Come on Volty, if I can write long boring posts about my meaningless past, you can entertain us with tales of travel with yer Beemer in Frogland...
My first bike was an RM50 that the old man bought us to learn to ride on, crashed a lot but had a ball. At that time dad had a GS850 which he used to take me on the back of, that is when I discovered speed. As soon as I turned 15 I got my lic and bought an MB5, which I spent a few weeks getting going, I passed the MB5 on to my bro an bought a GSX250ET which I rode for a few years including a couple of trips to Auckland from HB. I then made my worst bike purchase and traded the 250 in on a POS XZ400. About this time I dropped out of uni and started my apprenticship, I bought an FZ600 which was my favourite bike and I would still have it now if some low life hadnt stolen it from Wellington the night before I moved to Dunedin. While I had the FZ I also started racing speedway chairs. My first rig was a Z900 with twin plug head which blew up after one season then I bought a GPz900 powered rig which we ran for about 4 years. I also had a CBR1000 about this time which was a great bike as well. After the move Dunners the only bike I had was the missus VT250 which did/does not enjoy carting my 100kg+ carcase around. So I bought one of the bikes of my dreams a GS1000, only one slight problem it had been sitting under a tree for a couple of years.....
Come on Volty, if I can write long boring posts about my meaningless past, you can entertain us with tales of travel with yer Beemer in Frogland... Well......Once you got off the ferry in France or more often Belguim the first thing we used to do was go and and get some pomme frittes with mayonaise from one of the street vendors, then go to a bar and try and buy a beer using my best French...." un bier see vou play" " merci" .....you can get a long way if you make the effort...... Then it was usually off to the Hypermarket which were like Bunnings meets Countdown...meets JB Hi Fi..... I liked the beer section especially the Belgian Monk beers......and for Jane I would get a 2 litre flaggon of 50 Pence red.....yummy. I spent quite a bit of time around the WW1 battlefields mainly coming to terms with the scale of it and how pointless it all was. We used to set up in a free camping area outside Ypres or wipers as the troops called it in the war. Made a good base for touring the area. At the time 17 year old bikes were just old and not considered classics and the BMW /5 motor was more o less still in production. Modern bike riders ignored you and classics riders thought it was too new......left you chatting to Germans on their BMW's, mind you not many of them around the western front sites. I did get to chat to a group of what they call Chelsea Pensioners who dress in red and were WW1 veterans, pretty amazing to meet guys who were in the Ypres Salient in 1915- 1918. Even after lots of war books and movies I can't imagine what that would have been like. The BMW had Aussie plates on it so you got to meet lots of Kiwis and Aussies around the area, who were also looking at Aussie and Kiwi sites. anyone who thinks war is an answer to anything should go here and see the Menin Gate with its long lists of names of " those known only to God"
Unfortunately I have come to realise that modern bikers (modern bike riders) that I have met over the last 10 or so years lack the depth of personality that the classic mob do. Generalisation maybe... but they seem as lacking in soul as their bikes. Maybe because they have not developed as humans as well due to the lack of adversity that old bikes seem to install on their owners. It's like the people at work,they just haven't had the depth of experience,they live in a very narrow world.The bike riders just seem to be sportsbike riders,or cruiser riders...or into the Harley Experience.They haven't got out of their comfort zone and bought one of those bikes they sneer at,sneering is just so better than seeing what it's all about. My bikes have all been perfect and I'm a sensible rider....so the stories are few......
When I worked at British Aerospace in UK, we were only 15mins away from North Sea ferry to Rotterdam & Zeebrugee and finished work at lunchtime on friday. We used to catch afternoon ferry into Holland or Belgium, spend the weekend thrashing around French alps then catch sunday night ferry home and back to work monday morning. Could easily do 700 miles + in a weekend. Same as going to Paul Ricard for Bol 24 hours, Rotterdam to circuit in about 5 hours
I went ro Galipoli and Monte Casino...that was pretty cool..........
Ive been to hell and back a couple of times- but not on a bike. D'Pole you'lll like this..Max and others of the Panzer Division shut your eyes I won a ratbike award on a year old K100 (86 maybe? cant recall, was the year after they were released, remember the single swing arm they had?). and got towed home after the rally as the wretched beast ceased to function completely. With a rope TIED to the handlebars. not wrapped, actual knot and then there was the CT90 that threw me while I was pregnant with #1baby - twice in 2 weeks. After bf's 500 honda threw me the following week I gave up bikes for 17 years.
wow...you must be the only person ever to have been towed on a K100....you can say what you like about them........
