1988 Honda Hawk GT, bought used in 1999. The bike I wanted was the freshly released SV650, but something that new wasn't in my budget. Read a blurb somewhere, probably in Motorcyclist Magazine or similar, that the Hawk GT was an even sweeter handling bike, and I preferred the look, so was immediately smitten. Found an ex-track bike in the old Boat Bike and RV Trader for a suspiciously low price, and snapped it up full of ambition and naivité.
Little did I know, the little word 'SALVAGE' on the title was going to pose a major problem. I tried and tried to register the bike for the road, getting stonewalled at every turn, even getting the number for someone fairly senior at the MTO from a desk clerk, and was quite surprised when he seemed genuinely furious that someone gave me his number, and sharply told me I would never be able to register the bike in Ontario. I kept trying, and my dumb stubbornness paid off eventually when someone at the MTO counter on Yonge near King must have taken pity on me, went in the back, did something on the computer and came back with a roadworthy registration. I don't think I quite clocked at the time quite how big a deal that was, to be honest.
I rode the absolute t*ts off that bike from then on, including a bunch of ill-advised WFO runs back and forth from Toronto to Ottawa where I was working, and got the mahoosive speeding ticket on Hwy 7 I've talked about elsewhere here. Let's just say I know that bike could do more than 186 km/h as confirmed by OPP radar.
I also discovered the pleasure of wrenching on that bike, and began a constant campaign of upgrades, inspired by the old Hawk GT message boards, with Hord as the guru. The problem was lots of those guys were racers, so I ended up essentially building a race bike for the road, and ruined the usefulness of the bike by jetting it like crazy and giving it about a 120 km range due to the peanut sized tank.
In the end, I put a Penske shock on the back, Race Tech cartridge emulators and springs in the front, M4 high exhaust, Corbin seat, six-pot AP (I think?) front caliper, braided lines, bar end mirrors, foam pod filters, and a DynaJet Stage 3 jet kit. Lots of good learning in between swearing working on the bike outside, and the limited tools I had then probably have led to a bit of a tool addiction now.
I ended up taking a job that meant working on the road for long stretches, and then eventually settled in BC, so sold the bike on. I slightly compensated for the Hawk GT's lack of power by buying a ZX-14 as my next bike, which was fun for about six months before the novelty wore off. I don't really regret the sale of the Hawk as such, though every time I see one for sale, part of me wants to pick up another.
Anyway, I don't have any pics of the one I had, as being in my early-20s meant I didn't give a crap about that stuff, and a hard drive with the few pics I have of that part of my life disappeared somewhere along the way. This is the closest one I could find via Google image search, and it gives an idea:
Nostalgia is a drug.
