Lee, saw you had called me on the phone....Doing a little work on my '78 GL1000 project.
To your problem....What what was the temp outside when this happened? Last year, it was around 90 degrees, I was in Colorado sitting in traffic due to an accident and she got pretty hot. Temp guage started climbing at a pretty alarming rate. I thought about pulling over to the shoulder but then the traffic started moving. It didn't take much speed to start lowering the temp but it is unnerving. Never had a problem any other time. Just keep it in mind. Never noticed or realized the fan direction, seems opposite logic to me but what do I know....
On my 08, the fans seem to come on quicker but the needle never moves. Some folks on this board have commented that on the 06 and above they just desensitized the gauge to not show the temp climbing. Allegedly, that was Honda's cooling "fix" for the later models.