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This year, I'll be celebrating my 60th birthday. I started riding bikes when I was 16, a 40+ year love affair with bikes. Reading about other people's adventures and bike ownership got me trying to remember what it was that got me into bikes, what kept my interest in them for over 4 decades and whether my views about what I ride and why I ride have changed much. The exercise of rediscovering the highlights and lowlights of owning bikes through writing this piece has made me realise that I was probably lucky to survive without serious injury and the adage of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is probably true, albeit a somewhat extreme means of knocking in some common sense. However, doing the write-up has also been a huge amount of fun in reviving long-forgotten memories. Could have filled many more pages.
C onclusions from this period: The Suzuki 50 was the most wonderful thing in the world, and conferred god-like status (in my own mind). Regrettably, it didn't help one bit at school in pulling the lovely Christine Olney whom I'd worshipped from afar for years; but despite this crushing disappointment, I was a happy lad having achieved mobile independence for the first time. Thank heavens no photos exist from this period! T he intermediate years Passing my test and leaving school saw the acquisition of a Triumph 3TA 350 cc twin because of the need for a larger commuter vehicle. It was my main form of transport in snow, rain, and everything else nature had to offer. I think this is why I'm fairly relaxed about riding in all weathers even now. It was a charmless old pudding with a restrained 20 bhp or thereabouts but was significantly faster than the Suzuki. Speed meant everything and I'm ashamed to say that I rode everywhere like a complete twat. The lack of good riding skills was soon demonstrated as a car did a U turn in front of me and I was travelling too fast to stop. The resultant impact threw me over the bars, but not before my wedding tackle snagged on the rather prominent steering friction damper on the way past. The bike wasn't too badly damaged but I ended up walking like John Wayne for the best part of a week due to the purple plums in my trousers. Lesson 1 about being aware of one's surroundings and riding to the prevailing conditions forcibly driven home. Ownership of the 3TA coincided with the period when Japanese bikes were becoming a more common sight on British roads and they were also developing a deserved reputation for performance. This was demonstrated in humiliating fashion by a 100cc Yamaha sports twin that I picked a fight with one day. It simply buggered off into the distance and the Triumph's days were numbered, again demonstrating a preoccupation with what might be described as the typical young male "mine's bigger than yours" approach to life! The replacement bike of choice was a 10 year old tuned pre-unit construction 500 cc Triumph T100. It was immaculate with chrome everywhere. At this point in time, big bikes fell into one of two categories; café racer or Marlon Brando Wild One look-alike. The Triumph fell into the latter category with raised bars, spotlights and bloody great mirrors on long stalks which folded back and trapped you at speeds over 80 mph; making the engine tweaks unusable. Dropped "Ace" bars were subsequently fitted, a significantly more pleasant riding position on the open road. To look really cool, the silencers were occasionally removed for a good blast round town on straight pipes. I intensely dislike noisy boy racers which is a fair pointer to how the rest of the population above 25 years old would have felt about me at that time. Owning early Triumphs certainly honed both mechanical and electrical skills though. On one infamous occasion whilst fitting a new centre stand spring, the screwdriver slipped and I ended up punching the concrete floor with great force. There was an explosion of light and a red mist. When it cleared, I found that I'd stabbed the seat several times with the screwdriver and it was a good insight with respect to how crimes of passion occur!
The enduring memory of this piece of stupidity was the sound of loose change jingling down the road as a jeans pocket wore through, followed by rather a lot of pain as the final layer of denim disappeared. Dignity was also in shreds having to ride home with my arse exposed to members of the motoring public.
Growing up a bit Road bike ownership was replaced by an old Wolesley 6/110 car as the main form of transport. Bikes certainly weren't forgotten though because studies as an engineering student awakened an interest in engine development. The decision was taken to build a drag bike, partly because of the outrageous horsepower achievable with a supercharger and nitromethane but also because riding in a straight line would not expose my inability to go round corners at a fair lick without falling off. The first attempt at building a hot motor consisted of sticking a supercharger on a nearly stock Triumph 350cc twin motor and running it on methanol. Optimism was soon replaced with pessimism when piston crowns regularly separated at the oil control ring as a result of high revs. A short-stroke crankshaft was built in the engineering labs and mated to a 500cc barrel to make a very over-square 350. A whole load of other mods were carried out at the same time and a prolonged cycle of "blow it up, fix it, improve it and blow it up again" was entered into. The engineering work during this period would fill a book by itself. The sport was pretty safe; with only one "off" at speed when the throttle stuck open and laying it down was the safest option. Minimal damage to man and machine. The other occasion was far more painful when a chain broke on the start line and acted like a flail on my back - now that bloody hurt! Eventually, Icarus was very competitive but the time and money to go further was beyond my means, interest waned and racing was abandoned.   C onclusions from this period: A happy marriage of engineering theory and practice by actually using my education to have fun! Worrying signs of maturity appearing.
