Different Strokes

2 strokes

There must be many bikers, these days, who have never ridden a 2 stroke powered machine. I pity those poor souls. I started my motorcycle life on a underpowered 2 stroke moped and I could not recommend that particular abomination to anyone. In later life however I did get my hands on many more exciting smokers. The thing about 2Ts is that they are extremely simple with only about three moving engine parts, when designed correctly they are excellent fun. The power delivery is unique requiring the rider to fully engage in order to extract the maximum from their ride.The powerband is small, impossibly tiny, covering a couple of thousand revs. You have to concentrate. Being in the wrong gear will deliver the performance of an asthmatic snail get it right and you will be rewarded with an exhilarating roller coaster ride. Select first, build the revs, drop the clutch and take off like the proverbial scolded cat. Don't relax, a nano second later you're grabbing another gear, no clutch, slight pressure on the gear lever, slam the throttle shut and immediately grab another handful as the gear snicks into place. Repeat this pattern until you run out of gears, road or talent.

Until relatively recently all GP bikes were 2 strokes, they were basically banned for being a polluting health hazard. They were a health hazard alright but mostly to their riders, this was due to the on/off nature of their power delivery. Get your timing wrong and the bike would viciously spit you off into the scenery with absolutely no warning. Most racers seemed to love them and hate them in equal measure. They were highly strung and so were the bikes.

So when you hear some ageing racer banging on about how difficult these beast were to ride don't take the piss out of the old fart. He's lucky to be alive.

Accidents

Collins Concise English Dictionary
 1. a happening that is not expected, forseen or intended
 2. unintended happining that results in injury, loss, etc
 3. chance meet by accident
 4. an attribute that is not essential


I believe that whilst motorcyclist do not actively seek physical encounters with other road users, roadside furniture or parts of the scenery they accept them, as integral part of the activity they choose. A close encounter with one of the above is, at some time, an inevitable part of the hobby. I would go further, pain is an intrinsic part of the bikers experience there seems to be a perverse enjoyment of adversity inherent in their activity. Even without an accident the average biker will experience some level of pain on most excursions. Surely then minimum one can expect following a ride is a sore arse. Therfore when an accident comes it is accepted as the motorcyclist's due, the ensuing scars a badge of honour.

Now I must admit that I have had a few unplanned dismounts in my time. I would like it on the record however that none of them, NONE of them, were my fault officer. I high proportion of them were as a pillion, some were due to blind or stupid motorists, others caused by poor road design or maintenance, mechanical failures, acts of god..........the list goes on. In an imperfect world the motorcyclist approaches the perfection of the gods themselves and is therefore blameless. I am not bragging when I say that I am probably the best road user there has ever been and by definition no accident could have ever been my fault.

Sorry got a bit carried away there but you take my point.

So next time you get punted off by some blind octogenarium or a Darwinium obsessed marsupial, or the wrong type of leaves on the road, rise serenely above it in the certain knowledge that your downfall was brought on by a lesser organism. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off an ride on (paramedics permitting).

Get yer kit off you pulled!

Knee sliders? Surely for most bikers a needless accessory. Of course in my youth the concept of getting your knee down didn't exist. Racers were beginning to hang off the bike but tyre technology wouldn't permit the lean angles achievable now. In those days if I got my knee down it was rapidly followed by my arse, head and other delicate parts of my anatomy. Which brings me to................


Clothing (biker fashion).
Ok hands up, who wore a waxed jacket back in the day? Did you consider yourself fashionable, trendy, atractive to women? If you thought any of those things I am here to tell you you are delusional. In fact all specialist clothing available to bikers was designed to render the wearer an outcast. Even the now chic leather jacket was subverted by the Hells Angel set, if it wasn't distressed, dirty and pungent it wasn't for the likes of us purist bikers. Most bikers of my vintage rode their bikes in all weathers. The roads were more polluted and infrequently cleaned. Bike maintenance was performed in a 'just in time', 'side of the road' way meaning the jacket performed as an oily rag in times of extremis. My waxed jacket was never, ever cleaned, there was no way of cleaning it that did not threaten to destroy it's meagre water repellant properties. The outcome of this low maintenance regime, resulted in a garment that would provide a very productive archeological dig, it would not however attract women.

Steve proving that even desirable men look shit in biking gear.

This is how it all began.

My first bike

Take a bycicle and add a new fangled internal combustion engine to it and the motorcycle is born. Fast forward about 100 years and behold the Philips Panda. The Panda being a close relative to that original concept was little more than a bicycle with a small wheezing 2 stroke engine attached. However unlike a real live panda it was neither cute nor cuddly. I rode this inadequate contraption, through all weathers, over the handful of miles between my home and my place of work. It had a habit of dismembering it's exhaust on route and I spent many a cold, dark winters morn scrabbling about trying to find some indespensible part of the silencers anatomy. A baffle here, wingnut over there, end cap in a hedge. Trying to reassemble the hot parts in the dark with my limited mechanical knowledge was a challenge one could happily exist without. It's hard to remember that, in these days of universal car ownership, a small motorcycle was seen as a viable means of everyday transport for several decades after the war.