I have a couple of towing stories too. One was towing my mates CB550 behind my trusty (and rusty) Holden wagon. This was in Wellytown and we had about 3 - 4 km to go. The lack of a tow rope did not slow us down at all. I simply prowled the backyards until I found a garden hose. It was the work of moments to 'liberate' a good length. One unusual characteristic of garden hose is the stretch factor. When I planted boot in the wagon (as you do when towing a mate) I watched him recede in the mirror, then catch up and slingshot past me at a terrific rate of knots. Laugh? I near wet meself... We repeated the process a few times, but all concerned survived to reach our destination. One day I will recount the story of the Wangas races, The Kawasakis, the tow rope, the cop and my new bike...
Slickshifts,we didn't know what they were...but one day when rummaging in the shelves of Auckland Motorcycle Wreckers (before they became just Auckland Motorcycles) a mate and I came across one.''What are these?'' we asked Neddy...''Slickshifts''.Oh,so we got one each.I fitted one to my Triton,and my mate fitted one to his much modified T'bird.You could change gear without the clutch,not a big advantage,but it did save on clutch cables as we had our clutches maxed out because they weren't '50's Triumphs anymore. One evening we were all at a mates pad,after a long day doing nothing but work on bikes,we needed a feed.So we went down to the local fish n chip shop for some takeways...me pillion on the T'bird to carry the booty,a huge parcel of fish,chips,mussels and bangers.On the way back we found a Highway boy broken down....we were not friends,but not unknown to each other.So we stopped to see if we could help...it turned out to be a wiring problem,and as we were only a couple of hundred metres down the road I was sent down to get what was needed for the repair...and to deliver dinner.The T'bird had high 6 bends (off course),so I started the bike,and my mate gave me the chips parcel which I held to my chest with my left hand,put the bike in gear and rode off down the road. The Highway boy's jaw dropped - ''Did you see that? He didn't use the clutch...has it got the clutch on the right?'' My mate looked a bit puzzled and said ''No,I don't think so,it's just like any other bike.Check it out when he comes back.'' So when I come back and we work on his bike,we watch him go over and pull the clutch and brake levers.Priceless....
Towing bikes... yes that is not a good thing. Back in the day our idea of a fun weekend was to get all the toys together (off road VW, dirt bikes etc) and take them up to the bombing range at the entrance of the Kaipara Harbour. It is called the bombing range er... because the Air Farce liked to drop bombs there. You could drive alongside the tidal lagoon on the hard pack sand and get far enough into the forrest that the ranger that closed the gates at 7pm would not find you. From then on it was party time. Locked in. Many kegs and young ladies were opened out there in the dunes. The ingestion of lots af beer mixed with sand which got everywhere (including the afore mentioned young ladies) gave a great atmosphere and all sorts of booze fuelled activities went on. Bomb craters filled with rainwater in the dunes became spa pools, car bonnets became sand sleds (the EH Holden ones towed the best) and everything that could be jumped on a trail bike was, and sometimes road bikes joined in. We had a very high turnover of road bikes back then. As soon as you could hear the grinding of sand in bearings while riding ment it was time to sell and get another one. The favorite trick was to wait until someone went to bed early (ie; piker) and wrap a rope around their ankles, sleeping bag and all, then tie that to a dirt bike and take them on a high speed rude awakining through the dunes. Extra points were awarded if you could get them airborne when you dragged them over a jump. Umm.. the bike towing thing reminded me of it
...one guy who had the rude awakening actually broke his collar bone during the bonus airborne round. No one believed him and he whinged about it all night so we decided to play a trick on him after he got it patched up the next day. We started messing around with everything he did making him believe he had bumped his head as well as the collar bone. Moved things around in his room, changed his drink when he was not looking and a whole bunch of other stuff over a period of two weeks until he actually admitted himself to a psyc ward for a fortnight thinking the bump on the head had made him go crazy. We did tell him of the prank after he got out, somehow he never saw the funny side...but he did say the drugs in there were good...
Note to self: Never fall asleep when Dodgyiti is around....
ahh the racing car roofs memmory......we used to cut them off cars at Meola Tip and race then down the river into the sea.......well we did until we found the dead body stuck in the estuary...put a damper on things for a while...
D'Pole, love your yarn about the liberated hose. The kinda thing you dont need to tell you Mum. Note to self, if I get stuck over Masterton way, call AA before I call D'pole Volti, the short time I had the k100, it earned the Nickname Unyin..cos it made hardcore Beemer owners cry to see it in that condition. Being towed is anything but
