First love….. a red Fastback

The Red Fastback

Some women never leave you, and nor do some bikes. The memories that come flooding back when I look at a Norton Commando anywhere I see one, are really powerful…….. so much that they sometimes really surprise me with just how strong they are.

I saw a Red 750cc Norton Commando Fastback parked up the other day, and right off I was in a right old nostalgic state…… Couldn’t leave it and kept walking back to it. A bright red Fastback …… she was one of my young life’s “Firsts”

I wanted to take it home sooooo much. Wanted to feel her under me again, wanted to touch her, feel her throbbing between my legs like only a Norton Commando can. Wanted to run my hands over her polished alloy timing chest… trace the word ‘Norton’ so beautifully cast into the alloy like I used to do when I was polishing my old Fastback all those years ago.

Wanted to get on it again, and feel that moment when I bought my first one from Bridge Garage, in Exeter. It was an identical Red Fastback. She was beautiful and I fell for her the first time I saw her, crammed amongst all the other second-hand bikes in their showroom, all looking like the ownerless, abandoned and forgotten souls that they were, all wanting to be owned and loved again.

I bought her without a second thought.

I was twenty and still pretty raw to ride a bike like her. She’d been around the block a few times and was the biggest, most powerful bike I’d ever ridden.

I rode her away from Bridge Garage and up onto the busy flyover roundabout. I pulled her over and just sat there tight to the curb with all the traffic going by. Her engine patiently ticked over, heaving on the rubber mountings in that lovely Commando “rubbery” way they all did, and it was a moment I’ve never forgotten. She was quietly waiting for me to do what I wanted to her, anywhere, any time, any place. Quietly chuffing away through her unique ‘peashooter’ silencers in her special way, and seeming to say;

“I’m ready when you are, sonny boy, take your time”.

She was so latently mighty, so brutal, and I felt afraid of her but somehow not at the same time. I can remember quietly saying to myself “What’ve I bought? What’ve I done?” I’d just part-exchanged her with a nearly new Bonnie, ….. the iconic 650cc Triumph Bonneville, …..but this thing felt like I’d moved up into the Big Boys league ……… Like , really, REALLY moved in with them, and right at that moment I found myself wondering if I was up to it. I was a nutter and I was good, …..bloody good, …..but was I good enough for this?

She felt like such a handful. She was tall, her wide seat splayed my legs apart compared to the Bonnie which felt much smaller. She was heavy and just exuded badness, the likes of which I’d never felt under me before. She made me wanna scowl at the world. She was like the sort of girl you just wouldn’t want your dear old Mum to see you out with. She was going to do some real BAAAAD stuff with me. She knew it and so did I. She also seemed to me sat there on her back to know it was my first time in the big league, and that I was sitting there not knowing quite what to do with her. I could sense that she just wanted me to let her clutch out again and ride her, and somehow I knew she’d show me the way.

I can remember how she felt as I thought to myself, “OK, I’ve bought it, so there’s no way to back out of this thing now,” and gingerly eased the clutch lever out. I eased it out a bit too quickly, though and she grunted and shuddered under me as the revs dropped too low. I felt her threatening to stall but gamely refusing to at the same time. I automatically gave her a touch more throttle and she barked softly and suddenly lunged forward. I grabbed the clutch in again and slipped it for longer the next time.

I rode her through the Exeter traffic, and it was a real steep learning curve. Lots of lunging forward shutting off, then another lunge and so on. A good bit untidy until I got the measure of her very tall gearing. She was so high geared compared to the Bonnie and so you just had to slip the clutch all the time and daren’t let your hand off it once it was really in. She would run away with you if you didn’t snatch the clutch in quick enough when the traffic slowed. Run you into the back of the car in front, real easy. As soon as the clutch bit, she just surged forward with hardly any revs on. She was saying “If you think THIS is hot, wait until you really wind me up and let me go”, just like the Bad Girl she was. I couldn’t wait to get out of town and get some room around us.

Finally, we got out onto the lovely open road, and in a few miles I was giving her all the beef she could feed on and at the same time trying for all I was worth not to wind up throwing her down the road. Sure, I was overcooking it all over the place and had some real near misses but I just didn’t care, in the way you don’t when you’re so young and invincible. I was laughing at her way of being so fast without trying at all. I remember that the most clearly of all; laughing aloud as I rode all that hot sunny afternoon.

This was different from the Bonnie. That was fast, but this girl was REALLY fast and she took no prisoners. This was what I’d always wanted. This was what I’d always thought it would be like in all the hours I’d spent as a kid sitting on Dad’s BSA B31, wearing his leather flying helmet and goggles, and dreaming of riding like a God. Now here I was, doing it for real on a top-end bike. She was a Superbike of her day and that afternoon I knew nothing was going to be the same again. One of those moments in life and every bit as memorable as making love to a girl for the first time. A moment in a life when everything changes and an innocence is lost forever.

It was beautiful, that first ride and I think it was the first time I ever felt a bike really looking after me. No matter what I did wrong, she seemed to just show me how to get out of it. Like an experienced woman making love to a young boy, she gently showed me the way to please her, and the more I pleased her the better it got. She’d been around the block a few times, and there was a soft power in the way she handled under me. I loved her from those first few miles, and I never stopped loving her. She made me feel just so proud to be on her back and I rode her all day into dusky moonlit darkness. I just couldn’t stop. I laughed a lot that afternoon and evening, and I never felt prouder before or since in my whole life.

Well, I did, but that was when i married my wife. Yup, it was that good.

When I went to bed that night, I was different. I was finally the Greaser I always wanted to be at last. Head to toe in black leather, a white silk scarf made from genuine coffin liner and walking so tall. I knew for sure that no one was going to mess with me again, and no one ever did.

Anytime I want, I can conjure up that first hesitant moment on her back. Sat quietly on the flyover there on the cusp of something so new. Listening to her ticking over patiently. Blipping the throttle and feeling the huge shudder under me from that lovely big-twin motor spinning up. Seeing that pretty Red Fastback the other day, was a shock from how strong the feeling was still. It really took me by surprise.

Like turning a corner, seeing a first love again and feeling the breathless surprise of her, and it being like first time you ever saw her all over again.

© Kevin Udy 23/03/05

Risk, and it’s importance to Yoofs……

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)