WONDER WHO ELSE RODE ON
THE ROADS OF THE GREAT ISLE?
WORDS: ROGER MORONEY
This guy’s been to the Isle of Man a few times… have you?
Email us at iom@kiwirider.co.nz and let us know if you have or it’s on your bucket list
M
otorcyclists huh?
There’s a few of ‘em about… although
you wouldn’t know it until the odd word
is raised and spoken.
Which happens when you end up swapping scar
stories… for whatever reason. You’re chatting
with someone you slightly know and to break
the stalled conversation, and to get it away from
having a rev at The Trump or debating what
they’ll call the next dodgy virus to emerge from
the East, you may lightly ask about that ferocious
looking old scar on their left knee.
Nope, wasn’t knee surgery for an old rugger
injury, or the result of walking through a glass
door without realising it was still closed… they
fell off a bloody motorbike years and years ago.
Aha! you declare as you raise the long drawn
right trouser shorts leg up a tad, yep, ditto.
So, then you ask what they were riding and they
reply and then ask what you were riding and
next thing you know The Trump and viruses
have been completely eradicated from the
conversational landscape.
There are a couple of chaps I’ve known for a
while but the subject of motorcycling never
came up because I didn’t assume they would
have taken on the occasional two-wheeled foray.
On one occasion one of the lads, who runs a
88 KIWI RIDER
small business, was wearing a T-shirt with a
small Yamaha emblem on it.
Pianos, guitars or bikes? I enquired. He said
one of the kids got it for him because they
knew that ‘years ago’ he had a motorbike.
So we veered into the past and he had briefly
played aboard a very early two-stroke Yamaha
250, which had cooling fins instead of a radiator.
He knew I’d had bikes, and the occasional
misadventures, but I never knew he did.
And a couple of veterans of the halcyon bar
and party faze of the 50s and 60s who I meet
up with for an ale occasionally both had
motorcycles at some stage, before swerving
into four-wheel land.
Bikes like BSA Bantams and Enfields. And yep,
they had the occasional unintended liaison
between knee and tar seal. And lots of fun of
course.
A few weeks back an old chum of mine,
who I’d known through a shared love of the
Southampton football club for about 20 years,
passed away. He was a noble and fine and decent
and great chap was old Brian, and he knew I liked
motorcycles. A few years back he popped by to
see me and dropped off a couple of remarkable
old Isle of Man TT transfers… they would have
emerged from the 60s I reckon.