Tales of Whoa! Pt.3

Bluebells in the Moonlight.

I eventually became the proud owner of a new Honda CB100N which, poor set-up by the now defunct Shoreham bike shop of Grey, Rowsell and Baker not withstanding, was a good little bike.

It was the evening of my birthday and I decided to go out for a ride in the backroads of Sussex, down a lane called Spithandle Lane which runs from just south of Ashurst to Wiston. I knew this lane well, or so I thought, because we used to live in the hamlet of Wiston, so I’m driving along, minding my own business and a steady and sensible pace, taking in the scenery illuminated by my headlight. There was a full moon that night and the light from it was filtering down through the hazel coppice and illuminating the bluebells there, the scent of which filled the air. So, there I am, waxing lyrical in my mind about the loveliness of the night and looking at the view to my left, ‘coz I KNEW this road, when I was rudely awakened from my reverie by the sensation of riding on a rough surface and the plummeting!

OK, so plummeting MIGHT be an exaggeration but that is what it felt like for that brief moment before I fell off the bike on the right-hand verge of the left-hand bend I had forgotten about and had not seen…because I was not looking!

Now some weeks prior to this, I had flipped my handlebars over ‘coz they looked a bit like racing bars or clip-ons; damn they felt cool! Unfortunately in this position, they didn’t have much in the way of clearance for the tank, none in fact. So when I crashed the bike, a mighty dent was placed in the tank, one that remained until the poor bike’s demise. But that as they say, is another story. ;)