Bikes that made me: A Triumph Speed Triple shifted my motorcycling into a higher gear

Right now, I imagine a lot of people who know me personally are nodding slowly. But what I really mean to say is that my motorcycle life, specifically, has been far from typical. You know the stereotypical path of the young rider who buys a sporty bike and ages into a cruiser or a big, comfy touring bike some time in middle age? Not me. I owned a cruiserish bike in my 20s and bought my first pure sport bike in my 40s.

"Bikes that made me" is a series of articles by Common Tread writers about personal motorcycles that have been significant in their riding lives and the lessons learned from those machines.

Unlike fellow Zillans such as Ari Henning and Zack Courts, I didn't grow up on a race track. In my youth, I didn't even know anyone who raced and I had no close motorcycling role models to guide or influence me. In the motorcycling culture I was born into, most riders lusted after a Harley-Davidson while a few cool guys in college rode airhead BMWs or old Triumphs. I was among the unwashed masses of bottom feeders snapping up a cheap UJM as a first ride.

All of which is to say that into my 30s, while I worked in the news business and before I ever professionally wrote a word about motorcycles, my bikes were, to be kind, unremarkable. Utilitarian. Nobody stopped to look at them when they were parked on the street.

That changed in 1998 when I bought a Triumph Speed Triple, the bike that made me, certainly more than any other has.

The great motorcycle purchasing excursion of 1998

In 1998 I was living in Puerto Rico, four years married and two years into my first stint as a freelancer. I was scraping by in my new life of self-employment, but then I got a windfall. A PR firm hired me to translate into English all the news coverage in the local Spanish-language media of a big labor dispute and send a report daily to the U.S. corporation involved (where no one could read Spanish). For three intense months, I was up at 6 a.m. and pounding out my report by noon, and then had the rest of the day to do my usual work. But when it all ended, I had earned an extra half a year's income in three months.

I'd been reading the motorcycle magazines for a couple of decades, and now it was time for me to finally buy one of the bikes featured in those glossy pages. I rented an oilhead BMW (great week-long test ride, but crossed it off my list) and went to AMA Vintage Motorcycle Days in Ohio, where I took advantage of all the demo rides. By fall, I'd narrowed my choice to a Honda VTR1000 Superhawk or the new Triumph T509 Speed Triple. I found I could buy a used bike in Florida and ship it to the island for less than buying local. I flew to Florida, rode a Speed Triple, bought it and put it on a barge for Puerto Rico without ever even going to look at the Superhawk.

22 years later...

The black, 1997 Speed Triple I bought then, all stock except for a Corbin seat and an alternative Triumph exhaust, and with 6,259 miles on it, is still in my garage today. Manufactured in March, 1997, it's 23 years old, is currently wearing its 23rd rear tire and just rolled over 115,000 miles.

In this era of 200-horsepower naked bikes, the 85ish horsepower it produces sounds quaintly tame. Along with the 1997 T595 Daytona, it was Triumph's first fuel-injected model, and it never did get very good fuel mileage. After a couple of years, Triumph realized it was stupid to make the Daytona 955 cc and the Speed Triple (virtually the same exact bike, but without bodywork) 885 cc, so they raised the displacement to match. Years later, one of the major magazines, in one of their used-bike buying guides, referred to my orphaned 1997 model as "the altogether less desirable 885 cc version."

Despite all that, the triple made gobs of usable torque for street riding. Self-contradictorily, it whistled like a jet warming up on the tarmac and clattered like I'd strapped a coffee can half full of gravel to the sump. For me, it was easily the best performing motorcycle I'd ever owned, with its 17-inch sticky sport tires, sturdy, 43 mm fork tubes, adjustable suspension and disc brakes that stood out in their time.

For first time, I had a bike that people would stop on the street and look at, especially in Puerto Rico. Since there was no Triumph dealer on the island, I almost certainly had the only Speed Triple among the four million population. I remember once a man was walking by with his small son and stopped to point out to his boy the single-sided swingarm. Where else were you going to see one of those back then?

The Speed Triple has had a hard life, and I don't just mean surviving my ham-fisted mechanical repairs and questionable maintenance. After just a year in Puerto Rico, it made its second sea voyage as I shipped it back to the states and kept it in a shed at my parents' place, so I could use it on vacations. For two years, it sat except for a few weeks of hard use.

I used it when I finally, much belatedly, got on track, taking a Jason Pridmore course as an early 40th birthday to myself. Then when I moved back to the states to take my first job in the motorcycle business, working at the AMA, it became my daily ride. It got caught in a snow storm, loaded for trips with camping gear it was never intended or designed to carry, dropped less than a mile from my house on a cold April morning when I locked the front brake trying avoid a left-turning uninsured motorist. I thoroughly used and abused it, but I still haven't killed it.

Since then, working in the business has given me the opportunity to ride many motorcycles (I've lost count of models, but I know it's 20 brands). In my personal garage, many other bikes have come and gone, but the Speed Triple is here until death do us part. Nobody would buy a 23-year-old, 115,000-mile bike with scuffs and scratches and worn-out everything and a stain on the frame from where gas leaked on it years ago. Certainly no amount of money I could hope to get would be worth more to me, at this point. Every scar tells a story. Some have said I should restore it. I kind of prefer it the way it is. Fixing its flaws would feel like erasing history.

The passage of time alone does not necessarily create significance, however. What makes the old Speed Triple significant in a "bikes that made me" kind of way is how it altered my course. I'd always loved riding, but I bought the Triumph knowing it was capable of more than the bikes I'd owned before, and knowing that would push me to improve my own skills. That's why I took the Pridmore course. I wanted to learn, and with this bike I had a tool to help me do that.

For that reason alone, this old Triumph that, like its owner, is a little creaky in the joints, bearing a few scars, and a step slower than the younger models, is the obvious first choice as the bike that made me.