Last month I confessed to having clocked up 40 years of writing for motorcycle magazines. Wasn’t the only thing I confessed but Greg’s forgiven me, so we’re back again!
While looking for a photo to illustrate that column, another fell out of the album. It shows me dinking a couple of mates on the back of the old Matchless circa 1976.
Looks like full party mode too, probably the morning after a college ball judging by the fact that two of us got changed but Bill on the back hasn’t been home yet.
Fifty years ago, sheesh. I got my licence on that Matchless several years before this too. I’d fronted the police station in Armidale, parked her on the centrestand at the top of the drive and done the perp walk down to the office. Bugger, it was the sarge who looked up as the flyscreen door swung open. We had priors, mostly because I’d doubled his daughter home from school more than once. It was about a mile, used to take us hours…
“Ah, the Rooth boy. What have you done?”
“Here for my licence check, Mr Brown.”
“My, how the years fly. Put your helmet back on and let’s have a look.”
He picked up a pad and followed me back up the drive.
“Right, up to Faulkner Street, turn left and head around the block. Park here when you’re done.”
Fifty-five years ago, the world was a different place. Armidale didn’t have any traffic lights or roundabouts and things like traffic jams and lack of parking were unheard of. Weirdly, the population was about 20,000 back then and it’s only 25,000 now. Yet you can’t even ‘do’ that block thanks to a supermarket development, and you’re likely to sit in traffic waiting for somewhere to park unless you’re on the bike. What’s going on? Maybe more people have cars now? There were still kids riding horses to school back then.
And motorbikes, through the paddocks. Via the hay sheds and the soft green grass next to the dams.
Maybe it’s all the ‘town planning’ they’ve inflicted on country towns that makes them feel busier. You know, turning streets into malls, making ‘one way’ strips to allow space for street art, bunging in roundabouts, all the modern cleverness that chokes a place up like an inch of peanut butter on burnt toast. And fences with locked gates. No wonder most kids spend their lives indoors on screens these days.
So I kicked the Matchy over, made a big show of checking the mirror, swung my right arm out to leave the curb and chugged about 20 metres before swinging the left arm out and turning down Faulkner. I didn’t bother with any more of that indicating rubbish until signing the left back into Moore St where I figured the sarge could see. But he wasn’t there anyway; he was inside, filling the gaps in on my first licence.
“Happy birthday, son,” he said, handing me the ticket to freedom I’d be ticking the days off for years to get. “I know you can ride. I’ve chased you twice and I’m only giving you this because you won’t have it for long.”
The sarge had a reputation for being tough but fair and, sure enough, I lost it three months later. On points, mostly for failing to indicate. Who’d have guessed it?
These days getting a bike licence means demonstrating you know the rules and deserve to share the road. Back then they let us learn by going out and being stupid. Sooner or later you were either dead or had absorbed some common sense. Mind you, slow bikes and sharing the roads with the occasional grey motor Holden or Morris Minor was a whole world of safety compared to roads packed with zippy cars and drivers who are doing anything except driving. I’m a big fan of rider training, even without hay sheds and soft green grass…
A few years later I sold that Matchless for $150, what I’d paid for it. Thirty years after that I bought it back for $7500. People don’t ask me for investment advice.
These days the Matchless comes out for the odd ride around the farm or just a bit of tinkering to remember how simple life once was. But then it’ll go back under its sheet while something quicker and more precise comes out for a decent ride.
Life’s good. Modern motorcycles are even better!
