Well, the snows finally melted enough to give me a chance to hit the road on my new 1996 Honda CBR 600 F3. I don't have my riding jacket yet as they had to order it out of Kaleefonia (sorry, always picture Ahhnold saying that), so I toodled around the neighborhood for a spell in my heavy winter coat to get smooth after my 11-year layoff.

The F3 seemed very, very responsive and capable of immense quickness, which I didn't think prudent to explore:

1. at night
2. in 33 degree F temps with fresh rubber
3. in my first ride after 11 years

I was pretty smooth. The pants (Firstgear overpants) were a little slick on the seat, the thick Firstgear gloves were a little restrictive, and my new Alpinestar Web Gore-Tex boots were a touch stiff, but things started breaking in a bit on the ride back. My fingers got so cold and stiff I literally could not feel them, which made working the clutch in the parking lot of the restaurant I went to a bit of drama.

When I finally got there, my fingers were so cold that I could not remove my helmet for about 5 min. Frankly, it was too cold, there was black ice everywhere, and I should have never been out on the bike but it has been sitting there for a week unridden. Now, we can't have that, can we?

I can tell this F3 will be a docile beast at low speed in traffic. It seems to run cool - the temp gauge hardly got out of the "C" portion. The memories of riding this little 42 mile jaunt into the city stirred in me were powerful and deep - flashes of a 12-year-ago trip to Central City and Blackhawk with my brother-in-law kept coming to me.

God, I miss riding!

 

haha.... you might want to copy over some pics that aren't from fireblades.org.

 

Sorry. It took a week for the website administrators to approve my membership request that I got kind of situated at Fireblades. It's a pretty nice site, and seems a little more international in character than the CBR forum.

By the way, did I mention how nice that Honda is to ride? It's a fine motorbike - very neat, responsive, and capable. It seems like a superb little animal. I made a terrific choice in getting this motorcycle.

 

We're just approving memberships on post count. If you get 5-10 posts up, you're approved.

And we have a bunch of international peeps here, man! A ton in the 1000F section for sure. I talk to a few of them on skype quite regularly.

But yeah, the F3 is a great bike. My best friend had an F2 for a few years and he liked it very much. IDoDirt is a bit of an expert on the F3's, so if you have any questions, post them on up in the F3 section.

Welcome to the site, sir.

 

Thanks, KGtrout! I look forward to getting to know riders and writers here on the CBR forum.

BTW, the images were smilies.