Life with Hawk.

A month or two later I bought my first house. At that time affordable houses were in the North, so The Hawk’s first significant journey was in winter, from Bedfordshire to the North East, where he took me house-hunting in howling January gales. In the spring of 2003 he was to take me house-hunting in a different part of the country again. But, glad as I was to own Hawk after The Evil Machine, at first I just looked on him as my current C90. Then I realised he was nearly ten years old and still going strong. He’d outlived any of his predecessors, which made him special in my eyes. I’m told that at the age of fifteen, he became a classic motorcycle.

In the past a new C90 only cost a couple of hundred pounds, so once I’d ridden a bike to the point where repairs became expensive, I started to think about a new one. But somehow or other the last C90 ever had rolled off the production lines in Japan without me being aware of the fact. A new motorbike would cost thousands, with the probability that I would like it a lot less than Hawk. Whatever happened I vowed Hawk must keep going, because he seemed irreplaceable.

A trip to the Lake District meant a trip to Graham, a brilliant mechanic who never charged a penny more than necessary and at one stage he rebuilt Hawk’s engine for me. (Oh, yeah, I know very well when mechanics think they can take advantage of me, and they never see my bikes or me again!) But last winter a couple of unfortunate punctures mean I missed some days out. Why, I thought, do I only have one bike? The days of only having room to keep one bike ended when I moved to Merlin Cottage in 2003. So I kept my eyes open for another C90 in good condition, and last January The Hobbit came into my life.

She’s the first female motorbike I’ve ever owned, so now I have a breeding pair of C90s and I’m going to flog the progeny on Ebay! :-)