[Sid Squid]

I'd been around motorcycles all my life, my dad rode as did his brother and some of my parents friends too, but the first proper ride rather then just up and down the street where I live was this:

Originally Posted by Sid Squid

My first ever trip on a bike on the road was when I was four, a Triumph with the luggage rack on the tank, (I think it was a T110 - it was a while ago), belonging to my Mum and Dad's friend Larry, being as I was very short, (I still am), I coudn't reach the footrests so I sat in front of Larry on the tank and held on to the rack, helmets were not compulsory then and no-one seemed particularly worried about such things.
I remember every inch of that short trip so vividly; from my house then turn right onto Mansfield Road, through the lights and past the Stag, across South End Green and up Donkeystand Hill, around the Whitestone Pond and along Spaniards Road through the old toll gate then onto Hampstead lane to Highgate, turn right at the Gatehouse and past The Flask, down Highgate West Hill and then right onto Gordon House Road, under the railway bridges at Gospel Oak, (ohhhh the noise!), onto Mansfield Road and then back into my street. I wished it wouldn't end so soon.

It's very difficult to put yourself in the shoes of a four year old, memories fade and the capacity for wide eyed wonder is something that age somehow breeds out of us. That brief memory from *cough-cough* years ago is so burnt upon my memory that I can close my eyes and, almost, take myself back there now to that wonderful moment when I was so speechlessly astonished by that fantastic experience. I think I grinned for a month, and I knew that this was something I wanted to do too - I so wanted a motorbike and I became utterly obsessed by them.