FROM THE FRONT
Ifirst met Dave Minton well over twenty years ago, as the result of a slightly whimsical pub conversation with Jim Reynolds. We’d just started – together – our own attempt at an old bike magazine, wittily entitled the Classic Bike Guide, and were considering who we should invite to write for it. We had of course no money, but a chap should never let that stand in the way. Jim made suggestions, all of them sensible, and I wondered whether he knew Dave Minton, whose superb writing had entertained me while I was a fledging schoolboy motorcycling type with a Panther and ambition. I read everything DLM wrote in Motorcycle Sport and everything Dave Minton wrote in Motorcyclist Illustrated. I was in fact a fan. Which is the same today as it was then. I am a fan … as well as a friend.
Jim did of course know Dave, and arranged an intro. If I recall correctly, Dave stewed a rabbit for lunch. I was in awe. We talked about motorcycles, motorcycle magazines and much much more over an endless supply of rabbit stew and beer. Dave agreed to write for us, and has done so ever since. And we are still friends, which is remarkable indeed.
For a while, we both worked on a modern motorcycle magazine as well as on the familiar old clunker variety, and that was a startling experience. Not so much in terms of the level of analysis of which Dave is always capable, and of expressing with style and precision, but because we rode together on modern machines. I am entirely familiar with the teeth-grinding experience of being endlessly outclassed in sheer speed terms by other riders, but this was something else.
Typically, we would meet up and ride together, aboard whichever pair of machines Dave was comparing, to meet a photographer in a scenic location, preferably with a wide-open bend or two for Dave to set up the action shots. Consider this. Dave almost never broke speed limits … much. He was always aware that as a professional journalist his livelihood depended on his license. So, typically he would cruise around 10mph over whatever limit was in force. As I do as well, and I’m sure you do too. How, I wondered, was I regularly hitting the ton-plus on A-roads trying to keep him in sight as he swung the bends together in a fluid manner which was somehow exaggerated by the improbably rare flash of a brake light. Poetry.
This is the last issue of our magazine to feature Dave Minton’s Bendswingin’ column. I shall sorely miss it. Thanks for all of it, Dave.
Ride safely
Frank Westworth Frank@realclassic.net