Many years ago, when Honda’s 400/4 was the undisputed king of cut-price, 4-cylinder biking, nearly everybody I rode with had one. We rode everywhere together and had some great adventures but one story has stayed in mind as fresh as the day it happened. It was always a bit hit or miss planning a trip because, being young and ignorant of all things mechanical, at least one of our bikes would be out of action at any given time. I’d organised a trip over to Bristol which meant a straight blast down the M4 from Cardiff, only this time my mate Martin’s bike was out of action so I had to contend with his weight on the back of my 400/4.We still managed a reasonable speed though, averaging over 85mph most of the way and the Severn bridge was soon in view. At that time motorcyclists still had to stop and pay toll on the bridge.

Martin was the sort of mate that we all had when we were teenagers, the coolest member of our gang and didn’t he know it. He was the one who always pulled the girls, always got into adventures, always outran the police, always beat us when we raced and always, but always looked in control. His garage was a meeting place for all the local teenage bikers every Sunday morning and he was the only one out of the lot of us who had any mechanical ability. Consequently we were all in debt to him for various rebuilds and repairs to our dilapidated Universal Japanese Motorcycles.The price we had to pay for Martin’s superiority was his inflated ego, he didn’t like putting his hand in his pocket in pubs and certainly didn’t see why he had to buy cigarettes when he could just have ours. When it came to women he was even worse and it was often the case that you’d return from the bar to find ‘your’ girl under his spell.

As we hurtled (as much as a two-up 400/4 can ‘hurtle’) towards the bridge, Martin casually reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out some change. We approached the toll booths and he bellowed in my ear “I’ll get the toll mate”. I nearly fell off in shock, Martin offering to pay? Well, I wasn’t going to stop him, especially as he hadn’t offered to contribute towards the petrol costs for the trip. Martin, in his usual show-off style decided that we’d slowed down enough and launched himself off the back of the bike.

Do you remember ‘The 6 Million Dollar Man’? The re-built hero of the show, Steve Austin, was able to perform amazing feats, he could jump as high as a building and run faster than cars. That’s exactly who Martin looked like as he came running past me – at 30mph, legs like pistons, taking giant strides, arms flailing and a look of abject terror on his face. I watched in awe as he maintained his speed until stopped, forcibly, by the solid back of a Talbot Sunbeam car. I veered off to the hard shoulder and parked, helpless with laughter. That’s not all. The driver of the Talbot had been about to pay his toll when his car was shaken by the enormous impact. Leaping from his seat he ran to the back of his car to see a leather-clad biker laying on the floor, moaning… but where was his bike? It was when the driver looked under his car for the offending vehicle that I lost all control and slid out of my saddle and onto the grass verge, in hysterics.

Martin did get me back for laughing at his misfortune but that’s another story, for telling over another pint.