New Year, New Road Trip

This time last year I was going on 71 and frankly I was content that I was still able to get out on two wheels, whether it was because it was the most convenient way of getting to where I needed to go or simply because the sun was shining and I felt like a jolly.

Generally those jollies were restricted to roundtrips of no more than about 250 miles and to be honest I hadn’t really given much thought to whether or not my touring days might be over, but the likelihood seemed to have unconsciously receded as my personal odometer continued to roll relentlessly forward. Then last July it occurred to me that it was my 50th summer on a bike and unless I was planning to simply coast slowly downhill until I tipped into my grave, I really needed to do something to mark a significant milestone.

What followed was a delightful ‘Last Hurrah’, which took me around the UK mainland; and of course by the time I’d finished my tour, it was obvious that, accidents and illnesses aside, it was a lot more likely to be the first in a series of septuagenerian sorties than a line drawn beneath my two-wheeled adventures.

I’d initially hoped to secure a big scooter for the journey – because that’s what I’ve been riding for the last 20 odd years – but I ended up loving the Super Meteor 650 that Royal Enfield were good enough to loan me at ridiculously short notice, not least for the increased ‘cred’ it provided me with among my fellow motorcyclists.

As I observed at the end of my write up, “I couldn’t help smiling at my initial idea of doing the trip on a scooter because after finding myself re-immersed in a waving/nodding/foot-waggling world for nine days, it was a sharp reminder of the many fellow bikers who normally treat me and my fellow step-through riders as somehow unworthy of their acknowledgement.”

As Spring has sprung all around me I’ve begun to find more and more excuses to use my scooter and I’ve been quickly and rudely reminded that many, if not most of my fellows of the road, are much too contemptuous of scooters to acknowledge their rider’s existence.

Which is pretty ironic when you consider I have over half a century of riding experience (including the years I put in as a London courier in the ‘70s and ‘80s); that I owned – and thoroughly enjoyed – a 900SS in my twenties; that I’ve ridden scooters like the Gilera GP800, which is powered by an 850 Aprilia V-twin but still elicited the same non response; and I crippled my right leg couple of decades ago in an RTA and consequently a feet-forward automatic was my obvious choice to stay mobile (including the couple of years when I used to bungee my crutches to my scoot).

So how much does it distress me when supercilious poseurs (who’ve invariably paid more for their riding kit and hard luggage than I’ve ever shelled out for a bike – the Duke cost me less than £2k in 1983) snub me? Considering they will almost certainly have had a fraction of my riding experience (which means they couldn’t possibly have been around to enjoy bikes in their mad, bad, pre hi-tech speed enforcement heyday, whereas forty-odd years ago I was exploring the limits of my Ducati, while their pop was probably tear-arsing around on an X7 trying to impress their mum enough to maybe see about some baby making possibilities), to be honest I’m surprised my smugness doesn’t hit them like a speedboat’s wake as our paths cross.

Having said that, it has occurred to me that due to the limited range of my travels, the snobbery I’ve been encountering may well be largely a London and the southeast thing. Perhaps if I had toured the UK on a super scoot last year, the sports bike pilots in full leathers in the wilds of Wales and the GS adventurers with the aluminium luggage in the Scottish glens, would all have greeted me as a brother well met; but I’ll never know – as Aztec Camera put it “Life’s a one take movie”.

However, having decided that I should probably be thinking about another extended road trip, I’ve decided that I’m going to do this one on a scooter, even if I have to fall back on my trusty 400 Burgman, which is sure to provide me with ample opportunities to explore the universality or otherwise, of the code of the road.

Devon and Cornwall are so far off on their own that they never stood a chance of making it onto the itinerary for my ‘Last Hurrah’, so the southwest seems like the obvious mainland destination for my next adventure.

Watch this space

Dave Gurman