When I think back to my teenage years growing up in Salisbury in the then Rhodesia, I was introduced to the joys of two wheelers by a family friend who owned a Lambretta scooter and who was quite happy to let me ride it.
I remember roaring, albeit quite slowly, around the streets of Lochinvar, the suburb where we lived back then. In those days we didn't worry about things like crash helmets or any form of safety gear and I certainly didn't have a licence but the seed was sown and I loved riding that scooter.
At some stage a Velosolex came onto the scene, I cannot remember who owned it but I did use it to go to school a couple of times but eventually the engine packed up and wasn't repaired.
The first bike that was actually my own was a 1962 Jawa Manet and I thought I was quite the man on that one,
I was in high school in Bulawayo then so probably my parents bought it for me, I had great fun on it, here with my old school friend John on his Honda fifty.
I found this picture on the net and it could have been a picture of my bike, the same colour and general appearance, it was a scooter with motorcycle wheels.
When I finished school and started working I used it extensively and then when I joined the BSAP in 1968 I took it to the training depot in Salisbury with me. I was stationed back in Bulawayo after the training was over and used it then but gradually it deteriorated to the extent that one day it just died on the side of the road and I walked away from it. It stood there for about a week until one day someone took it and I never saw it again.
I got my licence in the Police driving school so I became a legal rider and rode the British bikes that we had back then; the Matchless 500cc and the BSA 650cc, both of which I really loved riding. After leaving the force and moving down to South Africa I soon acquired another bike and have been riding virtually continuously since then. Now it is almost fifty years since I got my licence and I am still riding.
and just look at me now! Hopefully there's a good few years riding left in me too.
1 comment:
I sure hope you have more than a few good years of riding left.
I loved seeing the old pics. I can remember my mom packing me around on the back on her Honda trail bike way back in the day. She made a special cushion for the back rack. Funny, I don't remember ever wearing a helmet as a kid - of course it was the 70's.
Thank you for the trip down memory lane.
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