Whisper it quietly, over the last couple of months the DR business has improved considerably. Once again I'm spending more time out on the road rather than sitting around swapping insults with my fellow DRs. The combination of the past recession, police and SS raids that would make old Adolf come in his pants and heavy costs have cleared out the ranks of DRs. Less people chasing more work is very nice, thank you very much.
Having written that it'd probably encourage UMG delinquents to grab their helmets and bikes, heading for London in search of quick and easy money. Which is fine if you have a nice bike, can afford the insurance and have a reasonable line in chat with which to persuade cynical, money grabbing despatch company bosses.
Quite a lot of the latter have closed up shop, as well, because the minimal profits that were coming in during 1991 and 1992 soon convinced them they would be better off in the double glazing, used car or taxi business. I can still dine out on tales of one entrepreneur who sold his business just as it was about to go down the drain... he'd listed our bikes as an asset of the company when in fact they were our own personal property. The cheap lease on the office was just about to run out which he'd claimed was freehold...
Even worse, he disappeared owing us lots of wages which the new owner, not knowing anything about them, was more than reluctant to hand over. Within a week the company no longer existed, everyone except the original owner way out of pocket. As a lot of the money was paid under the table, away from the eyes of the Inland Revenue, no-one was willing to shout too loudly about their lot in life.
I was only down a couple of hundred quid but with a mortgage and hp (on a new GT750) to pay every month, a week or more out of work would've sent me seriously into debt. A couple of hours on the phone, with the usual lies about the length of work experience and earning ability, soon saw me ensconced in a new DR firm.
New riders usually have a hard time with the existing despatchers, especially when there wasn't much work going around, but I knew four of the nine other riders from past exploits on the London circuit. We were soon all chatting away like good old mates, exchanging tales of mad cagers, delinquent machinery and mind blowing police tactics.
A minority of riders still insisted on riding around like lunatics on old hacks with rotted exhaust systems. The noise combined with a riding technique that, more often than not, involved parting pedestrians like the red sea, had annoyed upright and uptight citizens to the extent that any two wheel vehicle was deemed fair play for the plod when they weren't setting up road blocks to catch terrorists. Which was about the only time we had any peace from them.
Uh, uh, I have to admit that in the past I would've fitted perfectly the above mentioned profile. It wasn't that I wanted to be a juvenile delinquent (too much dirt, hassle and angst to wish that on anyone) but that the only way I could get rolling in the DR game was by starting out on an old hack without any insurance, tax or MOT. It was either that or go on the social; I was only getting on my bike and working my balls off, just like the politicos demanded.
Back in the early eighties you could get away with such rampant neglect of the niceties of law and order. Perhaps it was because it was when I was so young I couldn't legally have a jar in the evening, I found this period of life most invigorating. The police even let me off a few times and never seemed too bothered when | didn't turn up with the requested documents.
I was working sixty hour weeks but earning lots of dosh. Within a couple of months I had graduated to a perfectly legal, nearly new motorcycle that wouldn't rise an eyebrow from even the most dedicated cop. Some people take to despatching like a duck to water. I was one of those happy creatures who would throw themselves out of bed and on to the bike with a disarming grin and enthusiasm. Making money from riding a motorcycle all day long always seemed like a gift from heaven.
I'm still pretty much that way despite the depreciations of the past couple of years. What worries me about the youngsters, these days, is the only way they can get in the game is by loading themselves up with debt for the bike, insurance, clothes etc. Once in that state there's not been enough work around to let them get ahead of the game. Perhaps I'm just showing my age, but it's not a profession, under tnose circumstances, that I could recommend to anyone.
I don't know why the police have to be so hard on bikers, all we want to do is make a reasonable amount of money. If all DRs were banned, then parcels would take much longer to deliver and all the vans needed to do the work would soon lead to even more clogged and fouled streets.
Well, OK, I occasionally have to take to the pavement, ride the wrong way down one-way streets and ignore protestations of peds who are clogging up crossings, but that's nothing compared to cagers who cut through junctions as if they were the commanders of their own personal universe; cab drivers who go berserk if they are even gently cut up, and bus drivers who just drive, usually straight past crowded bus stops, as if their foot is permanently trapped on top of the bloody juice pedal.
At times, especially in the rush hour, I feel like I'm amidst a bunch of insane lunatics who have nothing more on their minds than knocking me off my Kawasaki. Only a few days ago, some jerk in a Merc ran me into the gutter so forcefully that I ended up churning up chunks of pavement with the stands. We finally came to a halt abreast of each other, he leaned across his passenger to leer triumphantly; the thought of a mere motorcycle getting ahead of him in the traffic apparently more than he could bear. So used to this kind of situation had I become that I carried an aerosol of bright pink paint which I surreptitiously applied to the side of his car as he moved off. He'd probably have a heart attack when he pulled up at his destination. And quite right, too.
There I was, trying to convince you all that I'd grown out of my juvenile delinquency phase... er, well, I never attack first, I always wait until sometimes strikes the first blow then seek revenge, usually with a little sleight of hand so as not to become involved in a bout of fisticuffs. Maybe they learn their lesson or maybe they go berserk the next time they see a biker. Who knows?
This kind of madness reached a zenith when the work was thin on the ground and we had nothing much better to do all day than lounge around devising revenge on people who had crossed us. It passed the time and produced some quite imaginative schemes. We once bought a sack load of potatoes, went around sticking them in the exhaust pipes of cars. We must've done a couple of hundred in a day, not that it made much difference to the intensity of the traffic jams.
Now that there's a lot more work about we have to get our heads down, work our arses off to rake in the cash. You need a pretty clear head and grasp of reality to work out how to do multiple pickup and drops so as to do them in the shortest possible time. It's also quite dynamic in that the best laid routes will be interrupted by the controller demanding I rush off to an unlikely place for an urgent pick-up just as I was planning to howl off in completely the opposite direction. Once or twice a day I can get away with ignoring him by blaming radio static but more than that is pushing things.
As is refusing a demand to run up to Manchester in the depths of winter. I work mostly in London, having found that temperatures outside the city are usually 10 degrees colder. My lungs have grown used to the inner city pollution and complain when subjected to a sudden, freezing dose of fresh air. Not that it counts for anything with the controller, invariably there are a couple of times a year when I'm sent forth from civilization to dice with the barbarians up north. One of the perils of having a large motorcycle which is classed as a tourer.
I suppose I should welcome the variety and the chance to get free of the traffic jams, but the GT and I are used to each other's ways in crowds of cars, know how we're going to react to even the maddest machinations. Some DR's prefer smaller bikes but I like the security of the having a big, solid machine under me (but not on the OE Jap tyres).
I had a few crashes in the early days, when I was young enough to roll with the fall, but during the past four years I haven't been separated from the seat of the GT. I have hit a couple of things, both immobile, when I've been forced off the road, and moving, when cars have done some sudden daft thing that not even a veteran DR could conceive. Which just goes to show, however long I do this job something new shows up to surprise me. I wouldn't have it any other way.
Eddie Fine
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