**Prize winner

Hello again, I’m back!

Just a short note to say a big thank you for getting me back into bikes – for the second time! As someone now into my fifties I was one of those who spent their youth zipping around on bikes in the 1970s. Me and my mates had a ball. Bikes were our release, our transport and our freedom. We courted on them, we courted disaster on them and then – when we suddenly had a missus and kids – we wised-up and bought a nice little car. Yeah, I kept largely in touch with biking in the 1980s: I was even close to buying an RG500 once, but I really couldn’t justify the money when baby number two was on the way. Then came my first comeback in the 1990s! Yes, me and two of my mates were three of those ‘born-again bikers’ that you heard so much about, but thankfully (despite some gravel-rash thanks to an accidental wheelie on a Fireblade in a car park) my friends and I survived and never became a statistic. Then, as the Noughties came along, I dropped two-wheels again and went fishing instead. I know what you’re thinking, but I could still only afford one thing or the other and have you seen the price of a decent Rod Hutchinson carp rod? Now – for the second time – I’m back. And it’s all thanks to you (ahem and one other magazine…) I picked up a copy of CMM to peruse while I was dipping the aforementioned rod into my local river and I really enjoyed it. Not only do I see all my old favourites that I used to ride in the Seventies, but the bikes I lusted after in that decade and the ones I bought in the Nineties too. Me? Finally, with the kids having left home and with some disposable following the divorce and the inevitable down-sizing, as long as I have a place to stick my tackle (no pun intended) and a garage for my one new-ish and two Cmm-era bikes, I’m a happy man!

Dave Lawford

Bertie says: “Brilliant to hear you are back Dave! We’re glad to have you as a reader!”