I’ve been talking about selling my R1 for a couple of years now. It’s a 2000; I bought it in 2003. In six years, I’ve put 4,500 miles on it. That’s an average of 750 miles a year and I’ll bet this year I didn’t even put 200 miles on it. When the whole family leaves each morning in one vehicle, riding the bike separately seems kind of pointless and selfish. I’ve ridden the bike to Ardmore and back once or twice and rode it out to Shawnee this week, but those are definitely exceptions to the rule. For the most part, I just don’t ride it these days.

I scanned Craigslist and eBay for bikes the same year as mine and picked a price in the middle. Then I posted an ad on Craigslist, sat back, and watched the morons roll in.

I listed the price as firm and within an hour I was getting e-mails from people wanting to trade a PlayStation 2 with a bunch of games for bike. Yes, I really want to trade $100 worth of gaming stuff for a sport bike. One guy offered me “a bunch of car stereo speakers, I don’t even know where they all came from!” As legal as that sounds, thanks, but no. I’m only half-kidding when I say I think the best way to sell something like this on Craigslist might be to simply delete the first three days worth of offers and then start from there.

In the end I connected with a guy who is now in his life roughly where I was back when I bought the bike: younger, married, good job, no kids, and looking for an adult-owned bike that hadn’t been abused. He came, he rode it, he brought cash, he left with the bike.

Believe it or not, the Yamaha R1 ranks right up there on the list of vehicles I’ve owned the longest. According to my records. I owned the my Neon from 1996-2003 (7 years) and our Rodeo from 1999-2006 (also 7 years). I owned the R1 for six-and-a-half (bought it in early 2003), so it’s right up there. (As I was typing this I just realized we’ve owned our minivan for six!) On the other end of the spectrum we have things like the dune buggy (about eight weeks), the Yugo (about six weeks) and the Suzuki Sprint (about four weeks).

This is the first vehicle we’ve sold since the kids were old enough to know what’s going on. I made sure to take both kids on rides around the neighborhood this past week. Mason was a little sad this evening when the bike finally pulled away. Morgan stood out by the mailbox, waving and yelling “Bye bye, motorcycle!” as it left. I explained to Mason that it’s a little sad when you sell a vehicle, but it’s fun to buy something else with the money so he seemed okay with that. I remember being sad when my dad sold his Blazer, but I also remember all the other fun cars and motorcycles my parents owned over the years.

Bye-bye, motorcycle!