Riding Kawasaki's 2012 Ninja 650R

Exit the lovely Sycuan Casino and Resort in sunny Southern California and bank a quick 90-degree right onto Hwy 79, which, while it sounds like another boring 40-lane never-ending-source-of-road-rage that we call ‘interstates' here in the traffic capital of Western U.S., is actually a billiard-table-smooth, two-lane road that wraps around the base of the Temecula Valley hills for mile after mile of what is a virtual public-road racetrack - complete with proper speed limits of at least 55 mph and all. (It's almost as if these media people at Kawasaki have put on a bike intro or two in their day).

A high-volume staple of Kawasaki's sportbike arsenal, a parallel twin-based Ninja (initially 500cc in size) in some form or another has been in Team Green's line-up of canyon carvers for well over 30 years. And we were in the twisties east of San Diego to give the newest incarnation - the Ninja 650R - a go.
Kawasaki first launched the EX500 Ninja in 1987 (called a GPZ500 in some markets and also featured in the movie "Top Gun")...

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