The accidental biker

I grew up around cars, thanks to my uncle Albie. Young and moneyed from his work in nearby copper-mines, he always had to have the fastest car in town. The town is O’kiep, 8 kms north of Springbok. It was the mid-seventies. Disco, afros, platform-heels and bell-bottoms. I wasn’t in school yet, and I was already hooked on anything with wheels. I drew very well at that young age already, and just about all my drawings were about cars, trucks and trains.

Uncle Albie, well, I call him Boeta, owned some of the fastest and most furious machines of the time. That meant gas-guzzlers like the Ford Capri 3.0 V6 and Fairmont 5.0 V8 that set the dusty streets of O’kiep alight with smoking rubber (up till recently he still had a red '71 Holden Monaro).

And did I revel in it! One of my strongest memories is sitting in the backseat of his Fairmont during a dice with his best buddy, who had a Mazda Capella 616 rotary.

My favourite was always the Capri however. I have the lines of the Ford Capri etched into my memory; I could redraw it faithfully from that early age on.

Until a few years ago, the fat tyres of the Capri was still lying around my grandmother’s house – stripped of the treat with the wires exposed!

My toy collection was, needles to say, largely cars. At the age of 15 I was still playing with car toys; a huge source of embarrassment for my mother at the time. I had scrapbooks pasted full of car pictures.

The Porsche 911, Ferrari 308 and Lamborghini Countach are car shapes I could recognise early on, from being immersed in the magazines, TV programmes and movies of the time. Being in a poor rural part of the country, it would take many, many years before I would actually see some of these cars in the metal. My favourite TV programme, of course was, Knight Rider (Pontiac Trans-am); followed by Magnum PI (Ferrari 308 GTS), and favourite movies included Cannonball Run and Smokie and the Bandit. The Pontiac Firebird became one of my first four-wheel idols.

I was only vaguely aware of motorbikes at the time, and the pictures of the six-cylinder Honda CBX1000 that I saw in magazines, stands out for me.

Having dropped out of my studies, and trying to make a living without having to conform to the rules of this world, the rebellious nature of biking took hold of my spirit in the mid-nineties. I shaved my had, got an earring, bought a second-hand black leather jacket, and went looking for a fight. I was a misplaced young man, riding on the steam of an anger that I did not understood.
But it did not matter, because it gave me a sense of identity. Weekend nights I hung out in Waterkant Street, where the mad bikers congregated around St Georges Pub and the Crow Bar. With my black Leather Jacket I was one of them. Everybody assumed I had a bike. I lived the fantasy fuelled by movies like Easy Rider and Kawasaki and the Harley Davidson Man. I felt, if not exactly free, at least defined.

But it was not until, until half a decade later, that Zorro, an eccentric student friend of mine from Venda, got a small scooter that we puttered around the campus (yes, I went back to the books) with one day. Zorro had several small bikes over his time on campus, but with a mind drowning in a fantasy sea of fast cars and bikes, I hardly took notice.

It was not until Eddie took hold of a rather lovely Honda MB50 from Zorro that the thought slowly crept into my mind; could I possibly really actually own one of these?

When Eddie got a Yamaha 125 Electric (also from Zorro), I took the brave step to learn to ride on it. The thing was a mechanical nightmare and most of my anxiety came from fearing it would die under me, rather than crashing.

Finally having a proper job, I could afford what I considered to be a “proper” bike – a 1984 Suzuki GSX400FW, that was painted a strange egg-yellow. But my time on the Yamaha 125 did not prepare me for this thing; the throttle was so sensitive and snappy, I could not ride it.

I made a public spectacle of myself in Waterkant Street, as I inched forward with fear and dropped the bike. Eventually I parked it and refused to get back on.

Friends had to ride it home. I was embarrassed and petrified; how was I ever gonna ride a bike?
The weekend, with no one looking, I started the bike, snicked it into second gear instead of first, and slowly rode off. I went around the block slowly, staying in second gear all the time, to afraid to change up, but gaining speed and confidence.

I started playing with the gears, practicing changing up and down. The bike fortunately had a gear position indicator, helping me not to loose track of where I was in the gears. Eventually I felt comfortable enough, and headed out into the street, and the traffic.

And this is the moment where my biking life truly started. Opening the throttle, savouring the wind in my face, the thrilling vibrations and intoxicating exhaust note, I knew the dream had become real.

Cars startled me at the traffic light, but I twisted my wrist, and they disappeared in my rear-view mirror. I could not get the grin of my face for days.

It is five years later now, and I never looked back since.