When I was about 12 years old all my mates had rat bikes which they raced around some waste ground behind the Ship & Shovel pub in Barking.
After much pestering from me my Dad brought home a pretty good nick FSIE and cut the seat in half, knocked the lights and number plate off and presented it to me with the words "Push it there, if I see you riding it on the road I'll cut yer nuts off".
When I turned 16 all my mates got scooters, so I got one of them as my first legal road bike.
It was a Vespa Primavera 125 but I insured it as a 50 special as they had the same frame and looked almost identical - you could not get away with that now! .
It cost me £120 and insurance was £25 and a Centurion Pinto open face lid was £15 I think, a pair of me Mum's gardening gloves (for when it was raining) and I was good to go.
Did a year or so on that and then upgraded to a Lambretta GP200, trashed that after a year by riding it into the ground and chopped it in for...an RD250! It was a private sale out of the Exchange & Mart, two bikers took it along with cash for the RD, I think they were going to have a ceremonial burning or something!
Most of my mates had got bored with scooters and moved onto cars so I was happy to move to more powerful motorcycles, plus I'd given up on the Mod thing as the scene was changing and I wasn't into scooter meets where you got your head kicked in by Skinheads and Scooter boys trying to flog you NF t-shirts.
Sadly both my scooters were genuine Italian bikes and in good nick, these days they would go for about £3k for the Vespa (although these are going up in price even more now) and about £7k (I kid you not) for the Italian GP. I currently own an Italian 1963 TV175 series III and you would have to part with at least £5k if you wanted it.
Anyway, I took my test on the RD and passed, then blew it up and flogged it to get a new engine for my Cortina 1600E - well technically it was a 1600 Super with E trim and furry seats, but it was a car and girls only gave you a feel of their tits in a car (well, only the classy birds).
Step forward a year and my need for transport changed again, having established a regular pair of knockers to grope, I decided I could not put up with using public transport to get to work, so I needed another bike - enter the Suzuki GP era!
I had about 3 Suzuki GP 100s and they all gave up the ghost after a while, there was also several dodgy old Hondas CB100, Superdreams, a very short spell on a C90 then I got a VT500 (awful, awful machine) Suzuki Katana - looked good but I think the frame was bent so I never liked it and then a never ending list of shit bikes until I bought my Fazer 600 in 2002
So dear reader you may ask what has this got to do with the original question "Why are you a biker?", Well surely it's clear?
My first foray into powered two wheels was the desire to tear the arse out of the World and get noticed.
The rest of my biking desires have been based around the need to go to work to earn money.....to put petrol in my bikes and provide a bit of food and shelter along the way and still tear the arse out of the World at weekends...if I've got the energy.
Topic: Why are you a biker? (Read 5718 times)
