Why I ride.

Why I ride

My last post got me ruminating on the bigger question, why I ride, what I really get from it. On top of the thrill and fun it has done something really special. 

I lived in London for 10 years before I got a bike. in that time I visited 2 cities in the UK and a town in Germany (for a wedding).

In the 11 years since I got my first "big" bike I have seen all four countries of the Union and 6 in Europe.  

Even more, I have a collection of stories, some things I witnessed, but more given to me by complete strangers.

This is the magic of motorcycles, old, young or in the middle, two wheels and an engine start a conversation.

Without a bike I would never have;

• had a old boy, straight from a Roald Dahl story, pop up behind a fence and regal us with a journey to rival Odysseus. From the wilds of Somerset to London, our hero being the only pilot in the village to have previously survived the perilous trek that could lead the farm truck to this far off land. We believe this epic took place in the thirties but did not want to interrupt it's intricate weaving with mundane questions.
• seen a pheasant run, the comic value of a pheasant at full gallop along the side of a road has to be witnessed!

Even my old Harley sweatshirt has been catalyst enough to elicit the account of a retired fisherman and curator of Lyme Regis's  aquarium. Banned from riding by his wife at the tender age of 76, when he dropped his Honda 400 on one of the numerous metal plates that litter british roads, turning lethal in the wet, and finding himself unable to pick it up. This survivor of six, separate, second world war naval mines that clambered into his nets, told of the time he brought up a whole Spitfire, complete with pilot!

The cherry of meeting this sage was that, now 86, he had just put his name down for a Honda Monkey bike.

I have been gifted tales as varied as fleeing the police on a chopped down, bored and blacked out Harley (a member of an outlaw motorcycle club member on holiday from Norway), to the black eyes of a colleague who had taken a pigeon through his open visor on a hot day ( a motorcycle policeman). 

The gift my bike has truly given me is a doorway into endless new worlds.