Wow, that's some serendipity right there. Ever find out why it got sold in the first place? Your story made me realize that maybe another reason I appreciate Honda is that I don't know the first thing about mechanical engineering. I'm at about the level of Lego Technics/Erector Set. Break something on a Honda? No problem.

Only downside is once you've acclimatized to owning a Benelli you start thinking that things like a Vyrus or a Bimota might not be so crazy.

I've heard people say this kind of thing in a lot of scenarios, kind of a "you don't know how good things can be until you've had a taste of what good really is". I can see that. Anything in particular that's stopping you from building that thing? I bet that building it would be tons of fun, especially if one had some idea of what one was doing!

I would like to learn more about mechanical engineering for the sake of riding and knowing how shit works in general. I was talking to a lady not long ago about whatever and she mentioned that her son was attending MMI which is much more full on than what would suit my needs, but it's cool that it's out there and that the graduates are well-regarded. I guess I could ask various friends who are engineers to give me a hand if I run into problems at some future time, but then again, my friends with engineering backgrounds seem to think they can take just about anything apart and put it back together the right way, whether or not that's really the case.