A great second bike. Maybe.

I bought it under pressure from a friend (the same one who taught me to ride the GS650). He bought a GSXR 750, and knew a guy who had a brand new CBR900RR, and figured I needed to join his speed/death cult. I was willing, and bought a race-prepped GSXR-750. Slabside.

It couldn’t have cost too much, since I was not flush with cash at the time. I’m betting it was sometime in 1992 when I bought it. The bodywork had been replaced with plain white panels, held onto the frame with a combination of the factory pegs and zip ties. The bike had no turn signals, and liberal amounts of safety wire held the cases and oil drain plug in place. The Yoshimura exhaust guaranteed a high level of both neighbor annoyance and John Law attention. I only had it for a couple of years, and got pulled over twice, with only one ticket. I was able to convince the local constabulary that it only sounded like I was speeding, and that non-operable turn signals are not the same as missing turn signals. I was careful to indicate a right turn with my left hand raised, elbow at 90 degrees as I turned up 12th from Lamar on my home.

Even in its most ugly form, the bike was a genius ride. It’s balanced, rheostatic control of almost unlimited power, and telepathic handling made plain that it was a more a bike than I was a rider. It just wanted to go fast, it didn’t care if it was in a straight line, around a corner, in a sleepy neighborhood, or on the highway. Blast down to Galveston for a Hundredaire’s Weekend? Sure. Bring your earplugs. Return the things your freshly-ex girlfriend left at your place? Even better. Let’s go. Play Highway Frogger with 18-wheelers and dozing commuters up I-35? Whatever, dude. I am here for you. And the GSXR would almost certainly call you “dude.”

East Texas go cart track, and guidance from the Central Motorcycle Roadracing Association.

Behold the eternal ProvNov. And no, that is not me or my bike. It is from that weekend, though. I have a bunch of picture of my bike on the track, but I put them somewhere special. So very special I have no idea where they are.

The point of the bike was to race. The point of the guy who applied gentle pressure to me to buy the bike was to race. So, we raced. We trailered the bikes (he had swapped his GSXR for a EX500 by this time, with maybe a Montessa and a XR500 in between) behind his VW Westy and headed to Oak Hill raceway in Henderson. Don’t look for it. It ain’t there anymore. I was a little trickle of asphalt drizzled across an East Texas valley. It was a cool place.

Spoiler: I was, and continue to be, what is defined in the WERA/CMRA/AMA rulebooks as a “dog-slow mullet” on the track. Race school was a perfunctory discussion of the flags and what they mean, advice to go where you look, and how to hold your arm up when you are exiting to the pits. A couple of laps around the track behind an Expert, and you’ve earned your ProvNov yellow T shirt to wear over your leathers. Now line up to race.

A couple of factors contributed to my slowness. None of them were the bike. It was primarily my fear. I couldn’t overcome looking over my shoulder for merging traffic. I was afraid of getting hurt, and wouldn’t trust the bike. There was the performative aspect, with people watching and judging. Going slow didn’t help, only made it worse. A little more instruction may have helped. It was muggy like East Texas in July is. Taking practice laps with the Hayden brothers buzzing past on Moto Liberty prepped TZ250s didn’t help. Yeah, future World MotoGP Champion Nicky Hayden, and his brothers Tommy and Roger were at the track, their preteen selves making the world seem slow.

It was my 30th birthday, too. Being old isn’t an excuse, but I was old. A bolted the license plate on, stripped the tape from the headlights, and headed to Dallas to visit a friend. I chased a cat on a GS1000 on a triple=digit flight up Highway 175 past Gun Barrel City. On the last leg back to Austin, I pulled under an overpass during a thunderstorm, only about 20 miles from home. I was beat. The bike just wanted to go.

I’ll never be a racer, but the day at the track made me a lifelong fan of motorcycle road racing.

I sold the GSXR to someone who was planning on exporting it to the Middle East somewhere. I bought a bike that was at the other end of the performance scale.