About 25 years ago I had just moved into a new house on a new estate, which was still being built around our ears. There was all sorts of salvage to be had from the junk piles of the tradesmen and I built myself a “Thunderbirds” style series of exchangeable sidecar bodies. There was the original fiberglass job with the seat and the Perspex screen, and then I could swap it for a box, a flatbed, or whatever. 4 bolts and 2 minutes saw a quick change for whatever was needed, and if the body wasn’t right for the job, I could knock one up from scrap just for the occasion.
There was a big heap of topsoil at the back of the estate, up on the edge of a hill, which sloped down past the back of the houses and joined onto another road at the bottom – at least it would’ve joined but there was a bit of a height problem and the contractors had just cut into the bank and left a 15 foot drop. My better half wanted a bit more soil to cover the usual builder’s foundation of rubble and rusty nails, so I was tasked to fill the wheelbarrow and truck it around.
Of course, it wasn’t long before I knocked together a sort of skip to go on the sidecar chassis and save me pushing the barrows back and forth…
So one day I was up at the soil heap, shoveling topsoil until I had the skip full – about ½ cubic metre – ten wheelbarrow loads. It had been raining before (this being Scotland, that was quite common) so the ground was soft and the tyres sort of dug in with all that load.
I couldn’t shift it with the engine – it was a gutless wonder – a Jawa 350 2-stroke with no torque and hardly any power anyway, but it was OK for puttering around. Anyway, I got off and tried to push it free from the back. Not much luck there, since the front wheel was pointing uphill. So I went round to the front and pointed the bars downhill a bit, and pulled on the front of the skip. The sidecar wheel came free with a bit of a rush and the outfit swiveled to face downhill and started to roll.
Now there was me on the sidecar side, trying to stretch over to the brake lever on the far side of the bike, but the screen got in the way. I couldn’t reach, and as the contraption began to gather momentum it literally scooped me up and dumped me on my a*** in the heap of soil, with my legs sticking out the front of the skip.
I tried to reach across for the brake again, but it was a bit tricky since most of my energy was needed to steer this contraption from the chair as it began to gallop downhill with all that soil rushing to obey Newton’s law of gravitation. There was me, having a free ride in the sidecar, with nobody driving, and the bike making what felt like a crazy speed from my unusual seat in the skip!
I didn’t want to pull on the left hand bar, since that would have led to a sharp left turn and a possible rollover, so I tried pushing but I just didn’t have the leverage, with my a*** in loose soil and my feet kicking in the air, hanging off the front.
I looked downhill and things were getting a bit desperate. The bank was approaching and with the usual luck, there was a power pole staring me in the face. At this point, I abandoned logic and just heaved back on the left-hand bar.
The bike slewed left, performed a neat skid turn, and came to a halt almost literally on the edge of the precipice. Breathing a sigh of relief, I levered myself out of the soil, and went round to a more normal riding position, from which I was able to start-up and drive round the bank and rejoin the normal world of roads and white lines.
The most amazing thing about all this, is that not a soul saw me career downhill, so nobody could tell the tale, except me – and who would believe such a sorry tale?
