History

Well, my riding history is a somewhat fragmented, and spread out affair. I have been around bikes all my life, I can remember being taken to school on the back of my dads old Kawasaki Z400, when I was about 8 years old, probably my first experience of being on a bike. It wasn't until I was about 14 though, that I actually got to take a bike for a spin. My first experience was trying to ride an old CR80 around our neighborhood, but as anything with us lot, there was a catch, it only had 1st, 2nd, and 5th gears, which made it somewhat of a challenge for us inexperienced riders, there were many flips, and "nearly" flips.

That bike never lasted very long, and the next thing I tried was a friends MT50 around his garden, the roots of a supermoto racer had been sown. We used to ride this poor thing up banks, into trees, just general hooliganism, around the garden. After I had mastered the basic bike controls, and learned how to do the emergency avoiding of the dogs, etc, we needed more room.....

The next stage was on another friends farm, screaming around the sugar cane on his AE50 being chased by dogs and god knows what else. I remember one occasion racing down this hill, we used to call it "Suicide Hill". It was a matter of finding out who could keep the old AE flat open. Anyway, I was on the back, with my "mate" at the controls, going hell for leather, when we hit a bump. The rear twin shock suspension didn't like that, and I got thrown off the bike. Somehow I managed to keep one hand holding on to the bike, bounced off the grass, and back onto the bike. All this, and my "mate never even tapped off, none of us would have. In the event of a crash you're on your own. Of course we never wore any protective gear, and it still amazes me that we all managed to survive through this period of many, many crashes.

There were quite a lot of bikes around in my teens. My one mate had a few bikes that we used to ride around a homemade track on a piece of abandoned land. My favourite was the PE175, a heavy old bitch, but reliable. He used to ride an IT175, when it ran. I seem to recall the piston cracking, so he welded it back together, it never lasted long after that. After that, he got an RM125, which I thought was the devil itself. On one occasion, we were on our way to the track, going down a steep bit of rough road, when he hit a bump. Normally that would be ok, but this time, the top of the rear shock mount broke, and the seat ejected him into the air right in front of me. I couldn't avoid his bike, and my front wheel hit his, still spinning rear wheel. I shot over the handle bars and landed next to him. I was ok, but he had broken his ankle. Good thing we had some cold beers with us, we had a smoke, and put the beers round his ankle for a minute, then drank them. I picked up his bike, and kicked it into life, helped him onto it, and off we went back home to see his mom, and then the doctor.

After a while I turned 16. My parents very kindly bought me a luminous PINK DT50 for Christmas. PINK I tell you. I'm a surfer teenager, and they gave me a pink bike. But hey after a while it got a rep all of its own, and by the time we left South Africa I was very sad to see it go. I crashed it I don't know how many times, I even ended up crashing down a manhole once, with the bike on top of me. I had to let all the air out of the shocks and ride it through a storm drain to get it out. I seized it once , due to running out of 2 stroke oil, and I even made the front brake drum explode after a heavy weekend, but at the end it still ran, "nearly" perfectly.

There are way too many memories on that DT (I'll be typing for hours), so we'll just skip a bit.

When I was nearly 18 we moved to the UK, and I never even thought of getting a bike, it was WAY to cold for that. So about 6 years passed and I never thought of biking at all. Then, out of the blue, a South African friend of mine comes over to live in the UK for a while, and while he is here, he acquired a GPZ305. He also thought it was too cold to ride, so it just sat in the garage most of the time. One morning I was late for work and missed the bus, so I thought I'd just jump on the GPZ, no license, no insurance, but you never forget how to ride a bike. That was all that it took. I rode it once, then I thought, since it wasn't being used, I might as well use it more often. I'd got a bit used to the UK weather by now, and soon enough I was riding to work everyday.

I didn't really like the GPZ, and wanted to get a bigger bike, and a license, so I went and bought an SV650S, and did the Direct access course to get my license. I failed the first time, for going too slow would you believe it. I wasn't sure of the speed limit in this one section, so I did 35, I should have been doing 60, I was gutted. I passed the second time, so that was ok.

I now had my SV, and a license, and was commuting everyday to work. I went to the TT on the SV in 2001. I learned some excellent riding lessons there. When you go into a turn too fast, a lot of people chicken out and run off the road, or crash, but when your only options are to lean the bike more, or go over a cliff, you go for the lean option. After doing 100's of laps around the TT course, I realized that I really wanted less vehicles on the road, they were all getting in my way. On one occasion I nearly t-boned a car on Quarry Bends at 100Mph, while racing a ZX6 and some other bike. That made me think twice about riding like that on the roads. Quick thinking, and luck has saved my life a few times, but luck doesn't last forever.

After that I started looking into track days, and did my first track day at Pembrey racetrack in Wales. In my first day on the track I got moved from the Novice group, to the Intermediate group, and then to the Fast group. My SV was decking out everywhere, and was embarrassing quite a few of the bigger bikes around there. At the end of the day, the instructor basically told me that I should think about racing, as I was doing lap times around the same as slow club racers, on a SV650 road bike. I guess most bikers think about racing at some point, but its just a dream you know. You don't actually do it. But i though sod that, why not??

Then it was a matter of what to race? the 600 class is the most popular, so can be a bit difficult to get entered into many races. So I thought about "sound of thunder" class, but the whole thing about super/sport bikes, is, if you crash them at any significant speed, its going to cost £1000's to fix, and I cant afford that. I did a few more track days while I was trying to figure out what to race, then someone pointed me towards Supermotos. Tough dirt bikes with slicks on. Cool. top speed around 100Mph, instead of 160Mph, and no fairings. Yeah why not? So I jumped in feet first as usual with me. I bought a KTM LC4, without even riding it, and 3 months later I was racing in my first very muddy Supermoto race at Cadwell Park.

I have already tested the crashability of these bikes, clipping bars, and going head on into the tyre wall, and high-siding at 3 sisters, as well as being involved in a 5 bike pile up at Blyton. The bike always survived, in fact I'm the one thats limped away, the bike has normally been fine. I cant imagine not racing now, there's just nothing like it.

Check out the Links page for the Championship info, and come watch a round sometime, you'll see what I mean. Even better, buy a scabby old dirt bike, put 17" wheels on it, and come join us.

Rich