REMINISCING

… OR HOW I WENT FROM EVERYDAY RIDER TO A LOVE OF THE UNUSUAL (AND THE DEMISE OF MY SUPER DREAM).

MEMORIES OF THE DISREPUTABLE YEARS

For those old enough, cast your mind back to the very early days of Back Street Heroes, and by early I mean issue 2 in 1984 – my first experience of the magazine which was to change my life totally.

I spotted it in our local newsagents, and a quick thumb through of the words n’ pictures inside showed me a whole new world. I’ve purchased almost every issue since I had my first photo in Readers’ Lives (issue 21 – still to this day, the best ever cover), but it wasn’t until 2005 that I had my first article.

Back then I was just your average ride-towork guy with a fondness for rock & roll music, photography, and getting lost. I’d passed my test a few years before on a C70, moved up to a 250RS and, then, in 1984, feeling flush, with a steady job, having just reached 21, I could afford the HP on a ‘big bike’ – in this case a CB 400N Super Dream. It had a huge white Rickman fairing, and panniers, and over the summer I toured England and Wales on it in pukka riding gear – cowboy boots, heavy jeans, and a leather jacket bought from a local market. If it rained (and it did… a lot) I had a yellow Millets ‘waterproof’ jacket, but still I got soaked. Maps and sunglasses were lost on the motorway as my girlfriend tried to read while riding, and we stayed in youth hostels, and were stopped regularly by police due to a stolen tax disc. It’s still one of my fondest memories of touring.

Despite the bike’s diminutive size, it also holds the claim to my fastest ride from Surrey to Lincoln at under three hours (and this was pre-M25 too).

The following spring I crashed in style on my first trip to Europe, just outside Oostende. Once off the ferry, in a serious storm, I was immediately blown sideways by the wind. “Mmmm,” I thought, “this’ll be a fun journey,” but headed out into deepest

Belgium. Hardly out of Ostend, the wind really picked up again, and a mega gust caught the side of my bike, ripped the tank bag off, and sent me on a brief scenic tour of the E5 and, eventually, the central reservation. It’d be something of an understatement to say I hurt – the gravel seemed to have shaved several layers of skin from my knees, and all I could see was blood as I’d bashed my nose and got a nosebleed as I tumbled down the road. As I tentatively lifted the visor and tried to ascertain nowt was broken, I saw a blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty who uttered the immortal words: “I’m a nurse, please don’t move.” Then I saw a policeman unclip his gun as he walked towards me...

Unceremoniously I was bundled into a VW Caravanette ambulance, and taken to Ostend hospital where I fought for them not to cut off my boots, and had several X-rays, two tetanus jabs, and a plaster-cast for a scaphoid bone break fitted. I don’t recall how, but I was taken to the garage where my bike was (owned by a guy who also restored old Citroens), and had dinner with them (strangely I do recall this – we had spag boll!), with their ten-year-old daughter translating for them.

I spent the rest of the week hobbling around with my uncle and aunt, who I’d come to visit, and enjoying the hospitality of the British Forces bars, while trying to arrange to get the bike home (oh how I cursed not taking out the extra

£15 insurance at the time… I’ll never go abroad without it now). A week later I returned to collect the bike, and pushed it on to the boat (with an arm in plaster). Back in the UK, Customs searched its every nook and cranny (even the pannier where the can of Tyre-Weld’d exploded), and then we had to unbolt large sections of it to get it into the van my brother’d borrowed. I still have the unpaid bill for 2,055 Belgium Francs for the ambulance at home...