The motor cycle racing season is well and truly up and vrooming.
Our spiritual wean, James “Wee Man” McCann is off to Bishop’s Court and like any spiritual mammy and daddy we wish we were able to go and cheer him on. I would go but Tiger will never leave the Rock. I think he loves that dog more than me. In fact he has as much as admitted it.
James new leathers are fabulous … so much so that I had to have my picture taken wearing them. OK! So they don’t fit tubby and I had to wrap them round me, but wear them I did.
James thinks I am nuts. He can talk. Racing at speeds in excess of 200mph is not for the faint hearted and you have to be a wee bit mad to want to.
I would love to go pillion. There is nothing to match the shear exhilaration of being out on a hog and getting a smack in the visor by insects. A huge bee nearly knocked me off my KE100 trail bike back in the day when I could fit into TT leathers.
I dropped the bike outside Wolfie Connors on the corner of New Market Street because I was afraid the guy in the car speeding on Long Commons didn’t clock me. I was so busy watching him I lost speed and fell over. He tooted on his way past.
First time I took the bike down Portstewart prom a motorist coming out of the harbour car park looked right at me. Or so I thought. He pulled out in front of me and I was so afraid I pulled the front brake and nearly went over the handle bars. He hadn’t looked at me, he looked through me.
Still have my lid after all these years but sadly the bike is long gone.
Tiger and I worked in the Seasplash Hotel in Portstewart in the late 70’s early 80’s and the craic was mighty. Dave and Shirley Henderson owned it and all the best bikers stayed there.
Roger Marshall doing a damned good impression of Rod Stewart singing Maggie May and dropping his trolleys to show us Scotland raised the roof.
I wonder if Steve Parrish remembers me. Two guys had told me they were him to get into the disco and when Steve wanted in I told him to p**s off. He did make an impression on everyone by going round Ballyreagh golf course with one club and whipped everyone. He is a talented guy in more ways than one.
I miss the late great Norry White of Motorcycle News. His pal Ewart Toms misses him too. Many wonderful, full of life friends are no longer with us. Tom Herron, Joey and Robert Dunlop and many more. Gone but not forgotten heroes.
Kevin Stowe came off and was lucky to survive. After a long time in hospital Raymond Gillespie and us nuts took him and his girlfriend Michelle to Donegal to the Talk of the Town. We stayed in The National and Tiger and my bed fell off its frame and we had to put it back together. There was no jiggy jiggy by the way. We were wrecked so put those naughty thoughts out of your heeds!
Shelley and Robert were tucking into a big breakfast when I appeared. I stuck my knife into my egg and heaved. Had to go back to bed!
Wayne Gardner (who wasn’t in Donegal) was shorter than me and I am four foot eleven and a half.
How he got his leg over that bike is a mystery to me. I bought a bike I can’t ride because it is too high for me. Tiger brought it out to the field and I was able to get on with him weighing it down. He started squealing like a wee girl that I was going too fast. I was in second gear! I got off and told him to park the bike. He parked it in the ditch but forgot to get off. Said the grass was wet. It was bone dry.
His sister is a Biker Babe who rides an 1100cc BMW Boxer cup and a 955I Sprint Triumph called Tweety Orr. It is as yellow as a dandelion. It is a powerful machine and fibrates. It is like nothing else. That is why bikers love it. The bike resonates within us.
Tiger picked Paul Gregg (York Hotel, Portstewart) up one day on the way home from walking the Rock. Paul had to get in the back as Rocky likes the front passenger seat. Paul couldn’t help commenting that Rocky leaned into the corners. Tiger said, “That’s nothing. You want to see him on the back of the bike”.
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