The Kawasaki ZX-12R Ninja, one of the fastest, most powerful bikes I've ever ridden!
‘Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a
broken-winged bird that cannot fly,’ said poet Langston Hughes. And while I don’t
think he had motorcycles in mind when he wrote this, it certainly does apply to
bikes as well – dreams of riding insanely fast bikes that are, on the face of
it, well beyond your means. Let me explain.
The seven days I spent with the Kawasaki ZX-14R were some of the most memorable days of my entire life. I love this bike so very, very, very much!
Back in school and college, I was obsessed with
buying and reading car and motorcycle magazines. Indian magazines that were
available in the 1980s were Car & Bike International, and the Indian
Auto Journal. These I bought and read every month, but what I really waited
for was to get my hands on hard-to-get second-hand copies of foreign motorcycle
magazines. Since there was probably not much demand for these, such magazines
were only rarely available, but when I did find copies, I would buy as many as
I could with whatever money I happened to have at that time. American magazines
like Cycle and Cycle World, British magazines like Bike, Performance
Bikes and Superbike, and the Australian magazine TwoWheels. New
copies simply weren’t available in Lucknow but I was only too happy buy old
copies, which were also reasonably cheap.
