The Motorcycle Diaries

Realised today that it's more or less 5 years to the day I parted with my last motorbike, a Yamaha TDM850.

When ever anyone asks why I no longer ride I usually tell them it was so we could start a family. This satisfies most folks. Kids and bikes don't go together. Kids and MPVs, yes, kids and bikes, no.

My first bike was a Yamaha FS1-E, affectionately known as a Fizzy or Fizzer. A 50cc, single-cylinder 2-stroke moped. The colour was called Popsicle purple. This was the 70s after all. I bought mine in '83 off a lad named Dave I worked with during a period of YTS work in a local ironmongers. He wanted £60, which I thought was a bargain, so without even looking at it properly I bought it. What a wreck!

At seventeen I was already 6'3". My knees were inches from the handlebars unless I sat on the pillion portion of the seat and to make matters worse I bought an enduro-type helmet two-sizes too big, all beck and goggles. I must have looked a tool.

The bike became even more of a wreck 4 days later after I tried to jump up a kerb (polite note to US readers: yes, we can spell curb like that) at 40 miles an hour. I'd been watching the speedo in rapt fascination and forgot the wide sweeping bend outside the local pub. I glanced up, realised I was never going to make the bend, and thought "No bother, I'll just bump it up the kerb".

I may have had the presence of mind to brake or shut off the throttle, but I doubt it.

The bike moulded itself around the kerb and I went wheee through the air, landing on my back several yards away. Unhurt, but -and I'm being brutally honest here- feeling a right prick.

The Fizzy was garaged for ages until my brother Steve straightened it out. I resprayed it from a tin labelled Vauxhall Viva Red, but it looked more like a shade of beer vomit.

The Fizzy used to cut out and tip me off in the wet and, come to think of it, it used to cut out and tip me off in the dry too, but it was my first means of independent transport so I loved it . . . a little bit.

I cut my motorcycling teeth on that bike. The bug had well and truly bitten, and deeply. There could be no turning back. But I wanted something bigger, more powerful . . .

Coming soon in the Motorcycle Diaries: My Honda C70 and I