The Honda F4i

I love motorcycles. Out of all of them, this is, and always will be, my favourite. There are several reasons. This bike was a write-off when I bought it. NY Salvage title, and a LOT of damage, that I'll slowly get to, over the course of the build - looking through the images of the build (and the fact that I'm pre-dating this section), it's like having a crystal ball. I'd still do it again.............

I had only known Brian Schmidt from HSBN, a Honda chat forum, and even then, only for a few months. Nevertheless, I sent my wrecked Honda to his house.

Scratch that. I sent my wrecked Honda near his house. The truck couldn't fit through some of the estate roads. He and his lovely wife Wendy pushed it, flat tires, and locked brakes, the rest of the way home. I was in Bermuda, probably drinking rum.

Shortly thereafter, I flew to Jacksonville, Florida, with my bike build/ stunter/ drinker partner, Bobert. We had bought him a wrecked bike, too.

Bob and I both love Streetfighters, which is convenient when you have a smashed bikes.

We had the bikes stripped, and the build underway withing the first 2 hours of arriving at this strangers house (after cooking him huge steaks).

Another friend on the board, KCult (Troy), had driven down fron TN about 12 hours to see us. So we used his truck to straighten my bent subframe (the fact is was bent was an interesting piece of news).

EDIT: After reviewing the photos, it appears that I had decided that it would be a good idea to mount my polished race pipe on the bike before doing any other rebuild work. In the trade, this is what we call "grossly out of sequence".

We then continued drilling and wrenching putting bars, headlights and whatever we could find on the bikes, and then went out for Bri's first gift to us - Vodka Red Bulls. We still drink these to this day, for special occassions, or whenever there's nothing else.

The cameraman in this photo is Erzy - Tim Erzinger. Sadly, we lost him in 2008, after surgery complications, but I would never trade those days we spent together for anything. He rode a Yamaha, but nobody's perfect.

The next morning (or mid-day) what was left of us began stripping the bikes for paint - yes, we were ready for paint on day 2. Funny thing is, Jacksonville gets cold in December - real cold - like 40 degrees. So paint took a while to dry. This was proven by Bri's clothing marks in most of the parts - talk about bull in a spray booth.