This off-season we’re running a series showing your motorcycles. Not just your road racing bikes, but your streetbikes, motocross bikes, dirt bikes, pit bikes, mini bikes, trials bikes, land-speed bikes, drag bikes, speedway bikes, whatever you’ve got. If you have more than one bike, send photos of them all–alone or with you! Send in-focus bike photos (as jpeg files) along with the make, model and year of each bike and your name, city and state, plus the name of the photographer, to [email protected]. By sending us the photos, you are certifying that you own the rights to the photos and are giving us permission to feature them on roadracingworld.com. They may be posted on roadracingworld.com during slow news days.
Seen here in our 21st installment are photos sent in by racer Dennis Parrish, age 59, from Corrales, New Mexico. “Hopefully you’ll enjoy these,” writes Parrish. “I’m a vintage road racer in a couple of ways. I’ll be 60 when my racing season starts next March, marking my 13th year of road racing. I’ve also flat tracked, motocrossed, desert raced and ice raced, but my first wish was always to go road racing. It just took a little time…
“There are two Kawasaki Z1s–a maroon ’75 and a green ’74. The black Honda is a 1981 CB900F and the red bike is a 1971 Honda CL350. The Z1s and Honda CB-F were modified to run in AHRMA Vintage Superbike classes and the CL350 to run in Sportsman 350. The Z1s were photographed by my good friend John Aylor at our local track. The CB-F was photographed at NOLA and the 350 at Sonoma.
“I have a little more than 40 bikes; I’m not exactly sure… Some are ‘projects’ – like a grown-up’s version of a plastic model kit with parts missing, others are rollers and the rest (about half to two-thirds) are complete and running. In the additional photos you see me on my KX500 play riding in the NM desert. I included two shots of my garage(s) where you can see some of my streetbikes and project bikes.
“I have three ’79 CBXs (the “Ugly CBX” photo was a $150 purchase), somewhere between eight and 10 Kawasaki Z1/KZ900/KZ1000s, around the same number of Honda CB750/900Fs and maybe four or five KZ650s plus a plethora of other bikes. My licensed and insured streetbikes are an ’01 ZRX, ’98 ST1100, ’81 CB900F, ’86 VF1000R, ’77 KZ1000, ’77 KZ650, ’98 XR650L, ’83 XL600R, ’79 CBX, ’82 FT500 and ’83 VF750F. Dirt bikes are the KX500, an RM400 plus pit bikes are an XR75 K0, XR80R, XR100R.
“The problem is that when I bought most of the running bikes, I rode them until they weren’t worth selling because they would only bring a couple of hundred bucks. Then, POOF–25 years go by and they start to become desirable again. Some of the project stuff was cheap, like the ugly-as-sin CBX. Others were traded for a case of beer, or $300, or ‘come get it out of my garage or back yard, please!’ and other bargains or trades.
“Luckily, when my current wife met me she accepted my sickness. I had filled up my four-car garage with bikes plus had some on the front porch, more on the back porch, a few in my race trailer and kept my CBX in my living room. After we married, I got to build a garage big enough to hold almost all of them. Even more luckily, I worked as a mechanic for Honda and Kawasaki dealerships in the early ’70s through the mid ’80s and had been ‘factory trained’ so I’m able to do all my maintenance and restoration work myself. There’s no way I’d be able to afford paying some one else to work (play) with my bikes. Hope I didn’t bore you too much with all this!”
Check out Dennis Parrish’s rider profile on roadracingworld.com here:
https://www.roadracingworld.com/members/dennisparri…
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