Hell have no fury like a woman scorned... which was how I came to set off for work one morning when the wheels decided to fall out of the chassis! All I’d done to the iron maiden was get her drunk and let my three flat mates in on the fun! She was an ex-Hells Angel moll, knew enough about bikes to get her revenge. It was not a pretty sight, my venerable XJ900 flapping in the wind with the wheels flopping around like on a broken kid’s tricycle.
It happened at about 20mph, the only thing that stopped me coming a cropper. I banged both my boot clad feet down on the tarmac to stop us tottering over. At the best of times, the early XJ wasn't a brilliant handler, and with all the DR gear - top box and panniers - felt like a real top heavy pig. It didn’t take much to make the old girl topple over.
By the time I’d pulled up, both my legs felt broken and I had a fit of the shakes. I seem to be getting more and more of the latter, these days. After tightening up the wheel spindles and checking the rest of the machine over - did the fuel tank offer the disturbing odour of dissolving sugar? Nah!- I ended up half an hour late for work.
The controller was some kind of clown out of a cartoon with a temper on him that would put a woman in the throes of PMT to shame. Even minor misdemeanours were treated as a personal insult, let alone turning up for work late. The shouting I could take, the problem was he'd spend the rest of the day devising wacky jobs that took me from one obscure, almost impossible to locate, place to another.
That particular day was really bad. It started off with a run to Stanmore that ended up in the middle of the countryside with a bloody big hailstone storm. After lacerating my eyeballs it was no wonder I couldn't find the pickup; I couldn't even see the tarmac a couple of yards in front. After harassing a couple of locals who looked like they wanted to call the police (hadn't they seen Mad Max?) I finally made the premises.
Only to be shouted at by hardcore security nutters who wanted to know why I'd dodged around the barrier and not come to an orderly halt. Because I was fucking pissed off over riding around in circles getting nowhere fast, mate. They looked like they were moonlighting from Heathrow customs and would have liked nothing more than to strip-search me there and then. It took them half an hour to sort out my package. Bastards.
I then had to run down to the city at maximum velocity. Did I mention that the old Yam had done 132000 miles? Well, it has, and it gets a bit nasty over 80mph, which normally in London ain't that much of a problem. But I had a lot of time to make up and the only way to do it was to wind the old girl up to maximum revs in all the gears.
The XJ comes with a normally trouble-free shaft drive. A marvellous piece of kit for DRs who just can't be bothered with silly things like daily or even weekly maintenance. The only problem is that once age gets into the mechanicals its direct action shags out the gearchange. It went really wacky once the machine had gone around the clock. It was like the selector shafts were bent and half the teeth were missing off the gears...
The upshot was that whenever I tried to use the throttle hard, I'd stamp on the gearchange lever only to find the box making noises like it was disintegrating and it’d sometimes finally engage gear with a huge bang - hilarious if it happened next to a sleepy cager or brain dead ped! So I'd wind the bike up to a double vision provoking 8000 revs, whack up a gear and by the time it'd gone through all the rigmorole the revs would be back down to 5000! Talk about going backwards.
The alternative was to hang on to third or fourth, and just ride the bike on the throttle. In the old days this wouldn't have been a problem but time and abuse meant the XJ lacked an air filter, had huge holes in the exhaust and god knows what debris inside the original and well worn carbs. Do I need to explain what this means? Perhaps there are some tender UMG readers who haven't tried to run their machines beyond their useful lives... what it means is that there are enough holes in the power band to make forward progress a series of shoulder dislocating lurches.
With a slick gearbox I could’ve ridden around them, with the do or die effort I was saddled with it was close to impossible to really cane the Yamaha. What it took was a certain level of ignorance, just screw the engine into the red until the valves bounced, then whack the gear change without using the clutch, the throttle still to the stop. This worked, the old lady fair flew along.
When I say it worked, I omit to mention the penalty paid. The noise didn't worry me, my hearing was long ago knackered by the ungodly four into one exhaust. No, it was the secondary vibration that got to me. I know, I know, your pristine XJ900 doesn't vibrate at all, but what we're talking about here is a well worn early model that was full of blood and guts even when new.
There was nowhere in the rev range where my bike didn’t thrum at least a little but once over 5000 revs things turned rather nasty, and once over 7500 revs it was double vision, filling shattering and hand shaking time. Now you actually get used to this after a couple of years! It's only when you stagger off the bike that you wonder why you're seeing two of everything and why your whole body is tap dancing away merrily.
Coming down from Stanmore to the city it was all a high speed blur, the speedo even flickering around 120mph once or twice. Yes Mr Sierra that was me who ripped off your wing mirror with a terrifying explosion - sorry! By the time I'd hit Covent Garden, I wasn't sure if I was coming or going and it took me a while to resolve the reality of a van reversing rapidly up the street I was zooming down. When the collision came it was with a crack that seemed to explode my brain into two. One part of me was grimly amused at achieving airborne flight, the other utterly dejected by the sound of the XJ exploding into a million bits.
Some people have all the luck in the world, others end up as vegetables or cripples. I’ve been despatching for over a decade, still have all my limbs and most of my brain (though this would no doubt be disputed by some). That day my luck held, though I don’t know for how long it will last! My trajectory had thrown me sideways, over the van towards the pavement. I landed perfectly, limbs outstretched, on my back - on top of about half a dozen peds. The soft landing was most welcome, though even then the thud made me loosen my bowels!
The poor old pedestrians were wailing and gnashing their teeth, but apart from a few bruises and scratches no serious physical damage done - god knows what mental traumas they were put through, though. Just think about it, strolling through London then suddenly a Mad Max clone drops out of the the sky on top of them and lets loose with yesterday's curry!
At the time it didn’t seem so funny, what with sodden pants and hystericai pedestrians. I waddled around the van to see what had happened to my poor old, ever faithful, Yamaha - really, joking aside, it was incredibly reliable, all things considered.
The bike had evidently slammed into the back of the van at a slight angle, flipped sideways and kicked in the van like an angry horse. Amazingly, apart from slightly bent forks, the damage was mainly the addition of some more dents, an interestingly bent engine bar and a cracked but repairable pannier. The van actually looked twisted out of shape, a write-off! The driver was too dazed and confused to attack me.
One advantage of wandering around with pants full of shit is that no-one really wants to know. Even the cops kept their distance, suggesting that I might want to come down the nick with the documents after I’d had a change of clothes. Sure, sure. I got the Yam out of there before they changed their mind, cleaned myself up in the nearby public toilet, much to the bemusement of the attendant, and went on to finish off the day's work!
The Yam rode fine. It was already so worn and dangerous in the chassis that another bash made little difference to the need to fight the handling with all my might and muscle. The only thing was that I hadn't noticed one of the hydraulic lines had been battered and it broke off at the end of the day, leaving me without a front brake! I came to a halt by wedging the bike between the backs of two cars, doing a couple of thousand quid’s damage to them in the process. The bike was fixed easily enough with a visit to a nearby breaker.
Having just described one of the worst days in living memory (my memory doesn't go back much over a week - too painful!), I should point out that most days are a ball. Time just whizzes by as I cram in the maximum number of jobs, I usually end up top dog in our firm! As to the moll, she came back full of remorse for trying to kill me (after what the Angels got up to, my antics were very mild) and decided she had a taste for being gang-banged.
Basher