Welcome to the new forum!

[Zero]

Welcome to the new forum for Louisiana sportbike riders and enthusiats. We aim to provide a special place for Louisiana residents and the surrounding areas a special place to come and discuss primarily, sportbikes and related topics. It will obviously, take time to spread the word and grow our community but with all of your help I am positive we can do just that.

About me: (skip to the last paragraph if you want to bypass the history lesson)
I go by the handle "Zero" on the internet. I've lived in Monroe, LA most of my life. I did a 4 year tour in the Air Force starting back in 1999 as a Firefighter. I got to travel quite a bit to places like Guam and Japan. I picked up a lot of new hobbies while overseas such as: scuba diving, car audio, custom computers, and fast cars. However, there was a young man I met in Guam with a 1999 Honda CBR 900RR, and I fell in love with it. Fortunately, this gentleman was kind of enough to teach me how to ride. I was instantly hooked and on occasion, he was able to borrow a friend's sportbike and I would ride his. Having your first sportbike riding experience on a 900cc CBR (that didn't belong to me) was the most thrilling and terrifying experience of my life. Luckily, it taught me a very healthy respect for the power these machines are capable of producing.

When I got back to the states in 2002 I was able to purchase my first sportbike, a brand new 2002 Yamaha YZF-R1. I ended up getting stationed at Holloman AFB in NM shortly after and began taking classes to improve my riding skills. When I was confident in my abilities I began riding with a group in the mountains about 30 minutes from the base. I steadily improved my riding and gradually my chicken strips mostly disappeared. Then irony stepped in and threw me a curve-ball. Even though I had become quite competent in my riding skills and spent tons of money improving my bikes performance, I ended up having a wreck, but not in the mountains pushing the limits where you would expect. It was due in part to complacency, in part to naivety, and in part to chance. The short version is that instead of spending money on that steering stabilizer everyone told me to get, I kept spending money on go fast goodies. Ultimately, a bad tank-slapper put me into a brick wall at about 50mph.

The next 3 months weren't pretty or fun and involved a lot of drinking meals through straws. For several years after the incident, I dreamed of getting back on a sportbike, but was honestly, too afraid to commit to doing so. Coincidentally, once again a young man would come in to my life with a motorcycle and renew my enthusiasm enough to overcome my fears. I met this young man through my brother and he had just bought his first sportbike, a very abused 2001 Yamaha R6. I've always been pretty handy with a wrench and helped him rebuild his bike after the stealership had taken him for a couple grand and still failed to get the bike running. After a day of tooling around we were able to get the R6 road worthy and my assistance was repaid with a ride. That ride turned my fear back into enthusiasm and shortly afterward I was able to purchase a 2005 Yamaha R1. It took some work to get the new bike ready for the road but for me that was half the fun. It's still not where I want it to be, but it probably won't ever be. I'll always find something I want to change or improve.

Anyhow, my friend and I have been riding together for some time now and have met a few others along the way, but we've been looking to expand our group. I turned to the internet to try and find more sportbike enthusiasts and was surprised at the lack of resources committed to our state. The few resources I did find were out of date, poorly maintained, or severely lacking in membership. I hope to change that with this forum. With a little help and some word of mouth advertising, I'm sure we can make this forum a great community and resource for all sportbike enthusiasts in and around Louisiana.

Welcome to lasportbikes.forumotion.com!

-Zero