PhilHydePhotos: Late-Life Crisis

The mid-life crisis passed me by without my succumbing to the age-old wish to buy a motorbike. I am told that this urge is a way to recapture one’s youth. Well, it is true that I had a motorbike in my youth, but I’m not too sure that I wanted to recapture those moments.

My prize possession was a Royal Enfield 250. It cost me 25 quid to buy, and more buckets of sweat and tears than you can shake a stick at to keep it going (hmmm… a strange but beguiling metaphor…)

Thanks to my dear brother throwing a spanner in the works by proving, beyond doubt, to Mum & Dad that motorbikes are not good for your health, I was not allowed to buy one. However, being a little rebel (nah) I secretly bought one whilst at university without them knowing.

Well, of course they new. The complex web of deceit such as driving up from London and parking the bike around the corner, cannot have been too effective considering my backpack then had to conceal my crash helmet etc. In the good old tradition of not talking about elephants in the room, the subject was discreetly avoided, leading to the ‘Bizarre Incident in Burtons’.

Both Mum and Dad could see that I needed a protective jacket, but would not speak of why it was necessary. Whilst selecting a jacket in Burtons in Letchworth high street, the shop assistant enquired if the purchase was to be used for riding a motorbike. The response from all three of us was a word lying somewhere between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and sounding more like a cat giving birth…

Being a cheap heap of junk owned by someone who didn’t know the front end of an engine from the rear, my not-so-prize possession spent more time in pieces than on the road (always with a couple of spare bits left over on reconstruction). Each morning consisted of the ritual ‘starting of the motor’. Normal kick-starting rarely worked (electrical ignition was but a dream in those pre-Cambrian days). Luckily (or not) I then lived in digs at the top of a hill. Pushing the bike down the hill to bump start it was easy. Pushing the bloody thing back up when it refused to start was not…

The end was nigh when on a trip north of London to see my cousin Valerie, I noticed that the thick black smoke emanating from the exhaust pipe, that had been annoying me for some time (and those behind me), finally stopped. This, I thought. was good news! Presumably whatever had been wrong had miraculously healed itself!

Nope.

The resulting lack of any oil at all caused the engine to explode in a pitiful example of a damp squib. Thus I discovered what a ‘big-end’ was.

Therefore; no. The urge to buy a motorbike in middle-age was dampened by my memories of reality.

Then arrives ‘late-age’…

Why oh why did I not buy one of these amazing machines before? It is powerful, feels fast (but isn’t) gets you anywhere (almost) and is amazingly stable. The small fact that they are statistically more likely to kill you than a motorbike seems of little relevance. My decision to stay safe by not going off-road lasted all of twenty seconds.

This thing gets you places inaccessible to anything other than horses or feet. And what does that mean? Photo-opportunities!

A couple of days ago I went with Kim & Mike right to the top of the local Pyrénées (the ridge Artigescou) where the views were absolutely totally stunning!