Your parents let you get an FJ at SIXTEEN!?!?
Sweet Jesus!! I'm glad you're still alive! You must have been the coolest kid in high school.
(Mom was an ER nurse, you can guess the rest.)
Yup, I remember the day I was planning to go buy the bike. I was 16 and a month, and had just sold my 1980 XS1100 that I had been riding to work for 2 years (on a farm driving permit).
This is me and my younger stister. We were on a motorcycle camping trip with my Dad. I think I was 14. Dad's bike was also an XS1100 with vetter everything. I bought this bike for $650 when I was 14. My Dad came into my bedroom in the morning and said that he had changed his mind and that he thought the FJ was too much machine for me. I cried my eyes out and pleaded with him that he'd simply ruin my life if he didn't let me have it. I had worked non stop for 2 years to save that money, and it was mine, and it was might God given right to own a FJ1200. Plus, I reasoned, that I had been riding the XS1100 for 2 years without killing myself, the FJ is almost the same thing (yea right). Somehow he was convinced and let me buy it. He shouldn't have. Oh the stories I could tell...
We at least thought we were pretty cool.
Here is my friend and I getting ready to go to our high school graduation ceremony (notice the robes).I actually think the colors and the styling made the bike more dangerous for me. Somehow I thought that it looked like it wanted to be going fast, on one wheel, down main street, with girls watching. As the owner, I was obligated to make that happen. Yikes.
I think you'll enjoy your decision to renew her, but I gotta ask, what will you do when junior wants to borrow her in four years?
Now, I have already told my son that there is no way he is getting the equivalent of an FJ at 16. He's a pretty good hare scramble racer (rides a KTM 85), but he loves to show off too. I told him that were going to get some clapped out, street legal Honda XR250 that he can ride to school. If he listens to what
that bike tells him to do, he'll probably stay off main street, keep his license and stay alive.