Riding Motorbikes

Let's just get something out of my system first -- motorcycles aren't inherently dangerous, no matter what people say. If you disagree, e-mail me and I'll explain why :-)

The Use and Abuse Roll of Honour

• a Suzuki GS125, on which I passed my test, some time around 1989, I think. A great bike to learn to ride on; very forgiving, easy to control and 70mph, flat-out chin-on-the-tank with a following wind. Still going strong, this was until recently owned by Sam Warwick whilst he passed his test. It's now made way for a 500cc Zephyr.



• a Suzuki GSX550, which I bought two weeks after passing my test. Riding this was the first time I'd experienced power curves and "jumping to hyperlight drive" blurring of the scenery. Eighteen months later, I'd got bored of it being so slow and so part-exchanged it for :



• A Kawasaki GPX750R. Over the 30-odd months I owned this, undoubtedly the best thing I did was to go over to France, visiting Paris and Nice via Interlaken in Switzerland. Whilst we were over there, we went to the Bol d'Or at the Paul Ricard circuit near Toulon. I don't remember who was racing or even who won; everyone there was too busy partying to notice.

The GPX has now gone to make way for one of my dream bikes, a '94 Ducati 900SS. If you don't know, I can't explain. Ducatis are like that.

Having had my (previous) car stolen and wrecked, it was my only form of transport for about three months over which period I did about 3,500 miles and had to get a tinted visor so oncoming traffic wasn't blinded by my stupid grin.

In case you're one of the poor unfortunates that doesn't own a Ducati, despair not -- you can still download samples of that wonderful V-twin sound from the Ducati WWW site. (Or perhaps the Massey Ferguson or David Brown WWW sites will be less busy ?)

Hopefully some time soon I'll get around to taking some decent photos of the Duke. There are some photos of me on the GPX750R taken at a Bike magazine shoot though.