1984 Honda GL1200 Aspencade - "Battlestar"
There's a lot of text on this page - if you don't read anything else at least catch the story of the Battlestar's demise.
The Battlestar is the only bike I have bought used, couldn't afford a new one and the ex-wife refused to go on vacation on the 750F again. It's also the only bike I've owned which had a name, I didn't name it, I don't relate to my bikes as people or friends, they're just metal and plastic (1).
The GL1200 had 5400 miles on it when I bought it and when it left my company I had completed 60052 miles on it myself, the most of any bike I've had (as of 1/1/2001). The vacation I bought it for turned out to be the last one with the ex-wife, rather ironic since I never really wanted a Goldwing. After the split I set myself the goal of riding a million miles by the time I was 70 and the GL took the first brunt of my enthusiasm. I've since realised the folly of riding just to run up the miles, got tired of droning on and on (unlike this web site 8-)
How it got it's name: A group of us were on a camping trip in Death Valley and I was impatient while everybody was getting ready to ride one day. I turned up the music on the tape player and rode around the camp eventually trying to go between two posts which were too narrow and I got stuck. The music being played was the theme from Star Wars and my friend Fran then announces to everybody something about "Bob and the Battlestar", she doesn't watch a lot of TV or movies so got the ships mixed up. The name stuck though, there is no truth that it is named after the ex-wife "Battleaxe" - Sandie if you read this - it's a joke!
I rode the Battlestar all the way to the Arctic Ocean and all round Alaska in 1987, one day I'll get round to putting that trip on the web.
In about 1986 a friend, Hesh, had the bright idea of riding to Colorado and back for the July 4th weekend, I'd never considered riding such a long way in such a short time and told him to get lost but right after I put the phone down decided it was a good idea. We did it and it became a habit for a few years and the resulting annual party was a contributing factor in the founding of the DoD and many other odd habits.
That not being enough we also started to ride to Utah for other long weekends to meet up with a DoD contingent there. One one of these trips in 1989 we were out riding in the mountains with the Utah contingent when Hesh and I agreed to swap bikes, we had never done this before in all the 10s of thousands of miles we rode together. He had a BMW with one of those springy side stands and of course the GL didn't have one. He took off with the stand down and paid the price proving that the little rubber feeler on the end of the stand doesn't work. A couple of us had noticed his mistake and were in hot pursuit but Hesh is not an easy rider to catch even on an unfamiliar GL1200. I ended up leaving the Battlestar in Utah and riding home on Hesh's BMW, he flew home a few days later. One of our Utah friends, Dan Canfield, wrote a brilliant description of the incident in the form of a wide world of sports commentary. This wasn't quite the end of the Battlestar, it sat outside Dan's house for the winter before the insurance company paid up and I then gave it to Dan for a friend of his who needed a ride, it never really ran well after that though (!) and although I don't know what finally became of it I suspect it was scrapped the winter after (Dan?).
One other unique record the Battlestar has is that it is the only bike I have ridden more than 1000 miles in a day on and one day I'll write up that story (5 snowstorms, a near fire, electrical failure...)
The Battlestar outside Dan Canfield's place after its rescue from the crash site.
There are before and after pictures of Battlestar on the fateful day somewhere on the web.
(1) I love to ride but am not particularly interested in bikes in a mechanical way and I only vaguely keep up with the new models etc. I also hate to clean my bikes.