The bike that broke me: The cursed Connie

This story has all the heartwarming appeal of meeting your hero, only to find out he's a mean drunk, hates veterans, and kicks his dog. A lot.

This is not about a bike that made me. It's about the bike that broke me.

The cursed Concours

This is about my 1997 Kawasaki Concours 1000. In 2013, I had recently started seeing my now wife. During a visit to her mother's, I met the man she was dating. Try to keep up, this man was my girlfriend's, now-wife's mother's boyfriend. Very Spaceballs of me, I know. He invited me over to hang out and drink obscure German beer one day and we found out we had some interests that aligned. We both loved Mustangs, sarcasm, and of course, beer. We walked out into his pole barn and three motorcycles gleamed once the sunlight hit them. A well used and maintained BMW R 1200 RT, a Harley-Davidson V-Rod, and a dark green Kawasaki. I'd never seen a bike like this, which isn't unusual, since at that point I hadn't even ridden since 2008. Motorcycles had fallen way off my personal radar.

I asked about the Kawasaki because it looked cool in the way only an '80s-designed bike can. He wove a story about buying it from the original owner after it was dropped off a loading ramp, busting the right front footpeg mount. After that, the owner's son decided he wanted a Fat Ninja bobber, and began a rapid disassembly, which was abandoned about the time Tide Pods became a snack item. I bet he has a weekly subscription for Sawzall blades, which is likely required for his primary source of income, which I can only assume involves the clandestine removal of your catalytic converter and/or the copper from your home's HVAC system. Not all heroes wear capes, I guess.

I managed to wrangle the Concours from his shop for the hefty sum of $500. I received the title, the bike, and roughly 3.25 boxes of removed parts. A few weeks later, I started a new career that involved dealership hours. I spent a weekend just getting the bike to run, and heard the big inline-four engine smoothly idling for the first time in something like eight or nine years. I immediately rewarded the bike with another six years of storage. I drained the tank and fogged the cylinders as I was moving out of state and wasn't sure when I'd be back for it.

I forgot I owned it. It was at a friend's house in a shipping container, for more than five years. He called me to gently remind me that I owned a 600-plus-pound piece of green goo that was occupying space.

"Hey, dumbass. Come get your stupid bike." So, I did. I trailered it in the middle of the night from rural southern Ohio to Bowling Green, Kentucky, during the beginning of COVID.

After washing it off, I ordered the peg mount and a Clymer manual. The peg mount got there quickly and that was pretty straightforward to replace. The manual was taking forever. Remember shipping delays during COVID? Good times.

I decided to join the Concours Owners Group forum and Facebook group. If you've never been part of that, suffice it to say that is the Gold Standard for owners groups, regardless of industry, manufacturer, or hobby. Those folks… I still love you all. Since I had no manual, I literally laid my parts out, took some pictures, and posted them to the Facebook group and these people helped me, in real time, reassemble a bike I didn't take apart. They also told me the go-to parts guy was Murph's Kits who, oddly enough, was an hour from my front door. I ordered some farkles for the bike and while waiting for them to arrive (thanks again, Wuhan), my son decided to back his power wheels Mustang into the left rear pannier while it was on the center stand in the driveway. The noise of that bike hitting its side was… gut wrenching. I got the bike upright immediately after reassuring the poor kid it was OK, and that he would definitely see his next birthday. Interested in what I found? Broken front right peg mount. Again. [Vulgarity redacted.]

I almost cried.

I hopped on the Googler and found another one. It arrived, I installed it again, life was peachy. Ish. I got it to run, but the working number of squeezy bits that make the bike not move forward was zero. I bought a rebuild kit for both brake master cylinders and all three calipers. They came in, I rebuilt them according to my manual that took two months to arrive, and… no brakes. [Vulgarity sternly redacted.]

I parked it at the end of my driveway under its cover while I ruminated on how much I really liked this bike. One day, the family and I went to pick up our puppy, and upon turning into our neighborhood I saw the Connie on its side. Again. Same side. I laughed because it was ridiculous. I pulled the cover off to do a damage assessment. The Rifle windscreen and a portion of the fairing were broken. Upon a closer look, I saw the right front peg was not attached. The mount broke. For a third time.

The closest tool I had was the driver I was planning to use to remove the windscreen. It left my driveway at high velocity and a trajectory suggesting it probably landed on Uranus. Not yours. That guy's.

This time I actually cried.

I called Murph for a new Rifle windscreen, which he had drop-shipped to me. It showed up wrong. So I sent it back and waited five weeks for the correct one to arrive.

Fast forward to January of 2021. We bought a house 200 miles away and the bike had frustrated me to the point that it sat in the garage untouched for months. After moving all of our other possessions, I drove down late one night to collect the Connie and a Triumph Sprint that was actively doing things the Concours was supposed to do. The Connie was hard to roll onto the trailer because the rear brake, which was non-functional the week before, magically decided to lock up. On the trip, the Connie tipped over on the trailer. Of course it did. Kickstand and neutral switch wiring: severed. [Vulgarity aggressively redacted.]

I got it home and promptly sold it to my cousin's new husband. He brought it back. Was I in a hostage situation? [Vulgarity... Scott, please! This is a family-friendly site.]

I got mad again and stuffed it in the new garage for another six or eight months before finally listing it. Ultimately it was sold to a very nice guy named Shannon. Eight years and zero miles later, she was gone. As Shannon's truck pulled away with the green Concours on his trailer, I gave it the only farewell it deserved: a one-finger wave. Your mom, Connie. Your freaking mom.

No redemption arc. No heroic adversity overcome. No happy ending. It won. I failed.

The bike that broke me.