By the time I bought the Aprilia RS125 I was already hooked on bikes...
The sensible thing would have been to pass my driving test and buy a Ford Fiesta but I was determined not to drive. Instead I did the least sensible thing and bought a peaky, precious Italian sports bike. It was a Valentino Rossi replica - perhaps one of the only bike racers who needs no introduction. At this time he wasn't the multiple World Champion but a cocky, clowning and
unbeatable teenager.
I bought the RS125 from a strange chap in Leicester. He kept birds of prey and had previously owned an RS50... which he promptly traded in for an RS125... which he then promptly sold to me. When I collected the bike the engine still wasn't run-in and had to be kept below 7,000rpm - easier said than done on a high-revving two-stroke with a power-band that began somewhere approaching 10,000rpm.
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| Another awful pose in the back garden |
It was bitter-sweet - on one hand I had the bike of my teenage dreams, on the other I hand both my hands were broken. I'm not certain Mum thought buying another bike was a very good idea and I suspect Dad was an important advocate in the backroom negotiations. He certainly lent me the considerable sum required to buy the bike, insurance and new leathers. I would have to work Sunday and Monday nights at Sainsbury's to pay off the loan, leaving very little for Friday night beers. I was supposed to save money by giving up smoking, a habit I'd acquired a year earlier. Giving up smoking and a life of asceticism proved harder than I'd expected. All the more so because it was around this time Lucas Gardiner introduced me to fruit machines, which proved a very expensive distraction from smoking.
The torture of owning an Aprilia RS125 and not being able to ride it proved too great. One day when everybody was out I wheeled it out of the garage and down the road. Despite a plaster cast on my right wrist I took if for a spin. It was very painful and unquestionably dangerous. Operating the throttle was clumsy and I had no chance of grabbing the front brake in an emergency. When I got back home I jumped off the bike and pushed it back down the close. Next door neighbour Chris was loading his car and very interested in my new bike - he once owned a Yamaha F51E and had lots of dull stories to share.
A week later I went to hospital to have my cast cut off. The right wrist had healed well but the X-ray showed the hairline fracture on my left wrist was more serious than they had initially thought. The doctor wanted to put this in plaster and I had to beg him to reconsider. He wasn't happy and warned I might get arthritis later in life. I must have bolted from the hospital. Later in life was the distant future, by then we'd probably all have hover cars and robot servants. There was no way I could wait another two weeks to ride.
It was a decision I've regretted ever since. I first noticed the wrist pain a few years later when I was riding on cold days. It was nothing serious but it reminded me of the day I refused the plaster cast. Insidiously it deteriorated. Last year when I was in Peru a taxi driver let go of my suitcase as I was unloading it from his car, my wrist twisted under the weight and it was agony. I waited a month or two but it was still troubling me so I went for a scan. The x-ray revealed the old trauma and showed where the bone had calcified as it healed like a small talon on a cockerel's heel. It was rubbing against the bone and becoming inflamed. I wish I could say those two extra November weeks spent on an RS125 had been worthwhile.
I had planted all my teenage hopes and dreams in the RS125 - that they failed to flower, let alone bear fruit was an important life lesson. I imagined that owning this bike would make everything better - but of course it didn't, because it's just a bike. The same is true of any object you covet.
I thought my Aprilia would grant admittance into the biking world. I thought that it would be accepted, even admired, by other bikers. Or that you only needed to ride up and park and you would be surrounded by a group of fellows, ready to offer instant friendship and understanding. This isn't how life works.
Once on a relatively sunny day early in the year I rode out to Carnell - the motorcycle dealership in Eye. In the summer it used to host hundreds of bikers, who would admire each other's bikes, smoke, drink tea and eat bacon butties. On the day I arrived the car park was empty except three young men on 600cc sports bikes. I parked on the other side of the car park and approached them nervously. I had barely taken my helmet off and said hello when one of them told me my bike had just fallen off its side stand. I was mortified but inexplicably disguised it and instead feigned indifference - more: "Not again!" We strolled over and I could barely bring myself to inspect the damage. Luckily it wasn't too bad, just a cracked indicator and a few slight scuffs. We made awkward conversation for a few more minutes. They were heading off on a 'blast' and didn't invite me along. I rode home to polish the scratches out my bike.
