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I guess it was pretty obvious from an early age I was going to be a biker. Always somehow ending up being a late developer I didn't have a moped but was forced to wait until I was old enough, as was the law at the time, to ride a motorcycle over 50cc. I then took possession of a shiny new, secondhand orange Honda CB125S.
Actually somehow I ended up getting it before I was old enough to ride it legally on the road so it was stored in my fathers garage.
At some point in my parents absence the temptation proved too great and I wheeled it round to a nearby piece of waste land we called the Snake Field, now part of the East Bristol ring road, to have a go on it. This piece of land, at the time the size of several dozen football pitches, was all overgrown with brambles and grass tumps and was liberally strewn with the debris of illegal dumping, the ever recycled building materials of innumerable 'dens' and if you were lucky the remains of a naughty magazine. Despite the intertwining maze of paths that snaked around the field, between the masses of brambles, inside the hedges and under the trees its most notable feature was the sewage pipe that crossed the middle of it. It was a concrete pipe of at least three feet in diameter leading from the adjacent houses and out across the neighboring fields, buried below the surface except for here, where it was generally higher than the surrounding ground. Earth had been piled against it on both sides so it took the form of a gently sloping earth bank with a rounded concrete top. Or perhaps more accurately right in the middle of the field on the main muddy path it was a perfectly formed takeoff ramp!
Secure in the knowledge that the training I had been given by my father, up a quiet country lane, had given me all the skills I would need I opened the throttle and slipping and sliding on the wet mud headed fearlessly towards the bottom of the field. I don't know what I expected to happen. The innocence of youth perhaps or with the benefit of adult hindsight, child like stupidity. Whichever, inevitably I was going to learn a lesson that day and so I did.

CB200

I think it was returning home from visiting my sister who was living in Swansea attending University at the time. I was inexperienced in having such autonomy and also riding the bike such a distance was a great adventure to me. The weather was wonderful sunny and warm and the roads I was restricted to with L-plates weren't too busy. With my sunglasses on, my luggage as a backrest, my high handlebars bought from the local Triumph dealer and the original flat handlebars upturned and bolted to the front of the bottom of the frame as a set of forward 'highway pegs' for my long legs I was laid back and really enjoying pretending to be an 'Easyrider'. The bike was running just fine and it was great fun occasionally gently leaning with almost no effort to flick the bike around some slower moving car on the wide country roads and snatch a glance at the driver's expression in my mirrors as the 'King of the road' roared by. I was really enjoying myself. I was happy. I was warm. I was comfortable. I was asleep!
Somehow at the last minute I came to and realised that the speed I was going I had no chance of avoiding it and I'd have to brake, hard! The car in front was going SO slowly that it instantly became obvious I was in trouble. I stamped on the brake pedal and gripped the handlebar lever as hard as my clenched fist could while trying to stay upright in a straight line and almost in control. Slowing, slowing, I was going to make it . . . BANG! I drove straight into the back of the car but somehow incredibly I stayed more or less on the bike and didn't even fall off despite the strange bits of debris flying past me. I ended up sat on the petrol tank with my legs dangling either side of the engine against the hot exhausts perilously close to the front wheel with my left hand still clutching the handlebar and my right hand holding onto the front indicator stalk trying desperately to steer the spluttering bike towards the kerb. Somehow everything came to a halt and I put the bike on its stand and started to breath again. Now I was for it.
I'd never had an accident involving anyone else before and I admit I was rather nervous and really didn't know what to do. I think the car driver was probably a little nervous too since the image I was wearing, all leather, denim and dark glasses was certainly not that of the timid, polite and apologetic person I became. I became all the more so when I realised that the bike was unscathed, as was I except for a strangely sore thumb, but the back of the old Welshman's three wheeled Reliant Robin van had been smashed to bits! It was still drivable but there were cracks and fractures all over the body and a trail of fiberglass bits littered the road for several yards.
If I'd had a different upbringing and my wits about me I should have leapt on the bike and disappeared there and then but that just wasn't right and it didn't even occur to me. Neither of us really knew what to do so accepting responsibility for what I had done I naively agreed to drive to a Police station in nearby Chepstow and report the accident with him! I duly followed him from an appropriate distance safely dodging bits of fiberglass as they continued to fall off the back of his van as the back door flapped in its broken frame. During the short drive as we encountered some traffic and turns and roundabouts my adrenalin charged body began to settle down and I began to realise something was wrong. I couldn't grip the throttle or brake properly and ended up having to try and twist it and pull it with a cupped hand without using my thumb which was really starting to ache inside my leather gauntlet. Eventually after what seemed like an agonisingly long ride we pulled into a Police station car park and I was able to painfully remove my gauntlet and examine the damage. There was no break to the skin or blood but my right thumb was definitely a funny colour, a funny puffy shape and seemed to be pointing rather more than the other one over to the left. I accompanied the old man into the Police station and respectfully doing what I thought was the right thing I politely told the amazed officer behind the desk the truth about how I came to be there. I mentioned my thumb. That was the critical error. I didn't really understand at the time how crucial that was but it was something along the lines that an accident is just an accident which insurance companies deal with EXCEPT when there is a personal injury. If there has been an injury of any sort it must be reported to the police for them to take whatever action the law deems necessary. The action in this case was that I was cautioned, had to make a statement and was charged with 'driving without due care and attention'! Considering I had survived falling asleep on a motorbike at seventy miles an hour and had ended up parked in the back of a Reliant Robin without falling off and almost unscathed I think a more appropriate charge would have been guilty of a pretty outstanding circus act.
When insurance details were exchanged and all the paperwork had been done, weighed down with my guilt, regret and document production demand it was suggested I should make my way to the casualty desk at the nearby hospital.
I didn't feel like such a macho biker bro sat waiting my turn in casualty nursing my aching thumb. I felt really silly. I only felt a little better when the x-ray revealed that I did indeed have a hairline fracture. The nurses were all rather nice in their caring attitudes and uniforms and reveling in their attention I expressed mild concern that my thumb did seem to be rather bent. Dutifully robust attempts were made to force my thumb back straight. With hindsight it was obviously just the impression given by a bit of swelling around a very slight fracture, which in time would heal itself. I've never actually passed out but I think I know what it must be like just before you do. Painful, lightheaded, hot and cold, sweating, feeling sick.
Glad to be out and more than happy to put up with a bent thumb for the rest of my life rather than submit to any more torture fruitless torture I coaxed the bike back across the old Severn bridge on the cycle track and slowly made my way home to lick my wounds.
The insurance companies settled although it did seem strange that such an expensive household stereo system was hidden in the back of the Reliant and had been so completely destroyed in the collision. The case duly went to a Chepstow magistrate's court with my absentee guilty plea and I eventually got my license back with penalty points and a modest fine.
All in all a valuable lesson albeit something of a rude awakening!

