My best friend has a saying: “Quinn loves passionately…temporarily.” Deepest sympathies to the poor girl who ends up with me, if ever—I would be lying if I refuted. I’m a passionate person, and when I see something I think I love, my heart burns white hot for it. An unfortunate downfall of being so passionate is that my eyes and heart often reach further than my knowledge or wallet can, and because of this, I found myself posting on the /r/motorcycles subreddit (shout out to y’all for enabling my unhealthy habits) about wanting to build a streetfighter despite knowing absolutely nothing about building motorcycles.

As I was posting, a Redditor named Tom messaged me about his streetfightered out Yamaha FZ1. It was already done how I wanted it with the high mounted exhaust and the round single headlight. He offered it to me below market value if I would make the trip out to Texas to ride it back home. I booked the flight not a minute later. I agreed to purchase a motorcycle on the Internet from a stranger that had four times the power of my first bike with not more than five months of riding experience under my belt. I know what you’re thinking: “Are you actually fucking retarded?” I agree…but in my defense! (Cue rationalization.)

Let me preface my defense with some details regarding the events leading up to the trip. A lot of people close to me told me it was outright stupid, I caught a nasty bug that left me incapacitated for an entire day, and I was starting to get cold feet. I started to think that losing the money on the flight would be better than any number of things that could happen to me out in the world.

But you need to hear about Tom. He was so involved in the process because he could not in good conscience sell me a bike without knowing whether or not I’d make it home. He changed the spark plugs, oil, replaced the coolant, flushed and filled the brake fluid, replaced a worn brake pad, and lubed the chain. “If you get into trouble, it won’t be because the bike let you down.” Those were his exact words. He even threw in a rear shock from a BMW S1000RR for shits and giggles. My decision to go through with it was based purely on the fact that I trusted him. Business tip #1: Trust speeds up all processes.

I paid the paper, shook his hand, and literally rode off into the fucking sunset. Check that off the bucket list.