Hi I'm Joe Guzzista. I've been nuts about Moto Guzzi bikes since 1993. I'd just bought my first bike, a Honda, and my old pal Charlie Finlay...you still out there bud? ...who owned a V1000G5, kept on and on about how Guzzis were the best bikes and would always have a new reason to justify this claim. Charlie's G5 was old, tatty, rusty...but it sounded like thunder and went like snot off a stick!

One day Charlie and I rode to a small side street in Hammersmith, West London, to see a chap by the name of Roger who used to maintain Charlie's bike...talk about an Aladdin's cave! Roger was a proper bike mechanic: wooly hat, greasy knuckles, roll up stuck to the bottom lip..."...wouldn't catch me riding anyffing that didn't cruise at 90" he grunted ignoring my gleaming Honda and pointing to his Cali. Looking around the yard and repair shop whilst Charlie and Roger talked I was stunned...it was wall to wall Spadas, 750S3s, Calis, an Ambasador, you name it it was there...I was hooked good and proper...seduced by the sound of the V-Twins whenever somebody came to collect theirs and thundered off into the West London evening.

Unfortunately, Roger moved to Luton and, as far as I know, still plies his trade there...I hope so, because he was the real thing. What he didn't know about bikes, and especially Guzzis, probably isn't worth knowing...not like your present day corporate, technical engineer gobshites with their workshop targets and laptops!

Riding home through London that night I decided I wanted a Guzzi at all costs...some months later a bike caught my eye...it was a Nevada 350 and it became my first exploration of all things Guzzi...I used to commute to work each day and thought it was well cool when the rider of the black 1100 Sport that used to pass me at Blackwall Tunnel, and ignore me on my "invisible" Honda, began waving each morning...the bloody Nevada was certainly not boring...one morning on the A2, the left hand mirror began spinning like a dervish and took off into the Kent sky! It also had a strange habit of dropping one of the silencers...you'd be thrumming along quite happily then, all of a sudden, you'd hear this roar and in the remaining mirror there would be a flash of chrome dissapearing down the road! But boy I loved that bike...weird innit?

I still got it, in bits, waiting for the day when I have enough time/knowledge/inclination to turn it into a bike again...ho-hum...from the baby 350 I moved to a 750 Nevada, then a Cali Jackal (Claudia) that has already been discussed...following my road incident...nothing accidental about the way the miopic muppet on a mobile phone hit Claudia at a roundabout...I am now looking for my next Guzzi...doesn't matter what it is but, "wouldn't ride anyffing that didn't cruise at 90!"

Update on the above:- I found a Guzzi and, funilly enough, she's a spitting image of Claudia...here she is: