My history in bikes

I’m a believer that you either get bikes or you don’t. Once bitten, it never goes away. There maybe times when you are without a bike, but ask any biker who doesn’t ride not to notice others…….an impossible yearning to throw a leg over and take off.

It all started for me when I must have been 6/7 riding around empty car parks with my dad on Sundays on not much more than a 50cc version of something or other. That said speed is speed and having taken a head on smash into a concrete post, only to get up, get back on and ride should have told me something then.

In was back in 1993 when having ridden on the back of a friends Ducati 900SS that I really needed to get a part of this and pass my test. Within 4 months of learning to ride on a Honda CG125 I got my hands on a licence and freedom to hit the road. Things have changed a lot since those days for learners, some good and some bad, but I was able to basically ride anything.

Despite this, my first bike along with lots of others was the venerable Honda CB250N Superdream. It was certainly mine, reg EKD 158Y, ’83, silver tank with low mileage and bought for around £500, ironic that they are now selling for upwards of £1,500 and I even saw one yesterday for £7,995 !!

I kept this for less than a year, but it was long enough to see the future and to learn that it’s all about the journey on a bike, not how fast you get there.

Next in line came a brief foray with an early years semi adventurer in the form of a Kawasaki KLE 500 with its 500cc parallel twin it flew compared to my previous steed. It was great around town, a highish riding position, easy to manoeuvre and being a twin had a reasonable amount of grunt.

By now it was approaching 3 years since I passed my test and the time to make a step up had arrived. Still liking the dark look, I went back to Honda and ordered a brand new VFR 750FT in Ink Blue reg N405BBA, the bike you can see at the top of this article. It was ordered from my local dealer Hunts of Manchester who I am pleased to say are still around today and are one of the largest independent Honda dealers in the UK. As anyone who has owned/ridden one of these will tell you that the V4 engine makes it one of the smoothest bikes around which coupled with the legendary Honda build quality (better toolkit than I had in the garage), made it out to be one hell of a bike. It was one of those bikes that you had no idea what speed you were doing until you looked at the clock. Three figures in a blink.

So the story goes that because the bike was so over engineered, Honda lost money on each one sold. 18 months into ownership, I had a big off riding a friends Yamaha TRX 850, but that’s another story, decided to sell it and hang up my leathers. In truth, I wish I had kept the bike as they make for great cheap buys nowadays and were recently voted by Bike Magazine as one of the best 20 buys, quoting it as “engineering genius for naff all cash”

Scratching, touring, short runs, long runs it will do it all. Great weather protection, decent fuel economy and a turn of speed not dissimilar to the Millennium Falcon.

Between 1997 and 1998 I relocated and didn’t really have time for bikes, but in 1999, decided to take the plunge again and buy a new Ducati 900 SS FE. Around this time bike manufacturers were moving away from carbs into fuel injection and the venerable brand Ducati was following suit.

In a salute of the this, Ducati produced a run out model of the 900 SS, the FE standing for Final Edition. Silver paintwork, carbon every where, a K&N air filter and carbon pipes, it sounded even more glorious than the standard bike. Built as a limited edition of 300, it was the bike to have. Just have a listen.

Part way through the year 2000, disaster struck and the bike was stolen, never to be seen again. In reality they probably didn’t even know what they were taking, tossers and I still have the keys, manuals, special edition cover and paddock stand, but no bike. I would still have it now without doubt and with values climbing, well worth looking at another as a future investment.

Without a bike for the next 17 years and whilst things had changed massively, some for better, some for worse (my Ducati was around £7,500, a similar current model today is £13,500), but despite this, I never lost touch with the biking scene until the Summer of 2017 when I decided that I wanted to go again.

Having a love for all things modern heritage, that is look older than they are, but with modern underpinnings and not wanting a 200 BHP nutter superbike, decided I wanted to embrace the new scrambler range, (more about that in another blog) and having dropped into a local BMW dealer decided to go for a BMW R Nine T Scrambler that’s the one featured on the home page and below although there have been a few mods completed since then, but more about that later.

So there we have it, 26 years and 5 bikes – doesn’t seem much to me, but think of this as the beginning of another journey.