Honda ns250r
Rider: Matoxley
Reason for ride: old fashioned lust for speed
Date: 7June,1985
Bike: Hondans250r
Every lap of the TT is a ride of a lifetime – no other racetrack comes within a thousand miles. When I got my first bike – I was 17 – we lived in the middle of nowhere, Hampshire, so, bit by bit, the local lanes turned me into a speed-crazed idiot. It was their fault. Three years later I started racing and four years after that I did my first TT. I didn’t want to do the TT because I thought it was too dangerous for a young fool who still crashed too much. I only went because the editor of MCN gave me two weeks to write one story, about racing there, which was too cushy an offer to turn down.
I spent a week learning the course on a road bike (a Kawasaki GT550, I think) and in a Transit van, with Team Bike TT devotees Mac Mcdiarmid and Anthony Ainslie hammering the track’s secrets into me.
My first proper lap was in an early morning practice session, starting at 4.45am. Stagger downstairs and into the B&B’S lock-up, kick my Suzuki RG250 into life and burble up the hill to the paddock. It’s dawn on a beautiful summer’s day and minutes later I’m hurtling through sleepy villages, giggling to myself. I’m also freezing cold and occasionally terrified. It’s the weirdest mix of sensations. After two laps I’m back in the paddock, drinking coffee in the Hailwood riders centre and buzzing my nuts off.
I lead the race and end up third behind winner Phil Mellor. Next year I’m back with a Honda NS250R, one of ten bikes imported for the TT by Honda UK. I prepare the bike in my lounge in Bedford, which means fitting number plates and lockwire and nothing else. (I’m a shit mechanic.)
Nowhere else do you feel so sick before a race. Every time I started a TT I felt so ill I wanted to curl into a ball – you’ve convinced yourself that the worst isn’t going to happen to you, but your stomach knows better.
It’s a three-lap race. Halfway through the first lap it starts pissing down at Ramsey. The road is shiny slick entering Parliament Square and the next thing I know I’ve got Gary Padgett and local nutter Graham Cannell for company. They started ten seconds further back, so I’m not going to win this, am I?
For once, I don’t give in. We are three abreast over the Mountain, touching elbows into the Bungalow. Finally I get rid of them, but I’ve got to get ten seconds further ahead to stand a chance of winning. Everything has to be done to perfection. It’s one of those rare days when I’m in the zone – that trance-like state when your subconscious takes control, so you’re going faster than ever with less effort than ever.
The sun is out now. Those parts of the course that twist their way through a tunnel of trees are the best – you’re flat-out in sixth gear with the sunlight flashing through the leaves, like God’s own strobe light.
I’m getting sporadic pit signals telling me I’m in the lead. On the final lap exiting the Gooseneck I glance back to look for Padgett and Cannell. They’re nowhere to be seen. The possibility of victory has become the probability, I’m now prepared to do anything. I’m overtaken by that weird primal urge – the feeling of being hunted, which kind of goes like this: if they catch me they’ll kill me. I suppose it’s worth an extra shot of adrenaline. Coming down the Mountain I take the 33rd – a sixth-gear left-hander shortly before Cregny-baa – without rolling the throttle. Halfway through the corner the front tucks. But I’m in the zone, so it’s like I’ve saved the slide before I even had it. Fans are waving. Nearly there. Only two scary corners remain – Hillberry and Cronk-ny-mona.
I cross the line, but I don’t know who’s won. Cannell finishes 22 seconds further back and Padgett has crashed, so it’s me.
People who spoke to me right after tell me I was in a strangely dazed state – still in the ride of a lifetime zone, I suppose.
Rider: Benlindley
Reason for ride: first ride on a bike
Date: 14January,2008
Bike: Modenaselit150
Most stories you hear about first tastes of motorcycling involve paddling grandad’s Puch Maxi round the farm, ‘when I was just eight months old.’ In comparison I was a late bloomer.
One of the benefits of having a Thai girlfriend at school was that the ‘meet the parents’ step in the relationship was synonymous with a month-long holiday in Thailand. I was eighteen fresh from years of chastened choir practice and ready to discover the world… and its beaches.
The Thais introduced me to the twist-and-go moped outside the family hotel. ‘You’ll need to ride this to get around here, Little Ben.’ Thanks. I remember thinking it looked like a big, mean, dangerous hunk of plastic. However, Mother Thai was looking
on, judgingly, so I mounted up, twisted the throttle and nearly crashed into the hotel’s artfully-arranged flower display.
I was allowed to use the scooter to collect shopping, which I put in a bag looped round the handlebar. It turns out having an extra 3kg of noodle soup and sundries hanging off the left grip doesn’t positively impact a bike’s handling. I’d push the bike into a left-hander and the soup would wade in too, forcing the bike to turn much deeper than intended. Then I’d over-correct and the soup bag would swing back round, whack me on the thigh, and force the bike upright. The resultant seesawing riding style made me look like I was completely and utterly trolleyed. But I didn’t much care, instead piling on the speed and sniggering into my piss pot.
This first taste of motorcycling’s sweet thrill ensured that for my next Thailand trip I went prepared. And that meant convincing my parents, both of whom were sceptical of two wheels. The argument went like this: ‘Parents, I’ll have to ride mopeds in Thailand, and to do it safely I’ll need to have lessons. So I’ll be doing a CBT in the UK.’ “Oh, son, that’s so responsible of you.” ‘Okay parents, that CBT was the best fun I’ve had in my life, so in order to make my scooter use in Thailand really safe, it’s important for me to pass my full-size bike test right now.’ “Son, we can’t argue with something that sounds so logical.”
Six months later I did 3604 miles on a Harley Sportster solo across the USA ( Bike, October 2012). Yes, that did stretch the definition of ‘mopeds in Thailand’ a bit.
‘It’s one of those rare days when I’m in the zone – that trance-like state when your subconscious takes control’