As some of you will know I started in the motorcycle trade in the very early 80’s and over the years I have had positions in most areas of the industry from storeman, mechanic, sales rep, sales manager, to shop owner and as you can imagine I have dealt with a great many people in all sorts of situations and ended up in all sorts of scrapes some of which I can safely recount without fear of arrest….!
Way back in the early 80’s, the trade was still riding on the back of a massive growth in motorcycle popularity launched in the 70’s with the introduction of the first real super-sports motorcycles from Japan, ground breaking bikes like the Honda CB750-4, Kawasaki H1 & H2 two stroke triples, not forgetting the stunning DOHC Z1. Indeed when I started in the trade, as a storeman in, the now defunct, K Motorcyles of Bedford, it wasn’t uncommon for people to form a queue in the showroom on a Saturday afternoon, clutching their deposits, all waiting for the attention of the salesman, how things have changed! We dealt with all sorts of people from, spotty sixteeners wanting the newly released AR and AE50 mopeds, 17 year old mad heads looking for 250’s, the affluent middle aged, looking for the newest, fastest bikes, to the smelly old gentlemen in a Belstaff who only had a motorcycle licence and wanted ‘something cheap! to get me to and from work’. And as you can imagine this complex mix of people often crossed paths in the shop, and of course as they all had something in common, motorcycles, we had a surprisingly good social scene revolving around the shop.
Almost inevitably a group formed who would go for weekend ride outs, often to gigs, shows and rallies and this group evolved into the Daytona Motocycle club, who met once a week in the ‘Pink Plough’ pub on the B660 Kimbolton Road, now owing to the rather rebelious nature some of us exhibited, this soon split into the sensible Daytona club and the very much less sensible club the SDC (don’t ask what it stands for, or I will have to kill you….) to give you an idea of the sort of antics we got up to, the following are replies to a social media post I recently made about a Suzuki GT380 that A55 Motorcycles is recommissioning, made by a couple of other members of the SDC about another members GT380….
One Response
Although I never lived in the Bedfordshire area, it makes me recall my time as young biker growing up ito aq now old young biker. I can well imagine the wacky things you got up to. I recall as a 17 year old being the proud??? owner of a Honda c50 and my best friend Steve owning a Suzuki 50 2 stroke ( always broke down) hanging around with the old guys on bikes and wish to be accepted by them as (ONE OF THE GANG) So steve a I decided we were going to impress there guys, we started going round a round about rightby the pub were all drank at the only thing we went the wrong way. Me being an absolute idiot decide I was going to do it more times the Steve which I did until I fell off break my wrist at the same time. not so spectacular really until you find the 200 yards down the road from that round about Roger more lived and 1/2 mile the opposite way live the McCartnet family. Wirral biking scene was not a lot different than Bedford, how we servived I’ll never know. But we did and I am now almost 65 30/11 and I still ride, currently a Suzuki Boulevard VL1500