CG125 CB750 4

CB400T XS1100

I was cruising up the A420 towards home dodging in and out of the heavy town traffic. It seemed heavier than normal but was of little concern being on a bike, since there is always somewhere to squeeze through especially when riding a loud chop and wearing that sort of image. Weaving my way through, past the traffic lights up into St George the traffic unusually suddenly came to a complete standstill. For as far as I could see up the road toward the police station nothing was moving on both sides. I'd never seen it this bad no matter how busy. Carefully I pulled out into the middle of the road and announcing my presence to anyone who was likely to step or pull out in front of me by revving the engine I headed up past all the fuming, parked car drivers. As I passed the police station on my right I noticed just up ahead where the road widened into three lanes just before the landmark 'Fountain', all the traffic had parted leaving a wide space in the middle of the road. Cars were strangely abruptly having to pull out round something lying in the road and were then very slowly crawling by looking down. As I drew nearer I saw that someone was lying there in the road and cars in the queue were dangerously only seeing the figure at the last moment as they accelerated toward the apparently clear stretch of road before them. What on earth? My mind raced.
I pulled the bike over across the carriageway at an angle and dropped it onto its side stand about twenty feet before the prone figure to afford some protection and hopefully indicate by its angle the way cars should go to safely get by. I briefly noticed the grimacing car drivers faces as they approached who obviously thought some arrogant biker was causing all the trouble but I had no time for them as I ripped off my helmet and left it on the bike.
There had been an accident. As I made my way toward the figure on the floor I noticed on the other side of the road a small car with a shattered windscreen and dented bonnet pulled awkwardly in against the pavement. Only a few hundred yards from a pedestrian controlled crossing someone had tried to cross the busy wide road and hadn't made it. People were milling about or stood awkwardly. I knelt down in the road next to the slight figure of the old lady and didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do and something had to be done. In desperation I reached out and grasped her wrist and tried to feel for a pulse as I looked at her to see if I could see her breathing. I was just a young punk who didn't know her and I felt guilty holding this old ladies wrist and tried to do it with just my finger tips as though out of respect and not to be too familiar. My mind frantically raced trying to remember any old scrap of first aid training I may have seen on TV as my own heart pounded in my hand. Someone briefly joined me at her side and I desperately asked them if they could feel for a pulse because I couldn't find one but I don't remember them staying there for long. I took the moment to adjust my awkward crouching position and moved to see if I could see her breathing. She was old. She was very old and frail lost in her old thick coat with a wrinkled face and white mottled skin. She wasn't there any more. There was crack like a broken eggshell on the side of her head half hidden by her fine grey hair into which I could see and her lifeblood was ebbing slowly away in a river down the road. I knew nothing about emergency first aid but I did know it didn't matter. Whoever it was who came over then, agreed with me in my macho matter of fact way that she was a goner. But it seemed that there was something very special about that moment that was just out of reach and that many years later in the writing has brought me to tears. What sort of a life had she lived? What things had she seen? What hardships and joys? Whose daughter, sister, wife or mother? What children would miss their grandmother? Which friends were left to mourn her passing? All that she was had ended there like that. Who was I to stand witness to her life ebbing away before me?
It could have been worse! On the other side of the road passers by were trying to consol the young woman sat on the kerb sobbing next to her beaten up car. It was an accident . . . she shouldn't have been crossing there . . . it wasn't your fault . . . but oh the agony of having taken a life like that. Forever. I can't imagine.
The wailing of the sirens of the ambulance agonising slowly forcing its way through the traffic on the wrong side of the road spurred me into helping someone else try to hurriedly wave through the obstructing traffic past my bike but they all wanted to see. The ambulance arrived and any burden of responsibility was immediately taken upon the shoulders of the crew who leapt out all business like to do their work. I watched from the bike as I put my helmet back on. With one brief look their experienced eye obviously confirmed my conclusion and with little ceremony they quickly picked up the body and placed it on a stretcher and out of sight into the ambulance before turning their attention to the other victim.
I drove home but had difficulty settling my mind and found myself visiting St George police station later that day just to confirm that she had been pronounced dead on arrival.
I don't think I will ever travel that road without remembering, as I pass the spot where lives were ended.

Goldwing GT750

CX500

C70, , , , , Harley

- - - - - UNFINISHED - - - - - UNDER CONSTRUCTION - - - - - -

I used to be a 'biker' but I don't ride any more and certainly don't live the 'lifestyle' whatever that may be !

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