I have travelled fairly extensively, and have lived in Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Australia, South West Africa (now Namibia), and South Africa. I now live in the UK with my wife (who is French).
My interest in motorcycles started when I was at university in South Africa. I bought my first car; an unreliable 1961 Fiat 1100. Although very cute (the doors opened backwards) - and a typical student car, it became a bit expensive to run with all the garage bills!
I therefore put an advertisement in the local paper to swop it for a motorcycle. The swop duly took place, I took my large motorcycle test, and my first bike turned out to be a Honda CB400N.
The bike did well. A friend and I occasionally went trout fishing on weekends. Picture the scene - two big blokes, one clutching two fishing rods, keep nets and sundry fishing tackle, perched precariously on what was in truth a fairly small motorcycle! But it took us there and back without complaint.
During one university holiday I did a 3000 mile tour. This started and finished in the Western Cape.
For photos and experiences of the most beautiful, scenic motorbike rides on routes taken in and around the Western Cape in South Africa, have a look at My-Scenic-Motorbike-Rides. Other useful information is also included on this site.
My trip was fairly uneventful apart from one small incident; the chain broke, knocking one of the exhaust pipes off. Fortunately I was not too far from a garage. Once I’d bought and fitted a new chain and sprocket, and fixed the exhaust pipe back on with a jubilee clip, I was able to continue.
It was, however, wintertime, and I remember one early morning as I passed through a rain shower the temperature was so low that the water froze on the windshield.
After my mammoth trip, in the next university holidays I decided to rebuild the engine. My girlfriend's parents had an unused garage which was ideal. I stripped everything down over a couple of weeks and laid all the parts out neatly in the order they came off. Worn parts were replaced, and I put the engine back together again with the aid of a Haynes manual.
What I didn't know was that my girlfriend's stepbrother had been playing with some of the parts, with the result that a tiny pin went missing. I did not notice it at the time, but it was of vital importance; it stopped the oil pump cog from rotating freely on the drive shaft.
Once everything had been reassembled, I took the bike for a test ride. The oil warning light came on, but I knew full well that I had filled the sump with the required amount of new oil, so I suspected an electrical short and kept going. The engine seized.
So why do I still do my own servicing? Well, I learned from my mistake. But what happened to the next bike I owned demonstrates why I’m reluctant to pay a garage mechanic to do any work unless I know for a fact they have a good reputation.
A few years later, my next bike was a Suzuki Katana 600 shaft drive which I found abandoned at my place of work one morning. A few weeks later it was still there, so I called the police to check. It had not been stolen; and for some time I was unable to contact the previous owner. Eventually, several months later, I found out he had just abandoned it as the engine needed some work, so I took it to a local bike dealer who rebuilt the engine.
About a month later it was ready, and having paid the fairly large bill, I took it out on the highway. After about 10 miles my knees started feeling very warm and the bike seemed to be down in power. I pulled over and noticed the top of the engine was smoking and the spark plug leads had started to melt.
A helpful driver in a pick-up truck stopped and offered me a tow back home. A tow? That’s right. I wouldn’t recommend it! Still, I got home uneventfully, and decided to take the bike to a (different) bike workshop for a repair estimate. This one discovered that the first dealer had used the wrong engine gaskets, blocking the oil holes which delivered oil to the top of the engine.
I sold the bike as scrap.
My first bike in the UK was a Yamaha Diversion XJ600S.
At the time I was commuting around 80 miles on a daily basis so the mileage soon mounted up. Once again I was doing all my own servicing except for major things like the valve clearance settings (and to be honest I would have done this as well except for the requirement of having a lot of different shims). Because I was replacing the air filter at the recommended service intervals I opted for a K&N air filter, which saved me money in the long run.
I was commuting in all weathers. One morning I discovered that it had snowed during the night, but this did not deter me - given the choice between the bike and public transport, the bike won hands down. The motorway on-ramp was around a mile from my house, and I covered this distance in first gear with both legs extended just in case the front wheel slipped on the icy surface.
Once I’d reached the motorway I just rode in the tyre tracks of the vehicles in front, keeping to an even low speed with the rest of the traffic (I think I stayed in third gear). On the way home it started snowing again. By this time the roads had been gritted, but I had to keep wiping snow off my visor with the regularity of a windscreen wiper!
When I pulled in to the driveway at home, I discovered that the snow had built up on the front of the bike to a depth of about a foot, with a hole in the middle where the heat from the headlight beam had melted it! I wish now I’d taken a photo but at the time all I wanted to do was get indoors where it was warm.
Although a 600cc motorcycle is perfectly fine for commuting, I had always wanted a really big bike. Having seen several Police officers riding around on their Honda Pan European ST1100’s, the design struck me as having an elegant simplicity - the bike just looked "right". So as the Yamaha started to get a bit tired, I decided to sell it and buy an ST1100. Ebay to the rescue; I both sold the Diversion and bought the Pan on Ebay!
