Bye bye biker

Dear everyone,

It is with great sadness that I announce my resignation as a biker, a rider of motorcycles, for health reasons. This resignation is effective immediately. Well, strictly speaking, it is back-dated to May 20, when my motor insurance policy lapsed. It will be a done deal when I have at last got through all those tire-kickers and sold my latest (find it hard to say 'last') and loved BMW motorbike.

I have been a biker on and off since 1976, when I bought my first moped, a 50cc-engined vehicle that managed 60mph (with the wind behind). It got me out and about quite a bit and was easy to look after.

The BMW, an 800cc mid-weight touring bike, is a lot faster and requires professional service, which is just as well as I long ago lost all interesting in pulling bikes apart to service or fix them.

We have had a wonderful time together over these past five decades. Me, the bikes, the friends, the journeys, all of them loved and valued. We have had good times and, I guess, some bad. We have had some memorable, some momentous, times and, as you can imagine, I have a few tales to tell. With dotage, as they say, comes anecdotage.

Thinking about the term I have used, 'biker', I am not sure it fits. Isn't it just one of those labels I have just resigned from? You know what I think about having labels pinned to me. Although, to be fair, the label has faded over the past 50 years. Then, in the 1970s, being a biker meant something. It meant something exciting, dangerous, it had a bit of a bad-boy image about it.

You recall that time, roundabout 1981, when I went out for a ride with my girlfriend, T, on pillion? We stopped off at that pub in Surrey, a young couple out for the evening. You served the drinks I ordered, but then took them back again when you noticed the helmet in my hand.

We don't serve bikers here!

...is what you said. Funny, that you were happy to serve us when we were just a boy and a girl, having a quiet drink, but because we showed up on a motorcycle, you didn't want us in your grotty roadside pub. Where is the sense in that? We were hardly likely to cause a riot, even if we were the rioting kind, which I can assure you we were not. But in those days, as I mentioned, 'biker' was a label and you do love your labels, don't you?

Funnier even than that, was the day I went out with my little biker group of friends, again back in the early 80s. We went on a 'run' to the coast, Hastings I think it was, stopping off for the occasional cuppa and cigarette. Three lads and the two girls, little Angie with her sidecar combo, and the posh girl who called her bike Nobby, after her horse. I'll leave you to guess why. Arriving at the seaside resort, we came across a whole bunch of youths on scooters, 'mods' as they labelled themselves. They looked at us, not knowing whether to react, then later jostled one of my friends as he left the restroom. I guess they must have seen the movie Quadrophenia. You know, where Sting plays that 'mod' with the flash scooter and there is a mass street fight between the mods and the biking 'rockers.'

Those little trips we had as a group were always good fun and I recall those days with a smile. Of course I have lost touch since that time, and I stopped riding a bike, don't recall why, a few years after that. I think it was in part the fact that I was a Brit Biker, riding a Triumph 650 Tiger, the less-glam version of the Bonneville, that motorcycle movie star.

As you know, British bikes were then none too reliable, and I was never that good at fixing anything that went wrong. As I may have mentioned before...

Anything falling off this motorcycle is 100% British made

So my previous last bike, before a 25-year hiatus, was that Triumph, which I gave up trying to fix when it went wrong. Selling it as a not-quite going concern. You know how it is. Or at least you would if you had ever owned a motorcycle that was made in Britain.

Brit Biking? Nein danke

Reminds me of the photo a friend took of me pushing the Triumph to a garage after it broke down. He took the slogan from an anti-nuke badge that German couple gave me and I liked so much...

Where did I meet the German couple? On a trip to Germany? No, it was a trip to Cornwall, as it happens. With my non-biker friend Peter, we toured around the West Country on my bike, heading first to the Sussex Coast and then right along through Dorset and Devon (Dartmoor), before riding into Cornwall. You remember when I lost balance stopping in traffic and Peter decided to bail, knocking me and the bike right over in the process? Nothing harmed but my reputation. And of course Peter has more recently had his own last ride, has ridden his own bike (figuratively, as he never had one) into the sunset. There were many other memorable trips, too many to mention.

What put me back on two wheels again some 25 years later? The simple practical expedient of needing a method of travelling across central London to a new job, in 2007. Then it was just a convenient way of travelling through the awful central London traffic. Didn't enjoy it much. Wasn't too bad when I left home around 5.00 am, when there was not so much traffic. But the return journey, unless it was after a late shift, was always a nightmare.

Some years later I moved to an office job in central London that was, apart from many other benefits, more convenient for a rail commute. And so another episode of biking ended. Though I didn't really miss the daily two-wheel commute, I started to think about a trip our little biker gang talked about but never got off the ground. A road trip across northern Europe to the far north of Norway, to see the midnight sun. I wondered if I could hire a bike for the duration but figured it would be better to buy a touring bike and then sell it after the trip. I bought a big map of Europe and plotted out a route across the English Channel, 'La Manche' as the French call it, perhaps the 'American Channel', one day. From France it is a road trip all the way, apart from a short ferry crossing. I figured three weeks of hard riding, and wondered if I could find a biking friend to go with me.

So I did buy another bike, a touring BMW that took me to Wales, the West Country, Norfolk, and of course the Humber and onwards to Scotland, the best of all my biking journeys. Though I really enjoyed my long trips away, I also found it a bit lonely sometimes. I then thought about what it would be like to be away from my loved ones for a full three weeks or more. This led me to consider a shorter trip, perhaps to Denmark and Sweden but, as you know, it was not to be. Perhaps next year?

Given the big gap in between, I make it a total of around 25 years of biking. Funny thing is, I spent more time on a bike as an older man, than I did when I was a youth. Perhaps my survival as a biker depended on a more mature approach to riding. Do you remember when, seeing me riding to work that day, you on your scooter following behind, you said:

You ride like an old man?

A young woman's perspective, perhaps? And what did I say in reply?

Well, I am an old man.

I think I must have been around 52 at the time. Old enough but, whether an 'old man' or not then, I certainly feel like it now. With all the old-man ailments I 'mustn't grumble' about. So I can hardly complain if age, and one condition associated with it, mean that I now have to step down off the footrest.

... at least until I next get the urge and find something a bit more appropriate to my age....

HELL NO!

If and when I do get another bike it will be fast and furious and guaranteed to take me in comfort on my next big bike journey.

Assuring you of my best affections

Ray, (ex) biker

~~~~~

More biker bits from Ray

Crossing the water

Two countries, three bridges, one motorcycle and a cool clear pint of English Ale

Where have all the bikers gone?

Why so few motorcycle tales on Vocal?

A breath of sea air

A made-up story, based on a real trip to the Kent coast.

Thanks for reading