I bought a fringed leather jacket from the Sunday market, a brown Centurion Firebird, a pair of bike boots with buckles that chinked as I walked, the obligatory white fishermen’s socks turned over the tops of the boots and a sew-on Ogri patch. I was ready to hit the streets. Now all I needed to do was learn how to ride the damn thing.
Easily sorted by an hour in a pub car park with a mate who'd recently bought a 400 Superscream. He went home, my parents calmed down a bit and I took a longer ride into the countryside, alone at last on my machine. The YB was only a year old, just 80 miles run in. It took ages to complete running in at 30mph, but once done the bike would do 70 to 75mph if the winds and gradients were right.
I later crashed it on the way to a pub while racing a mate’s plastic pig. We kept taking different routes throughout the journey and seeing who could come out first, then diverting again and racing to the next meeting point. We separated one last time and I found myself on an unfamiliar road. Hit one of those bends that gets tighter and tighter, panicked, braked, put my feet down and... touchdown!
Half an hour later I stumbled into the pub car park, clutching my right shoulder and gasping for a drink. My mates saw the funny side. While the girls had been certain I'd been in an accident, the lads had decided I was lost. A couple took me home in a Plastic Pig while others took my bike... disappearing fast because they didn’t want to watch my dad's reaction!
The twisted rear mudguard and rack were straightened with an appropriately inserted pole. Only the rusted scrape on the engine bar showed there'd been an accident. As for my shoulder, it was only strained where another mate had previously broken my collar bone with a friendly judo throw. Later, I came off right in the middle of town on a Saturday afternoon, having jumped on the bike, started it up and ridden into a hedge before remembering about the steering lock. I also took off over a set of three hump-backed bridges, landed on the wrong side of the road and thanked God there was nothing coming the other way. I joined the BMF’s Star Rider Scheme, involving about six sessions at an RAF camp, going round cones and doing some road riding to achieve Part 1 and the BMF’s Star Rider Proficiency Certificate, then considered more difficult than the Part 2.
Needless to say, the only LC125 rider in our group wrapped his bike around a lamp post. The rest of us passed with flying colours. a It took a while for my Part 2 test to come through. Meanwhile, I took my first long bike trip, 150 miles to Donington’s Monsters Of Rock festival. My mates were going in a Triumph Spitfire but when I met them in another pub car park, they'd brought a bunch of bikers on a CB400, GS550 and GS750.
I really believed my little YB kept up well with the big bikes, but now older and wiser I know how much they had hung back. lt wasn't so bad when we were all held up by caravans, combines and weekend drivers, but when we hit the dual carriageways they could really have gone for it. However, the 750 rider hung back, shouting at me to lay as flat as possible, so I put my chest on the tank, belly on the seat and legs straight out behind me with my feet on the indicators. A 70mph, two-stroke flying trapeze act without safety nets or anyone to catch me... if only I could have seen those caravan drivers’ faces when I rattled past them like Superman in full flight.
We all arrived together, camped, drank ourselves silly and rocked the weekend away. I'd never experienced anything like it! Far out and wasted. Come Sunday, my new buddies left without me and the Spitfire, so we made our own way back. The YB made the 300 mile trip at full throttle with absolutely no problems. I was as happy as a sand-boy.
When I came to take my Part 2, my indicators weren't working. Too late to do anything about it. I went through with the test, which entailed riding round the block in one direction, then riding back the other way while the examiner ran through various alleys to monitor my progress or flag me down for the emergency stop. At the end of it all he congratulated me on passing, then advised me to keep up with my hand signals because he could hardly see my indicators. “That's the problem with 6V electrics,” he said...
By winter I'd met a girl who rode a CB125 but lived 25 miles across country. I fell off my bike on black ice while trying to find her house but had more lessons in winter riding to come. I often rode through wind, rain, sleet and snow to get there. Trouble was, my headlight was so poor that I often couldn't see any trouble until I was in it. One evening the roads were sodden with newly melted snow. I’d see a glint of headlight on water and just slow in time not to get a crotch full of water while fording the puddle. But then I hit one without end that just got deeper and deeper and, while I desperately searched the darkness for any sign of land, the bike conked out.
I waded half a mile through freezing water, then spent 15 minutes restarting the bike. It spluttered, coughed, choked and retched for the next couple of miles while I held the throttle on full and kangaroo hopped down the road. The road steadily smoothed as the YB's little heartbeat got the circulation back to rights. Then, just on 55mph, some bends came up and I couldn't release the throttle. The cable was frozen fully open! I screamed like I've never screamed before and took the slippery bends while still accelerating, before I thought to turn the ignition off. I arrived at the girl’s house sodden from head to toe, shaking with nerves and near frostbite, and hardly able to speak, I was so cold.
I discovered that not all winter riding is bad. It’s the agony of thawing out after a cold ride that tells you how alive you are. Forget sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Summer came, I got a 400/4 and my girlfriend crashed my YB while fetching the Sunday paper. She claimed the throttle cable broke halfway through a bend and sent her down the road. I suffered for it because my penance was to carry her everywhere until her knee healed.
I owned the YB for about four years - even when I'd progressed to bigger bikes, it was a handy little hustler when all else was broken down or untaxed. It developed a tremendous rattle and erratic timing, all symptoms of worn main bearings, so I flogged it to a dealer for £25. Other than that, the only problem I ever had with the YB was dirt in the carb. I only changed the back tyre twice and only replaced the final drive chain once when it snapped. Yamaha have produced YB100s for years.
OK, so you might buy a super fast 125 race replica but, really, why spend all that dosh when you just want to take the test and get a big race-replica, off-roader, custom, etc. You’d be far better off with something naff, like the YB, because they're cheap, easy to maintain and can do 75mph, which on a bike that small is as hair raising as 150mph on a big replica.
lan Spinney