First Bike?

I wanted a FS1E or an AP50 or even a Frantic Fantic ... anything but a Puch!
But a a 5th hand Puch was what I could afford so that's what I had, anyway it was character building, I learned fairly early how to ignore having the piss ripped out of me

 

And I thought mine was embarrassing

 

Yep you got it, 3 gears cable operated like a scooter, cables became so stretched that I nearly got my elbow down while going for third gear!

 

I had a Suzuki GT250 later on as well but mine was an R reg in metallic blue, getting all nostalgic thinking about it! But once the rose tinted glasses are removed it was an unreliable, noisy, smelly, shed of a bike that constantly needed visits to the doctors!

 

I wanted one of those, much cooler than my Puch!

 

The speedo on my GT 250 used to regularly read well over 120 mph, which when down the pub was the absolute truth!

 

Ouch , funny though the same fate for many first bikes, in my case 2nd, 3rd & 4th as well , then I got some training .
But as an idiot once told me, if you never crashed you never tried that hard!

 

Ha ha, some more than others mate!
I got into bikes in an era where mopeds did 50mph & if you didn't kill yourself on them you were allowed 100mph 250's on 'L' plates with no further training! ... what could possibly go wrong?
It's a wonder there's any of my generation of bikers left!

 

True, very true.
I did quite literally crash my first 4 bikes, then did some training organised by RAC-ACU, made a such huge difference to my riding that I went onto do the instructors course, after that I had CX500, CB750K & Z1000ST all before my 20th birthday & no crashes
After that I had 9 years racing a clubman level Moto-Cross when in my 20's so falling off was expected if not compulsory .