The Longest Relationship I've Ever Had

I’ve owned my Suzuki GSX-R750 K6 for 20 years, which officially makes her the longest relationship I’ve ever had.

She’s seen me through grief, divorce, MANY relationships, some brilliant years and some bloody difficult ones, and somehow she’s still here. Strong, reliable, beautiful and considerably less argumentative than most things I’ve shared the last two decades with.

Apparently comparing your new girlfriend to a 20-year-old Suzuki is frowned upon, so I’ll leave that there.

The bike, though, has earned her place.

She’s a red and black Suzuki GSX-R750 K6, and even after 20 years I still think she’s one of the most beautiful bikes ever made. She’s immaculate because I’ve always looked after her, but she certainly hasn’t spent her life sitting in a garage being polished and admired.

She’s been ridden, and ridden HARD.

This isn't a bike that's spent 20 years sitting under a cover waiting for a sunny Sunday and an opportunity to pose outside a café. Bikes have always been a huge part of my life. Track days, weekends helping racing teams trackside, long rides with mates and plenty of miles where the destination wasn't particularly important all came with it.

There were also a few adventures that seemed like a good idea at the time.

One of those involved France.

A bike trip across France should have been fairly straightforward. Some decent roads, good weather, a few mates and the opportunity to enjoy a GSX-R somewhere other than the roads I'd ridden hundreds of times at home.

Unfortunately, the French police also took an interest in my Suzuki... I mean, who can blame them!

I got caught speeding, which resulted in a ban from driving in France (oops) and the bike being impounded.

That puts a slight dampener on a biking holiday, I can tell you.

Going home without her was bad enough, but she was still sitting in what was effectively French bike prison, so a couple of weeks later I had to go back with my van and a mate to get her out.

Between the original trip, the fine, the impound fees, getting home and then driving all the way back to France with a van to collect her, it wasn't exactly one of my cheaper biking holidays.

Still, we both made it home eventually, and with a story to tell.

I can't imagine why the French authorities didn't seem quite as pleased about that as I was.

Thankfully, she survived my younger interpretation of European speed limits and plenty of other adventures over the years, and she's still immaculate. Through the Micron exhaust she sounds bloody fantastic too, with that deep, throaty note that makes it very difficult to behave like a sensible 51-year-old when you start her up.

For most of my life, riding has been about enjoyment, mates, speed, bikes and everything that comes with being obsessed with things that have engines.

At one point, though, it became something much more important.

Twenty Years With a Suzuki GSX-R750 K6

Around the time this bike came into my life, my four-year-old son was diagnosed with a brain tumour and eventually, we lost him.

There isn't a clever way of writing about losing your child because there isn't anything you can say that adequately explains what it does to you. It's a pain I wouldn't wish on anyone, no matter what they'd done or how much they'd wronged me. Life carries on around you regardless, and somehow you have to work out how to carry on with it.

Riding became one of the ways I managed to do that.

These days we'd probably call it “regulating your nervous system” and give it some fancy-schmancy name. Twenty years ago, we'd have just called it clearing your head and blowing some cobwebs away.

All I knew was that getting on the bike helped.

Once my helmet was on and the engine was growling beneath me, everything else started to disappear. Between the noise of the engine, reading the road, looking through the next bend and feeling what the bike was doing underneath me, there wasn't much room left for everything else going on inside my head.

For those few hours, I didn't have to think about the questions I couldn't answer or try to make sense of something that never would. I just had to ride.

Looking back, I probably didn't appreciate quite how important that was at the time.

A lot of life has happened since then, and somehow this bike has been there for a huge amount of it. Anybody who's kept the same car or bike for years will probably understand how, eventually, it stops being just a machine because there are too many memories attached to it.

A particular road can take you straight back to a day you'd forgotten about, while a familiar engine note can remind you exactly how something felt years ago. This bike has accumulated two decades of those memories, some I'd happily live again and others I wouldn't wish on anybody.

After that long, what she's worth has got very little to do with what somebody would pay for her. There are 20 years of my life wrapped up in this bike, and you can't really put a price on that.

Although I can also look at her and remember the time she ended up imprisoned by the French authorities, so not every memory is sentimental.

Nobody's perfect.

The Bike That Stayed Through Everything Else

Life didn't suddenly become straightforward afterwards, because that's not how any of this works.

Jobs changed, relationships came and went, the kids grew up and I got older, although apparently not necessarily wiser. Life moved on, whether I wanted it to or not.

