Way back in 1975, in what now seem to be prehistoric times, I owned a
Suzuki 120cc 'student' motorbike (I'm not sure why it had this
nickname). I used it to drive around London for the next three years, as
well as driving from London to Cardiff every now and then to visit my
parents. When I left London and moved to Cardiff (prior to emigrating), I
drove home on the bike, then drove it every day to Newport and back - I
had found a job in a laboratory there. When I emigrated, I thought for a
few minutes about loading the bike into our container but decided
against; in those day, kibbutzim were very anti-personal transport and I
doubt that a motorbike would have been a good thing to have brought with me. My
parents gave it away to someone local who didn't look after the bike
and crashed it after a few months (or so I believe).
Sometime during the mid 1990s, I became the ashamed user of a Piaggio 50cc 'motorbike'. This vehicle was bought by the financial manager of the company at the time; he used it to commute from the kibbutz to the factory, which was then about 1km from the kibbutz. Later, he was assigned a car and the bike was transferred to me. It was a good workhorse for the next few years but often had mechanical problems and surprisingly was even stolen about four times (although each time recovered quickly). The picture on the left is somewhat reminiscent of the bike I had (mine was certainly dirtier) but I think that it must have been redesigned in the following years. I was ashamed because frequently it didn't have enough energy to drive up mild slopes and I had to pedal in order to achieve enough speed. 
After the factory burned down in June 2007, the various departments found homes in different buildings in the area; eventually the offices moved to a building about 5km from the kibbutz. It became clear that the Piaggio would not be capable of transporting me to these various buildings and so a 'new' motorbike was purchased. Just as I started looking, someone on the kibbutz offered a Peugeot Vivacity 50cc for sale which I promptly snapped up. It turned out that the owner was the son of one of my neighbours - I didn't know that he had a bike. The model was very similar - if not identical - to the scooter which I had hired whilst on holiday in Santorini, so I didn't have any problems in switching from the slim-line Piaggio to the wider Vivacity.
This bike has served me well in the past six years but there have been problems which have got worse in the past year. From day one, the electric starter didn't always work; this became a problem of Sunday mornings when whatever charge had accumulated would disappear (I don't use the bike on Fridays and Saturdays), meaning that I would have to start the bike with the kick starter. The electric starter has not worked at all since coming back from Croatia last summer and after spending a few weeks of staying at home (remember the whooping cough?); as a result, I have ruined a few pairs of shoes starting the bike with the kick starter. Although this motorbike did have a few regular services, the starter problem was never fixed.
The situation has been getting worse and worse; after one Sunday morning when I needed about ten minutes to start the bike, I informed the company's "transport officer" that it was time to find me a new steed. After about a week, he informed me that he had found a 125cc machine (Kymco Movie) which had barely been used. Since then, three weeks have passed in which the machine passed its MOT test and insurance obtained (I note that the cost of the insurance for the new bike is almost exactly double that of the old and nearly as expensive as our car insurance)... and eventually the bike has arrived!
Apparently the bike is very zippy and a great improvement on the Vivacity. I never dared to make a trip longer than 5km on the old bike, but this one should allow me to make much longer journeys - although I doubt that I will drive it to Tel Aviv! The problem is not so much the motorbike as Israeli drivers.
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