At the, almost teen, age of 12 years old and after many years of harping on to my parents about having a minibike I, finally, came into possession of a 125cc Victa powered Deltek Rockhopper. A damn fine machine with a CHROME fuel tank and well.. what was supposed to be, front and rear suspension.
After being caught by my Dad trying to swap the 160cc Victa from his lawnmower into the Rocky and about 850 thousand laps of the backyard... one afternoon I broke free and rode down to some open parkland.
Alas... not content with the freedom of riding in this huge space I gazed in awe at a large, compacted pile of dirt that had been pushed up by dozer, my destiny, a 6 foot jump that had to be conquered. Nothing could go wrong... I was wearing a genuine imitation cardboard plastic Centurion Helmet which gave me much confidence as it was meant to be a safety device to protect me from injury and was bright orange.
My confidence and speed were both up to the challenge and as i left the top jump everything felt good. That was until the landing!
I hit with an extremely large thud, the suspension bottomed in milliseconds, my chin dropped through the handlebars and whacked the top of the forks, both my feet came off the footpegs and dragged along the ground .... and worst of all, I bloody broke the thong I was wearing on my right foot!!!.
Gee... It was only 18 months after I had flipped my billy cart, fractured my wrist in three places AND broken my RIGHT THONG!!!
Lucky it was only a thong that I had broken on the Rocky or Mum would have been really angry
I find that at 49 years old I now cannot ride anything without wearing gloves, it feels strange to operate the levers and throttle on a handlebar without them. I need to wear a helmet as my ears are bloody noisy above 100kph.
And I cannot believe the large number of road riders who wear short pants
Aren't motorcycle motors and exhaust pipes hot anymore
When they have their first good off on the tar I guess they will, like I did, learn how important good gear is to protect you.
I'm not trying to judge how others ride, but I've learn't my lessons
