Speed is addictive. Take it from me. I am immersed in the business of speed, spending every bit of dosh I can find on making my current motorcycle go yet faster. Having achieved 160mph, I now want more and will not rest until it has been obtained. The cycle is endless, violent and ultimately deathly. The faster you go the more it is a case of diminishing returns. A vast increase in power is required to go from 160 to 170mph. Either that or very special attention paid to aerodynamics, which at those kind of speeds is so complex that it's more of an art than science.
Riding very fast is a test of reflexes and sheer nerve. The complex array of mechanical components that make up a motorcycle needs only one small part to fail to cause the whole to turn into a rolling death-trap. Unlike most forms of fast transport there is nothing to fall back on. If a motorcycle fails in any way when going fast the result is going to be rapid, frightening and very, very painful.
I can only admire characters like Barry Sheene who having fallen off numerous times, suffered the indignity of brutal surgeons and massive pain, get back in the saddle for yet another dose of high speed insanity. I know if I ever lost it all at really high speed and survived the experience, I would not readily put a leg over a motorcycle again.
I have experienced wild speed wobbles at 120 to 130mph, which for some reason is a speed most vehicles seem prone to start weaving at. It took me all my nerve to relax my grip on the bars but not back off the throttle nor brake. The old codgers, with fond memories of Vincents and Bonnies, would tell you to speed through it - something on old British iron more likely to seize up the motor than damp out the wobble. I prefer to just back off the pressure to see what happens next. I may have been lucky, but this usually has the required effect on the wildly oscillating handlebars. Once the wobble has abated, and if the conditions are right, I wind on the throttle. I know that to slow down then would be an act of cowardice, one I might not readily recover from.
A more general problem is that speeding is considered not just illegal but a graven affront against society and civilisation. It never ceases to amaze me the length that authorities go to in order to apprehend speeders, who at least on motorcycles are unlikely to do any major damage to. anyone other than themselves. Not just radars, outrageously powerful pursuit vehicles and road blocks, but huge bloody helicopters careering across the sky at massive expense to the tax payer. It would make me hopping mad were it not for the minor fact that I never stay anywhere long enough to pay tax!
This attack on individual liberty makes speeding all the more dangerous. Forced off the major routes, which are ideal testing grounds both of man and machine, older roads, criss-crossed with a dangerous array of junctions and covered with neglected surfaces, are the only way left of enjoying one’s God given right to ride motorcycles rapidly.
It really hurts me to have to arise before dawn just to enjoy the capabilities of a modern motorcycle. My brain is still half asleep as I burn off expensive rubber and find the front wheel somewhere up above my head. This is the worst time of day for cohesive thought and mastery of reflexes. If I die from these highway excesses at that time of day it will not be my fault, but merely a result of mentally retarded policemen who can’t catch thieves, muggers or rapists and keep their daily tally up by pursuing those who dare to break the speed limits at more sensible hours of the day.
There are compensations to early morning speeding. No need to wear a helmet - if you come off at 160mph it's better to kill yourself outright than survive as a vegetable. There have been times when I brought in the sunrise with a 150mph on the clock, the bike bouncing about, cutting a whirlwind dash through the early morning haze. An almost mystical experience.
I don’t know if it's worse to ride into the sun, not being able to see where you are going, or ride with it at your back, making you invisible to cars coming at you. In the latter case I almost lost it all when hurtling along at 140mph, this car decided to cut into the main road, totally unaware that he was about to be cut in half by my rapidly closing motorcycle. The editor may see disc brakes as an affront to his engineering sensibilities, but I thanked whoever invented them as I hit the front stoppers with fear inspired strength. The tyre howled, the suspension locked and we were down to 65mph in what seemed like an instant. With a death grip on the bars I was forced to ride on to the grass verge to avoid Noddy, the resulting skid put me and the machine in the hedge. The car driver drove on totally unperturbed by events.
I was left to pull the mangled machine out of the bushes, myself luckily not injured other than a few bruises and cuts. The bike was still rideable. I should have been impressed by the way it had responded to my urgent need to lose speed and avoid impact with the auto, but I decided in a fairly typical superstitious manner that the machine was unlucky, as well as not being fast enough. Within the week I had traded it in for the yet latest bit of crazed reptile from the Orient.
I do feel that these Japanese have a lot to answer for. For too many years I happily pursued speed on a Norton Commando. In retrospect this dubiously engined vertical twin was one of the most unsuitable bikes I could have picked for my efforts. I was blinded by the majestic torque, the way the acceleration went straight to my stomach and the sheer charisma of the machine. In reality it was a rebuild every other week. I could not resist the temptation to put in higher compression pistons, wilder camshafts or ever more radical valves. The result was wild bursts of power, adrenalin charged acceleration and ever more frequent maintenance sessions. I ended up spending more time wielding spanners than riding the thing.
Something had to give. In the end it was the engine which all but exploded, leaving large holes in the crankcase, almost every component wrecked and a rider who was amazed that he could still breathe after the horrendous seizure took place at 125mph. At the time it felt like the whole machine was cracking up. We slewed viciously across a couple of lanes of motorway, pulling in the clutch having no effect on the locked solid rear wheel. I ended up falling off in the fast lane at about 70mph, rolling over and over and then much to my surprise finding the co-ordination to leap up and lunge at the central crash barrier. Vehicles roared past, jamming on their brakes and sounding their impatient horns. I was wearing full leathers and survived the experience bruised but intact. What was left of the Norton was scattered over the motorway, the totally wrecked engine embedded in front of some poor sop’s Escort.
The pigs, when they turned up, shook their heads in wonder and spent a couple of hours trying to think of something for which they could arrest me. There was so little evidence that the Commando had actually existed that they could not dispute my story that the front tyre had blown out. One suggested I be arrested for loitering on the motorway without a vehicle but this was hastily forgotten when I claimed my father was a famous lawyer.
I did the only decent thing by buying another Commando. But this one was never quite the same, although I applied all the same tuning tricks I had previously so laboriously learnt. During all this, a dubious association with the UMG meant I felt the full force of the editorial wrath whenever I managed to mention British bikes (if you think what appears in his mutterings in the UMG is bad, you should hear him in full flow!) and managed to get my leg over several pieces of Japanese iron. It was only a question of time and opportunity until I abandoned the Holy Grail of British Biking.
And that's where all the madness really started. With British bikes there were so many things to think of, so much work to do to just keep them running and so much mind blurring vibration when you ran them into the red, that speed is only one slice of the honey cake. With the Japanese stuff, with the odd exception, they are so damn reliable and civilised that the only way you can experience some kicks is to ride them beyond the limits of their often appalling chassis and, of course, the red line. More than anything, it's probably my sheer disbelief that these Oriental gents can produce such strong engines that drives me to thrash the living daylights out of them. Rule Britania and all that guilt trip. Now that modern Japanese iron handles so well, there is nothing to do but go faster and faster and faster and...
Johnny Malone