Every one has been asking about our new baby and how it rides, well let me tell you what people don't know is the story behind the purchase.  It was the morning of April 14th, a pleasant Saturday with blue skies with soft clouds in abundance.  Marge had something on her mind about motorcycles, I guess.  She'd asked, "let's go to Hubbard and look at the motorcycles at that Hornung place."  Uh-huh I thought, so I asked, "just to look right?"

"Yeah she says, just to look.  We'll do some "re-con" just to see what they got," all the while with a straight face.  I don't see it coming, not even when she asks, "can we take the truck?"  Well, I guess that would be alright I thought, just in case, of course we happen to see something that we just couldn't live without.  What that would be I hadn't a clue, I'm not to crazy about the newer bikes.  Definitely not to gung-ho about the sport/cafe racer style bikes and their seating styles on this ol' bod, let alone Marge's. 

 So, off we go to Hornung's to do "re-con" as it were, never in a million years did I suspect that Marge was going to the shop with a purchasing mindset at heart.  We get to Hubbard and as we're pulling up on the outskirts of town we couldn't help but notice there was trucks, cars and motorcycles everywhere.  With a big grill sitting outside as well getting ready to make foodage later we suspected.  We had no idea that it was there open house for the year, we were flabbergasted. After walking around smellin' all the new bikes as it were, we noticed an older but still reliable Voyager sitting over in there north-west corner of the display room.  We'd maybe seen this very bike 4 years ago or maybe they had one just like it then, but knew the price was out of reach at that time.

So, here it was again, it had returned.  We were lucky to even get to talk to it's former owner who was there talking to someone else about how he had just a little while back traded his ol' Voyager for the new '07 Yamaha touring bike.  I pretended to be interested in the Yamaha as well while I listened, I didn't know that the conversation he was having with this other biker who was also looking at maybe purchasing one for himself was the very guy who formerly owned the Voyager we were interested in.  I put two and two together and figured it out that he was possibly the old bike's owner that we just might purchase.

We asked the new owner of Hornung's if we could take the Voyager for a bit of a test ride.  Now, I hadn't ridden a motorcycle since November of '96, during what appeared to be an impending snow storm.  I had put my younger daughter on the gas tank and my oldest rode behind me, while I put my feet down on the snow to balance the bike home for one terrifying mile.  Things we remember doing when we were young and stupid, but that night I covered that KZ900 and haven't ever rode it since.  I jumped on this Voyager like it was November '96 all over again, fired it up, dropped it into 1st gear leaving the store in our rearview mirrors like I'd always been riding motorcycles everyday.  With a very confident Marge on the back, I was pullin' back on that throttle like I was born to do this, all the while trying to remember what it was Gary, the shop's mechanic tried to tell me about the 1st gear.  Oh well, to this day I still don't know what it was he said and was even more amazed that no one at the shop ever asked to even see if I had a motorcycle license.  Getting used to shifting and all the bells and whistles this bike of technology had to offer was pretty fun, 40 minutes of it.  I couldn't get the cruise to work though after trying and trying, so when we got back I mentioned that to Gary and he said he'd order a new micro cruise switch that's attaches to the front brake, which he did, he was also nice enough to install it when it came in later.  At a great price, free.           

Do we need to install anything else on this bike?  At the moment I can't think of a thing, since it's former owner took great care of it, even writing down all the various cities he was in when he changed the oil and where it was serviced and for what.  He'd installed heated grips, front and rear air shocks which are a very nice touch compared to my old '75 Kaw.  I believe this bike may have already came with the air shocks as a stock item but he replaced the rear ones with Progressives.  I also couldn't help but notice that there was a towing hitch that was already installed as well.  I just now need to find a 1" extended tow bar for it.  We're looking at all kinds of camping trailers, at the moment, we haven't decided on one as of yet, there's so many good ones out there.

The longest trip that we've been on so far is from here to Sioux Falls, SD and back in one day mind you.  Took 14 hours, through several thunderstorms, we stayed dry though, butt was my behind ever sore.  I think I'm going to have to look into some soft air seats or those gel ones if I want to go to the Pacific Ocean from the center of the Midwest some time.  Overall the nice thing is we have no reservation about just jumping on the Voyager and setting our sails to the winding highways in front of us to wherever I hearts want.

 

So if you see a couple of ol' Kawasaki kids rollin' past ya, give us a hearty wave, we'll be sure to wave back.

 

We're equal opportunity wavers.