Last weekend, I bought a new (to me) motorcycle. This Saturday, I am going to pick it up.

Different people have different sorts of relationships with their motorcycles. Me, I'm deeply monogamous, at least until the relationship is over. When I go looking for a new one, I might flirt with a few, but there's really no spark there, until I find the right one. And once I've committed, I have no interest in any other bike, not even a passing flirtation. I am not necessarily the same with people as with motorcycles.

Also, over the years I've formed my prejudices--all the more intensified after several years of riding a quirky, high-maintenance Italian bike--one of those relationships that becomes too impossible to continue after awhile, but too memorable and passionate to find another one so easily.

I never much liked Kawasaki--historically most of their bikes have all the charm of Soviet farm implements. And I especially never really liked Ninjas--fast, soulless, impersonal neon-green mass market and otherwise entirely uninteresting.

It seems that Kawasaki has new designers in the house. In any case, they designed the right one for me--2006 Ninja 650, as redesigned apparently by elves with a strong sense of engineering aesthetic.

Drove all the way to Cooperstown to look at it (as in, James Fenimore), an excursion that, like most destinations in New York State that aren't The City or Albany, involve dozens of tiny country highways that go through countless tiny frozen in amber 19th-century villages tucked into various obscure valleys.

I will not buy a motorcycle without riding it, and I have to like the seller. This one is a nice kid--another small town English prof, as it turns out. We share the positive professional neurosis of hyper-responsibility, which in this case means that he took obsessively good care of the bike and that it comes included with lots of toys, accessories, and replacement parts for the ones that got slightly scuffed in a mild mishap. Oh and of course a very large and comprehensive shop manual (we do RTFM, we English profs. Compulsively).

The test ride involved a lovely windy country road along Otsego Lake--JF Cooper's Glimmerglass. Once I found the rhythms of those pretty sweeps--which I did pretty much instantly on that responsive little bike--I damn near kept going. I love its voice--a lovely soft twin-engine purr, slightly throaty with a promise of wilder things. I love how perfectly my thighs fit against the curves of the tank. I'm not sure I've ever fused that quickly with an unfamiliar bike--that sort of flesh-machine body melding that ordinarily comes only after long acquaintance, deep love, and a certain amount of shared risk.

It also whispered its name to me right away, but the one it told me might only be one of its names. It hasn't said for sure yet.

Three more days until it is mine!!! Yay!!!