The Suzuki stayed.

She's been there on the brilliant days and the ones I'd rather forget, ready whenever I've needed her and asking for little more than fuel, maintenance and the occasional expensive part.

Considering she's my longest relationship, perhaps there's something to be said for that arrangement.

Riding a Sports Bike at 51 Isn't Quite the Same

While my feelings about the bike haven’t changed, my enthusiasm for actually riding her has dipped over the last year or two.

Part of that is life getting in the way, but another part is the inconvenient discovery that a 51-year-old body doesn't necessarily appreciate being folded onto a sports bike in quite the same way a younger one does.

Being a mechanic by trade probably hasn't helped matters either. Spending your working life bent over engines, underneath cars and generally putting your body into positions it was never designed for eventually catches up with you, and I've accumulated a few injuries along the way.

Although I've had her for 20 years, she's actually my second GSX-R750 because I threw her sister down the road and managed to break both the bike and myself in the process.

My current GSX-R has fared considerably better, but my wrist still likes to remind me that I'm not quite as indestructible as I once thought I was. A sports bike isn't exactly designed around the ergonomic requirements of a 51-year-old mechanic whose joints have started submitting complaints in writing.

Suzuki designed her to be ridden tucked in.

My body increasingly prefers something resembling an armchair.

I still loved owning her and I still enjoy looking at her, but the motivation to get my leathers on and disappear for several hours had gradually become less frequent.

I haven't exactly fallen out of love.

Maybe the relationship had just reached that stage where we were comfortable sitting in the same room without needing to do anything together.

Then last weekend I asked my new girlfriend if she fancied coming out on the bike.

Putting the New Girlfriend Through the Pillion Test

I knew she'd ridden pillion before with previous partners, although it had been quite a number of years since she'd last been on the back of a bike.

On Saturday afternoon, I set about getting the Gixxer pillion-ready, which meant removing the seat cowl and fitting the pillion seat, footpegs and custom-made grab rail. All very practical and necessary, obviously, but adding that lot does absolutely nothing for the lines of a beautiful bike.

The sacrifices you make for a woman. 🙄

At least I knew I wasn't introducing her to the entire concept from scratch, so we got up early on Sunday and headed out to Midway Truckstop in Whitchurch for breakfast, a popular stop for bikers. Tell me below if you know it.

It seemed like a decent first ride together.

Long enough to have a good run, but not so long that either of us would regret every decision we'd made by lunchtime.

It also became apparent fairly quickly that she was quite happy on the back at speed... bonus.

Obviously, no higher than the speed limit, Officer. 🫡

More importantly, she knew how to be a good pillion, which makes far more difference to the person riding than you might imagine.

A nervous passenger can fight the bike without realising they're doing it. They'll tense up, move at the wrong moment, try to stay upright when the bike leans or suddenly shift their weight because something has surprised them, and the rider feels every bit of it.

Someone who knows what they're doing behaves completely differently.

She settled in, moved naturally with the bike and trusted what I was doing without trying to correct it from the back seat. If she needed to communicate, she did, but otherwise she allowed me to ride and didn't spend the journey trying to second-guess what was happening.

After a while, I barely knew she was there.

Admittedly, she's only about 5ft 5in, so we're not exactly talking about putting a chest freezer on the pillion seat, but she passed the test rather well.

We met a couple of mates, had breakfast and then eventually headed off for home.

By then, my wrist had started aching.

The sensible decision was obvious. We'd head straight back rather than adding unnecessary miles, I'd give the wrist a rest and we'd still have had a bloody good morning out.

So that's what I decided to do.

For a bit.

Finding My Groove on the GSX-R Again

Somewhere on that ride home, something clicked.

The roads were good, the bike felt fantastic underneath me and I wasn't having to think too much about the person sitting behind me because she was comfortable with what I was doing. Being a pillion takes a fair amount of trust when you think about it. You're sitting behind someone else with no control over the throttle, brakes or where the bike is going, and when you start leaning into bends you've got to trust that the bloke in front knows what he's doing.

She did.

She wasn't fighting the bike or second-guessing me, and that meant I could get on with riding it.

My wrist was still aching, but I stopped paying quite so much attention to it. Funnily enough, the faster you go, the less it seems to hurt.

Again… obviously, still within the speed limit, Officer. 🫡

Then I found my groove.

The direct journey home gained a small detour, and that small detour somehow became a much larger one as I headed towards some of my favourite roads.

