1976 Honda CB400F
My first powerful bike (at least I thought so at the time). This was a radical bike for me, I couldn't afford a 750 and this had that great 4-1 exhaust system. I immediately bought a Dunstall fairing and clubman bars and spent a very long afternoon with Wayne and Nigel putting them on the bike. We never did get the headlight secured properly and for a long time it was "sort of" held in place with a wire coat hanger, didn't illuminate well.
This was the first bike I went on holiday (vacation) on, all the way down to Cornwall for week of camping, it rained the whole time. The strange thing is much as I liked this bike I don't remember many of the rides on it, after I moved away from Luton I mostly rode it to work about 40 miles each way every day in all weathers.
That was after I got it back from the big crash of course. It happened coming home from a going away party for me the week before I was moving away from the parental home and town. I was following a van along a country road when suddenly he swerved off the road into the ditch and there coming right at me was a car, I swerved too and almost missed the car unfortunately sticking my foot through his tyre (1) breaking four bones in my foot and ending up in the ditch. That hurts. The van driver took me home and I went to the hospital the next morning. That night there had been a huge accident on the motorway (M1) and all the doctors had been at the hospital all night and just gone home so I laid around for hours waiting for a doctor and they wouldn't give me any pain killers until a doctor saw me!
I rode the bike back and forward to work for most of 1978 but went almost nowhere else, it was sold when it became apparent that I was not going to return from my 11 week assignment in the USA.
(1) Yes, THROUGH his tyre, he drove off and the police caught him changing the wheel.