Packed up and ready to go - for an indefinite stay this time. The ultimate moment had come. Leaving photos were taken (and still exist) of two large brutes squeezing on to a gleaming XS750; every surface piled high with tent, sleeping bag, guitar, food, clothes and bundles of optimism. The type of departure from home that leaves one emotionally and physically overwhelmed.
At 22, the £600 for the bike was the most I'd ever paid and it was, for the first time, mechanically and visually a faultless machine. After an arduous five weeks of 13 hour days laying a gas pipeline, I had enough money (ignoring large and long-standing debts) to leave the country to chance my future abroad. With my degree certificate safely stowed under the XS's seat (someone who bought a red XS750 with gold wheels from a south London bike dealer probably has it to this day) I was ready to go to teach English in Toulouse, despatch in Paris, pick grapes in Tuscany - you name it.
I can already hear the cynics mumbling, 'What on earth do you want with an old, heavy, bad handling lump like the XS?' The answer, and I'm not sorry to say always has been for me - it was there, it cost as much money as I had and suited the basic reasons for which I wanted a bike. More often than not these are to be cheaply on two wheels on something with enough power to overtake cars. The quandaries of which bike often become hypothetical, boring and repetitive when faced with the problems of time and money.
As an added bonus I had company for the first few weeks on foreign soil - a friend hitching a lift to northern Spain. A good man, musician, drinker and built like Schwarzenegger. It gave me a pleasant feeling of security to be going abroad with him. The initial stage of the journey was like a holiday and punctuated with some wonderful camping behind massive 100ft dunes near Arcachon. The west coast of France, below La Rochelle and excluding Bordeaux, is really beautiful, especially in September, with the Atlantic rolling in majestically, on to long, deeply shelved sandy beaches.
We drank a lot of wine and sang into the night, gear strewn everywhere around the bike and under the pine trees. However, if these moments could last they would perhaps not be so good and the time came for serious thoughts of self-preservation. The money would not last long at that rate, so we struggled over the next few weeks to find work grape picking. To no avail, Spanish emigrant workers had all but sown up the casual employment. Meanwhile, so as to be able to afford a regular wine intake we ate frugally. Flour and water pancakes, with jam and wild figs (when the ants didn't get them). We waited, using the bike only to look for work at every co-operative wine depot in the mountainous Beziers region.
So far the XS750 had proved supremely comfortable two-up, which is often a problem for me at 6'3'. The bike was hassle free with a lovely exhaust tone, a sort of deep, rasping note while she sang along through the heat. Sometimes, the Continental heat was too much for the XS, which would cut out at low revs. The mpg was fairly stable at 40-45 because it was well looked after. The only problem so far was on leaving a fuel station to find oil blowing out ferociously, as if from a severed limb. All over the bike and myself. Pulling over, I discovered the oil filler cap was missing - we crept back to the garage, searching everywhere on the way, for hours, and then found it neatly tucked in behind the starter motor cover....where I'd left it.
The day before my friend was due to depart (having cleaned the oil off himself) for Santander, I was melancholy and remorseful at our lack of success in finding work. Not helped by a change of weather, with cold winds swirling around our campsite day and night. We discovered an English teacher soiree in Beziers - lots of wine, olives and pleasant chatter. An ideal opportunity to find work, eat for free and meet people. We gatecrashed and I got talking to a fellow itinerant, but this time in the form of a highly desirable if somewhat smug female Cambridge graduate.
I expanded upon her supremely fanciful notions of biking into the sunset, asked if she would fancy coming with me to look for work in Italy. I was bowled over when she accepted. The next day I put my friend on the train, keeping hold of his helmet and sleeping bag. I was to now have a far more satisfactory way of combating the cold nights. I waited for her at the appointed bar for two hours that evening then phoned the number she had given me, to be curtly informed that she'd left for Paris that morning. Ah well, I guess it was the wine talking or my leather jeans or something. That night I lay miserably listening to owls screech, mocking any chance of trying to sleep. At least I could keep warm with two sleeping bags available.
