hi. recently joined list. lurking a little to test waters, etc. i presently have a '93 yamaha tdm 850, (not a gts 1000,...yet.) i've been intrigued by the gts since learning about it about a year and a half ago, (not coincidentally about the same time i started riding.) i've heard james parker lives here in santa fe and hope someday to meet him. i just missed riding, and probably buying, a gts in albuquerque a while ago that had sat on their floor following trade-in for about three years, 'cause no one knew what to make of it. i did have a chance on a recent trip to california to ride a gts briefly and was _very_ impressed with its smoothness. one of the big draws for me is not the front end but its early success with electronic fuel injection; i have had a _ton_ of problems getting the jetting right on the tdm for our 7,000 foot elevation. i have found riding the bike to be great and much more fun than pushing it or getting stuck in the middle of no place. so efi reliability seems like it could be a big bonus. but it seems like getting one to me is still going to be a bit of a safari, which before i launch on it, i have a few concerns, and i'd value your thoughts. the bike seemed heavy and loath to flip from one tight turn to another. riding position is nice but hard hard on wrists. enormous complexity seems likely to make mechanic visits particularly painful. rarity points to fewer parts and less familiarity, not to mention _hard_ to find one in the first place. nice sounding ones, especially blue ones, are still, for me, _really_ expensive. (my wife is mid-stream in a torrent of health disasters.) the recent thread about abs difficulties makes me wonder about that and other mechanical problems that might have plagued the bikes and their owners. but for all that, boy do they seem cool. and i'm pretty smitten, so it's kind of a logistics thing. maybe this winter it will somehow seem easier and more do-able. but for now, i'm enjoying the list, but wondering how folks with more than twenty minutes on a gts feel about the good, bad, ugly and beautiful of living with one. thanks a lot, -- jim guss jim, elizabeth and pablo guss [EMAIL PROTECTED] (505) 989-1725 206 tesuque drive santa fe, new mexico 87505-3838, usa
