Whalan: circa 1973.
Not having a 250 class bike at the time and not being overawed by Maico 250s I'd picked up a nice 250 CZ for a good price from a bloke in our club who was going into gaol. In a rush to get it ready for an upcoming Amaroo MX I spent the usual Saturday doing what we all do to pre race prep our bike. After oiling, adjusting, fuelling and polishing the CZ I decided to start he up to make sure everything was working okey dokey. Being young and bulletproof I didn't think I'd need to go inside and put a pair of boots on to kick her over. The thongs would do, it was only a pissy 250 afterall and I had gone through the RT1 Yamaha kickstart initiation. If I could kick one of those bastards over, I could kick anything.
I was correct in the estimation of my ability with a kicker. The CZ fired right up with only a slight jarring sensation through my thong clad left foot. I clicked her into first and took off down the street with no obvious problems. On the return journey I noticed that I'd left a trail of fluid up the road so, wondering what it was, looked down to see if I'd left a fuel line off or an oil plug had come out. That's when I saw the blood gushing out of the gaping hole in the instep of my left foot with blood pumping out like a garden hose. It seems I'd caught my foot on the serrated footpeg during the kick start arc but for some reason hadn't felt any pain. That is until I saw the 3"x2" flap of instep flesh flopping in the wind and the gush of blood that by now had covered the engine, back wheel and my left leg. I rode into my driveway just as my mums friend Betty arrived and as soon as she saw the bloodworks she promptly fainted right there in front of me on the driveway. I stalled the bike, jumped off and lay on the lawn trying to figure what to do. All of the noise, blood and what looked like a dead Betty on the driveway drew the attention of my neighbour who, upon seeing the blood assumed I'd run Betty over so he started to work on her. The drama all seemed to take minutes but I suppose in real time from kicking the bike right through to hitting the lawn probably only took 30 seconds but during that time I must have lost a couple of pints of blood. My neighbour ran into my house and got my mum to call 000 and within 2 minutes an Ambo was there to rush me to Blacktown hospital where they sewed over 20 internal and external stitches into the instep of my left foot. I was in hospital for three or four days and you can imagine the flack I got from doctors for not only riding a motorcycle but daring to do it in thongs! To this day the scar is still quite noticable and I've never had full feeling in that part of my foot since.
I've never tried starting a bike in thongs again either.
