I have been riding bikes since I was 9 years old.
The thrill of freedom is something that never leaves you -
that exhilarating rush of air and the escape of control.
Halt right there with images of a custom built pit bike or motocrosser
- it was in fact a Honda C70 that 5 or so kids begged borrowed and saved
pocket money to buy to ride on the summer stubble fields in rural Norfolk in the late 1970's - a time when most kids had ripped play clothes and shoes with holes in.
Back then every village had children - ours had a pack of ferally civilised wildlings that used to squabble among ourselves but had a wild pride too.
We were famed for being the kids that St Trinians would be afraid of!
There were times when other villages kids came, saw and were marked out and we would get all together on our oddball bicycles and go and raid them.
Scrump all their apples - tie them up with washing lines (clothes on!) even ride the fish and chip van and just fight with them for the hell of it and come back to the village bloody and beaten but showered in glory.
Bikes, Motorbikes and the hooligans that rode them were a huge influence on us all. It was a time when AC/DC was pop music and in the charts and on the radio. Black Sabbath were yet to have drug problems, Led Zeppelin was for girls and every kid wanted a leather jacket and a Raleigh Chopper.
We used to chopper our bicycles with make them stylishly deadly with absurd long forks - totally ineffective brakes.
The real grown up Bikers from other villagers were like gods to us - huge giants riding Odin's battle steeds with names like "Poison" and "Bomber" and tales of their bravery raiding other towns for miles around were the stuff of heroism.
Our village and nearest market town was feared for miles in every direction. I have travelled with world and had many people ask where my strange accent - almost australian comes from from - I say I am from Norfolk, a small town where Lord Nelson went to school and was made a man - many times I have seen people gulp and say they have heard of it, people from Wales when living in London - English people I have met in New York, Russian people I knew in Poland, even a sweet old lady in Sweden. Sad in a way but life is for living not crying.
All my life this adventuring spirit has never left me - I travelled the world. I worked and lived in USA, Canada, Holland, Sweden, Poland, Russia, Slovenia - I have been a historical reenactor and Vikings and Saxons - enlisted as a Rifleman in Her Majesty's British Army serving in frontline Afghanistan - one could say been a bit of a Pirate in my 50 years so far... but it all began with a Honda C70 and riding that thing hell for leather on Norfolks wild stubble fields in the summers of the late 70's
But all that pales in comparison with meeting my wife and getting married in 2017