The roads of Cali's Central Coast...

Fast forward a few years to 1982, and I've arrived in beautiful Santa Barbara, California!  I had visited my Uncle Joe and Aunt Judy a few times during high school and college, and always knew I would live in California one day.  

I had finished 3 years of college at Suffolk County Community, and had been working that whole time in school.  I had been either tending bar, or clamming and it was time to hit the road and live somewhere else.  Plus my brother Tim and I had spent the prior winter living in Florida, taking care of my step grandfather, Tom Austin.  I discovered that I loved living in a beach town that had warm weather year round!  What a concept!  

"TA" as he was known to us all had developed a brain tumor, and Nana needed help getting him back and forth to the treatments.  Anyway, much more about Florida and Ft. Lauderdale later- there's lots of great stories to tell about that 12 month stretch!

Anyway,  after some time in photography school at Brook's Institute, working at Rocky Galenti's as a bartender, and then winning a liquor license (another story for another entry) in the lottery and opening up the Bombay Bar & Grill, somewhere along the line I got my second bike- a REALLY fast Kawasaki crotch rocket.  I think I paid about $4000 for it- which was a lot of money for a bike in those days.  The KZ750 was the precursor to the Ninja, the bike that set the motorcycling world on its ear with the cafe' racer style becoming the new rage.  That time almost became the end of the V-twin and Harley Davidson!

Low, sleek lines, a racing fairing and windshield as standard equipment, and the "giddie up" to make you have to hang-on for dear life.  I can remember many a night after getting out of work at Rocky's or later the Bombay Bar & Grill, and hitting the 101 Freeway for a 120 mph speed run to burn off the adrenaline of the nights work.  Ironic that scaring the shit out of myself would calm me down and allow me to go to sleep before the sun came up.  I remember many a time when I'm crouched over the tank, redlining the RPM's and thinking that if I hit a bump in the road I'm a dead man.  The good part of that was I wouldn't have felt a thing as I bounced down the road at 100+ miles per hour.

Had that bike until 1986, when I was selling real estate for a living and needed real transpo and a nice car with four doors.  One of these days I going to get another racer to go along with my current Cruiser ride...