MAN & MACHINE
Name: Jason Shambrook.
Scooter club & town: Cheap Red Wine SC, Guernsey.
First interest in scooters: In the mid-Eighties, a few mates had them and we used to hang about together. Great times and I still see them occasionally after I moved away.
First scooter: PK50, we knocked on a chap's door and asked if he wanted to sell it. Within a month my dad had it cut down and had a kit in it. I blew it up a day later screaming it down the dual carriageway!
Favourite scooter model: Without a shadow of doubt, the GS150. For some reason it just makes you want to keep looking at it! First ever rally: Disc 85, I remember it being very muddy and we didn't have much money. Obviously had enough for a bottle or two of Clan Dew (whisky and wine). I remember thinking ‘this is fun' as my tent collapsed and I realised I had lost one of my shoes.
How did you get there: It took us eight hours to ride from Northampton to Donnington on the PK50. People were walking past me with their shopping as I went up hills. I learnt how to use the momentum of going down the hill to propel myself up the other side. At one stage I am positive I touched 23mph, but we didn't have GPS in those days so I can't be sure!
Any funny stories: They all are! We had joined the Unlikeables SC from Northampton and decided to create a Wendy House camping village at Great Yarmouth in 1986 that looked like the street we lived in. Got down there, set them up and it looked splendid. A row of terraced houses with our scooters parked outside. Off we went to the pub, returning in the early hours to find that our bodies didn't really fit inside. I woke up first in the morning shivering cold (drank some more Clan Dew) and glanced across the ‘street' to see houses on top of people covering just from their waist to their neck. One of them had met a girl in a pub and was under a length of tarpaulin with her as according to him, “it was only a one-bedroom house”.
Furthest you’ve ever ridden on a scooter: Went to the Vespa Days in Belfast a couple of years ago. There are three of us called the Amigos and the other two had set off before me. I rode from Portsmouth to Liverpool, ferried across to Belfast (in force 10 wind) and then as a group we rode down to Dublin, then to Rosslare, across to Pembroke, through Wales and back to Poole. My mate Boabie McAmigo has just done it again on his own this month!
Scooter model: Vespa GS150, 1961.
Date purchased & cost: Purchased from the UK in 2010 for around £2500.
Any specialised parts or mods: Just couldn't get on with the engine so had a Malossi 221 rotary valve built with a standard 26 SI carb and a Polini box exhaust. The engine was built by Ben Nowak at Vespmoto in Germany.
Top speed & cruising speed: I am not a quick rider, don't think I have been faster than 50mph on it! The Jersey Royals SC will vouch for that when they left me behind on my T5 on the way to Weston-super-Mare last year, I did still beat them there and back though. Mainly because the Lambrettas kept breaking down.