Most Gen 1 owners also have a bond...or more precisely share a common experience of anguish and elation that later generation owners simply cannot fathom. They are members of the
PDP Tribe.
Most of these hearty souls banded together in Web 1.0 days ferreting out low-res photos of the rumored FJR via WebCrawler, Alta Vista, and once in a while via the nascient and inferior Google. They sought out elusive promotional material at dealers, stared enviously at the vinyl posters on dealer walls, poured through e-mails from listservs for scraps about the coming juggernaut of SPORT-touring perfection, and vainly invented meanings for the letters F-J-R. Forums hadn't really even been invented yet.
The occasional nomad from Europe typed in broken English sketchy details of beige 2001 and green 2002 FJRs and most everybody just believed Aussie sources were funning us. The French were just deluded. To some the FJR was just another Yeti sighting. Nobody actually had ever sat on one--let alone ridden one on our continent.
But a few of those hearty souls bucked all semblance of reason, wrote non-refundable $500 checks to dealers touting the "Priority Delivery Program", promised to pay the balance when the bike showed up months later, and twiddled their thumbs. Let me say that again......people used to drop small stacks of hundred dollar bills down on a vague promise by Yamaha that they'd own a gray FJR with side cases and liners thrown in for free months after they paid! And they did this without ever actual seeing one--let alone riding one.
Those were heady times and brave souls.
And 2004 owners did much the same thing, but did have a slight advantage in that they could see and possibly touch one of the few 2003 examples around before plopping down their money. Extra trusting 2003 owners would even let them sit on them. Warchild was one of those and even had one of the early-farkled machines with a Russell seat, highway pegs, and new-fangled PHIDs mounted on custom made one-off brackets.
2005 owners had it a bit easier with two year of bass boat blue pleasure and few even found spare inventory around from people that had bailed and forfeited their $500.
In 2006 that all changed. This forum went through a little stress as the newly coined "Gen 2" owners were generally worse than Millennials on Redbull...completely oblivious to the character-building discipline that the PDP instilled in FJR owners.
And we won't talk about the shortbus AE owners....a dead-end in the evolution of the species.
By Gen 3 the crusty old Gen 1 owners were worrying more about whether their prostates worked, don't care as much anymore, and a few found themselves reborn by picking up used Gen 2 or holding out for a Gen 3.
For that reason alone, for those that
endured the PDP.....Gen 1's are the best.