There was no point waiting in south-east France, so while I still had some money and a good, reliable if somewhat bulky bike, I decided at least to try to see some of Europe, even if making money there was impossible. So, it was off to north Italy to harvest apples in some region or other. But I'd lost patience looking for work while the money dwindled and the thought of being stuck somewhere with the bike and not enough cash to get back home made me a pure travel junkie.
Having left the spare sleeping bag somewhere in Provence in disgust at all the unnecessary packing and unpacking, and the vagaries of women in general, I eventually reached the port of Brindisi in south-east Italy, having been unashamedly touristy all the way through Pisa, Rome, Sienna and Florence. A surprisingly long haul down through the spine of Italy and then along the arid coastline, passing many dried river beds and medieval hilltop towns. Often, I had to move my legs about on the bike, resting my feet on the crankcase for a bit of cramp relief.
Down in this southern city ragged kids chased my bike and I was most glad to be able to get straight on to the ferry that night for Greece. The weather was glorious on the crossing and I can recall writing a postcard to someone, sitting on the deck having just eaten some chicken dish (given to me by a sympathetic Greek family). I was absolutely paranoid that I might come down with salmonella poisoning and curl up and die somewhere unheeded. I had suffered this horrendous disorder a few months previously from eating a chicken pie given to me as an unwanted purchase by the person I was writing the postcard to, in Newlyn, Cornwall.
Well, I made it to the other side quite healthily and rolled into Greece after the usual (for me) lengthy deliberations with customs officials. It's something to do with their unerring capacity to pick up on obvious terrorist characteristics, such as long hair, moustaches and leather jackets. Luckily, I have a fail-safe hiding place for the Semtex.
I met an American trainee architect on a condemnable CB400/4 coming out of customs. He'd ridden from London on it, with the wiring loom melting on the downpipes to keep them together and a highly developed bump-starting technique. We travelled the precarious and dilapidated motorway to Athens together, he promising me entry to the youth hostel he was going to after I'd fixed up his snapped throttle cable with my spare (probably worth more than the Honda). He then proceeded to save me by picking up my wallet which I'd left unnoticed on a roadside cafe table.
We didn't stick together after that and I carried on being a tourist. Consuming Ouzo and soup-like coffee, visiting the Acropolis and breaking into the Oracle at Delphi after dusk. Barely tolerating hordes of German kids in the youth hostels and seemingly everywhere else, and eventually coming back to Athens where I decided to sell the bike and buy a ticket to Australia. I'd been told that it was easy to sell a bike in Greece but none of the dealers would touch it, due I think to the amount of prohibitive red-tape involved in registering such a machine. I was stuck with the big Yamaha so had to head back towards home while I could still afford it.
It seemed I might as well enjoy myself while I was free from the debts of home, so I bought a ticket for the Olympic stadium Amnesty International concert. It was also interesting to find out how my guitar snapped in two very neatly whilst riding between two concrete bollards in the parking area. Well, at least no-one would want to steal it now.
The concert was good and I left the stadium buoyed and confident - not as 'boyed' as I was about to be, however. Pushing the starter button resulted in a couple of deathly clicks and it didn't take me long to realise I had the CB400's disease. This problem was never fixed before I sold the bike on arrival back in London, with ten pounds in my pocket and not enough fuel to travel back down to Devon where I lived, so I stayed in London instead. I tried to fix it, but found it impossible, with the help of a Greek ferry mechanic, to remove the starter motor cover, which is securely wedged in beneath the carbs and airfilter box. A brand new battery purchased in Strasbourg at great cost just about saw me home in the end....
Anyhow, there I was in the car park with a dead bike when a passing Athenian noticed my plight and in return for his push-start, I gave him a helmetless lift through the mad night traffic and lidless loonies on scooters hurtling often three up through the city.
He promised to take me to a late night spot, where we could eat and treated me to food, the like of which I hadn't encountered in a long time. The bike seemed similarly content on its diet of high grade Greek four star. Only there was a catch, which slowly dawned on me as the night wore on in the company of the arty types.....I was his 'catch!' Luckily, the restaurant was on a steep slope and I didn't need a push to make my hasty escape. All part of trying to travel the world.
Dodge