If you ever wanna fall in love all over again with your CB1100

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First thing, nab yourself a perfect fall day. Bright sunshine, cool in the morning, seventy degrees in the afternoon. Head east to the California Gold Country, resplendent in its autumn foliage. Bop around in mickey mode, maybe sixty mph on smooth, serpentine roads up to, say, a funky little hamlet like Georgetown, but only after taking a detour through a soaring cathedral of evergreens to Stumpy Meadows...





Upon completion of your detour, go grab some Mexican food. The tortilla chips have to be crunchy, the salsa properly chunky. Helps, too, if the woman sitting at the bar looks like a brunette Scarlett Johansson.

As you're getting ready to leave, maybe some old Billy Gibbons look-alike on an old H-D Sportster will be sitting on a bench outside the bar, studying your bike.

"Yours?" he might ask. Better still, he doesn't ask what year it is, or are you the original owner, or who performed the restoration? Nope, he follows his initial question up with, "2017 CB1100 EX, right? Met a fella last week down at Bike Night in Sacramento who had the exact same bike. Was that you?"

I had my helmet and shades on, so he couldn't see my face.

"Nope, it wasn't me. I don't go to Bike Nights."

Brother Billy went on to tell me that he currently has "five or six" Harleys, but he's planning on getting rid of all of them. Instead, he wants something for long trips, to go see friends in the Rockies. Says he's had a half dozen CBs, all from the late sixties to early eighties. Now he's looking at things like the Kawasaki Concours, but he only knows about the previous generation version, the one that was introduced in 1986. I described the new one to him, the size and power of which seemed to put him off of that idea.

Gesturing to my bike, he asked, "I don't want anything too big or heavy. Definitely no Gold Wings. How are these things for long trips?"

I told him that I have no problem doing 500-mile days on my CB, and I would have zero hesitation about riding it to Canada and back, but then I also don't like big fairings or windshields. I like clean, smooth air, with no buffeting or turbulence. He agreed on the windshield issue, so I told him a bit more about the bike.

Then I offered him a ride. His eyes lit up, big time.

Fifteen minutes later, after zipping up and down that twisty little slice of heaven, he came back sporting a huge grin.

"This is the one," he said, pulling his bandana off of his face. "Thanks a bunch. That's it. I'm gettin' me one of these, just like this one. A red EX."

He was stoked. With his big gray beard, bright blues eyes, and puffy red cheeks, he looked like Santa Claus, if Santa made his rounds in black leather chaps and a matching vest.

We headed off in separate directions, and during my ride to my next stop I couldn't help but take note of each of the bike's qualities that I'd described to Santa Billy: the ease of the clutch, and overall transmission excellence; the ridiculously good suspension quality, turning all those Gold Country roads into a never-ending magic carpet ride; the beauty of the gauges, and of the sparkly red paint shimmering in the early-afternoon sunlight; the serene tranquility of the entire experience.

Very cool, indeed. It was just all so good. There is simply no better way to come to appreciation something than to gush about it to someone else, and then lock down that great feeling with your own confirming experience.

And so it went, until I hit my next destination, Hidden Falls...









(That last shot reminds me of a Civil War battlefield. Love that one.)

You know, on a day like this, I find myself really coming around to that whole mickey way of riding.

And so it goes....

What a great way to fall in love again with one of Honda's very best.