Of course, I did have one biking buddy at this time - my Dad. Sadly, for the company and the time we spent together I was completely ungrateful and unappreciative but now I've come to realise that it doesn't really matter. You are confused about everything at 17 so this is just one more thing to add to a long list. When the BMF show came to Peterborough I stubbornly insisted that I should go without him - lying to him, and myself, that I was going to hang around with my bike instructor Martin (a grim, ex-marine who rode a Kawasaki Zephyr and undoubtedly saw me for exactly what I was). Instead I spent a lonely day on my own trying to make my £7.30 stretch as far as possible and pretending to enjoy the 'Moped Mayhem' while sucking on a Marlboro Light because I'd failed to quit.
From my current perspective I now appreciate our time together - sometimes fixing cracked expansion boxes, replacing punctured tyres, or sat on a muddy bank somewhere in the Midlands watching hours of windswept racing with only a mug of coffee and a cavernous picnic bag filled with Minstrels, Jaffa Cakes, Pringles, Choco Leibniz and cement dry, single-ingredient sandwiches that no tomato could ever touch. We certainly ventured further afield now my engine capacity had more than doubled and the Aprilia would have visited Donington, Cadwell, and Mallory Park.
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| Biking buddies - the gang nobody wanted to join |
I refused to ride the RS125 on L-plates because I wanted to be taken seriously. I was very lucky the police never stopped me because there's no way I could have kept my cool under interrogation. The bike was de-restricted and was probably making around 27-30bhp. It was a lot of power for such a light bike and cruising at 80mph was easy. Magazines would report a top speed of close to 100mph but this seems unlikely looking back. That said, I did once see 100mph on the speedometer along the Castor bypass.
In theory I was supposed to pass my bike test on the RS125 but I had little interest in learning. I was getting lessons from Cam Rider in Eye, under the watch of Martin in his tassled-leather trousers. I was cocky and over-confident and probably a complete pain in the arse. For his part, he made unscheduled stops at the bike accessories dealer next door to Hein-Gericke where a sales girl he fancied was working called Xena - like the warrior princess. I was happy just to be part of the circle and didn't mind so much that my class time was being swallowed by idle chit-chat. Looking back I think they were all laughing at me because I was nervous, over-compensating and desperate to fit-in. I would say how I was thinking of going racing in the Honda Hornet Cup and other such fantasies.
Performing the U-turn on my Aprilia was a real challenge because of its steering lock. It was possible but required a lot of practice and no margin for error. When I came to take my test I completed the U-turn successfully but locked the rear-wheel on the emergency stop. The bike was so light and the brakes were so good that I probably stopped from 30mph in half the distance most of the CG125s could manage.
I was devastated to fail but was unaccustomed to success at this time (it was only at University that I would learn how much effort goes into success). I'm certain I went into my first bike test resigned to failing and it was certainly no surprise when the examiner confirmed the news. It was no surprise to Martin either, who was waiting at the test centre. He had little consolation.
I had taken the morning off school to take my test and rode home crestfallen (rather than to school). Mum was in the kitchen and the news of failure did not go down well. She pulled her: "Tell me the truth... now I know you're joking" trick. Once she'd accepted my failure she said: "Even thick Anthony Pacey in the village passed his test." For once I was too disappointed in myself to argue, although I did marvel at her imagination - Anthony Pacey was a boy we went to primary school with and somebody I had not seen or spoken to since leaving... that his name should come to me at the dark moment made it stick to this day and it has acquired a curious aftershock.
I took the failure of my bike test very badly and no longer wanted to ride my bike. Instead I saw it as a financial burden that was forcing me to suffer the indignity of working on a checkout in Sainsbury's for minimum wage. A punctured tyre and several other unexpected repair bills had only deepened my levels of debt. In the end I decided to sell the bike. It sold in no time at all and instead of an Aprilia RS125 I had a bedroom drawer filled with £20 notes. I got a decent price and was just about able to pay off my debt to Dad... but not quite. I remember being nearly in tears as I watched this middle-aged stranger ride away on my bike.
I was back on the Derbi Senda once again but I was determined to pass my test and buy a 'proper' bike. It hadn't been a particularly happy time with the Aprilia, but then it wasn't a happy time for me in life - so it's a bit unfair to expect the bike to medicate. One of the happiest moments I had was picking up my girlfriend of the time and taking her to school on her birthday. I was not supposed to carry a pillion so I had to smuggle a second helmet out of the house in the morning. I'm very surprised Mette's mother allowed her daughter to go on a bike, particularly considering I had crashed only months earlier. Perhaps in those brief moments - and we're talking a journey of only five minutes - I was fulfilling the dreams I had imagined when I bought the RS125.
Like the Derbi Senda, the RS125 is now almost certainly with Jesus.
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