This week, Dick
Henneman, touring guru, scooter expert and, um, mature gentleman,
gives us his take on why he rides.
For me, it
all started with money - or more correctly a lack of it.
You know, it's the usual story. Just got married,
first mortgage, both out at work, one car between us but we need
two because public transport is non-existent. We need another set
of wheels, but it's got to be cheap to buy, cheap to run, so really
it's got to be a bike. And that's how I first got onto two wheels
- although some might blame my choirmaster for giving me a lift
home one day on the back of his pre-war Matchless, but we don't
want to go into that now! Even more surprisingly it was my wife
who first started off the riding thing in our family, as I was quite
happy to stick with four wheels, having been a petrolhead from a
very early age.
 Now
let's be honest. To begin with, riding a bike for me was
just a means of getting from A to B. But then circumstances changed,
we didn't need two vehicles any longer, but I found that I'd rather
go off to work on the bike than the car. Why? It can't have been
a speed thing, as a 125cc trailie is not renowned for its ability
to leave "blackies" on the tarmac (although it did wheelie
quite well!), and divine handling was not a characteristic of early-70s
Japanese chassis technology. So what was it about riding a bike
that appealed so much then, and in fact still does today?
Looking back all those years - pause while I don
the rose-tinted glasses and fire up the background violins - I can
only put it down to one thing. Total involvement. There's something
about riding a bike that means you have to be, as near as possible,
in complete control of the machine and the environment around; and
while this is clearly impossible to achieve, the act of trying to
attain it gives me an intense amount of satisfaction. It's a buzz!
Ok, so maybe I'm a control freak, and I won't deny that, but getting
on a bike gives me a rush, something that I've only ever found behind
the wheel of a racecar on a race circuit, and that's not something
that you can do every day on the way to work - well not if you want
to keep your licence intact that is!
 I've
been soaked to the skin - early motorcycle clothing wasn't
particularly waterproof (and some of the current stuff isn't that
brilliant either), been knocked off more than once, broken down
on countless occasions, suffered frostbite and been so cold when
I arrived that I needed help to get off the bike. But none of this
has ever put me off riding. I don't think I'm a masochist (stop
hitting me woman!) and I don't consider myself to be one of those
people who feel the need to live constantly on the edge. You'd certainly
never get me to go bungee jumping. But there's something about riding
a bike that makes me just that little more alive.
And strangely enough, it's doesn't need to be
the latest mega-horsepower, tyre-shredding track refugee in order
to do this. Even a 50cc scooter can be a hoot in the right circumstances,
but let's face it, power can be addictive. Riding a bike just gets
me into a different frame of mind. There's no room for worrying
about the mortgage payments or whether I'll get that pay rise I've
been promised. Just tune your mind into the surroundings and the
world around you, get the feel of the road under the seat and through
the bars, and move into a different level of experience.
I suppose part of it has to be the risk. No one
will argue that riding a bike is safer than driving a car, yet few
riders (and I'm one of them) will willing and deliberately place
themselves in the same dangerous environment in their normal lives
as they do on the road. For me it's the belief that I can manage
the risk by exercising and improving my skills and remaining in
control. That's not to say that I'm the world's greatest rider,
far from it, and many of my friends(?) who've ridden with me will
testify to that quite willingly! But the thing is, I want to get
better at it, and it's those times when you take that corner just
right, when you're in exactly the right position on the road to
see that idiot who's just about to pull out, when that planned overtake
is done to perfection, these are the moments that make it all worthwhile.
 The
other thing that gets me about riding bikes is the intimacy
you achieve with your surroundings. Forget all about side-impact
protection bars, front and rear crumple zones, air bags, tinted
glass, air conditioning and millions of engineering man-hours dedicated
to the eradication of noise, vibration and harshness. In the saddle
there's just 1.2mm of leather and a couple of millimeters of Lexan
between you and the world around you. This brings you much closer
to scenery and the environment than you can ever hope to be in a
car, and is one of the reasons for me that makes touring on a bike
so good.
And that's why I ride a bike.
We’d really love to hear your
reasons for riding, and ideally to share them with everyone else
as well, because we’re trying to understand what makes everyone
tick. So why not let us know?
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