2010-09-01

Let the journey begin...


[czytaj tego posta po polsku]

Yamaha FZ 150
Basically, since I've created this blog up until now there was no triger to start publishing. Up until I got this bike. It was then that I decided to take my camera with me at each time I'd be cruising around. This is a good way to collect material for interesting blog's content. All the other ideas for what else could be possibly on this blog came after that.
To start with, let me throw some light at the bike itself and at my story with it.
Me and two wheels
It all started here, in Taiwan. In the past, while still in Poland, I once sat on a small 50 cc mini bike of my cousin, who had quite a few of them in his home garage. I had my experience of driving it, it was not a stunning one though. Well, my cousin let me start with something suitable for my level - 50 cc mini bike as mentioned before. So I sat on it, closed the clutch, accelerated, opened the clutch, and... I can't say I did it sensually, as the bike stood up on the back tire, throwing me off like a rodeo bull, then went few meters ahead without me and felt down against the road, leaving nasty dent on the fuel tank. Many years have passed since then, and I still feel some kind a way about it, especially with feeling guilty for breaking not my stuff, though the cousin, while seeing the whole thing, seemed more after me than after the bike back then, which was really nice of him.
Year 2008, summer holiday, few days before the opening of Olympic Games, and I'm leaving Beijing (getting sentimental now...) and from Mainland China I'm traveling through Hong Kong to Taiwan aka Formosa (Portugese: Ilha Formosa = Beautiful Island). The island is of vertically stretched shape, covered by high mountains on a large area. On the East Side mountains often stick out right from the Pacific Ocean. On the West Coast mountains are embedded further from the coast line giving away a lot of space for urban development, which is one of the reasons for which most cities are established all the way along the West contour of the island. Also, all the way down from the North, Taiwan crosses from subtropical to tropical climat. It is an island full of wonderful scenic areas and beautiful natural sceneries, but apart of all those mother nature's miracles, yet another integral element of local landscape are... scooters! No kidding! They have so much of them scooters here, that where one is first time to witness scooters parked along all city streets with no space to stick a finger in between any two of them, while there are still plenty of them in the traffic, well...it's quite impressive :] When my brother was visiting me from Korea, where he also saw many more scooters than he observed in Poland, then even though I was informing him on this matter upon his arrival, he was amazed to discover, that the reality exceeded his expectations. Well, as for me, for the first 6 months of my life on this island, my only bike was... a bicycle :P But then, after six months I became a proud owner of my first ever scooter - 125 cc Kymco. Not new offcourse, I bought it from a friend who bought it from soemone else who got it from yet another someone... and so on probably :P But there's gonna be a separate post on my blog to present my Kymco bike. Since back then, however, I was dreaming of a different kind of a bike. Somethink a bit bigger, heavier, something that you sit on with your legs around it, not for chair-sitting scooter ridding position. And something with manual gears, as it always seemed a real-man-must-know thing to me. Back then, I was excited at each time passign or being passed by Yamaha FZ bikes. Their design is just so much more handsome from other same styled bikes here. And those are available both with a sport-like housing and as naked version. The only thing I didn't know back then, was that those bikes are equiped with 150 cc engines. It turned out to be a great discovery to me later on. In Taiwan the most basic driving licence for motorbikes covers those up to 250 cc. In case of 50cc however most of people I came across driving those were aparently never bothered by getting any driving licence for it.A higher cathegory of a licence for motorbikes is for those from the range between 250cc and 550cc, and finally for anything above 550cc there's a standard driving licence cathegory A (for motorcycles). Since I have never owned any driving licence at all, I took the national taiwanese examination for that first basic driving licence for bikes up to 250cc. It is also the top popular cathegory of a driving licence in Taiwan as by the standard any Taiwanese randomly picked from a croud is most likely to have it. People just get it done before they even can get anything else done. Scooter is definetely most popular transportation mean on the island. And so the market for bikes from this cathegory is huge as well. Scooters are most often 125cc, and motorbikes (manual gears) 150cc. However there are also 50/100/200/250 options for both. Well, it's fairly enough to start with, there will be more posts on this subject later on.
So let's get to the point: Yamaha FZ 150 and others...
the model FZ 150 was released by Yamaha on the Taiwanese market in 90. The one I have is from 1992. The youngest I came across was 98, and I saw quite a few of 96. Currently, as speaking of this particular model, in Taiwan there's only a second hand market. You can still purchase those bikes at the bike shops, but those will all be machines from 90. after a general maintenance fixes, parts eplacing etc. New ones can still be imported. Soon, hovever, the new Yamaha model is expected to be introduced after Indian market - 150 cc Yamaha Fazer. So far, when speaking of a similar design, there are Kymco Quannon which can be purchased brand new, and a recently introduced SYM T1. Mentioning the Quannon bike, I personally like naked version model indroduced recently, than the one with sport housing. The reason - the sport-styled one looks too much like a toy bike. Enges are a bit to quadratic and sharp. A it too futuristic, while pretty small in terms of overall size. The naked version much more remains a motorcycle machine and both tires seem to be larger than in previoust versions. Then, including all second-hands, there is also Honda NSR. It's noticeably smaller and lighter from Yamaha FZ though, good maybe for small guys, not a 1,86m guy like myself. It's pretty much what's most popular in the range up to 250cc in the FZ-like visual design styling.
Technical specifications and other details of Yamaha FZ 150 will be put in a separate post. I'd still like to tell more on my story with this bike. When it was being sold as a brand new bike back in 90. it was priced at around $100k NTD (aprox. $3200 USD). Novadays it can be bought from a bike shop starting from $30k NTD (aprox. $930 USD). Not very expensive, but the expenses will add-up after the bike is bought as part are more expensive and less available as for bikes still being in the production. Often, needed parts have to be looked for. Luckilly enough, Taiwan is not a huge island after all, and when a certain part is needed but not available at the site where we ask for it, a nice Taiwanese bike shop manager will call his friends aound the island and get one of them bringing the part after a while after taking it out from some old Yamaha FZ somwhere out there. This bike is novadays serviced and maintained almost only on transplantations. With a pocket full of money however, you'd be able to still get it pimped up at one of bike tunning shops. If you pay well, pro fellas can basically recreate the bike for you piece by piece. But this is not the case for me ;)
Personally, when I have to get my bike serviced, I follow the first scenarion, like on the photo below, when at some village in the South of Taiwan my Yamaha was waiting for replacement parts freshly mined out from some anonymous donor:


