Having managed to almost snap off my left arm and write off an eye - in circumstances so embarrassing I ain't got any intention of revealing them here - you may well find that this issue - this column in particular - is even more incoherent than usual: normal service will resume ASAP. Or something like that. Not being totally suicidal (yet) I'm effectively wandering around on foot with the odd amusing diversion on public transport - and if you ever saw a wretched looking chap muttering obscenities at a bus stop that was probably I. ‘Course, you meet the nicest people on the buses! Some of them in very short skirts despite the weather.
The only motorcyclists that I know likely to give me a lift have a total death wish - and knowing them I can well understand why they want to end it all! - which makes the pillion perch as attractive as a day job in one of the more fey motorcycle glossies... and, anyway, there's a long list of acquaintances who want to get revenge on me for the way I introduced them to motorcycling via the pillion perch. What goes around, comes around, though a couple of them even ascended the great heights of contributing to the UMG!
It's just as well that, these days, the vast majority of UMG contributions come in via email, removing the tedious need to type them in and destroy what is left of my eyesight trying to decipher illegible scrawl; copy and paste taking mere seconds rather than hours. I say just as well as my clutch hand is fucked at the moment and although my typing speed would never secure me proper employment (thank god!), trying to use merely my right hand is as annoying and unlikely as trying to start an old Brit single on a cold day just wearing trainers (not that I possess any - trainers or old Brit singles) with my left leg.
Having managed to drop my back-up hard drive on the floor and smashed the side of my portable computer if any of this drivel actually reaches print it will be a minor miracle. I put it down to the heart of darkness and black magic, gone wrong; if it had gone right I would've been a goner. As I'm still here I'll have to keep going, won't I? If I write what I wanted to here, right now, this magazine would cease to exist, and as we don't won't that - do we???? - I won't. Put it this way, I'm being attacked on all fronts and have about a fifty-fifty chance of either getting way ahead of the game or going down the tubes. When I say going down the tubes, I mean the UMG going down - I can exist quite happily without it!
But who gives a fuck, there's always tomorrow and some new kicks. I'm in one of those moods when the temptation to blow a load of dosh on some hyperbike is high, the fact that I can, at the moment, but barely swing a leg over one of the bastards neither here nor there. Every now and again | get one of these obsessions - sometimes for replicas, sometimes for British bikes (just to show how silly things can get), though I really should put my money where my mouth is and build the ultimate hack but that, alas, would require some kind of permanent abode and the boredom of staying in one location for more than a month just can't be taken, these days!
Rationality does usually catch up with me - the replicas too fast and the UK police totally over the top - ridiculous speed limits even on back roads usually deserted of traffic (except for loitering plod). Mad speed and nowhere to enjoy it doesn't add up to much but what the hell, can always throw mud over the numberplate or something. British bikes’ self destructive nature have been chronicled at length and unless you buy a re-engineered example from someone you can trust merely an expensive way into an ongoing nightmare; as I don't know anyone in the motorcycle game that I can trust that’s right out of court.
In between these two extremes of insane power and butch practicality there are hundreds of options but most I've tasted already and become, if not bored, at least not willing to make the effort to spend a lot of money and time buying something a month or so down the line I'm just going to want to get shot of. We are talking kicks here, commuting to work takes the form of getting out of bed at an unlikely hour and crossing the room to my desk, so I should just be taking the maximum adrenaline buzz and damning the consequences.
But living in a city, my little Yamaha RXZ (a Thai manufactured 133cc air-cooled stroker, circa 25hp and 250Ibs - though now no longer manufactured) proves able to whizz-bang through tiny gaps at unlikely velocities, has sufficient punch to wake up the nervous system and costs so little to run that it's probably cheaper than a C90 with none of that little bugger's handling or gearbox truculence. And it's been reliable for tens of thousands of miles despite minimal maintenance (some kind soul pointed out to me that I run the UMG in exactly the same way as I run my motorcycles - in total neglect model).
Until my left arm recovers I can't even buzz around on the RXZ - well, I can, but the kangaroo hops aren't a pretty sight and I have to keep swinging my head from side to side to account for the blind spot produced by the bandage! My advice, don't stare because you'll probably ride into something!
Bill Fowler