A few years ago I belonged to the local motorcycle club, not a patch club ubt one of them meet on amonday night at a different pub, have a beer, chat, laugh type of clubs.
We always had a ride out on a sunday morning, ranging from 4 to 30 bikes depending on weather normally. On this sunday we had about 9 bikes, nobody had any suggestions were to go so I said that I had ridden some good roads a few weeks back, the others then agreed that i would lead and they would follow.
Set off at a steady pace so take most of us could enjoy the ride, and the roads were cracking, dust and grit free, nice warm summers day, no traffic to speak of. Noticed in my mirrors that some of the riders were not staggering themselves as we rode along, not my problem as the next bikes behind me were and i had ridden with the riders for a few years and knew their style of riding as well as they knew mine,. We stopped off in a cafe in the back end of belong is essex somewhere, normal cafe food, nice cuppa and talk turned to getting home and if we were going the same way home or not. it was decided that we would, so off i set leading again. Crept though a small town, by now the locals had woken up and had just attended church or something like that, so the pace slowed down. Grandpa Joe and his austin princess managed to get in front of us and slowed us down for the next 5 miles to 20 mph, nowhere to overtake as it was a single car width road and he was driving down the middle of it.
trying to remember the road layout ahead when he turned off and the bike automatically leaped forward as i wound the throttle back, down 2 gears and the bike came alive again, long fast sweeper coming up i remembered, there it was, left , right, right, left again the bends and the bike were flowing. lean angles increasing as were the revs of the bikes, quick glances behind, mates look good we flowed, the road was ours. Another set of bends then a long straight faster we rode along that road, then I noticed the hedge was turning towards the right, cant be I thought aint due to yet.
But it did indeed, I chucked the bike down as far as I dare, praying that i would crash, the rear tyre started snaking on the tarmac, I started shitting myself, fear held me ridged on the bike and but some grace of feck knows what i made it around the bend. damo and phil behind me made it as well different lines and phil was very close to feckin the edge. It was then that i saw in my mirrors kev went straight on, so did his two mates who were following him. Feck!! braked and turned around to find a bike shape hole in the hedge. We got off our bikes expecting the worst, but all three of them were fine, just few cracked plastic and a few bruises. Alan who was following them was standing at the side of the road laughing, when he could catch his breath again he then explained that they had all been in each others tyre tracks and about 4ft between them and the one in front.
He then went into great detail how kev had stood the bike up aimed for the hedge and hit it almost dead upright, his two mates who were following did the same bloody thing and hit the hedge in the same bloody place.
"it was like the fookin red arrows motorbike team" he laughed,
whoosh whoosh whoosh one after the other straight through the same hole, amazing skill to pick the exact same spot. Kevs answer was to blame phil for taking the wrong line as he was following phil into the corner and had tried phils line instead of his own. He never rode with us again after that ride, But i do know he rode into another bike he was following in the tracks off on another ride. Some people never learn.
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