I'm getting close with my FZ lady from around January 2010. So far the biggest trip she took me for and the longest single-shot quality time we've had was during my trip from Hsinchu down to Kenting which makes aprox. 400 km each way. The trip was taken during the Chinese New Year 2010, and my beautiful black girl was not mine yet back then. It was first my mate Evgeny (friend from NCTU). He bought the bike after I nicely encouraged him to do so when we visited a bike shop together.And when he was buying her, we made a deal, that she'd be mine six months later. So I bouth the bike from him and she's now mine, officialy and legally since August 2010. Well, my Kymco scooter is still in, I use it for general transportation, and Yamaha is for having quality time with, for cruising when I only have time to do it. And I hate those who try telling me how prolematic this bike can be, that it's old, that spare parts are expensive and not always easy to get, that this design is not really comfortable for long riding... well, some people just can't get it - this bike is a definition of a style, a class within itself, it represents a certain flavour that pleases me, and like bunch of other FZ fans in Taiwan, I know what I ride, and I take it the way it is. Don't try to chang your gf, acccept her the way she is ;] As soon as she's the only one that can make you happy:

And now some video clips with all the machines mentioned above in this post:

And this is actually the article that innagurated the whole blog thing. I became so much into motorbike cruising that now I only have to teach myself to take my camera at each one of my trips to collect resources for my future blog development.

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