Falling off a Honda CBX750 can be a rather frightening experience when it happens at 85mph. Visibility was minimal, the road was awash with water and I was riding home the worse for wear from someone else’s (I'm glad to say) stag night. My leather jacket and jeans had become quickly drenched by the violent thunderstorm. All I wanted to do was get the ten miles home as quickly as possible. In fact, I was just about to wrench the throttle open to put 130mph on the clock when the road, what I could see of it, was suddenly filled with a strange mass of objects.
Having drunk about ten pints of beer without having a piss, my bladder was full to bursting point, further adding to my need to get home as quickly as possible. When I realised I was about to plough into a herd of stray sheep, I pissed my pants before I knew what I was doing. What the hell were the blighters doing on the bloody M4? Before I had a chance to touch the brakes the front wheel ran into the first of the furry creatures.
The next thing I knew was that I was sailing through the air. I landed amid these madly bleating sheep, breaking the back of the one that took most of my weight. Dazed, soaked through with water and piss, not particularly coherent from the excess of beer, for a moment in the unclear light I thought those sheep not killed by myself or the bike were going to attack. Lying prone I studied the hideous profiles of these bleating beasties until I shook off the daze and staggered upright.
I rescued the battered but still whole Honda from amid about ten dead sheep, clambered aboard and rode off, scattering the rest of the sheep before me. My whole body felt bruised, not helped any by having the bars bent and one of the footrests missing. By the time I got home I was in another world and barely managed to stagger up the stairs. Before I could strip off, | threw up until I was retching up air. I slept for about 18 hours after that trauma.
The Honda was splattered with blood and bits of dead sheep. After a visit to the breaker for new bar, levers and pegs, I took her for a jet wash. A 1985 job, she was four years old and I was the sixth owner. Despite all the owners and their probable abuse the old bitch was still a bit of goer even with 42000 miles on the clock. I was too busy riding the beast to bother with maintenance, just filling up with oil when the level went down to the minimum mark.
A few: days after the sheep incident, I was playing at silly buggers with my mates, trying to see who could pull the longest wheelie. Sticking the tacho needle past the 11000rpm mark produced a lovely roar out of the degutted 4-1 exhaust, dropping the clutch had the front wheel way up, with the number plate dragging along the tarmac. Brilliant, I thought, I'll beat them all... some bozo in a cage decided to turn across my prow - he must have been deaf as well as blind to miss me. Grabbing the front brake was a useless but instinctive manoeuvre, so I rolled off the throttle. Perfect!
I brought the front wheel down on his roof and mashed the side of the car with the bike's undercarriage. God, I had some explaining to do when the cops turned up. They were not amused, having to send for a rescue team to cut the driver out of the wrecked car. When the bike was pulled off, there was hardly any damage! The car driver was shocked but not badly injured. He started shouting at the police about the amount of time he had to wait to be cut free, which pissed them off so much they didn’t bother to book me for anything (it was his own damn fault, after all).
A week later I slid off the Honda when I put too much power down, charging off from a busy junction. The back end twitched nastily and then the Japanese Dunlop (all I could afford) just let loose on the damp tarmac. The Honda normally feels so stable that you think you can get away with anything... this time the bike skidded across the junction, flipped over a few times and finally came to rest in a florists, after demolishing its plate glass window and several hundred flowers. Just to add insult to injury, a bloody cage bounced me off its bonnet, breaking several ribs and straining my wrist.
The bloody bike was battered but still rideable after all that. I was tempted to take a hike out of the area before the plod turned up, but the owners of the half dozen or so cars that the Honda had hit on its path to the florist’s had a firm grip on my collar - in between screaming obscenities at me they were eyeing the lamp post as a likely place from which I could be strung up. The police were their usual pleasant selves, but couldn't find the patch of oil I had obviously hit. They could see I was in a lot of pain so rather than book me for anything they persuaded me into the back of an ambulance.
With ribs and wrist bound up, I set to work sorting out the CBX750. Various dents and scratches were ignored and various non-essential bits like the fairing, indicators and tailpiece were pulled off and dumped in the corner of the garage. I forgot about reporting the accident to the insurers, they were still trying to digest the crushed cage incident. Soon, my raw boned CBX750 was back on the road. I ignored my parents' pleas and assured them that passing the tests on a borrowed 125 was more than enough experience to cope with a piffling little Honda CBX750.
Two weeks went by without major incident, my wrist and chest hurt so much that I dared not exert my self too much. But as the pain began to fade my lust for the throttle came back. The way the CBX punches out its 90hp I just found too irresistible. It would roar up to 125mph like the world was going backwards, leaving my skin with a tingling feel and my brain buzzing with adrenalin. I kept roaring up to corners far too rapidly and giving myself some very frightening moments as I hauled on the brakes with the bike bouncing off the wrong side of the road.
Massive ground clearance and my own ability to ignore tyres that were threatening to skip off the road usually allowed me to get around the corner. Until one corner tightened up more than expected; there was nothing for it but to gracefully accept the fact that we were going to go through a hedge. It wasn’t any old hedge, but one of those full of brambles that hooked themselves into my flesh and refused to come out without tearing out huge chunks of my body.
A large piece of this bush became detached from its roots and embedded in the fairing frame. There was no way I was going to risk more abuse of my body by trying to tear it off... I was screaming with agony from having lost large chunks of my wrists, throat and legs to the brambles already. I decided the best thing for it was to ride the bike as it was. What cagers thought of a 130mph bush screaming up behind them I never did learn! The bush actually gave more protection than the fairing ever did and was probably just as aerodynamic.
Back home, after treating and bandaging the wounds, I took my large hacksaw to the bush and soon had it off the front of the bike. Damage from that accident was another bout of dents and scratches but no serious hassles that I could see - I was becoming well impressed with the way the Honda resisted crash damage. My mates kept laughing at the state of the machine, but not on the road as the CBX would blow off their bikes with little effort. I was top dog, no doubt about it.
My time as king of the road was brought to an abrupt end by the motor seizing solid, after a bout of frenzied town work that saw me mono-wheeling in between lines of traffic. I didn’t fall off this time, I managed to grab the clutch before doing any more damage than hitting the side of a few cars with the back of the madly skipping machine. Bloody ungrateful heap, I thought. The mileometer read 49457, a laughably low mileage at which to experience engine failure. Before I could do anything about the bike, my parents gave me a nice newish Lotus Elan for my birthday. As soon as I realised the kind of birds this car could pull it was goodbye biking for good.
Dean