Ok, first page of the blog, nothing to say right off…….. :oI
I’ve got another running, so have to see if I can keep them both going. I liked the look of some of the WordPress blogs, and thought I’d give this a tryout.
What can I say about me? I’m something of an Old Greaser from the seventies, have passionately loved bikes all my life, and have been thrashing them half to death since I was sweet sixteen. Fifteen actually, when Father let me have my first ride on a bike around a disused WWII aerodrome. I can remember that acutely. It ranks alongside the first time I made love to a girl (At eighteen!), and both have been passions ever since. :o)
That bike was a 250 Ariel Golden Arrow SS Sports. Dad was talking to a bloke about getting me a bike to do up, and he said he had one in a hedge in his garden. It was his son’s, who was too young to ride it on the road and used to ride it around a field. No lid, boots or anything particularly protective, as we all did back then, before the weenies tried to take the thrill of risk out of life. It all went quiet one day, and his father eventually went over to find his son dead by the bike. He’s hit a tree. He dumped the bike in the hedge, and there it stayed.
Ok, my first entry, and already I will have someone who might read this fired up to have a go at me, for sure-certain.
Let me try and explain where I stand on this. Life is a risk, and young men in particular need to be able to take these risks with their life……… it’s a rite of passage, like it or not. Close the doors to those risks, and believe me, speaking as a lifelong adrenaline junkie, and off the scale when I was young, those risks WILL be taken in some way or another. I’m sure a lot of the trouble with young men these days is that there just aren’t the outlets for them to ‘prove’ themselves that were available to my generation. If I couldn’t have had the outlet of bikes for my extreme thrill-seeking personality, I dread to think where I’d have ended up. I had two very, very serious accidents by the age of eighteen, and for my parents sake tried to give up on bikes. Within two months I was in trouble with the Police. Fairly minor, drink-related trouble, but trouble that meant a night in the cells, and in a magistrates court to be bound over to keep the peace for a year nevertheless.
As an aside……… the police gave me a damn good hiding, including deliberately slamming the cell door on my hand, and y’know what? I’m bloody glad they did too. I deserved it…….. I was behaving like a hooligan, and a good hiding did me the world of good. I damn well didn’t want to repeat the experience!!!
I got another bike shortly after that, and was more or less was back on the rails again.
Case proved, I think.
We all did things like ride beaten up old bikes around fields in jeans and t-shirts. If you’re my age, you’ll be a product of that, and will in all probability understand the value of that. You soon learnt that it hurt to fall off, what made you fall off, and we had to fix what we broke too. There were fewer wealthy parents cosseting their offspring in those days with a new-for-old parenting strategy. We learnt to look after those old bikes we spent so many hours doing up, modifying and trying to keep running on a shoestring.
There is a thing called Risk Compensation. The safer you feel, the more you raise the bar to feel the same level of risk as when less safe. I sometimes still take a bike out in just a t-shirt and jeans, lid and gloves, and I can assure you I’m happier at a much lower level of risk. And, I know the risks, believe me…….. I’m making a choice. Sloping along, out in the breeze, is a lost pleasure I still love. I’m an Old school biker. We’re a dying breed, so don’t any of you newbies get smart-assed with me, ok? :o)
A thought here………… whilst it’s in my head. Most new bikers these days are ‘old men’……. starting out on a big bike, and a modern big bike at that, at anything over thirty years old, is ‘old’, believe me. You just cannot learn the reactions to the instinctive, lightening-fast level that we used to develop as teenagers, no matter how hard you try. I’m only still as good as I am now, because I started real young in a baptism of fire, learnt real fast as you can at that age, and most importantly…….. I’ve never stopped practising those skills ever since. THAT is a key factor. Use it or lose it.
How scary it must be to pass your test at forty, having quite often not even had a bike for a couple of years as a Yoof, and then having your Bullshit Male Ego choosing the hottest crotch-rocket you can buy, I can only try to imagine. I follow so many scared riders……….. you can see the nervousness in the way the bike in front of you moves around on the road. You only have to look at the Chicken Strip on the tyres to see the hopeless level of ability.
Here's a Chicken strip...the bit on the side you're too chicken to get on the road.
This is better. You don't have to be a lunatic to get it this good, just able to walk the walk
But you DO need to be a good bit nutty to melt the rubber right to the edge like this! :o))
So, arrogant as it sounds, when I venture forth half-dressed, I stand more than an even chance of making it home again. Yes, the worst could happen, and it will bleddy hurt if it does, but I do bring the aggregate of thirty-six odd years experience to bear. I also have a very well-developed ‘sixth sense’ which comes from thousands of hours in the saddle, and has saved many a day. There have been times when, for no apparent reason, I’ve just shut off, not overtaken, or whatever, and something ahs happened right out of the blue which would’ve been disastrous if I hadn’t.
So, if you’re thirty-plus and you’re new to it, don’t follow my example. It’s much more likely to end in tears. Biking is treated as a trendy lifestyle-thing for those with spare cash, but believe me, it’s no video game. You don’t get many second bites at the cherry in a tight sopt, and certainly don’t get to simply press ‘Play Again’.
Anyway……… off the soapbox… those who should listen, won’t. Those who would, prolly don’t need to.
That first bike of mine, that lovely blue Ariel Arrow nearly killed me too, and put me in hospital for over six months. Well, actually, it wasn’t the fault of the bike, but that of the moron coming the other way who was overtaking on a blind bend, ……….but that’s another story.
Maybe it was just jinxed.
It seems so few years ago that I took that first ride, and when I think of that bike I often give that unfortunate boy a thought.
There, but for the grace of God, went I.
Clint. :o)
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