A week later, it was safely tucked up at home, to the obvious displeasure of Jennie who squared the account by buying a piano which was significantly in excess of the GB 400 cost  1987 Honda GB 400TT
The GB provided a happy partnership for a number of years but it was underpowered for 2-up riding and Barrys Point Road loomed large in the tale again. A perusal of the bike shops up there whilst in Auckland on business revealed a nice BMW K100 RS complete with panniers at Holeshot. I wasn't actually contemplating anything this big but the price was right and it was in lovely condition. Learning to ride a big, heavy fast bike was quite a mission and it took about a year to push it along at a fair speed. Using the art of counter-steering was an absolute necessity with the old girl. After 3 years of pleasurable ownership, some mates and I saw a Kiwi Rider magazine article about one of their staff having taken part in the Rusty Nuts Grand Challenge 1000 miles (1600 k's) in 24 hours ride. The author just missed the 24 hours cut-off and was hallucinating with pain at the end. It was obviously one heck of a challenge so we sent in entries for the 1996 event whilst clearly in a deranged state of mind. The ride was in terrible weather, it was scary and we were in an awful lot of pain at the finish. However, the feeling of finishing within the 24 hours was indescribable and we had every right to feel proud. Whilst the physical challenge was bad enough, the mental aspect of the ride was just as bad. Everyone swore that they'd never do another one but challenging oneself becomes addictive and two more rides on the BMW were undertaken in 1997 and 1999, one of them being completed in just over 18 hours. It was whilst owning the BMW and becoming accustomed to riding reasonably fast that I did my one and only runner from the law. The exact circumstances are better left undocumented but I got away with it, having scared myself witless in the process; shaking so badly when finally stopping that it was difficult to hold the bike upright. A salutary experience and never to be repeated. A confession to Jennie (in case my number plate had indeed been more visible than first thought) brought forth a bollocking of substantial magnitude. This was followed up by another one from our daughter who takes after Jennie. I'd like to think that our two sons were secretly chuffed though, although not much was said so as not to incur the displeasure of their mother.  The K100RS and Suzuki X7 The new Millennium dawned and the last of our kids trundled off to university. Jennie celebrated freedom from not having to run young parasites around any more by getting an MX 5 sports car and we took off in it to the south island for a month of sightseeing. Whilst we were in the Queenstown area, I saw an advertisement for riding Quad bikes in the foothills of the Remarkables. I thought that it would be a lot of fun although Jennie wasn't at all keen to try it out. However, a bit of sweet-talking about how easy it was to ride farm quads saw her reluctantly agree. On arriving with the instructor at the location, there was a strong need to bite my tongue. Farm bikes my arse, they were Polaris 2 stroke screamers - oh shit! The instructor was great though and spent a lot of time coaching Jennie over the gentler terrain and she soaked it up like a sponge. The phrase "ignorance is bliss" was never more appropriate when on one really scary steep downhill section strewn with boulders, Jennie left me for dead and was giving the instructor a great run for his money too! I was so proud of her and it's an excellent example of how self-imposed mental limits have such an impact on riding.  Quads near Queenstown The great thing about Jennie getting an MX 5 was that it signalled a possible quid pro quo in the shape of a new bike after 7 years of enjoyable BMW ownership. The opening gambit was a few casual visits to various dealerships with a non-committal Jennie in tow. Various machines were sat upon, with Management declaring that the pillion seats on most sporting machines were instruments of torture. Now as it happened, we were in Auckland to celebrate our wedding anniversary and by sheer fluke (hehe) we found ourselves in (yes, that's right) Barrys Point Road! In the window of Cyclespot, there was a phoenix candy blue Honda Blackbird and it was quite simply love at first sight. A few weeks went by of dropping unsubtle hints, not to mention some equally unsubtle grovelling before Management allowed a phone call to be made to ascertain if it was still available. It was indeed, and an appointment was made to test ride it. If I'd thought the BMW was impressive, the Blackbird was literally mind-blowing. The test ride up the motorway to Albany left me quite rattled due to a glance at the speedo and realising that I would have been without a licence had one of the boys in blue been about. A deal was done and a few days later, I was the proud owner of an absolute missile which had to be treated with utter respect. The first couple of weeks of ownership did not go smoothly. A friend was standing outside his house and I pulled up to show off the new acquisition. Coming to a halt, my boot caught on something in the road and the bike toppled over with me underneath stupidly trying to