So, what is it about bikes..?

Personally, I'm at the tail end of those generations
for whom a little 2-stroke, single-cylinder, learner
bike - air cooled - was an affordable way to get
about.

My first bike cost £400, and a look-up table in the
MCN for the insurance said £97 or thereabouts. It
had its MOT and Road Fund License and, as such,
with the price of a pair of L-plates, I'd've been lucky
to have been able to pass my car test for that.

And would I have been able to afford a car? I didn't
think so. So it was get mobile or not. The same
dealership sold a mate his first bike a couple of
months later. It being older, and what they had in,
I think it was £100 or £150.

You hardly even see bikes in the press for that now,
never mind from a dealership.

Anyroad, having persisted for years on the basis
it's not about how good your bike looks it's about
the riding, I decided with this one that, as it was
on the never never, and I was going for a fairly new
one, I should get one that wouldn't be embarrassing
for a pillion to be seen on.

Sadly, the reality is that it seems happy with me
and luggage or with me and a pillion. But not both.
And, actually, I'd not be happy with a pillion much
above a size 12 (clothes, that is, not boots).

But seriously. Three or four times it is I've been
out on it without my Day-Glo waistcoat, and each
time I've been fighting schoolgirls off with a stick.

It got a bit boring even, riding down the road and
waiting for the next group of upper-school kids to
notice me and start vying for my attention.

But even Day-Glo is no guarantee of safety! I've
just rode up the road now and a couple of young
lads in a fair first (or Mums') car had the windows
down, fists out in the air, doing Beavis and Butthead
impressions on sight.

You go to work and just because people have
had bikes themselves, this gives them some kind
of automatic (pun intended) license to try and blag
a go on it.

I've driven vans and trucks, commercially, yet for
some reason don't consider this a fair excuse to
ask to drive my colleagues' Sherpas or Sprinters.

But because it's a bike you can end up feeling in
some ways almost bad for taking the line of "well,
no, not if you're not insured..."

Perhaps if I'd raced vans competitively I'd feel that
bit different about asking to drive other peoples'? I
tend to think not.

I mean, yeah, it's nice to follow a Ferrari round on
a hot summer's afternoon--and turn more heads.
But, in all fairness, it's not like it's the kind of iron
that impresses the kinds of bikers you meet in
bikery circles, particularly. And I knew this when
I got it. I did 70 wherever possible into Wales and
back this weekend and still seem to have got 70
to the gallon out of it, trip total. Oh, and no cramp.
I put this down to wearing thermals as it's back
this afternoon on a quick jaunt into town after work.

Still, at least I was right about one thing--it looks
good enough (black & chrome) not to be too much
of an embarrassment for a suitable pillion (not to
mention the restoration project that can be done,
in tandem with formal training, for said pillion).

But still, it all leaves me in that wierd old hinterland
of feeling like a biker around motorcyclists, and non-
motorcyclists alike, but feeling like a motorcyclist in
biking circles.

It's just nice to know many problems do still yield to
logic and persistence. I didn't just imagine all that.

G DAEB
COPYRIGHT (C) 2009 SIPSTON
--

 

(C) 2009

SIPSTON


= WANKER.

 

Just twigged how he does this:-

http://johno.jsmf.net/knowhow/ngrams/index.php