Joking Aside...

Hope everyone had a great new year by the way - mine sucked:  and is still sucking which is why i have been away or quiet or not blogging or whatever and i aint sayin i'm back yet lol

I have regrets and i have done things that weigh heavy on the conscience.... but no matter what has occured in my life there has always been a trusty steed parked somewhere to take me away from it all.  Motorcycling is a huge passion of mine and working in the industry has taught me loads - but i'm no genius - you do something for a long enough time (like playing Burnout) and you simply pick things up dont you?

I guess then that this is gonna be my bike story. Feeling selfish maybe.

It starts with me working in a gay bar at 16.  None of my online buddies know this and i don't care that you now do despite the endless ribbing i will get from now on but i'm not a bullshitter so why hide the truth? So this bar maid starts working with us and she's like 29 but everyone (bouncers, glass collectors, bar men) are all goin crazy for this chick and i don't know how it happened but she's interested in me.  We start seeing each other (i've always looked and acted older than i actually am so don't think bad of this chick ok?) and she's a biker chick and her ex is always turning up on his bike but he's a cool guy and i like him which in turn makes me interested in bikes (i just lost a friend called Simon to a bike accident too)

Out of the blue she buys me a friggin motorcycle....

Suzuki GS125

It was old and a bit rough but it ran and it was black which is very very important lol: i loved it.  My parents hated it of course which just makes you want something more!  Before you know it i've moved on to these which found themselves in my front garden

2 Kwakasaki Z's and a Wet Dream (CB250 Honda Superdream)

Now my father is quite pissed off with me at this point and rightly so.  I got three dog bikes in his front garden and i'm working in a gay bar bringing weird and wonderful people back from my nightly excursions and staying out all night and doing countless drugs which he was fully aware of now that i look back AND i'm seeing this hot 30 year old too - just rub it in why don't you - so he comes out with the only choice he has and that was "The bikes go or you go".  So we all went... bye bye.

I stored the bikes with a retired S.A.S. guitar playing bike riding lunatic who just wanted to play guitar with me and appreciated weed as a storage fee and i moved in with my girlfriend.... Now that did not last long - What the hell do you think you know when you are like 17 years old?  You know shit.  So we split - she did a moonlight flit (is that just uk lingo or universally known?) and disappeared.  That could have been because of the mad bouncer stalker guy she went for a meal with when we were on a bad patch: dunno. I'm doing psychology and sociology at various colleges at this point and messing myself up with LSD and shrooms an' weed but still hanging in there spiritually, writing poetry, keeping diaries, playing music, ignoring my family completely,  sleeping around like the original man whore and pulling pints and tearing up the streets on my bikes STILL without a licence and not giving a toss about anything but myself. 

Don't you just know trouble is heading my way fast?

So i go out and buy another bike - The Death Seeker

Honda CBX550 - most powerful machine to date for me but thats a funny thing:

It was Black (of course - stick with me guys) felt absolutely huge in comparison to my other bikes but it didnt have any power!  Been riding it for about 3 weeks i guess and i'm confounded as to why it feels like the motor is a 250cc instead of what its supposed to be... i reach down and fiddle with the choke mechanism and yes i've been riding this thing with full on choke for 3 weeks - you noob - choke off and it sets off like a greyhound chasing Mr Rabbitto:  again i sh*t myself!

Now i'm mingling with the wrong type of people and getting deeper and deeper into my psyche and dealers pockets - drugs are not cool are they? - everything in moderation they say and that works for a while but eventually you will hit rock bottom - hell i know someone who pawned every single thing in his house the day after his mother died, i knew a guy who fell 13 floors to his death just messing around on a balcony on Heroin, i have too many memories of saving people from insanity from white ones.

And there i was: addicted to drugs.  A friend told me about some position coming up in a bike shop, which i very reluctently went for and got... i knew bikes had 2 wheels and a go and a stop thingy and i could ride them and that was it.... but god knows how: i got this job! Going straight is very difficult if you don't actually want to.  We had this 2nd floor room full of crates from the Jap factories where we built bikes and it was very cool because people are not aware of how easy it is to actually pull a bike from the factory crate and complete the build, hoist it to another tech and pre-delivery-inspect it.  If i was a noob and took the day out to Hinckley Triumph to watch the assembly line (all Triumphs are literally hand built - fuel tanks are handpainted and signed by painter) i would be so impressed.

So no more psychological bullshit from college - no more gay bar pints - no sleeping around - just the occasional spliff and quiet drink and i get rid of all my rat bikes and head for the future: haircut and sports bikes.

I'm gonna skip a few years and a few bikes actually because going straight and legal from being an arsehole is weird - in that time i just got in trouble with the police for posession, lost dealer "friends" to illness and mis-adventures, lost my license before i actually had it... but then this bike came out from Yamaha - damn ugly if you ask me but touted as the all rounder and won awards left right and centre.... The Fazer 600.

Now that is a perfect replica of my Fazer.  One of my regrets is not taking any pics of any of the bikes i've owned which is why i like putting them up on here i guess!  This is the bike that i learned to pull wheelies on and got 150mph out of.  These things are fantastic and i still have this bike waiting for retransformation/rebuild after a serious accident.   People talk about "wrong place, wrong time" and "fate" and yeah... you can believe what you want. I can't shake what happened. 

Goddammit i knew J was gonna be impossible.  However i do believe things happen for a reason - i am here for a reason and i was there on that day for a reason.  Some guy will be in wheelchair for the rest of his life because he ran out at me without looking - he is blind and paralysed and brain damaged and had to have a leg amputated.  What happened to me is inconsequential in comparison.  Can i let it go?  No

Bikes are part of me - they make me and they have ruined me, i'm so sorry for what happened to this guy and i tried my best to avoid him- there is so much i havnt said about this accident... but why wont it go away? 

I'm gonna finish this motorcycling blog, i'll be back very soon i guess but i do apologise for this one.  J was hard and i don't know why it was so difficult!  All i needed to say was be careful out there because you never know when fate is gonna throw her cards in?