Maria's Motorcycle

I put about 60 miles on Maria's '94 BMW K75S today and am impressed anew with what a sweet bike it is.
When I bought it for Maria back in 2000, we did a variety of things to make it a better fit for her characteristically female shorter legs. We took a little slack out of the forks, replaced the stock shock absorber with a shorter custom job, sent the seat back to Sargent to have some foam carved out and changed out the stock tires for low-profile Bridgestones.
She rode it a little, but never got comfortable with it. Then she got hit head-on by a blind woman while driving my mother's '91 Buick LeSabre. The airbag and seatbelt kept her from being seriously injured, but the crash dealt a severe blow to her motorcycling confidence. She hasn't ridden the bike in the two years since the crash.
So it fell to me to keep the battery up and generally make the bike feel cared-for.
I've been riding it a fair amount this year on short local trips, trying to save the tires on my BMW K1200GT for touring.
There's a 11-mile stretch of road west of town that has lots of twists and turns through the undulating west-central Indiana countryside and the K75S is a pleasure to ride there.
Everytime I ride it, I'm struck by the pure, elemental nature of the ride. None of the gadgets and amenities of my sport-touring machine - just a nimble little motorcycle that feels right at home being flung into one turn after another.
And I like the one-of-a-kind custom acid green paint job more and more as time goes by.
Getting back into motorcycling isn't particularly high on Maria's list of priorities right now. She has her hands full with projects at her newspaper and our calendar is starting to fill up with wedding photography jobs, plus she has developed a painful hip problem.
So I guess I'll just have to keep her bike in good shape by riding it regularly.