The A to Z of Motorcycles

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Motorcycles

Motorcycles, boy racers love them, mothers hate them! Yeah, the latest Honda might be amazing but there are many considerations besides which helmet you buy to go with it. Motorcycle safety is of extreme importance and yes your lid is crucial to that but a good quality set of leathers may save your life. good quality motorcycle jackets can be expensive but they are specially designed to protect you if the worst should happen.

Motorcycle insurance should be your very next concern, you simply can't be without it. Insurance may be expensive, especially if you are young, but this should have been considered when you were working out your budget for buying a motorcycle! If you checkout the cost of insurance first you may find that a choice needs to be made as to if you buy a new or used motorcycle. However, if you are buying the latest Harley Davidson I doubt the cost of protective gear, insurance and motorcycle accessories are going to be of major concern ;-)

My interest in motorcycles was destroyed by my mother at an early age. My father loved them and it was through a motorcycle accident that he met my mother (she was his nurse!). However she was so afraid of the dangers of motorbikes that my father had to give them up. This must have been incredibly difficult for him as it was the early 1960's and he had a Honda motorcycle that had the ONLY racing frame in the whole of the United Kingdom (at that time). He was a bit of a fanatic to say the least, anyway, he was approached by a racer who asked him for a loan of the frame for the TT races on the Isle of Man. After some bargaining, including the agreement that the racer would give my father his hand-made leather motorcycle boots and have his bike race tuned on return, the bike was taken away, stripped down and the frame used in the TT.

Unfortunately I do not know the racer's name or how he did in the TT but he survived and my dad got his race tuned Honda and a pair of cool boots. His bike was cool to say the very least and he loved the thing. One rainy evening he was racing down the road, bobbing and weaving amongst the traffic, when he was pulled over by a policeman on a motorcycle. The policeman took hold of my dad's bike and asked him to dismount. As soon as he did he fell to the ground. The policeman explained that he had witnessed my father clip his leg on the side of a bus, my father hadn't even noticed (maybe because of the adrenalin rush?). He was rushed to hospital and, after many operations it was decided that the only way to save his leg was to chisel off some bone from his hip and pack it around the break (if was the 1960's so no titanium etc.).

The interesting thing about this is that if he had not been wearing the boots given to him by the TT racer he would have lost his leg - weird? However this is why, as a child, whenever I asked about getting a motorcycle my mother made my father show me his leg and hip. Motorcycle safety was always the primary concern but it tended to put me off motorcycles for life. Well almost ;-)

Author Details:
Andrew Kelly, copywriter for various web sites including, The A to Z of Motorcycles, part of an ambitious project to cover various subjects.

NOTE: This article may be reproduced ONLY if the author details and links remain in place.

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