For a long time now, Son has been wanting to get a motorbike, but I have said no: they’re dangerous, noisy smelly things that shouldn’t be allowed on the road.
Which – as I have alluded to before – makes me a bit of a hypocrite.
But, he has pestered me and pestered me and many of his mates have one, so I have finally capitulated and on Saturday, we borrowed a van and drove to Billericay to buy a 2009 Yamaha YBR125… with only 120 miles on the clock.
For a bike with such low mileage, the bodywork isn’t as good as one would expect, with a couple of tiny dinks in the tank and what looks like paint thinners spilt onto some of the plastic bits, where it has probably spent years tucked away in the corner of a garage, with all sorts of crap piled upon it.
But overall, it’s in good nick and the engine runs as sweet as a nut – hell, it still needs running in!
He is searching around for insurance at the minute (extortionate), so the bike is just sitting in the garage.
Last night, we changed the oil in it, as I believe it still had the original oil from 2009 in it and then I took it for a bit of a ride around the garden. It’s so light, compared to my bike, and I was dicking around on it – standing up on the pegs like a trial rider – when the road tyres decided they didn’t like the slightly damp grass and over I went. My first motorcycle accident in thirty years or more! Luckily, I was wearing proper motorcycle safety gear: thin dog-walking trousers; short-sleeve t-shirt and slippers.
To add insult to injury (I grazed my shin), when I was riding around, I noticed some dog shit. “Must pick that up, later”, I thought. You guessed it: landed straight in it… a nice runny one, all up my arm!
Whilst the family laughed at me and Son showed concern for any damage to his bike – just some mud embedded in the foot peg – I tried to turn it into a lesson by example for him:
“If someone with 43 years of motorcycling experience, can fall off that easily, at 5mph…”
But I’m sure it’s something that I won’t be able to live down, for a long time.
Oh the ignominy. I particularly like the flash of dogpoo running up your arm. Artistic that is. Creative, even. But the bike sounds very tidy.
She is. A nice little runner, as they say.
Strangely, even though it has modern niceties, such as EFI and an electric starter, it also has a kickstart. We’ve been having a lot of fun with that. Brings back memories.
I can’t possibly comment on this one.
Well, there’s a first! 🙂