Travels with whatever piece of crap I had at the time

Inspired by @bigtom13's "Travels with Connie"

#1 - The Sand Bike

Over the years I have had many bikes and cars and a few vans and trucks. Sometimes the vehicle was interesting, sometimes it was the event. I may or may not post more of these stories, depending on my mood, my memory, and the availability of round tuits. The only thing I promise is no original photographs. Unlike Mr 13 I never carried a camera so I will have to rely on what I can find that most closely resembles what I had and tell you where I stole borrowed nah, I had it right the first time stole it from.

Today I am going to tell you how I came to be the proud(?) owner of a battered Suzuki RV125, and my first day with it.

Photo uploaded by epinene to databikes.com

In the early 80s I drove a taxi in London. Not one of the ubiquitous black cabs, but a regular car known as a minicab. There were special rules for minicabs. The most important, the ones which, if you were caught in violation of, could get you hung, drawn and quartered, were you were not allowed to pick up passengers on the street, and you had to have "hire and reward" insurance. Expensive? Yeesh. A month of hire and reward insurance and a year of "third party fire and theft" or regular insurance cost about the same.

At the time I was driving a 2 litre Princess. A very smooth ride mid-range car, plenty of room. Also the first automatic I ever owned. 12 to 16 hours a day in central London traffic and suddenly you really appreciate the lack of a clutch pedal. Anyway, I'd better get on with the bike or I'll have to find another pic.

The car was in the shop due to some serious front end issues, so my boss said "Go to my house and collect an old Suzuki from my garage. It's yours. Courier with it while your car is off the road, and if I need an emergency courier." This would usually mean phoning me at home, since I usually worked nights.

So I grabbed a handheld radio, got a driver to get me to said garage, and behold, my first glimpse of my first Suzuki, my first 125, and my first sand bike. It was called a sand bike because it had abnormally fat, low-pressure tyres, great for beaches and dunes. None of these facts impressed me so much as the appearance, though. It was ugly. Even pristine like the photo would have been bad enough, but this bike had probably been through several world wars.

The horrid colour, that was there, but the lettering was scratched and scraped so that on the side facing me it was a SU. KI Rv(amorphous blob.) The blue mudguards were sort of present and sort of blue. It did have a top box, though, and a waterproof one to boot. That will come in handy later. The rest of the bike was scratched and/or dented, but nothing appeared broken bar one mirror. Nearside, so less important. Wait. I almost forgot the seat. Do you see where there is a little bump near the front of the seat? That was the front of my seat. The back end had suffered a similar fate, but there was more than enough left in the middle, liberally covered in silver duct tape, for me to park my arse.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating, they say. In the case of a bike it's more like can you feel anything when I do this? This? THIS Vroom ping ping ping vroom vroom. Vroom may seem an exaggeration, coming from a Japanese 125, but if you stop thinking 900 and think five-year-old on his tricycle instead you pretty much have it. Pop the clutch and we're off. With a whopping nine horses thrashing away beneath me I pointed the front wheel, as BigTom might say, and followed it toward Central London.

About halfway back, when I figured I was in range of our transmitter, I called in. "26 26." "26" was my call sign, doubled to increase the odds of being heard between other conversations. And again, "26 26." This time I got a response, not from our dispatcher but the boss himself. "26, how's the bike?" "I hope nobody I know sees me on it, but thank you very much. Seriously." "I have a job for you, 26. Multidrop in the City." He then handed me back to the dispatcher, who told me to go to one of our regular clients and "pick up several envelopes for the City." This becomes important shortly, but first ...

A little background here would be in order. London as many people know it is not a city. Sometimes it is a county, sometimes who knows what it is. Politically it has been LCC - London County Council, and GLC - Greater London Council, and others too numerous to mention. Not really, but "too numerous to mention" sounds more impressive than "I can't be arsed to look it up." Sometimes the Conservatives slice it up to create right-wing pockets, because as a whole London almost always votes solid Labour.

More background, I'm afraid, this time a partial explanation of postcodes. Like the US of A with its zipcodes, every locale in the UK has an identifying code. First is a one or two letter code which identifies the nearest city. "B" is for Birmingham, "M" is for Manchester, (in PC that might ought to be Personchester, but I've already said what I think of PC,) "BS" is for Bristol, etc. London is so big it has several primary codes. "N" is for North London, "SE" for SouthEast London, and so forth. For example, I once lived in "W2 2SE" in West London and for a while in "BS3 4QJ" in Bristol. I now live in "87032" in New Mexico, where the first two digits denote the general area. 87 is New Mexico like 90 is part of California.

Within London, which, as I said, is not a city, there are two actual cities. One is the City of Westminster. The other is the City of London. No, I'm not trying to confuse you. There is London and there is the City of London. The latter is usually referred to as "The City" or less often as "the square mile." Here is another of those inconsistencies I keep bombarding you with - it's actually 1.12 square miles, but we feel square mile scans better.

The City was the original London, with a wall around it built before even I was born. You can still find bits of the wall. Nowadays it is the financial centre of the United Kingdom, and absolutely dead on a Sunday morning. The postcodes for this sometimes lifeless landscape start either EC1 through 4 or WC1 or 2. Western Central and Eastern Central between them include all of the City of London, but also parts of the neighbouring boroughs. We often assume that WC and EC addresses are City addresses, it makes it easier.

So anyway, I'm barrelling along Euston Road towards my pickup at speeds sometimes in excess of 30 mph. The spec for this monstrosity claims a top speed of 60. Not in my universe. Finally I'm there, and being handed a pile of envelopes. I go out to my bike and start to sort them before dropping them in the top box. WC2, EC2, EC3, Greenwich ... Greenwich? Not only is that not the City, I'm not sure it's in the county!!! Streatham, SE. Cricklewood, NW. Shepherds Bush, W. Hackney, E. Highbury Corner, N. In all, there were 7 envelopes for addresses which could be loosely considered the City.

Okay, this is going to take some serious planning, so back to the office to lay it all out on our poker table. The boss takes one look and says give me the miles, the hours, the drops. We'll bill this whatever honest way gives you the best payment. So I develop a plan to do this the best way possible. City, then E to Greenwich, then SE, SW, W, NW, N. And I'm off.

A couple of banks and a newspaper in the City down and it starts to rain. Okay, I'm strong. It won't last long. I can take it. By Greenwich, which I think was my twelfth drop, I figured it was let's make Catweasel miserable day in somebody's mind. Undaunted was I. I was wet. I was not going to get any wetter. Even with windchill I wasn't cold. I'd made it this far, and I knew that however they sliced it up at the office I was due a good payout. I don't remember the payment, but I know I never uttered a word of complaint when it came.

At this point I decided to take off my shoes to pour them out and made an interesting discovery. Every other item of clothing I wore that day leaked. Including the yellow jacket I'd found in the top box, which I'm guessing could best be described as "light shower resistant." My shoes, on the other hand, did not let out a drop.

Trust me, I'm a doctor.
Catweasel

186,000 miles a second may be fast, but it's the law.

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