It’s all coming to a head – the bikes, the squats, London living. The centre cannot hold. I move into a dead man’s filthy flat, but soon break another leg rushing about too much on a heavy GS550. Then a few months later I prang my nicked-and-recovered GS450. The camel’s back finally snapped and that night I torch my A-Z Streetfinder in my helmet.
No lid. Bent bike. Streetfinder a pile of ashes. There was no going back for 106. How fitting that my last big job had been to Bristol, the very city I’d planned to move to when I started out on that brief summer’s messengering back in 1978, aboard my gleaming Bonneville. Whatever adventures my motorcycling future held, the days of despatching were done.
Ron and Gorby sign-off the Cold War and USSR retreats from Afghanistan; Harry meets Sally; Satanic Verses; Tiananmen Square; Exxon Valdez; Hillsborough; UTA Flight 772; Tim Berners-Lee suggests a ‘World Wide Web’; Iron Curtain ruptures; Guildford Four released. Marchioness, Motorola Micro TAC mobile and Blackadder’s final episode (left).
It’s the end of an era. And the start of another. Over and Out.
Adventure Motorcycling Handbook 