A couple of reminiscences;
1. One Sunday afternoon I was out on my z650 in Northampton with my mate Steve on his 350LC, and we had a couple of friends with us: Dave on my pillion and his wife Deb on the back of Steve. We were making progress around the ring road and arrived at the Upton Way roundabout and were turning right off it.... There was no traffic so Steve pitched the LC onto its side and flew round it (it's quite a big roundabout so a good speed can be maintained). Back in those days (1982) ones rate of progress was marked by how much of the bike could be dragged found corners - even most racers hadn't started knee-dragging by that time. Until that day I'd only ever touched the right-hand crash bars on my z down once, briefly. I was determined that Steve wasn't going to get away, resulting in my right-hand crash bar getting some sustained contact with the tarmac, until it levered the front tyre off the ground and down we went.... Although neither of us was really hurt, Dave wasn't impressed with the hole in the knee of his brand new Levi's...
2. From 1986 until 1992 a bunch of us made a pilgrimage every spring to Les 24 Heures du Mans (bikes, not cars) but in March 1990 I had an RTC resulting in a written-off EXUP and a broken arm and dislocated wrist. That year's Le Mans trip looked to be off for me until my mate Speaky offered to take me on the back of his new CBR1000F. I was made up not to miss out and the CBR was quite comfy, certainly better than the Genesis he'd had previously. All was fine until the return trip, which unusually that year we had to make via Cherbourg instead of the usual Le Havre - I believe it was because Superbike mag were doing a promotion and had block-booked the Sunday night Le Havre boat for their readers so we couldn't take it and had to head to Cherbourg instead. Heading up the peninsula towards the port there is a long-ish bit of dual cabbageway and as we were on a bunch of big-bore sports bikes they were naturally caned along there, and I mean properly caned as in chins on the tank, flat-out in top type stuff. Speaky was matching the other bikes and we were both hunched-down to escape the 160-odd mph wind blast... Only my left arm was in plaster so I could only hang on with my right arm, and I could feel the wind blast inching me back along the seat despite my best one-armed limpet impression. I closed my eyes and hung on as hard as I could, and it seemed like forever before they rolled off back to a relatively sedate 110mph. Not an experience that I'd recommend when unable to hang onto anything properly....
