A STORY IN PIECES

A motorcycle is a sum of its parts, right? Nope

- Kartik Ware

Why?! Why persist with motorcycles? They've damaged my body rather frequently (and my mind, on an ongoing basis), ensured that my bank wonders where the overwhelming majority of my income goes, and generally made the people closest to me wonder if I have it all together inside my thick skull. I'm not quite sure of that last part myself because this is the first time ever that I'm writing about a motorcycle I've never even seen in person yet. What makes it all the more baffling is that it's mine. But there is a history of hope to be told here.

A few salary cheques after I joined this magazine in 2008, I bought this motorcycle... well, that's inaccurate — I bought a motorcycle, some critical parts of which still find themselves on this bike. It was a Yamaha RX 135, with a banged-up expansion chamber, and came standard with the previous owner's confident boast that 'it easily goes to 140'. Of course, I'd been a sceptic long before that and I obviously didn't believe it, but that wasn't even the point. For the first time in my life, I could buy a motorcycle with my own hard(ish)-earned money, and I did. And then, as has been the story of my life, I set about making it my own. 'Stock is for suckers' was the rule I lived by then, and I think I still do now, whenever I can spare the thought.