Thought I'd let you know a little bit about me and my bike history, sit back, grab a cuppa and hopefully enjoy :-
I got my first bike when I was 14 in 1979 and my Mam and Dad split up. They both had bikes and my Mam gave me her Yamaha YB100 when she left to tour the world. We lived in Sunderland, Co. Durham or Tyne & Wear as it is now. I kept the bike at my Uncles farm in Thirsk, N. Yorks. I rode it in the fields and my Uncle used to take me out on it round the villages, we just wore flat caps

can you believe it, different times eh.
I got my first road legal bike when I was 16 after I left school. I saved up while working on my Uncles farm and bought a Suzuki AP50 in red. That bike was my freedom, freedom to go where, well, almost

and when, I wanted. I learned to ride on the road properly from that day forward and I'm still learning, every ride O:) I rode that 'Ped' to Sunderland one November to go home to my Dads, who'd given up bikes by now, for Christmas. It was the coldest I had ever been, before, or since, can't understand why when I had a leather bike jacket over a white t-shirt, Geordie jeans and Adidas Samba trainers ? Bloody freezing'. I remember almost walking into my Dads kitchen, filling the bowl with hot water and stuffing my ice cold hands into to it to warm them up 8-[ what an idiot, I soon learnt not to do that ever again, the pain was very bad but not the worst I would experience related to bikes...
I ran out of money back in Sunderland and so reluctantly sold my beloved Ped,

hey ho. The following year, 1982, I went to stay at my uncles in Thirsk again to find work, there was no work then in Sunderland, it was pretty poor, 3 million unemployed, things weren't good country wide never mind the industrial North. I got a job on a nearby farm, milking 92 Friesian cows and general farm work with pigs, sheep and crops, I loved it. I pushbiked, initially, the 5 miles to work then bought a Yamaha DT100 to save me legs

Well, I had owned that bike 26 hours before coming down a 1 in 4 bank called 'Sneck Yate' just outside Boltby and i hit a sheep which had got out of the field and was in the road. BOOM, hit it smack in the guts and I went 'arse ower tit', twice

I was winded and turns out I had dislocated my shoulder ](*,) and no gloves at the time either, DUM ! The sheep died too

The bike had bent bars, no speedo or ignition barrels but other than that it was in pretty good shape. I recovered over a short period, didn't miss a day off work, just daily did tractor work with a steering knob fitted to the steering wheel and my boss was very understanding

The next chapter wasn't so clever..................tbc.