I had just completed my A-levels and had done rather better than expected... as an incentive Dad had promised me £1,000 for every A grade I achieved in my exams. I surprised everybody by getting three A's and blew the winnings within a week on the GS500E. Sam received a similar windfall at the same time and carefully banked his sum. He used it as the capital for the extortionate loan company he operated through University, by far his most reliable customer was his flatmate Amreet.
I picked up the bike on a sunny summer's evening. Dad and I took our bikes for a blast, heading along the flat (and occasionally bumpy) fen roads that followed the course of dykes. I really enjoyed this first ride. Even with its restriction the GS500 had loads more torque than the RS125 making it much easier to ride and also more forgiving. It was a lot heavier than the Aprilia but the riding position was more comfortable.
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| Suzuki GS500E |
The rest of mum's brothers arrived and made similar mean comments... lawn mower etc. Of course, I shouldn't attach any significance to this and Mum's side of the family all speak like this - I suppose these days it's called banter. It's never designed to truly wound and never oversteps boundaries from which it cannot return.
With a restrictor kit the GS500 could manage around 85mph flat out - slightly slower than the Aprilia but this is due to the extra weight, aerodynamics and the fact the Suzuki was never intended to run at 33bhp whereas the Aprilia was running as the factory had intended.
The first person to ride pillion (legally) on my bike was my girlfriend of the time Sarah, although she spelled it Sara and then got annoyed when people called her Sara. Only three details of this event remain with me: the first was mum saying: "be careful, it's precious cargo" as I left. Secondly, getting into trouble cornering flat-out where the Frank Perkins parkway became the Fletton Parkway and being surprised at how unstable a bike felt at speed, two-up, cornering and braking. I still hadn't quite got my head around the physics of a motorbike. Finally, that I had turned the engine idle adjuster erroneously when I was looking for a choke. I showed Sara's dad my bike and when I started it up it nearly hit the limiter and I had to pretend that was perfectly normal.
One of its first big trips was a run to Heptonstall, near Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, for an Arvon Foundation poetry writing course on which I had enrolled to support my university application to study Creative Writing. It was November but I got quite lucky with the weather and set off in bright sunshine. It could have been a beautiful ride through the Peak District but I chose to take the A1 all the way up to the M62. Of course, I missed the Halifax turn off and nearly ended up in Manchester. Even despite getting lost and stopping for a long lunch, I arrived very early. I had given myself seven hours for a two hour trip.
I hadn't got my top box fitted by this stage, so my possessions for the week were all tied with bungee straps to the pillion seat. I think one of the unnecessary items I hauled all the way to Yorkshire was a chain and lock. I used to be more fastidious about securing my bike, these days I'm more willing to chance it. I remember always riding around with a chain around my neck like a Feldgendarmerie. This was so dangerous, I can't believe I used to do it.
I had more adventures in Heptonstall than the Suzuki, although one of the 'poets' there did write a poem about the bike which he shared with me on the last day. It was an acrostic poem built around the word ARVON - I can only remember this because one of the lines was "Vrooming down to Heptonstall", which - even then - struck me as so clunky I made a mental note to never attempt an acrostic of my own. It was a strange episode because I had barely spoken to this man all week. As an 18-year-old I was a bit alien in the middle-class, middle-aged, wine sipping society of the Arvon Foundation. I suppose he was feeling romantic and inspired in the refined poetic air of the retreat and saw a teenager on a motorbike and imagined himself young. Maybe he even went back to Barnes and made an ill-advised purchase from the local Triumph dealer. Let's hope so.
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| Rendez-vous at a service station outside Leeds and the only photos of the bike |
We stopped for a Little Chef (Dad's particular weakness at this time) and decided the Peak District would have to wait for another day. It was a few years more before I would ride through the Peaks, but I fell in love with them instantly. On the long blast down the A1 I triggered a speed camera near Nottingham and got a £70 fine and three points on my licence.
At the poetry course I met Sophie, a Conservative, horsey-type with aristocratic pretensions and the most shameless self-promoter I've ever met - with her exaggerations regularly straying to the fantastic. Within minutes of meeting her you learn her grandfather and Laurence (meaning Olivier) regularly dined with the Reagans. Of course I fell for it all. The King's School Peterborough had been awash with the dullest kind of girls - daughters of lawyers, accountants, local businessmen. They were so deeply infused with the deadliest aspects of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism and were destined, by and large, for lives of slow rot which might flower into post-menopausal alcoholism. Sophie was very confused, and she was a liar and a show-off but she wasn't dull.
She lived in an old country cottage in Rutland and I used the Suzuki to visit her. It was a lovely ride down the Welland valley through Harringworth, with its railway viaduct, and Wakerley Woods. It was at the White Swan in Harringworth where Sophie and I finished dead last in the Tuesday night quiz - I took it with sport but her pride was piqued, especially after she insisted on calling our two-man team 'Stronger than MENSA'. Anyway, I always used to ride too fast down this road and would regularly get caught out by agricultural detritus spread across the road by tractors. Once Sophie and the animal aunt, which is a live-in helper who babysits your pets while you're on holiday (yes, I was surprised this was a thing too!) were returning from taking the dogs for a walk in the local quarry. The animal aunt pulled out onto the road without looking just as I arrived. I slammed on the brakes but it wasn't enough and had to career onto the grass verge, somehow I stayed upright. Neither the animal aunt or Sophie had considered the episode particularly remarkable but I was white and shaking.
