LIFE AND RIDES OF A BIKER

When i started my biking life there wasnt many foriegn bikes on the market, they were mostly english, triumph,norton,b.s.a. james, arials matchless , e.t.c. each one had differen characters, my mate adrian had a 125 james,(similar to the b.s.a. bantam and it was a pig to start, we didnt have starter motors on in those days just a good old fashioned kick start, but odd times it didnt do the trick so bump starting was the only alternative kept fit in those days with out the gym.
one wet morning after a bit of shopping in the local town, i saw my mate trying to bump his james off, Adrian was puffing and blowing with his wet gear e.t.c. on so i shouted do you need a push bud, no he snapped back i can manage im not useless you know so off i went, as there was reasoning with him when he was like  this, anyway i hadnt got 10 yards away when there was this almighty smash,and a sound of broken glass, iwent back to see adrian half in and half out of a car showroom window, he said he took an almighty run and bounced on the seat the engine fired into life, caught him unawares he lost controll and ended up in the showroom inches away from a brand new skoda.
Now fortunate for him the manager was a very good friend of Adrians dad and it all got sorted out with any hassle.
Many jokes followed after that, (is it right you have started dancing with your bike? what was it the glass walz)
and are coming with us today ade we will have a smashing time !!!
next time i start my disasembly of a 500 single matchless.
shiny up rubber down

along came the day to upgrade from my honda 50 super sport, to a big twin a 125cc!!!!!!! yamaha, model as1
i walked to the butchers shop that had it for sale, payed my dosh, all 50 quid of it and jumped on and very gingerly set off. all going well, so decided to go for the open road so went to get myself out of town, 
I stopped on a slight uphill junction to turn left easy enough manouver !! but what about the extra power???
I wound the throttle back a tad and dumped the clutch and achieved something most riders have to practice for a while my very first (unplanned wheely. It shot across a very wide very busy road with my lags flayling around at the back of me a vice like grip on the bars and my chin 3 inches from the petrol tank, i managad to get control f the beast a couple of inches from a garden wall that was on the opposite side of this very wide very busy road as i managed to regain my sitting position and able to draw breath again i was greeted by the sound of car horns and a large helping of verbal abuse and hand signals.
I got back to the right side of the road to get home, riding at a very sensible speed and getting used to the new found 2 stroke power, i was thinking of all the names i had just been called, did it put me off biking ??not a chance and my mate was so impressed he bought a slightly newer model so fun was to be had again.
We soon found out that if you laid flat out on the tank with your legs up behind you the ammazing speed of 73 miles an hour could be reached, it took a while to reach it and the vibrations caused a tingling sensation to certain parts of the body so was only good for short bursts but it put a smile on our faces.
The only big difference then was the tyres, i am sure some were made from granite not a lot of grip in the dry and scary in the wet ,good practice for a bit of off roading!!!!! though.
remember shiny up and rubber down

after the first scooter incident i found myself on varios mopeds inc the super fast 50cc honda sport!!, then an old as1 125cc yam and being on a provisional licence, 3 of us decided it was time to take the plung and get a bigger bike but first we had to take the test, this was no big deal in those days you turned up with a bike less than 250cc and waited your turn till the examiner got to you,we had sold the jap bikes and got good old brit bikes but the smallest engine we had was a 350 t triumph mine,So we scuffed up the engine size # and all stood there looking as innocent as was possible, the bloke had a good look at it and asked if it was only a 250 yes we all nodded, we did the number plate reading bit and seeing as it was my bike i went first,
The examiner told me to do a figure 8 round part of the town he then pops out in different places to see how you do and give marks. after 10 minutes he stopped me and gacve me a different route and said when he popped out with his clip board held up i was to execute an emergency stop, got on the route turned a corner and started to throttle up when an ambulance came flying round the corner lights and bells going, so i pulled over to the side and threw the anchors on,Now i didnt know the examiner would pop out of the passage way at the same time and he didnt know there was an ambulance tight up my rear, so i as pulled onto the kerb he was in full swing with his clipboard , did it scare him as much as it did me i think so, but when he managed to get his breath back he told me it was the best emergency stop he had seen though he didnt like to be that close as a rule, any way i got my pink paper and the next lad went on his way, we all passed so now we could ride our bigger bikes.I believe the examiner retired shortly after that, something to do with a recuring nightmare of a boy tearing towards him on a 350 triumph.

I was just 10 ish when i got started with the biking ,i pushbiked to see a friend of mine from school,his dad had an old scooterin the yard.My friend was a want to be mechanic even at that early stage in life he knew what he wanted to be(and turned out to one hell of a mechanic when he left school)
Anyway we dragged this old heap into his dads shed and set to work on we pinched some petrol out of his old mans lawn mower, and he set to work we tried every spanner in his dads toolkit and fiddled with everything that we could fiddle with, after about an hour of mechanic work we had an engine growling at us, after much discussion it was decided i would be the first ever test crash dummy so on with some old gloves, a pair of safety type goggles and a wooly hat as a skid lid.
So here we were ready for the off we wheeled the beast outside i sat on the bit of sponge we used as a seat kicked it into life ,i selected first let out the clutch and twisted the throttle back, it shot forwad like a beast, the sponge slipped, the throttle (which we didnt look at )got stuck and i was propelled at brake neck speed towards his mum and dads rear kitchen door, i hit this with such force it shot open and parked up the kitchen units,
Now we didnt know his mum was in the kitchen baking pies, it scared the life out of her, any way she got her breath back and started beating me over the head with a large wooden spoon untill we got the beast dragged out of her kitchen (thank goodness for the wooly hat) any way we pushed the scooter back to its resting place, end of first biking experience, oh and we had to cut the lawn with a push mower because we stole the petrol from the other mower.Did it put me off motorcycle defentily not.!!!

hi i came here nearly 14 years ago with my wife and 2 sons and as much as we could fit into an alfa romeo 33,I was fed up with the civil engineering in uk (been in it since leaving school from tea boy to contracts manager)So we rented out the house to come here for 11 months, i got work cooking in a bar one of my passions, we were ready to go back when i got a job fitting beer coolers e.t.c. so we stayed on, then i got work with a local building company but didnt like the way he did things so we started our own company, and ran it for 11 years, We sold it and sort of retired, but needing something to do other than ride my ducati around the roads, i started to do motorcycle tours, my passion and get payed to do it what could be better. I will try to amuse  and share  a few stories of my biking life and life in general before and during our time here .and descibe some of the routes we ride.