Defining Moment

Got a day off from The Salt Mine, being as it's my birthday an' all. Thought I'd share these pics with y'all and the memory from the day which has stayed with me ever since.

Taken in either 1971 or 2 at a sprint meeting at Duxford, when it was still just a disused WWII airfield and not the Imperial War Museum that it is today

I can clearly remember blokes unloading all sorts of exotica from their vans and trailers, all the results of hours of labour and love deep in garden sheds and garages. Sounding for all the world like the gates of Hell had been opened and the apocalypse was here and now!

Then this guy turned up, first 750 H1 I'd ever seen, rode it down from Birmingham to compete. As I recall it left the line with no real sound, certainly when compared to the roar of the Brit stuff, sounded like men's motorbikes they did. But then all that remained was a lingering cloud of pungent two stroke smoke and a dot that was very rapidly becoming part of the horizon. He absolutely decimated the up to 1000 cc fastest time of the day on it, he waited about, picked up a trophy or something and then rode it back to Birmingham.

Don't know about the writing on the wall, for me this event tore the wall down and replaced it with a rice paper screen. 

Still bought Brit after that? You bet ya, gotta support the underdog dontcha think.