protect it. Despite the shock and embarrassment, watching my mate trying to keep a straight face whilst lifting the darned thing off me was extremely funny as friends are not normally noted for restraint in such circumstances! The responsibilities which go with owning one of the fastest bikes in the World began to dawn, and I decided to enrol on an advanced riding course run in Hamilton by Ward Fischer, ex Chief Instructor for the Ministry of Transport. Whilst it was a bit stressful in places (shirt soaked through with nervous tension!), it was one of the best things I'd ever done as he picked up quite a few less than desirable habits and proceeded to work on them with me. However, the outstanding part of the course, and also the hardest; was learning high speed emergency braking skills. I had visions of either going over the bars or following the 'bird down the road on my arse but he improved my technique until I was braking so hard that my wrists and elbows were creaking, and wedding tackle was being painfully squashed into the rear of the tank. As Ward correctly pointed out, knowing how to brake properly from high speed may one day make the difference between serious harm and walking away from a situation scot-free. This course undoubtedly changed the way I ride and observe the surrounding environment, very much for the better. Ahhhh with one exception, that is. There was one subsequent occasion when some monumental stupidity nearly lead to tragedy. A number of us were out for a ride and a friend had borrowed his daughter's RGV 150. At fuel stops, we'd play "tortoise and hare", sending him off a few minutes ahead and then chasing him. Along a straight between Paeroa and Te Aroha, we spotted him in the distance and decided to go past at warp speed, which we duly did. What we had neglected to remember was some very bad ripples in the road and at somewhere between 220-240 km/hr, our mate was treated to the sight of a Hayabusa, a Blackbird and GSX-R 1000 showing a lot of daylight under the tyres. Time slowed down into a series of freeze frames and there was no fear, just a feeling of regret that I'd buggered things up completely and that there would be no tomorrow. However, the Hayabusa and Blackbird came down arrow-straight with the slightest of shimmies, but the GSX-R was all over the road trying to buck the rider off. After stopping shortly afterwards to scrape out our leathers, we let another mate on a Harley lead us home - a very lucky let-off indeed. In 2003, the lure of another 1000-miler Grand Challenge started to surface for the most stupid of reasons. The previous 3 events on the BMW had been fairly painful experiences, even with the upright riding position. Hmmmmm wonder what it would be like on the Blackbird where there was considerably more load on the wrists? Could I last the distance? Bloody hell, it hurt all right but we got through it with about 5 hours to spare. Riding the 160 km-odd home from the finish was a bit of a nightmare. The pain in the wrists and forearms was so bad that the journey had to be mentally divided up into 20 km distances to get through it. Get through one, watch the odometer for another 20 and so on until it was over! You'd be forgiven for thinking that the Grand Challenge was quite enough of an experience on the Blackbird but the need to do something outside the comfort zone surfaced again in the shape of the 2005 Southern Cross endurance event covering both islands and 4000 km in 5 days on the edge of winter is a big ask in anyone's money, especially on a mix of sealed and dirt roads. Riding in the company of two outstanding companions in all conditions, seeing some of the most spectacular scenery in the World and finishing it on time was an unbelievable experience. It has undoubtedly been the highlight of 4 decades of riding.  Picton on the 2005 Southern Cross with Mike Angell Where to from here? What is it with me and new challenges? Maybe to convince myself that I'm not really getting any older, maybe because you only get one shot at life and should live it to the full - God knows what the reason is! It will be a sad day when life doesn't hold the prospect of doing something exciting and a bit different. I still like the odd high speed fang but it simply doesn't give enough satisfaction by itself anymore. Just trickling along enjoying the scenery gives an equal buzz. The common factor about riding at both ends of the speed spectrum is the absolute pleasure gained from riding with precision - getting lines through corners right, being smooth and anticipating potential hazards. Everyone has occasions where they drop into "Zen state" and riding well becomes effortless - the challenge for me is to make them more frequent! There's something about riding bikes that transcends mere words and borders on the spiritual. The riding itself, the camaraderie between perfect strangers, the inner glow at the end of a great day of riding either shared with good friends or solo. All I know is that I would have been much the poorer for not having experienced any of it over the last 40 years or so, despite Jennie being moved to remark on numerous occasions that I have the mental age of a 5 year old! Roll on the next few decades of biking and whatever they hold. Geoff James ( New Zealand ) |
