After 18 years of driving in my cage, I decided it was time that I got my motor running, head out on the highway. Uh... Oh Yeah!
I did almost two months of research before I test rode anything. The last bike I owned and drove daily, well, when it was running, was a '81 Harley Sporster. It was a piece of crap, but, HEY! I looked cool. The four bikes I chose to test ride were(drum roll please) Yamaha V-Star 1100, Trimph Bonneville America, Harley Duece and the Kawasaki Drifter 1500. All of them were easy to test ride except for the Harley, I finally got one of the mechanics to let me ride his. Since it was the last one I test drove, and I had a bit of time to get over the "Mystique" of the Harley, I realized it was not $9,000 dollars better than the other bikes, or $6,500 in the case of the Kawasaki.As a matter of fact I didn't think it was AS GOOD as the Yamaha or the Kawasaki. With the pad on the Kawasaki so my 'ol lady could ride two-up, well, it was just plain old UGLY. The Triumph was nice looking, but it seemed underpowered and kind of expensive for what you got. SO! I'm here! Ready to buy the V-Star 1100. I go back for one last ride and what is this? A Suzuki? No way! I have to drive it. Guess what? It's just as nice as the V-Star, handles better but doesn't have quite the OOMPH... But! Is the V-star $2,000 dollars better though? Nope! So I decided after almost SEVEN months that the Volusia is the way to go. So what did I buy? Why, a 1980 Yamaha XS650. of course. It's faster, handles better than the bikes above and for what they wanted for the Duece I could've bought SEVENTEEN of my little 650's. So! What was I trying to say before I got on my soapbox? For the money, the Volusia is a darn good buy. I didn't know it was 800 cc's until after I'd gotten back from my test drive. It's that GOOD! Then one day as I was coming home from work there was this old Yamaha sitting in a front yard with a for sale sign on it. Well... You know the rest of the story.