A bunch of us had this year’s first real day out on the off-roaders recently. Several of my Huddersfield mates were joined by Shoey (a half-mad acquaintance) and Foggy (aka Carl Fogarty, four times WSB champ) on a trip to the excellent Mick Extance Enduro Experience.
During the dinner-stop Mick was telling us how his business venture nearly didn’t get off the ground at all. He’d been followed home from one of the first enduro days he organised by some wrong ’uns who then proceeded to steal seven almost new bikes out of the back of his truck. The thieves, and the bikes were never seen again… well, not by Mick anyway.
As the conversation went on it turned out that nearly everyone sat around had a story of a bike being nicked. It struck me that bikes must be the most nicked things in the world. Off-roaders are particularly attractive to thieving scum because they’re not registered, so are unlikely to ever be traced back to the rightful owner, even if they’re found. Same goes for kids’ bikes.
I was the victim of a bike theft some years ago that was so audacious and breathtakingly simple you almost had to doff your cap to the skinny, drug-addled t#@t who carried it out.
I’d had a big crash coming out of Clearways at Brands and torn my cruciate ligament. The surgery to sort it out was straightforward enough, but the rehabilitation, I’d been told was gonna take ages. Probably at least three months till I’d be back on a race bike and six to eight months till I could ride an off-roader without the fear of knackering everything again.
To stop myself being tempted and doing myself more mischief I decided to sell my motocross bike and buy a new one when I was fully fit again.
So an ad went in TMX (Trials and Motocross News), Suzuki RM250, one careful owner etc, etc and I waited for the phone to ring. I was aware at that time thieves were answering bike ads and using a ‘viewing’ trip to case the garage where it was kept only to return later and clear the place out, so when the first bloke called and said he wanted to come and look I said I’d meet him somewhere with the bike.
He said he was coming from Barnsley, so we came up with a place to meet, a petrol station we both knew, and arranged a time.
I’d already borrowed an automatic Peugeot 405 from a mate who had a secondhand car pitch and I was fairly adept at driving it with the bad leg poking down into the passenger footwell. But with a full, ankle-to-thigh cast on it was still a two hour job hooking up the trailer and loading the bike on.
As I arrived at the garage a pale, wiry youth climbed out of a scruffy transit parked at the side of the forecourt. Knowing what he was about to do he must have seen me hobbling to meet him and thought it was his birthday. He helped me get the bike off the trailer and began looking over it.
He asked if he could hear it run. I suppose at this point I should’ve started to smell a rat, especially as I’d just noticed his mate in the van drive off the forecourt. But I was a bit wet behind the ears at the time and keen to make the sale, so I said, “Oh-yes mate, fire her up, she runs lovely.” You can guess the rest… the urchin kicked the bike into life, popped it in gear and calmly rode past me with a smile on his face and off down the road. I felt violated.
And things got worse. When the police got the CCTV footage from the garage they discovered, as expected, the reg. on the van was false and said I shouldn’t be too optimistic about seeing the bike again. But to add insult to injury they sent me a letter warning me that I shouldn’t be driving while incapacitated! Bugger.
