Who is This?

Part Two of Endless Summers and Motorcycles.
By Peter Hyde

  
The year was 1969 and an iconic movie hit the big screen, Easy Rider.  It was a movie that was to have a big impact on our young impressionable minds. Me and my bike crazy mates decided to ride into Queen Street and see this much advertised movie.  It captured our imaginations with its scenes of  guys who had nothing better to do but cruise down big American freeways on Harley choppers and smoke dodgy cigarettes, everything we didn’t have……well except the dodgy ciggies.
We roared into Queen Street and parked on the footpath outside His Majesties theatre (the things you could do in the 60’s) and wearing our long army great coats, no helmets and long hair traipsed into the theatre.  We were captivated for 90 minutes until the end scene which left us stunned and disbelieving, we never saw it coming.  We stumbled out into the bright sunlight, hating ordinary citizens and anything that looked like a cop and authority, how could the heroes be killed off seemingly just because they rode bikes and were searching for a country they thought existed….ok ok and they might have sold a few drugs along the way to finance the whole thing but was that reason to shoot them.
Our feelings wore off in time but it did leave an impression on us.  Life was so good to us in the 1960’s; we had not a care in the world and spent all our spare time tinkering and riding bikes. At that time there were two factions on the North Shore, the bikers and the surfies, much the same as mods and rockers in the UK I suppose. There was never any conflict, they did their thing we did ours.  With the advent of computers yet to hit, laws were very lax, none of the government departments talked to each other so it was easy to get away with anything.  Traffic cops were easy going and you could actually talk to them and most times avoid a ticket with promises on top of promises to get a WOF the very next day or a registration the day after that. There was a local motorcycle cop who rode a 650cc Matchless with crash bars and canvass leg protectors, whenever he saw us coming in the opposite direction he would quickly drop his machine over and do an expert U turn behind us and pull us over just to cast an eye over us and our machines.  There was always friendly banter unlike today where all that is gone.
I rode a motorbike for years before I decided to get a licence (actually persuaded by the judge in the traffic offences court).  I went to the Traffic cop shop in Takapuna which was behind the central post office which is now the new mall/arcade thing in Hurstmere Road.  The testing cop told me to get on my bike on do the tightest figure 8 I could do  in the gravel out the back of the station with my feet up on the pegs.  That was the test.  Likewise getting a WOF, we went to an old garage in Albany where the mechanic got on your bike roared down the road did a skid and wrote out the WOF.  You can’t help but get all misty eyed thinking about how simple things were back then.
We rode like idiots with no regard for safety gear, helmets were not required by law and really the only ones that were available were Bells from the USA which couldn’t have ever afforded anyway.  If it was raining we wore ex-army great coats, took our boots or shoes off, stuffed the socks inside, tied the laces together and hung them over the handle bars so they wouldn’t get as wet as if they were on our feet!!!!!!
One wet day I was riding in this fashion and a cop pulled me over and expressed his concern that I was riding without any goggles on ……..don’t ya just love it !!
Our long hair was everything, what a sight we must have looked to the general public, long haired hoons on bikes, but the truth was we had a lot of fun and never hurt anyone in the process.  How we survived I will never know, we got so pissed that we could hardly stand and still got on our bikes. One morning I got up and cast a bleary hung over eye out of the bedroom window and there was my bike lying on its side in the middle of the lawn exactly where I had left it the night before.  I know a lot didn’t make it but we did, all except my mate Barry who didn’t, he was killed and it was the first time I really cried and cried and it took along time to stop.
In 1971 the lads decided to go on a summer road trip down to Wellington via New Plymouth and Wanganui.  I remember really pissing my father off because my grandmother had just died.  I told him that I wouldn’t be going to the funeral because we were going on a road trip come hell or high water or grannies funeral.  With a hiss and roar we headed out of Auckland, south towards New Plymouth. There was an assortment of bikes, I had just ditched my pommy shitter and bought a new CB 350 Honda twin with an electric kick starter WOW.  One of my mates on the trip was called Blair Harrison or more universally known as Horace, he was to become NZ champion 250cc motocross rider. This guy could really ride a bike, he was fearless and half mad, he was discovered by the Los Angeles Hell drivers and was recruited by them to perform motorcycle stunts touring the world.  We rode into New Plymouth and ended up down town at the local beach.  Sitting on our bikes we noticed a large sign saying “No bikes on beach or sand dunes”.
 For Horace this was like red rag to a bull.  He fired up his bike and shot straight off the road into the sand dunes. We sat on our bikes watching Horace have a wonderful time charging up and down the dunes putting on a real show for us. We didn’t notice the motorcycle cop turn up next to us.  He enquired over the noise who the idiot was and of course didn’t know.  Seeing the cop, Horace stopped on top of a large sand dune and proceeded to give the cop the fingers (two finger in those days). To our surprise the cop fired up his machine banged it into gear and took off into the dunes in hot pursuit. Horace led him deeper and deeper into the dunes until the cop and bike were hopelessly bogged down in the sand, Horace roared around him in showers of sand amid laughs and jeers from us up on the road.  Horace joined us and we departed for Wanganui with lots of waves and advice for the poor old cop who was furiously trying to free his stuck bike.  I wonder what he told his boss.  A lot of fun was had on our road trips we were always getting into strife.  Another memorable trip was down to Rotorua.  My girlfriend was on the back and we ended up in a motor camp on the shores of Lake Rotorua.  It was pouring with rain so rented a rough and ready bunk room with no showers just a sink.  After a couple of wet miserable days my girlfriend Julie said she wanted to have an all over wash in the sink so we all retired to the pool room to give her some privacy (we did have some sort of manners).  After a while we noticed that Horace was missing so we went looking for him and found him peeping through the key hole at my girlfriend having a bird bath.  We grabbed him and dragged him into the room yelling and kicking and that was just from my girlfriend clutching a towel around herself.  We stripped Horace naked and covered him in handfuls of raspberry jam from a large tin found in the cupboard. He sent the next hour standing outside in the rain trying to wash the very sticky mess off himself in the rain to much hollering and hooting from us watching from the balcony.  Of course we got thrown out of that place as well.
I guess I have my father to thank for my long motorcycling life. When I was living at home as a young teen we had very little parking for cars so my father said that I could not get a car, it was a motorbike or nothing, god bless him. That was forty six years and a lot of bikes ago.