Page 41 - Motorcycle Trader (February 2020)

SHAUNDENNIS
Y OUR
major damage. With
the help of good advice
from the guys at McIver
and Veitch Motorcycles
in Dunedin, I managed
to get it going again
but let a cousin, who
had helped me put it
all together, take it for
a test ride. He repaid
me by riding over a
railway embankment
mad Dutchman after it expired
in the rain on a dirt road and
had the unpleasant experience
of drifting around corners taking truckload. I’ve currently got a
up the full width of the road and Suzuki SV1000 and a Kawasaki
hoping nobody was coming in
FIRS T S
While not technically my first
bike (which was a 1975 Yamaha
DT125), this is my first ‘proper’
and writing it off. I was had it now! motorcycle bought after I’d left
absolutely devastated. I did eventually get home at 18 to join the navy.
Although I had over it and I’m now History hasn’t been kind to the
a good selection of 73 and, after being Yamaha XZ550, but I loved the
Douglas parts, they away from riding for look and spend two trouble-free
were mainly for the 40 years, am currently
basic Dragonfly model riding a very original years traversing the length of
and quite different 1989 Honda GB400. NZ chasing various ‘ports’ as
to the 90-Plus. That Nobody but me gets to sailors do.
lovely, big front brake ride this! While not technically my
finished up on a mate’s Stu Gray, ‘girlfriend’, Sharon and I spent
go-cart. Oh, if only I Cromwell, NZ a lot of our downtime together
during a shore posting (when
her Petty Officer boyfriend
wasn’t around) riding around
the opposite direction. When room for a Suzuki T125 in there if the mountains of the central
we finally made it to the tar, I could find one. North Island.
I assured him that my house As for girlfriends, there were I retired from the navy at
was only a couple of hundred a few but he’s a picture of the the ripe old age of 21 and sold
metres away and that I could one I ended up keeping (or, more the XZ550 to a friend who had
push it from there. It was, in likely, she ended up keeping nothing but trouble with it. Had
fact, eight kilometres but I me) on my Norton Commando I ever changed the oil? You had
was so pleased I was still to change the oil?
alive I didn’t notice. 750 – another bike I’d love to own Sharon and I caught up years
I don’t know how many again. I’m blessed because after later, both the worse for wear
kilometres I did on that bike, all these years, my wife still loves but still great friends. Thirty
but it must have been a to ride as pillion, and we ride years later, I’m still riding (1974
pretty-much every weekend. BMW R60).
Grant P Shepperd, Shaun Dennis,
Z1000SX, but I reckon there’d be shepperd@xtra.co.nz escort2000rs@yahoo.com.au
MOTORCYCLE TRADER 41