Well, on a racehorse to be honest, my dad had aspirations for me to be a flat jockey (the man clearly never understood genetics). My dad had his own business and consulted for all of the big engineering firms so moved in high circles. One of those circles swung pretty close to the Oppenheimer stables and resulted in me riding the Sunday gallops at Turfontein Race Course near Johannesburg; our family emigrated when I was only 5 years old. I loved the speed, racehorses go faster than push bikes. I must have been 13 or 14 by the time the Jockey Academy in Durban had decided that I was going to be too big to ride racehorses for a living ( Man, they had no idea ) Having out grown any chance of getting into the jockey academy I was indentured to my godfather as an apprentice patternmaker.
As an incentive my old man got me a 1981 Honda MB 5 to get to work on. One of Hondas first attempts at building a 50 cc bike that wasn’t embarrassing to be seen on. The other really appealing thing was that it would do a bit more than 36 mph, which is roughly flat out for a racehorse. I crashed it on the first day I had it. The additional 5 or 6 bhp the Honda produced was heady stuff to a 16 year old. Thusly, I became the first in my family that aspired to be a biker. Not long after starting work I found out that working for my Godfather who was in business with my pop was a bad move, I also found the dust from certain types of timber would set me off coughing and spluttering for days. I had a mate called Kenny working at Honda who sort of persuaded the boss to give me a job being a counter assistant with occasional workshop privileges. Ken is still a mate, we chat on face book occasionally. In fact Kenny and I went on to start a small club with a few mates and drink lots of beer and generally get ourselves into all sorts of laddish and loutish behaviour but that folks is a different story all together!
It suited me down to the ground and most of what I earned went on beer and stuff for the bike, it got an expansion box and port job, the seat tray was cut out and the auto lube was junked. It ran on Castrol RD 40 premix and smelt of chips. It went like shit off a stick for a while before it destroyed it’s self in a most spectacular fashion after one too many sessions polishing ports. The piston made a really funny noise as it tried to squeeze out of the pipe. I was totally bereft, robbed of my speed rush.
In a strange quirk of fate, at almost the same time my engine was destroying itself a chap called Chris was hitting a termite heap at about 60 mph with his left peg and foot while racing an Enduro event on his IT 175 Yamaha. A foul noxious contraption that had a reputation for trying to kill the uninitiated that sounded like an out of control chainsaw between your legs.
A few days after getting out of dry dock Chris approached my father and explained that he had paid for a full season racing enduro and MX in the enduro class. He further explained that due to a small lapse in concentration his big toe was now 4 mm long and would require a fair amount of rest and surgery before it would once again resemble anything remotely like a toe. As a result he couldn’t wear his MX boots.
.
Would it be OK? At no cost to my Pater if he put me on his bike for the rest of the season? He asked. My dad succinct to the core replied “ As long as you don’t kill him” After much wailing from Mater and a firm promise that if I killed myself she could kill me next I was allowed to do one race to see if I was any good at staying alive. How to survive the first time? Condoms or a Swiss army knife were not going to be much help, I needed a bit of training it seemed.
Chris had a plan, he arranged for me to go riding on the mine dumps with the guys he normally trained with. What’s a mine dump you ask? A big pile of dry cofferdams for mining waste.
Generally a couple of hundred meters long by half again as wide, thirty meters high with a flat soft top. Over the years the rain forms massive tunnels and caverns through and over these monuments to industry. Absolutely mental, terrifying but fun. These are some of the most lethal places I know to go riding.
Chris’s only advice “ Stay on the dirt roads on the way there, the tar fucks the knobblies up. Stay close to the ‘okes’ and don’t get hurt hey?” A question? A statement? Who knew?
To be more accurate “ Who cared?” I was 16 years old, I had a job, access to booze, weed, wimmin and a sort of sponsored ride on a quick bike. I was over the ‘kin moon man. Life was GOOD!
I survived the training sessions and despite making a complete fool of myself in the first couple of races I managed to get away relatively unscathed, just. I could crash quiet well by the time I had figured out that dirt bike riding is 90% out of control 2% in control and 8% luck and the size of your balls (or whichever part of the anatomy the ladies choose to substitute) I also did some flat and grass tracking on oval courses on the IT and that was a lot of fun too.
I walked funny, talked with a squeaky voice on occasion after losing the pegs and finding the tank with the plumbing. I twitched and shook and spoke with a trembly voice. Essentially I was hooked and beyond redemption. I was, am and will always be a petrol head and adrenalin junkie. I still get a shiver of excitement every time I hear a two-stroke chatter by.
I rode for a club with some fantastic folk, some of whom are still mates today, I got hooked on the lifestyle as well as the speed bikes offered.
I’ll not try to bullshit any of you into thinking I was much good at it, I did manage to finish most races over two seasons and even got a third on a shitter of a day. The rest either fell off, got bogged down or gave up that day and I rode the ride of my life and deserved third. Ok fair enough, one podium in 31 races, crap I know.
But it was a fun way to discover the freedoms biking can bring, whether it’s racing dirt bikes, riding with your mates in a club or blasting down the drag strip looking for a perfect ET.
A lot has happened since then, some good, a fair old bit of bad and some I’d rather forget (I was in the SADF between 83 and 89 but that’s another story too ). But hey! You live and learn, I still love bikes and riding, I still get a buzz when I press the starter button on a bike or trike. Especially the ones I have helped build or refurbish.
The Last 19 years have been different for me though, a fall from a roof and a bad day playing in goal on a frozen pitch have left me a little less able to do the silly stuff.
A bad car crash in Wales in 1994 just about finished me off and resulted in a really bad case of PTSD and other mental health issues. I kid you not one iota, if Wendy hadn’t been about I’d not be here to write this, Wendy and my two girls gave me renewed purpose. I was determined to be a good dad whatever else life threw at me so sort of coped and got on with it. I did manage to break a shrink and two psychiatric nurses along the way but I coped.
I’d thought biking was over for me with the nerve damage but finding out about the NABD about eleven years ago has changed my life. One of our neighbours has a brother who rides with one arm on an adapted bike , she was kind enough to introduce us and he told me about the National Association for Bikers with a Disability or NABD as it more commonly known.
I joined and within a few months had decided to put a bit back in, I went and met Rick Hulse the chairman . I shook his hand and the rest as they say is history, 10 years I’ve been muddling through with him and the rest of the Committee, helping to run the leading biker charity in the world and I think we do it rather well.
So there you have it, it all started on a horse.
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