After a long recovery and all sorts of problems with insurance and compensation, I had gone back to driving cars again for a while. It was a few years before I went back to two wheels. Marriage and children became the focus. But the yearning was still there.
I picked up an old XS250, and then managed to get hold of a really cheap Honda CG125, which was in amazing condition and really low mileage. So I chopped that in for a Honda 250N Superdream. A friend at work had a BMW R80. He was an old geezer and the bike suited him. I thought an R80 would suit me too, but these bikes were just too ancient and I wasn’t ready for retirement at that time. I bought an ex-police R80RT, in white and still with police single seat and panniers. I bought that one somewhere in Essex. I rode it home to Bexhill-on-Sea, where we lived at that time and immediately started to strip it down. The engine and mechanicals were in excellent order, but it was cosmetically challenged and white! A couple of months later it was civilian spec’ and dark metallic green. It looked fabulous, but was still an old R80RT. Some people love ‘em. I’m not one of them!
At that time my son was about two and a half years old. He was already following in my footsteps and loved cars and motorbikes. I had spent a couple of months in my garage, stripping, cleaning and re-spraying the RT. It was all back together and waiting for its unofficial revealing ceremony. It looked like a new bike. The paint job, for an amateur, was bloody near professional and the bike looked like new even if I do say so myself! I was stood in my back garden talking to the neighbour over the fence when I heard a tapping noise. I listened, trying to decipher the noise. It was a metallic, banging sort of sound. It sounded like metal on metal. Hollow, like a metal drum being hit with a hammer. Close. I ran back to the garage and found young Alex, my son, sat astride the RT, smiling as he beat out a tune on the tank with a spanner! Fortunately, not too much damage done. A few chips in the new paint job before it had even seen the outside world!
I changed the RT for a black BMW K75S. That was a completely different machine. It handled sweetly, was smooth, quiet and surprising agile. This bike was in immaculate condition and looked as if it was only a couple of years old. In reality it was about 8 years old when I got it and had covered well over 100,000 miles. People would admire the bike when it was parked up and could not believe it’s true milage. I once was looking around a motorcycle dealership in Pevensey Bay, near Eastbourne when the salesman came over and started looking around my bike. He offered me a deal and an extremely good price based on what he read the milometer as being 10,400 miles… not 104,0000!!
The K75 was such a nice bike to ride that I decided that it was now time to do my RoSPA and IAM courses as I had already done them both in the car some years earlier. The police instructor couldn’t believe how I could keep up with him, yet manage to lose all the ‘power-rangers’ on their sports bikes when we were out on observed rides.
After the K75 came a blue and white Yamaha XJ900. This was another very smooth and comfortable machine. Probably one of the best all round bikes there have been, in my opinion.
This was followed by another short period of car ownership before getting back into bikes yet again. Once more I realised that biking is just in me. I needed the freedom of two wheels no matter what it was. I got hold of a ‘project’ Honda 250RS which I did up and then sold.
BMW K1200RS 