Having had my world tour on the GS550 abruptly curtailed by some rouge Algerian halt inching it whilst I was spewing up my guts in what passed for a hotel room, I suddenly found myself back in the Great Capital with a pocketful of loose change, a burning desire to earn some money and a friend who had just started a despatch company. You know the sort of chap. mortgaged up to the hilt several times over, starting a business on even more borrowed money with nowhere to go but up... anyway beggars can't be choosers.
Being bereft of the Katana was no great loss in London, it was too heavy, too slow and too painful a ride for 10 hours of concentrated madness every day. l have been despatching in the capital before, so I know the game well enough, all that was lacking was a suitable pair of wheels.
That was where Graham came in. He had an immaculate 400 Superdream, which he only rarely ventured out upon on sunny weekends. He wouldn’t sell it but let me hire it from him for forty notes a week, all consumables or, god forbid, damage to be paid by Culler Enterprises Ltd, a limited company being a good way to keep the tax man off your back long enough to grab the money and take off for a new country.
The Superdream came with a rack, so a visit to one of the few friendly breakers in London soon copped a huge top box and pair of throwover panniers. The CB was still on the original FVQs which tended to bottom out over the potholes and throw the back and around. but with less than 400lbs to control, I was soon hurling it through the traffic with the best of them.
Few despatch riders out to earn a decent crust (£500 upwards) bother much with traffic laws or signals from police officers to stop. Too many of them have no tax or insurance to want to exchange insults with the law and a detailed examination of their machines would bring up a major list of offences. l was more or less legal but in a hell of a hurry to make my deliveries, even more so as the recession has badly affected DR's earnings.
l was not too amused by my friend's antics back at control. His idea of a business was evidently to take on all the tasks he could, from controller to coffee boy. My last sight of him was wrestling with four phones, screaming instructions whilst trying to read a map of London. Mistakes for pickup had started to come in hard and fast, I'd made three wasted journeys for which I suspected I would get no monetary credit.
Thus did I have little compunction about rushing the Honda through a crowded pedestrian crossing, the air horns full on, and then wrestling the machine the wrong way up a one-way street, which I figured would take me out on to Oxford St, leaving a mere 50 yards of an illegal blitz to get to my destination. Clever sod. I congratulated myself, nearing the end of the one-way section, bouncing the Honda's six valves in second gear. Despite the chain driven balance shaft a large amount of vibes made it through to the handlebars.
Then some bark in a big Bentley cruises out of a car park only checking the side of the road where traffic was expected, driving straight across to a side exit. I quickly calculated that the softest part of the car to hit was the centre of the front door. Braked hard, clutch pulled in, bike skidding about a bit and... thump! Tearing metal, bent forks but I'm still on the bike, still upright. Wheel her backwards. Marvellous it's still rideable, turn around and ride off pronto hoping the dazed idiot doesn't have time to clock my number plate.
I hide out in a side street to check out the damage, nothing a bit of fork straightening would not cure. It rides a bit strange with its shortened wheelbase and steep rake, but I can handle it. Make the next four deliveries, phone in with a puncture and head for the friendly breaker. He agrees the forks are fixable and he'll swap me a Superdream front end for forty notes. An hour's work and I'm back in the game. Great!
Back to base. My friend is incoherent, flinging abuse about, half a bottle of whisky gone down. Two riders have quit already but his cut rate prices means the work is flowing in fast. I get a rise on the spot when I promise to work my arse off to do thirty collections and deliveries in the afternoon. I spend ten minutes figuring things out, making sure I'm not rushing back and forth from one side of London to the other too many times. There are deliveries and collections in the same area a couple of times and what looks impossible at first turns out feasible.
Outside the sky turns black and the Honda, unaccustomed to such abuse, refuses to start unless I bump it. On with the waterproofs and off for the first five collections, all clustered around Covent Garden. One of them includes a huge A1 sized parcel that is bungeed on to the top box with a flimsy bit of black refuse bag for protection from the elements, which are already spitting out huge rain drops.
Up to Black Friars is a breeze, although I had to cut along the pavement a couple of times. There’s always one address that is impossible to find, in the end I got desperate and asked a taxi driver. who must have been one of the few with a bit of pity. Two pick-ups not far away and then it's an across town trawl to Chelsea.
I narrowly miss crashing the Superdream again when a taxi cuts me up down the bottom end of Hyde Park and he gives me the finger when l blast him with the horn, but otherwise I make it safely to the first of three deliveries. There are two pick-ups in Fulham and a couple of deliveries in Earls Court and then another pick-up in Kensington and a delivery in Hammersmith. At least I think so, my carefully plotted route has all but been obliterated by the heavy rainstorm.
The road surface has turned treacherous, the front tyre that came with the front end swap being some Taiwanese crap that slides all over the place. Huge puddles have formed on parts of the road, cars and lorries sending up tidal waves of water, drenching the poor old Honda, not to mention yours truly.
In Hammersmith I finally offload the huge package, sodden right through as the bit of protective plastic flew off after the first 100 yards. The girl at the desk looked at both it and myself with total disbelief, so disarmed was she by this apparition that she failed to notice she’d just signed she had received the goods in excellent condition. I was tempted to ask for her phone number, but on reflection thought that would be pushing my luck, and left her instead a large puddle of water with which to remember moi.
A long thrash down to Acton, riding the centre of the road as if it belonged to me, which, of course, it did. Got the weaving Superdream past the ton on one stretch, even had time to brake and wonder if the police car in the pub carpark was on duty or not. One delivery and one pickup within a 100 yards of each other. Amazing!
So far out of London I decided to phone in. Took five minutes for the phone to be picked up and another five minutes to get my message through to the boss. He was so far out of it by then that he offered me three pick-ups in Charring Cross. Er, no thanks. The rest was easy enough. a straight line. more or less. back to Central London with various pick-ups and drops, with enough time left to turn up at base to see it there was any more work.
By the time I got back another two men had dropped out and there was a pile of work to do. In the first day he'd managed to lose half his staff and obtain about three times more work than he could handle. The next few days were not much better, but gradually things began to settle down. There were soon another two riders sharing the work load, and he even went so far as to employ another person in the office. Got to give it to him, though, he had the gift of the gab and the right idea of cutting costs down to the bone.
I made £640 in the first week, half knackered myself and crashed the poor old Superdream two more times. When its owner came by to see how I was getting on he asked why I was running two CB400s, being unable to recognise his Superdream as the decayed, battered heap that was propped against the well outside my flat. I told him that he'd better sit down. We finally settled on £750 as being a fair price; I haven't seen him since for some reason.
I've had the Superdream for a month now and its motor has begun to rumble. Time to tart it up and flog it off in the back of MCN. Shouldn’t lose too much dosh on it. Got my eye on a nice CB450 twin that hasn't done much mileage. A couple more months work and I should have saved five grand, nice little nest egg to fund the Grand Tour Part Two.
Al Culler