For the years I've been helping my uncle unload a ton of cars, trucks, and bikes from his property in north Georgia, there's been one item I've been hesitant to list for sale. And given my uncle wasn't eager to part with it, it didn't seem to be hurting any feelings that I deliberately kept it under wraps in all of the listings I've created over the years.
The bike in question is a Suzuki GT380. I have no meaningful connection to the bike, nor did I grow up wanting one. It was one of the few bikes seemingly parked carefully underneath a roof ledge (this was totally by accident; nothing was parked carefully here) and the "bag of snakes" exhaust still had some flashes of brilliance on top of its pitted chrome tubes. The bike still kicked over if you asked it to, which always gets my project car/bike/truck juices flowing, as if it's saying, "I never gave up."
Well, a gentleman I've invited to the property in the past owing to his connections in the motorcycle world finally took me up on my offer. And wouldn't you know it, he picked the belle of the ball, the GT380, out of the messy stack of bikes to bring home to his boss, who apparently does a quick servicing on worthy bikes and lists them for sale for a modest profit (it's a GT380 after all, which is hardly a valuable bike.)
I know it's looked down upon in the enthusiast community, but there's a part of me that wishes it stayed hidden for another 20 years until I was ready to restore it. Then again, in this fast-changing hobby, who knows if the necessary spare parts would even still be in existence by that time? I'm thrilled this bike will run again, but a part of me still wishes it had happened under my care.