowest, smallest motorcycle I’ve ever owned.