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Somewhere in 1992 I think it was a colleague of mine
introduced me into the joys of riding an XT 500.
As a result I got my drivers-license and bought one from one of
his friends. There are no pictures of it as far as I'm aware, but
it was generally known as 'the bike from hell', since it was all
black, welded together from lots of suspicious parts and actually
had had a weld-job or two too many.
It left me standing on the roadside a couple of times, but I
always got going again, either by fiddling around with it myself,
or with help from the friendly AA-man :)
Up till one time when it blew a valve right through the cylinder.
It being a one cylinder block, that kind of stops you dead.
Luckily it didn't me; it happened on a bridge on the highway...
So I started looking for a replacement block and eventually
found an XT for sale cheap.
Turned out though that it was in much better condition then 'the
bike from hell' so that one got scratched and this one 'rebuild'.
I don't use it as often as I should or would, nor do I do much maintenance on it (I should overhaul it some time soon), but it gives me loads of pleasure when I get to play with it.
Here are some pictures of it, taken from all sides. One shows
me trying to start it (I succeeded :) which can be testy since
it's a kick-started bike.
(PS For those Mini-loving bikers out there; that the '94 IMM
T-shirt I'm wearing there :)
To get an idea what kind of people ride XT 500's, here is a
link to the 'Baggerij'
site.
Eventually, meaning when one becomes available for the kind of
money I would be willing to spend on it, I'd love to own a Yamaha
Tenere, for now I'll stay with the simple, trusty and fun XT 500
though.