I've been at the despatch game for nearly two decades. Started out as a way to make some money out of my favourite hobby. A few years on, having more or less mastered the art, I was into serious dosh, mortgages and marriage. I was relatively lucky that when the last crunch came I had paid off most of the mortgage, owned a relatively decent machine and could survive on a modest income.
Some youngsters were in serious trouble, not helped any by vicious raids from the Inland Revenue and SS. They could only service their huge loans by riding rat motorcycles for 60 hours a week, paying no income tax and claiming the dole in at least one name. When they finally met up with reality they were utterly destroyed. All they could do was flee the country.
So, come the early nineties, there I was with all my experience, a nice enough Honda VT250 and an income that was about a third of its peak. It was pretty obvious that the 8000 mile VT had at least a year's worth of life left it in. If I indulged in a bit of native cunning, as was my normal practice even in the good times, I could probably get it to run for three or four years. Just a matter of picking up a couple of engines from crashed bikes and using two decades worth of discarded cycles that were littered around the garage and house.
I'd bought the VT cheap from a civilian who couldn't take the jittery handling. It was still on the OE Japanese tyres it came out of the showroom with. The merest hint of rain turned the poor thing into a vicious, violent and vile handler. It only took a few yards worth of wild slides to figure out that it was time to hit the tyre shop... a set of Avon Roadrunners utterly transformed the feel of the Honda.
This V-twin is perplexing in its complexity with water-cooling, four valves, DOHCs, etc, etc but runs extremely well up to the ton and then dies a death. Vibes are minimal and torque sufficient. The engine layout means it's narrow enough to charge through tiny gaps that would turn a C50 owner psychotic. Cut and thrust lunacy was slightly limited in tight traffic by the heavy feel of the steering. After a twelve hour day the last thing needed is a mad, maniacal wrestling match.
One advantage of a mere 250 in current circumstances is frugality. 60mpg or more was OK by me, as were consumables that lasted for well over 15000 miles a set, even when they were often the cheapest I could find. The only thing I had to keep an eye on was coolant level which could disappear faster than beer at an Aussie rugby meeting. A couple of desperate times I had to empty my bladder into the coolant holder.
The disc brakes always seemed fierce enough to suit a bike of twice the capacity, but were sufficiently sensitive to avoid locked wheels in the wet. This was just as well as the chaotic traffic in London was running wild. I knew some DR's who'd gone completely psycho under the stress of the crazy cagers.
One chap had taken a hint from Happy Henry, whacking cars with a tyre iron huge enough to rip the rubber off tractor wheels. He hasn't yet got it chrome plated but we reckon that it's only a matter of time. Another had acquired a fake revolver and would shove it through the window of petrified car drivers. It often seemed as if I was in the midst of urban warfare rather than trying to merely earn a living.
There were still some good times, though. The long summers and relatively mild weather for the rest of the year, meant there were quite a few fast runs out of town with a blazing sun and blue sky for company. Even the cagers snarling up the roads filled me full of pity for their utterly pathetic lives rather than with anger for the way they slowed down my progress.
The one long traffic jam that represented London at peak times was rather a different matter. I never, unlike many fellow DRs, became at expert at pavement excursions. The one time I tried the front wheel caught the kerb, the bike flicking itself and I horizontal. I landed well but was lucky to avoid being run down by a grin toting Negro behind the wheel of a red bus. The VT shrugged it off, tough little bugger, even though it bounced off more than a few cars.
No, in that kind of really heavy traffic, where even a bicycle couldn't get through, all I could do was grin and bear it. With the relative scarcity of jobs there wasn't much point rushing around like a juvenile delinquent; many an hour was spent lounging around reading library books when there was no work available. It beat listening to tall stories from equally aged DRs that I'd heard before.
The VT proved amenable to 20000 mile service intervals as long as it got regular oil changes around the 1000 mile mark. The most I got out of an engine without a major strip was 62000 miles. Impressive, I thought, for such a high revving 250. One engine wore out its pistons and bores (letting me know by locking up solid), the other threw pieces of cam lobe all around the mill. Both happened in heavy traffic when I was, for once, overloaded with parcels to deliver.
Some of the DRs with rat machines had blow-ups every week, leaving them stranded miles from their deliveries. They often ended up in a vicious circle in which the boss refused to give them much work because of the unpredictabiity of their machines.
That meant there was no way to buy anything better and the next bike would turn out to be an even bigger rat. A couple ended up seriously injured when the machines seized in the traffic, leaving them to be mowed down by the cagers. Rumour was that the car drivers actually cheered!
In both cases of engine demise the gearboxes had become tres nasty, nearly finishing me off several times when I suddenly found the bike stranded in neutral with screaming cagers converging for the final kill. This kind of combat zone at my advanced age was rather more than terrifying. Frantic footwork and enough prayers to put a devout fan of Allah to shame somehow managed to save me from becoming hospital fodder.
The present engine has done a mere 34000 miles and has a gearbox that still works in a predictable rather than Russian Roulette manner. The cycle parts cost next to nothing to fix, since when anything major went wrong I merely replaced it with something vaguely similar from my collection of parts. In twenty years I've written off six bikes and blown at least 15 engines, so there's a huge assortment to choose from.
I always put on a new set of Avons before the old ones get down to the bare carcass... experience has taught me that it pays to fit decent rubber. Especially on the capital's treacherous roads, which when they aren't covered with spilt diesel, engine oil or gravel are often as not a churned up mess that should've been repaired months before.
And, it's difficult to keep a constant eye on the road surface as well as clocking the antics of the car drivers and peds. Taxi drivers have been mentioned before as being especially psychotic but I've found them relatively skilled - it's only when you actually bump into one of them that they go very wild. From time to time, especially in the winter months, I have become so sick of the game that I've tried other jobs.
Whilst 20 years experience does mean I can get a job with one of the better DR firms (the stories about the snakes would fill up the whole of the UMG...), it means that in any other field of employment I'm no better off than a school-leaver. The best job I picked up was as night clerk in a Paddington hotel - until the police closed it down because of the way dubious ladies would hire the rooms for an hour at a time. So, I've always come back to despatching.
It does seem to go in cycles. A couple of really good years when the money's better than most, then a year when it's tolerable, followed by a couple of desperate years. By my reckoning things should be looking up by the time you read this. Bloody well hope so, anyway!
Clive