Funny how that happens.

I knew exactly what the Suzuki was doing underneath me because after 20 years together there aren't many surprises left between us, but that doesn't mean you ever stop respecting her. I know what she's capable of, and a bike like this will soon remind you if you start thinking you know better. The engine sounded fantastic, she felt planted and responsive, and for the first time in quite a while I wasn't thinking about whether I should be out riding.

I was simply enjoying it.

This wasn't about pretending I was back on a track day or trying to prove that I can still ride like I did 20 years ago. At 51, I've developed a healthy appreciation for the fact that tarmac remains considerably harder than I am, and recovery times aren't improving with age.

What came back that morning was the feeling of a really good ride.

Instead of thinking about my wrist, work or anything else waiting for me at home, I was concentrating on the GSX-R, the road ahead and enjoying some of my favourite roads with a good pillion behind me.

We ended up taking a considerably longer route home than I'd planned, and by the time we eventually got back we were absolutely buzzing.

I'm not going to pretend one Sunday morning suddenly fixed the fact that I've struggled to find the motivation to ride as much lately, because it didn't.

But I had a bloody good ride.

And I'd missed that.

Then My 15-Year-Old Son Wanted a Go

Apparently my renewed enthusiasm was contagious because the following night my 15-year-old son asked if he could come out on the back.

Going from a slight 5ft 5in woman to a 5ft 10in teenage lad changes things somewhat.

Physics gets involved.

The extra weight sits differently, braking changes and the bike turns differently, so you adjust your riding to compensate. It certainly made me appreciate quite how little I'd noticed the previous day's passenger once she'd settled in.

He needed a few pointers at first about where to sit, what to do through the bends and, more importantly, what not to do, but he soon got the hang of it. Once he'd worked out that his job was basically to move with me rather than try to help, we settled into it and had a really good run out together.

The ride was completely different from the day before, but it meant a lot to me for another reason.

This Gixxer has been part of my life for two decades. She carried me through the period when I was dealing with losing my first son and gave me somewhere to put my head when I couldn't make sense of anything else.

Now I had my 15-year-old lad sitting on the back of the same bike.

Life can be strange like that.

You don't always notice the significance of a moment while it's happening, but there was something pretty special about the two of us being out there together on a bike that's been part of my life since long before he was born.

By the time we got home, he was absolutely buzzing.

I may then have made the slight error of mentioning to my girlfriend the top speed we'd reached during our little run out. Obviously, Officer, said speed was entirely within the legal limits.

Her response was somewhere between a dull roar and a banshee.

Apparently, being a mother herself meant she had rather strong opinions about the wisdom of taking a 15-year-old lad out on a sports bike and then telling her exactly how fast we'd gone.

Note to self: next time, what happens on the bike stays between me and the lad. 🤫

Maybe I Never Lost My Love of Riding

Before that weekend, I'd started wondering whether I'd reached the point where I loved owning my Suzuki GSX-R750 K6 more than I loved actually riding her.

I'm still not sure I've completely got my motivation back, and I'm not going to pretend that one good weekend has suddenly turned me into the bloke who wants to spend every spare hour out on the bike again. Even if my joints allowed me to.

What it did remind me is just how much I enjoy her when everything feels right.

Things are different at 51. I've got more aches, a few more scars and enough experience to know I don't need to prove anything every time I get on a bike... honest.

The problem is that the Gixxer hasn't got any softer just because I have.

After a couple of decent runs, my wrists and the rest of my body are fairly good at reminding me that perhaps it's time to find something slightly more forgiving for a 50-plus bloke who still wants to have fun without needing several working days to unfold himself afterwards.

So, I think another bike might be on the cards.

Before anybody gets excited, the Gixxer isn't going anywhere.

She's getting close to classic territory now and, after everything we've been through, selling her isn't something I'm interested in. Instead, I've got plans to build myself a summer house where she'll eventually take centre stage.

Clean, dry, protected and somewhere I can still stand looking at her whenever I want.

Basically, she's getting a retirement home.

Although knowing me, retirement probably won't mean she'll never come out to play.

I'll find myself something a little kinder to ageing wrists for the regular rides, while the Gixxer gets to enjoy a slightly more dignified life and remind me of 20 years that I wouldn't swap, even if there are parts of them I'd rather not repeat.

My longest relationship is with a Suzuki GSX-R750 K6, and it turns out I've already planned her forever home.

I reckon that's commitment.