I made a few modifications to my GS500E over the years... some good, some bad. The good included a top box, the automatic chain oiler and the wind shield. The most egregious was when I replaced the perfectly adequate single front chrome headlamp with an ugly fox-eye streetfighter style light. It was a white plastic and clashed with the rest of the bike. Also the lights were half the strength of the standard lamp and made riding at night very dangerous - as I found out once on a snowy ride back from Northampton. To make matters worse I tried to spray it blue to match the rest of the bike using a colour that looked (on the cap) not dissimilar. Of course, I now know it's better to contrast entirely than attempt to match and arrive just two or three shades too short. It was such a mess I had to scrap the project and fit my old headlamp - which incredibly went back on without a hitch. Or so I thought!
During my bodged mechanics I had loosened a wire from the ignition loom that had once been safely zip tied. Over the months the wire rubbed when I turned and eventually wore through, causing a short circuit and the battery to drain. I had to call the RAC out on several occasions before the fault was diagnosed. Once I broke down approaching the Hardwick roundabout in Kings Lynn and had to be towed all the way home.
This wasn't the biggest mechanical fault the bike suffered. That award almost certainly goes to the engine seizing on the fast lane of the A1(M) on the way back from Brands Hatch. It was a beautiful summer day, the racing had been great and I was following Dad on a Triumph Speed Four he had borrowed. I heard a painful clunk from below and the sound of locked metal being twisted and bent. I pulled the clutch in and fortunately managed to navigate three lanes of traffic to coast to the relative safety of the hard shoulder. It was some time before Dad realised I was missing and even longer before he could turn around and retrace his steps. It was obvious that engine was never going to start again and I had to sit on the bank under a setting sun watching other bikes howling past as I waited for another tow-truck.
This incident could have been the end of the GS500E. Replacing the engine was - perhaps - only just cost effective providing I could find a sympathetic mechanic prepared to do the dirty work. Dad and I sourced an engine from a scary breakers yard in the darkest fens. The engine number had been sanded away and the new engine was silver, and not black. One of Richard Marson's old mechanics was then operating from his garage in Turves and he agreed to remove the old and fit the new. The operation was a success and my Suzuki had risen from the ashes.
I kept the motorbike with me in Norwich throughout my time at University. It was really useful, particularly when I was living off campus. I could also use it to travel back and forth from Norwich to Peterborough rather than taking the X94 bus which took about two-and-a-half hours. Once I had to sit next to a guy in his early 20s who had just been released from prison in Norwich that morning and was on his way home to Lynn. He was already on his third beer and was in the mood for a big night out to celebrate his release. At that moment he was chirpy and peaceful but every so often he betrayed a flicker of madness and I guessed he might be back inside before the night was out. I remember one journey back to Norwich on Bonfire Night. I had been in Thorney to watch the MotoGP season finale at Valencia. It was a cloudless night and all along the way I watched fireworks fizzing, bursting and showering.
One of the problems I had was my hands getting cold - I had always suffered with poor circulation but the longer journeys to Norwich made the pain unbearable at times. I used to make frequent stops on the A47 to hold the exhaust while my hands warmed up... a little too quickly sometimes and I branded a few pairs of leather gloves in this way. I experimented with mittens, silk liners and once even wore several pairs of the plastic diesel gloves from a petrol station but to no avail. I once attached bar muffs and although they offered some succour they never fitted properly and just pulled slightly at the front levers so my brake light was permanently glowing. I've no idea why I didn't fit heated grips, nowadays I can't live without them and they are the only thing that works.
I remember once having to pick Sam up from Peterborough station. He had just got back from New Zealand where he'd be on a 'medical placement' - which is the Maori word for skiing and drinking. Incredibly, nobody come to meet him from the airport after the 11,500 mile flight. Even worse, nobody had come to meet him from Peterborough station. I stepped up and picked him up on the GS500E with one bag in the top box and his cricket bag full of dirty laundry strapped with bungee hooks to the back. We were completely over the recommended weight limit and all the weight was on the back wheel. It was the vaguest and most wallowing ride I've ever had. I had invented a new type of anti-dive forks. We got home without incident.
Despite six years of loyal service and mechanical abuse the Suzuki met a sad end. I got a job working for Motor Cycle News (MCN) and suddenly had access to all of the latest bikes, what's more, Emap would pick up the petrol tab. Slowly the Suzuki retreated into the shadows as it shared garage space with Ducati Monster S4Rs and BMW R1200LTs. Eventually I decided to sell Suzi. It wasn't a great idea because insurance was so cheap, it was mechanically sound and would have been really useful in a couple of years time when I was living in London and working at the Press Association. I sold it to an old chap who worked in Perkins and wanted a reliable commuter. He gave me £900 and wobbled off down the road with his wife following in the car. I wasn't sorry to see it go, I'm ashamed to say. I had a BMW F800S in the garage.
Occasionally I saw the Suzuki around Peterborough. I guessed the new owner lived in Eye so we passed one another. Of course, he couldn't recognise me... I had a different bike every week. Under my dark visor I always felt slightly guilty... like bumping into an ex-girlfriend on the street when you're with a younger, more attractive model. The six years with the Suzuki had been an important time in my life. I went from leaving school to unemployment (which I called a gap year), through my University years, and then finally into my first serious job. It's funny that in all the time I owned this bike the only tour I ever made was to Heptonstall. I couldn't even find a photo of me with the bike and I believe there exist only two photos of the bike (taken on the return from Heptonstall at the Motorway services where I met Dad).
In brief, the Suzuki was a true work-horse and served me very well.
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