We moved from the great town of Reno back to Sonoma County in June.  With that move my 1998 Honda Shadow tagged along.  I was still tinkering with some aftermarket parts adding little touches here and there. I found a great website where they sold handlebar clocks and temperature gauges which was a good thing to have.  I also added some chrome parts to shine it up a little.  I ended up having to fix the radiator because it had a little leak but other than that I didn’t have any problems with it.

Fun Thing, my parents have a neighbor across the street that has a custom show bike and when Street Vibrations came around he was taking his bike on a trailer to Reno and asked if I wanted him to take mine in his trailer, it was really great to have my bike up there and Even though it isn’t anything special I enjoyed riding around during the event.

It was after this event I knew it was time to figure out how to get a bigger bike, so the search began…..

I had three different things I was looking for in my next bike

1)      Larger engine

2)      Some extra mods like highway bars and windshield would be nice

3)      A well maintained bike

4)      Kind of a bonus I did not want a black bike, weird I know but all I ever saw was black bikes and I wanted something a little more unique.  I know my Dad has a thing against white cars and all but I really wanted a white bike.  I liked the look and I liked the contrast with white and chrome (Which I knew I would add)

With limited funds I knew I would have to either sell my Shadow and save a little money for a new bike, or find someone that wanted to do a partial trade for a bigger bike.  I took it to the shop and had the oil changed and a safety inspection done getting it ready to sell.

I started researching what kind of bike I wanted and I narrowed my choices down to four different bikes;

The Honda VT1100 is a motorcycle engine used in numerous bikes in the Honda product line since its debut in 1985. Measuring 1098 cc, the engine is a 52 degree twin-cylinder with liquid cooling. It provides around 50 horsepower depending on application and tuning.

I thought this might be still to small of a bike and in a couple years I would be on the hunt again, then I looked at the Honda Valkyrie ONE OF THE GUYS AT THE CHURCH IN Sparks had one and I always liked how the engine was larger and  more of a small block type enginve rather then a v twin, I also liked how it was a highway cruiser but it was still pretty fast and had a good sound to it.

The Honda Valkyrie is a motorcycle that was manufactured by Honda, from model years 1997 to 2003. It was designated GL1500C in the US market and F6C in other markets. The Valkyrie engine is a 1,520 cubic centimetres (93 cu in) liquid cooled, horizontally-opposed flat-six engine transplanted from Honda’s Goldwing model. This was unusual since most “cruiser” style motorcycles were based on a V-twin engine design similar to the engine of a Harley-Davidson.

The third bike I was looking at was the Suzuki intruder, it was the same size engine as the Valkyrie but a little lighter and more importantly it was a bit more in my price range.

The original Suzuki VL 1500 Intruder LC featured a low 26.7-inch seat height and an underseat 3.5-gallon fuel tank, contributing to a lower center of gravity, enhancing stability and low speed handling. Its new^[1] engine is designed to produce a claimed 67 hp at a low 4,800 rpm and 114 Nm at 2,300 rpm.^[1] In 2002, its front single disc brake was upgraded to dual discs and the bike received a 0.6-gallon larger, 4.1-gallon fuel tank.^[3] In 2004, the bike received four-way emergency flasher / high beam passing switch, multi-reflector turn signals, hydraulic valve lash adjusters, hydraulic clutch and a back-torque limiter.^[1]

The motorcycle’s name combines V referring to its v-twin engine configuration, L referring to its long frame,^[4] 1500 referring to the approximate metric displacement of the engine and the LC standing for Legendary Classic.

I was still a little hopeful I would find a Harley out there that I could get on some how some way.  Well I looked for a good while without any luck. I had my Shadow on the car lot for a couple weekends but it was a hard time to sell a motorcycle and most of the ones I was finding online needed some work or the owners were trying to get to much money for them.  But you know how Craigslist is some days it’s hot some days it’s cold but it usually is faithful.

As I was browsing the Craigslist app on my trusty iphone one day I found a guy who had just listed a Suzuki intruder 1500 low miles white (Which is the color I was looking for) a couple mods like new comfy seat backrest for passenger and windshield, one other thing that caught my eye was that he said the bike was to big for him and he wanted a smaller bike to ride around……I had a smaller bike!!!!!!!