Yamaha TR1

I knew virtually nothing about Yam’s big V-twins when I was suddenly offered a TR1 to replace my MZ 125. The friend who persuaded me to part with £650 belonging to the bank justified the sale by explaining that I needed something that sounded like a proper motorcycle. Other comments like poor man’s Vincent and 55mpg were only just heard above the roar of blood rushing to the brain as I looked at the gleaming V-twin and realised that it had only covered 8000 miles from new and that he was the original owner. I tried it up the road and found that it really was smoother than the MZ, and I realised that there was even more performance to come if I changed out of first gear...
 
So I bought it, polished it and took it to a dealer to cure a leak from the grease bath enclosed chain case. Two weeks later and £70 poorer, but without the greasy rear tyre, I loaded it up with throw-overs, fuel and daughter, set the rear shock to its hardest setting, and embarked on my annual 400 mile summer pilgrimage to Cornwall. The bike was brilliant all the way down the Fosse Way to Stow on the Wold, and after a lunchtime break at Pershore, the 112 miles of dreaded motorway.
 
You break through the pain barrier when giant buses pass you at 80mph and suck you into their slipstream, so that your right hand is almost touching their bodywork, and it seems that all you need to do is lift your little finger to push yourself away. And you make the inevitable decision to travel faster than them.
 
That’s when it starts, I suppose. That love affair with biking, when each tiny movement of the throttle gives an instant 10mph gain and your concentration becomes total wherever you ride - unless you want to bean accident looking for somewhere to happen - and at speed there exists just you and the bike in the whole world. Nothing else matters, nothing except you and that noise, the slipstream and the jerking, twisting machine between your legs.
 
You corner at eighty and the exhilaration is like a narcotic. You survive that, so the next bend is taken at ninety. You watch the tarmac from the corner of your eye, feeling as if you could lean your helmet on the surface, appreciating the meaning of ear’oling.
 
After a while it’s all hanging together and everything flows with a rhythm. We, TR1, daughter and I, were under such a spell on the return journey when we caught two riders on a big BMW and were in turn caught by a solo rider on a GS850. The three bikes flew across Dartmoor and Exmoor in glorious convoy, through sweeping bends taken on the limit, totally committed to an unchangeable line, hanging on to bars and seat, feeling the suspension clamped down tight, right at the end of its travel.
 
When the bike seems to move in slow motion and you become so tuned in that you seem to step outside your body, able to look at the plot, judge the slipping, sliding, driving forces and know that nothing will puncture or break. And you feel immortal; for the moment. So much for biking on a shoestring.
 
Richard J. Langdale