“When you know, you know.” That was how I felt when I first sat on this 1999 Suzuki SV650S. It certainly wasn’t how I felt when I bought it.

Well over a dozen years ago, after seeing the bike listed on EBay, I threw down an offer and waited for the end of the auction, knowing that I really should have done the numbers a little better first. What’s this gonna cost me again, after transport and licensing and so on? But oh, what a cute little bike! Watching the auction time tick down was a little nerve-wracking, half hoping someone would outbid me. What the hell have I just done?! The next thing I know, I’m pricing up a Ryanair flight, a ferry ticket, and trying to figure out how many stops away from the airport, by train, is the dealer in the UK, who had the bike – now, my bike. All in all it was a great experience, as the moment I slung my leg over the bike, it was all obvious: this was a great little bike.

That was a long time ago. In the meantime, this brilliant machine – a 1999 Suzuki SV650S in yellow – has been all over Ireland, through a few scrapes, eventually finding it’s way to France, where I stored it for over a decade, only taking it out on the rarest of occasions. The dry weather and cool storage of the cave in France were easy on it, though I did need to rebuild the vacuum-operated fuel petcock, and rebuild the carburetors, as these things can fail due to a lack of use. But the bike has come full-circle and is now back in Ireland.

Always easy to work on, always easy to live with, and it never left me stuck at the side of the road. To my credit, I am pretty good with “preventative maintenance”; but this has been a bulletproof, reliable, and dependable motorcycle. Even with relatively high mileage, this Suzuki SV650S got me across the UK, all over Ireland, and down to the south of France, without a hiccup.

Now it’s back in Ireland, it will be moving on. Will I miss it? Sure. But the new owner will love it, and more importantly, will make much better use of it than I ever will. Part of collecting cool stuff is ensuring other people are able to collect cool stuff, which means there are times when you have to let go of your “cool stuff”.