Having recovered from the terrors of riding a Gold Wing, the CB750 felt tiny and agile by way of comparison but I was becoming pissed off with its paucity of power. I mean, the damn thing almost caused me to be arrested after I had bounced down a bit of local Freeway at 110mph on an early morning jaunt when any self respecting cop should have been staking out drug dealers, muggers or murderers. The Yank cops have the same kind of problems as our own English porkies; unable to catch most villains they much prefer to pursue perfectly upright citizens whose only crime is an addiction to fast motorcycles.
If I'd been on something with more power I would have just opened the throttle and disappeared off the Freeway at the next turn off. I have to admit I wasn't full of mental clarity at that time of day - well would you be at 5.30am? The car had come right up to my number plate before turning on its siren. For a moment I thought my brain was really strung out, but a glance in the shaking mirror revealed a blurred image that might just be a local cop car.
Part of the quaintness of American cops is that if you don't pull over they tend to shove a gun out of the window and blow your tyres away. As I knew the bike could not out run them, I indicated right, slowly losing momentum. American cops also assume the worse, coming out of cars with guns unfurled as if you are the most wanted man in America. In its way, I suppose such paranoid madness is quite flattering but I didn't need that kind of shit; and anyway my visa had run out.
As we pulled over to the soft shoulder I spied what I was hoping would turn up, a small motorcycle sized gap that gave on to a field. Into second gear, drop the clutch, whack open the throttle, lift feet out of harms way and we were through. The Honda tried to dig its front wheel in the soft grass but I yanked on the bars and screamed the engine to the red line. Above the scream of the exhaust I thought I heard a few gun shots, but I couldn't be sure.
It was pretty obvious to me at that juncture, that the only way to ride the Honda over the undulating surface was to keep the throttle to the stop with 50 to 60mph on the clock. Any slower and the front wheel would surely dig in. The bike slithered across the slippery grass, a few times I had to put a boot down speedway style to stop the bike going all the way over.
My concentration was so total on the ground a few feet immediately ahead that I failed to notice the large clump of bushes. There was nothing for it but to power through the dense undergrowth. With the visor down and protection of a leather jacket and gloves, it was only my knees and lower legs that were viciously lacerated by the brambles. By the time we emerged from the other side speed was down to a mere 30mph.
Hitting a dirt track at a right angle, I put all my weight on the brake pedal, swinging the bike around on the back wheel. The track was badly rutted but much more stable than the grass. I was able to scream along in third using engine power to control the machine, doing 70 to 80mph for most of the way. Passing a huge ranch a pack of Dobberman dogs sprang up and rushed to the fence that separated the path from their territory. They were too slow to threaten me so I gave them a blast on the air horns that I'd fitted.
I only fell off once. The front wheel hit a huge hole in the road. With visions of some irate redneck charging after me with his pack of brutal hounds in the lead, I ignored the pain in my shoulder and knee, upped the CB750 without looking at the damage in any detail and went for it. The motor hadn't even cut out, so I probably only lost a few moments.
The track went on for hours. My assumption that it was leading to a road seemed to look less and less valid. Knowing my luck I was probably going in a huge circle which would spit me up once again on the ranch's doorstep. I could feel the blood seeping out of my legs and I had to ride with my left arm pointing straight down as it was extremely painful to use the clutch for more than a few seconds.
It was with great relief that I powered the Honda up a steep bank on to a proper road. A mile down the road I saw a sign which said I was going the wrong way. The 50 miles home was hellish. I found it very difficult to operate the gears and kept looking down at my knees which were bloodied and still bleeding. I rolled along with no more than 60mph, the last thing I wanted to do was attract yet more police attention.
The apartment block was a welcome sight when it came into view. There was no way the police could have caught up with me for the address in the registration form was different and, indeed, entirely fictitious. I hid the battered Honda out of sight and took the rest of the week off to recover. Most of my injuries were superficial but that did not stop the pain from messing up my mind. A diet of Jack Daniels and sleeping pills appeared to work after a fashion.
When I finally decided to look the Honda over I was horrified. Here was a five month old machine that looked like a sixties wreck. The tank was dented, the bars bent, the forks twisted and everything covered in a mixture of mud, oil and general crud. The only way I could clean it up was to take a wire brush to it, which had an expensive looking effect on the engine and frame finish. After half an hour I gave up. Some local youths agreed to take on the job for fifty dollars, so I left them to it.
The bike still looked decrepit but I could see where it was possible to patch or touch it up. After a respray to the tank, panels and guards it looked like a three year old, hard ridden heap. The first dealer offered me $2000, the second $2500 and the third £2600 in cash, so he got the machine.
Public transport is either non existent or highly dangerous, only the really poor and desperate silly enough to use it. The next day I was crazy enough to hand over $1500 for a five year old Z1300 with 29,500 miles on the clock. The six cylinder mammoth was even heavier than the Gold Wing but the torque was amazing, the damn thing would wheelie with absurd ease with slightest tug on the huge cowhorns under acceleration in second or third gear.
The strong tendency of the bike to want to go straight on when trying to go around corners was not all that surprising but bloody frightening, all the same. I began to imagine I was the captain of some huge ocean going ship, needing to plan a few miles ahead any turning manoeuvres. The huge bars felt more like a tiller than anything else, it was necessary to take up weight lifting to maintain a grip on them if you wanted to do more than 80mph; the six cylinder engine was liquid smooth up to an indicated 125mph after which even I chickened out as it felt like I was on top of a charging rhino on quicksand.
Some semblance of sanity returned to my life when I got another contract. Rather than lounging around all day drinking whisky and popping pills, I had to spend 10 hours a day looking like I knew what I was doing, earning an obscene amount of money. It was all bullshit really, I had about half a dozen different CVs with wholly fictitious claims of my work experience. By the time they checked them out, if they bothered with contract work, I would have done two or three months work. I knew a little about a lot of things and could bullshit my way along for a few months until mistakes started showing up. Then it was time to move on!
The big Z proved as reliable as big Zs usually are, 2000 miles of total neglect didn't seem to phase it one jot. Its width limited my ability to charge through clogged traffic but I soon got the hang of it.....as my personal position with the police was so precarious I kept below the ton for most of the time, although I still dug revving the balls off the engine in a low gear at 3.00am in the morning.
Johnny Malone