Ah, pipe smokers of the world...let me share with you this true and cautionary tale ...it was written by me as a regular column which I write for a magazine and I offer it to the world of TBA/Speedy riders as a warning to you all.
Being a sort of gentleman hoodlum my friend Larry had decided that, in the words of the old advert, ‘a pipe does something for a man’ …...therefore he announced one day in 1980 or so that, henceforth, he’d smoke a pipe. All very well, and, being an impressionable sort of lad, I decided I’d give this pipe smoking lark a go, too. I gave it up after a few goes, realising I was leaving a lot of pipes on the top decks of buses and generally I couldn’t be bothered faffing around with them. I also nurtured the suspicion that it didn’t really improve my image.
But Larry persevered. And then did a bit more persevering till I was thoroughly fed up with all this persevering stuff. He even drilled and bolted a metal ashtray to the handlebars of his bike and claimed this as possibly the single most superfluous motorcycle accessory ever devised. It has to be a pretty strong contender for the title, I reckon.
Anyhow, come Stonehenge Festival time we dutifully pobbled off down the A303. At this time we were both riding XS650’s as we’d finally got fed up with pushing our various machines and had reckoned the XS was about as close as we’d get to a British Bike Experience, but without the strenuous exercise these involved.
All went well initially, at any rate.
Somewhere along the way Larry, as was his usual wont, stopped for a smoke. (How many hours of my life have been spent in lay-bys watching this ritual?) On this occasion I gave him a bit of hassle. And he grumbled a bit, tapped his pipe out in the way a North Sea Fisherman would have been proud of, and got back on the bike.
A couple of miles later and I thought at first he’d got a wiring problem as a wisp of smoke appeared behind his bike.
Then another, followed shortly after by a small cloud of smoke…and a little while after that I could distinctly see sparks. I tried the obvious- sounding the horn, flashing the headlight and even overtaking and gesticulating at him. This last tactic was particularly ineffectual and resulted merely in a returned V sign from Larry as he wound up the throttle and accelerated rapidly into the middle distance.
Ordinarily, of course, I’d have followed. However Larry had recently been taken to task by the local constabulary over the volume of noise from his exhaust( sawed it off, just before the baffles, see?) His solution had, as usual, been dictated by expediency and economy and involved simply stuffing said pipes with wire wool-resulting in the occasional spitting forth of great gobs of incandescent Brillo .You didn’t want to get too close to these, I can tell you.
At this point in the proceedings I can remember giving a sort of shrug and accepting that, as usual, fate would take its own (& often grisly) course.
It did. When I finally saw him again 2 or 3 miles down the road, Larry was riding along at a fair old pace, but now was trailing a 4 foot sheet of flame from under his left armpit in a scene reminiscent of a battle of Britain dogfight, the loser plummeting to earth in a dizzying death spiral. I think it was the latter image occurring to me that solved the mystery. I remembered Larry’s propensity a) to be somewhat careless about making sure the pipe was extinguished before b) stuffing it in the top pocket of his denim cut-off. Presumably the increased turn of speed had resulted in a kind of ram jet effect, causing the observed phenomenon.
To all of which ,of course, he was completely oblivious…so long as
Larry rode on, he felt no pain. (Later he told me he’d dismissed the slightly warm sensation as being heartburn brought on by a diet of beer and burgers the previous evening).
Finally though it was the recurring image of a doomed pilot which both decided me to put a stop to the death ride and which provided a mechanism to achieve this, hopefully without the need to shovel up the remains. The A303 has a significant number of roadside ditches. Some of these are significantly wet and, in the end, I simply gritted my teeth and gradually slowed down in front of him, effectively running the silly s*d off the road and into one of these. As his bike squealed and then stalled, I leapt smartly off mine and promptly shoved Larry into an especially wet and noxious ditch.
I will forever cherish the memory both of the look of surprise and indignation on Larry’s face, and of the distinctly audible hiss from under his left armpit as he hit the water.
Despite my protestations to the effect that I was in fact his saviour and general benefactor, I suspect he remained secretly convinced that I’m just a sore loser. Either way, Larry gave up the pipe, though he never raced me again either, come to think of it.
Al
