This all started in the extremes of a rather extreme youth begat by the dying days of the wild sixties; just as Editor Fowler seems to be pursuing the unacceptable face of motorcycle publishing, I pursued the unacceptable face of motorcycle racing on the road. As age has imposed a degree of low cunning on these efforts, youth imposed an excess of exuberance that was almost abruptly ended when I turned off the lights of a Norton 650SS that was heavily enough tuned to do 120mph some distance in front of the pigs; if I lost the boys in blue I almost lost it all in the moment of blindness as my eyes adjusted to the sudden loss of light. Ever since that close escape I’ve modified my bikes.
That had been just as well as I'd twice before had to flick the switch off. Those times the speedo was flickering around 150mph, an event full of enough fear as it is without worrying about the consequences of being run off the road by a police Porsche 911. And no, Thatcher’s bum boys haven't been issued with Teutonic wonder cars, this was a Belgium motorway (though most of the pigs run around in VW vans that can be blown off in second gear) and my latest game, after a days hard grind, is to race with the pigs to the Dutch border.
The tool for this kind of excursion needs to be very fast, thus my purchase of a Honda CBR1000. I didn’t actually purchase this device with this in mind, but having shelled out three grand to some yuppie in Shit City who’d lost his job in the stock exchange collapse and was so desperate that he was going to buy a VT500 to go despatch riding, I was damned if I was going to pussyfoot around at 70mph.
After a few clashes with the UK police, which I’d better not go into here as I’ve still got a British passport and don’t want it taken away, I decided I’d be better off on the Continent where the plod appear more concerned with beating up immigrants and actually catching criminals than merely cruising up and down the motorway all day.
Having been a keen viewer of American movies in which car drivers are pursued only as far as the state border, where they can safely give a cute V sign to their pursuers, I thought I’d apply the same concept to Europe. As I quite like living in Belgium and they have an open border with Holland this seemed like an excellent starting point.
Poring over several maps revealed a couple of border towns not far from the motorway that I could sneak through once I’d shaken off the plod... I’d done the same run many times before. Most of my problems came not from the police but from the way the Honda shook its head and weaved around 130mph. It became worse up to about 140mph when it suddenly went stable again. It could just as easily have been some quirk of the aerodynamics as a major chassis design fault. I had been practising my Flemish along the lines that it was much safer the faster the Honda went just it case they caught me.
150mph is a strange experience, everything happens so quickly, distances close so fast, most car drivers have no concept of the rate with which you can eat up distance at that kind of speed, which fuels the paranoia. Oh yes, the paranoia, the stresses on the chassis, the engine and the rider are so great at 150mph that it only takes one slight malfunction and the whole game ends in a funeral procession. The problem is, the more I ride at insane speeds the more I want to do it. I actually leap out of bed at 5am, full of joy at getting the Honda out on some deserted roads for a quick blast.
Like all addictions, it’s a very costly business. The damn thing eats up tyres in 3000 miles and you have to fit the most expensive or those weaves become speed wobbles. The rear chain starts rattling and vibrating at 8000 miles if you go above the ton and it rips the cheaper O-ring chains apart a lot quicker than that.
And I wouldn’t dare fit one of those O-ring chains with a link that bolts together, not with 150mph on the line, so the whole rear end has to be torn off just to swap a chain.
The brake pads are bad enough but the discs seem to be disappearing almost as fast, I suppose it makes sense, if you can’t make a decent profit out of the bike, make discs that need replacing every 12000 miles. And that engine, I don’t know what kind of service intervals Honda recommend but I find it’s decidedly ratty after 800 miles and won’t put out that extra edge that'll get the speedo round to 160mph. So it’s into this chap I know in Antwerp who'll set it up nicely, but not for less than a hundred notes a time. Bad enough to drive a man to crime,
The mirrors at 150mph are quite clear, although there’s a bit of a buzz through both the bars and footrests despite the presence of a wimpy engine balancer (well, I do like Norton Commandos). They give a rather good view of my elbows unless I go into a contortion act, whereupon the view of a Porsche 911 is clear enough to pick up in the micro second that I can allow my eyes to stray to the mirror.
Twice I’ve been caught out, concentrating too hard on the prospect in front, when a 911 has crept alongside, but luckily I was only doing 130mph and was actually able to power away from them - I’d like to have seen their faces. The pursuit that followed in both of those cases was quite frightening as I’d to use the relative narrowness of the Honda to sneak in between lines of fast moving cars with the horn blasting away. Having modified the number plate into a QD job with the real number on the inside whilst speeding I wasn’t too worried that they could creep up and read my number plate.
Once, I had only a split second to make up my mind. Ram on the rather excellent twin discs and slow down for a full carriageway of traffic, or edge the Honda in between two cars doing a silly 70mph. All the usual braking distance judgements become somewhat shot once you get above 140mph, so I took the easy (!) course, blasted on the horn, whacked open the throttle, said a few prayers, formed a stiff upper lip and went for it. One advantage of going so fast is that by the time a car driver’s aware of your presence you're gone - one way or another.
Head more or less down on the tank, the normally useless full fairing has some effect as the speedo flicks past 150mph, the noise of the engine and exhaust lost in the banshee wail of the wind over my head. The road cuts through a couple of embankments onto a flat plain where a gust of wind tries to pick up the Honda and flick it over. By the time I’ve backed off the throttle and grabbed some brakes, I’ve got the bike leant over at an absurd angle into what appears a minor gale. A few car drivers had blasted their horns as I gate crashed into their sacred space and I muttered a few obscenities at the designers of the Honda’s slab of GRP. Jesus, with a bike weighing so much it should’ve stayed on line even after a shove from a wrathful God.
The road turned, the wind behind me now, I went for the redline in top gear, something I’d never been able to achieve in the past. God, the thing really seems to fly through the air, there’s actually a bit of a punch at 140mph and even the wobble doesn’t seem so bad.
Fifty miles of motorway madness means a visor splattered with flies and I haven't been brave enough to see what happens if you take one hand off the bars yet (got to keep something in reserve for when I get really bored)...
I wasn’t sure, but I thought I just blasted past a police Porsche, the lights reflected off my visor from oncoming cars makes it difficult to discern very much. All I know is to keep an eye on the mileometer as that'll tell me when to turn off for the back roads to the border. The speedo gets past 160mph but there seems an awful lot of vibration, just like when you string out a CD175, in fact, rather than a marvel of high technology.
Turn off coming up, can’t see any flashing lights in the mirrors, brakes hard on, throttle dead, cut up a few cars just for the kicks, the world seems a very slow place at 80mph as I hit the turn off lane. Then I’m aware of two things, this clattery noise from beneath the GRP that sounds suspiciously like a shot camchain (surely not on a Honda?) and the cold shiver up my back that talks police...
Johnny Malone