A year and a half ago today, I bought my 2014 Honda VFR800 Deluxe Interceptor. As of yesterday, it’s truly mine.
That’s not because I just paid off a loan. Whether through bottom-feeding and buying cheap used motorcycles when I was young and broke (and probably couldn’t get a loan) or shopping carefully as a more established adult, I’ve never borrowed money to buy a motorcycle. Except for two leftover new models (which were discounted), every motorcycle I’ve bought has been used and in all cases I’ve paid cash. And that leads me to my own personal quirk that kept me from feeling the VFR was truly mine until yesterday.
It’s not about the name on the title. I don’t feel like the motorcycle really belongs to me until I’ve put more miles on it than anyone else. When I bought the VFR on March 4, 2020, loading it into a rented trailer hauled by a borrowed car to bring it home from the dealer just days before the world shut down due to the pandemic, it had 9,013 miles on it. Yesterday, I went out to run a few mundane errands. When I left, the odometer read 18,025 and when I got home, after a totally forgettable ride of battling bizarrely heavy escape-Boston-for-Labor-Day-weekend traffic, it read 18,054.
It took a year and a half, but I’ve now put more miles on the VFR than anyone else. It’s mine. For real.
Back to life as an only bike
There’s another reason the VFR feels like mine now, more than ever. Circumstances.
Lots of things changed in my life this year as I moved from Ohio to Massachusetts. I went from four motorcycles to, for the moment, and functionally, one. I sold the Triumph Daytona 675 and handed down the old family Suzuki GN125 to my nephew. For now, the Triumph Speed Triple I’ve had for 23 years is in storage, awaiting the moment when I have a place to park it here in the city and the chance to bring it up here. So for practical purposes, right now I have one motorcycle, even if I still own two.
The VFR800 Interceptor is a good do-it-all motorcycle as long as you’re not planning to go off-road (and I don’t). But that’s not the only reason I’m feeling more at home with it.
The Interceptor and I escape the city when possible. The best option is westward, to the Berkshires. The VFR800 is made for this kind of riding.
Lots of people go years and only ride one motorcycle. But I have owned at least two bikes for the past 20 years. Plus, in many of those years I’ve also ridden multiple press loaner bikes as part of my jobs. (Not true in 2020 and 2021, when I didn’t ride a single press bike as the pandemic put my travel and bike testing on ice.) When you go a long time riding just one bike, it becomes your default. It becomes what feels “normal” to you. That’s why a new and inexperienced rider who starts on a cruiser can, for example, ride an ergonomically neutral standard bike and think it’s a radical sport bike. (One popular vlogger recently did just that.) Or someone who starts out on a sporty bike tries a cruiser for the first time and can’t imagine how anyone can ride such a thing and feel in control.
There was a similar influence at work for me when I was riding four different motorcycles. The VFR was easily the heaviest of the four, and that weight bothered me some every time I got on it. Now, it’s been more than three months since I’ve ridden the Speed Triple (the GN125 was such a different experience it really didn’t count) and the VFR has become my default. It no longer feels heavy. It just feels “normal.”
A year and a half into ownership, the VFR is now mine on multiple levels. Our now monogamous relationship has given me a higher level of comfort and familiarity. Swimming through the perpetually heavy and aggressive traffic of the greater Boston area, navigating the narrow and confusing streets, I no longer even think, “I wish I were on something more nimble and lighter.” Instead, we just go.
And now, the motorcycle has spent more miles with me than with anyone else. It’s a machine. It can’t bond. But I sort of have. After a year and a half, today. About time, right?
I have a soft spot in my heart for VFR’s too, so I eye up every one that hits Craigslist or fb marketplace, and then back off when I see the price. I’m not only a used-only buyer, but I try to keep it around $5000. Pretty sure someday I’ll find a latest gen for that amount. Currently I have a 2014 Ninja 1000, so it’s similar. GREAT bike, but….not the same.
I’m lucky that my wife rides too. Besides the Himalayan in our garage, I get to ride her two bikes, a Street Twin and a SuperCub. But now you have me wondering what it would be like to settle in at just one bike. Then the obvious next question hits me, “If I could have only one bike…” Too much to think about. Plus I know it wouldn’t last long. There’s no one bike that does everything as well as I would like.
Which then leads me to nudge you. Sorry if I spoil the happy motorcycle marriage glow, but…N+1? Electric maybe? I’m watching that new Sondors Metacycle to see if it does close to what they say it does.
If I hadn’t bought the VFR, I would have bought the same generation Ninja 1000 you have. And honestly, that’s what my head said to do. The Ninja 1000 is lighter, more powerful, no overly complicated (expensive) valve train, better electronics. The only advantages the VFR has are looks (subjective) and lower insurance. It was a rare case of going with my heart over my head.
I got my VFR for $7,000, so they would be around $5,000 now if used bike prices hadn’t gone nuts, like other asset valuations of everything from houses to cold rolled steel.
For me, I think the perfect number of motorcycles is two, if they’re the right two. I only ended up with four by accident. Ideally I’d have the Interceptor for travel and a Zero FXS for all local riding. It would be perfect for city use. But since I have that old Speed Triple that’s been with me 23 years and I’ll never get rid of it until one of us dies, I just need to get my parking/garaging situation sorted at my new home and have the Interceptor and the Speed Triple as my two bikes.
Ninja 1000 and a Himalayan sounds like a great combination. And that doesn’t even count your wife’s bikes.
Long-time appreciator of your articles but first time commenting – I like your outlook on when a bike is ‘yours’.
I do have a question: you’ve mentioned that you don’t recall how many bikes you’ve ridden, which of course is entirely understandable, but do you remember all the bikes you’ve owned?
also at what point did you figure that you were going to hang on to that speed triple for as long as either of you lasts – I haven’t been riding for super long but it’s been long enough for me to figure that I’m likely to get tired of every bike eventually.
atm I have 3, the first bike I bought myself, a 1990 vulcan 500 that I need to put back together and sell, a 2018 cmx500 to be replaced when I get used to the newest of the three (to me, not in actual build-year) a 2015 bmw R9T, which I fell in love with immediately on first test-ride and have not fallen out of it in the several test-and-after-purchase rides since, but even it carries the looming specter of me one day wishing for something different.
Hi Rodrigo, thanks for commenting. Not only do I understand wanting to make a change now and then and experience different kinds of motorcycles, I actively advocate it. The more you diversify the kinds of riding you do, the better rider you will be, in my opinion.
To answer your question, I have personally owned 11 motorcycles, from my first bike, a 1976 Honda CB360T to my current VFR800. In between there’s been a wide variety, from a 250cc dual-sport to a Harley-Davidson Sportster to my Triumph Daytona 675 sport bike. So I do like variety.
The Speed Triple has overlapped six of those other bikes. I liked it from the start and as a standard street bike, it was versatile enough that I could use it for various things. I took it to one track day before I had the Daytona and I traveled on it and rode it to work almost daily for years. So it remained while other interesting but less versatile bikes came and went. And then eventually it reached the point where there’s no reason to get rid of it. I couldn’t sell a 23-year-old, 117,000-mile battle-scarred Speed Triple for more than pennies. It runs fine, so there’s no reason to junk it. So why not keep it and keep enjoying it? If it ever dies, I’ll let it go. I won’t swap the engine or something like that. But as long as the Speedy and I are both in running order, we’ll just keep going. I don’t see any other reasonable alternative at this point.