From a 5, all-male sibling family, it might seem rather strange that at age 9, I had never mounted a 2-wheel cycle.
A good friend of Dad’s had donated a bicycle, a medium sized Raleigh, not new but in remarkably good shape. (Uncle Jack, as he was known to us, was, at the time, Maintenance Director of The Kwame Nkrumah University of Ghana). Needless to mention he was a very “hands-on” person.
I remember very vividly, the huge Flamboyant Tree in the front yard of the house where he lived, in Kumasi, Ghana.
This tree became my “prop” point for takeoff and arrival, as I taught myself to ride the bicycle.
Strangely, I never remember falling off, shaky as I was on each of those infrequent forays.
Around this time, my parents moved/relocated to Accra, Ghana where Dad was to take up a new job posting.
A few months after, the bike was home with me in Accra.
I loved it and looked after it as best I could, learning everything from just about everyone who could teach me. Those bicycles had no cables and used rod-actuated brakes, very maintenance free indeed.
I rapidly went up through tube patching, spokes adjustment, bearing pre-loading, and I must say in hindsight, it left an indelible somewhat technical print on my mind.
By the Summer of ’64 it was time to push on to Secondary school and pass the Raleigh onto Ernie - #5, the youngest of my brothers.
#4 brother Sydney had a new bicycle - a Superla and he never seemed to get very comfortable on and with it.
#2 brother Leo, ended up riding it most but with infrequent attention to it, it soon enough fell into disservice, lacking basic care it required.
Apparently as I came to learn, Dad had ridden for years in his youth and at about age 43, in the absence of the family car, used a small 50cc Laverda scooter then subsequently a Honda 50, for a year till the car came back after an engine overhaul.
He passed the Laverda onto #1 brother Ralph and on one of my holidays, I was, much against my wishes, given a first lesson on the scooter.
My initial fears were about crashing his prized property.
Around this time I was over-mentally attached to machinery being in perfect condition. He assumed because I was proficient on the Raleigh, I would take to this one easily.
So there I was, never gone down, on a throbbing 2 wheeler, twist grip gear change, foot brake down somewhere, not the foggiest of what a clutch was for and a tutor ready to run alongside me after a 5 minute introduction!
I just could not concentrate let alone coordinate. The poor machine must have sensed my dilemma more than the oblivious tutor.
With my hand on the handlebar and in 1st gear, both feet on the floor board, propped up, he instructed me to throttle up and release my left fingers.
The machine took off and with no further inputs I soon needed to turn as there were cars parked in the parking lot ahead.
With no idea of how to disengage drive I attempted to turn. I must have been fixated on keeping the machine upright and had no intentions of banking it. Needless to say, I barely avoided hitting the car but I took a very hard fall indeed.
There was blood all over my right leg from the attempt to save the scooter falling and Ralph assured me the scratches on the guard were no big deal and on such a machine they act to protect the rider. Though he gave me a conciliatory ride before we returned home, I never accepted another lesson.
In Secondary school, about 1967, #2 brother, Leo, had a good friend, Alex Wilkinson.
Alex had 2 Kawasaki 80cc motorcycles.
They both had skipped school one day and headed out on a 192 km (120mile) trip.
Leo fell a few times and carries scars from them today. Tough as it was to learn the hard way, he became the most daring rider of the our clan and during the following holiday, badly wanted a bike of his own. But for quite awhile, Alex lent him one of his.
All the while, I stayed away from the machine and he had no idea of my earlier fiasco on the scooter.
But one day he had a breakdown and needed to get the Kawasaki home from town. He asked me to help and simply assumed I could ride it, he would follow in the car. Also, I was not licensed then.
On site I was able to repair the bike and my heart began thumping as flashes of the scooter crash shot through me. I needed to get over the phobia so I took hold of the machine and with no open field nearby to practice a few laps on and with a brother in the car right behind me, the main road was soon reached and we headed home. There was one circle (round-about) to go and I could see I had no immediate slot.
I can remember the throttle going high and the brakes jamming hard against a surging machine as I barely avoided a car in the circle. The bike wagged furiously and I was sure I was going down again but miraculously, it barely held out and I rounded and straightened out, all the while wondering how brother #2 was taking it all in. I was relieved at home when he mentioned nothing about it.
We checked out a few used bikes but Dad, with his in-depth mechanical mind rejected them all and instead, got the Family-run Company at the time, to purchase a brand new Yamaha 80 for him.
This bike was cherished by him and all parts were available and cheap. He would change barrels and pistons every few months for the heck of it.
About this time, Dad purchased 2 Garelli engines, little 2-stroke Italian machines that bolted beneath the bicycle frame and engaged the rear wheel for traction. We had fun with them and mobility for Ernie was now assured.
In ’71, I had finished A-Level exams and Dad had arranged to buy me a bike.
The day for pickup came round and Leo, Dad and I went to get it. Turned out to be a BMW R27. I was terrified of it and the area was down of a hill. I explained to Leo I could not handle this one so he straddled it and eased it out of the room, up the hill and back home as we followed.
It was promptly named ‘Bigstuff,’ anthropomorphizing had begun.
For the next few weeks as I did all the necessary maintenance adjustments and little mods, I was struck by the sheer strength and depth of German engineering. There was no doubt in my mind that this machine could last an easy 50 years in the right hands. So over the next few weeks, man and machine got quite well acquainted and the lapses of clutch and other nuances all unraveled and we became one. I practiced how to soft ride and safety became the watchword. Interestingly, the more I settled in with Bigstuff, the more Leo drew away from it and would not touch it for the 3 years till we sold it.
Bigstuff was to teach me a lot more in engineering than riding and perhaps my present career owes much to it.
I was new to electrical work and Leo was the beacon.
Unfortunately we inadvertently put a 12v Yamaha battery on it before we knew it was a 6v system! We found out the hard way!
Generator “went” first then all other related electrical accessories. It was impossible getting a replacement at the time from Mechanical Lloyd (BMW Dealership) and so the only other option was to have it rewound.
The day I went to pick it up, I borrowed the Yamaha 80 and everything felt weird, eerily light under me.
As fate, or should I say luck, or the lack thereof would have it, on my way back and almost home, a cabbie shoots out from a queue, blind, and suddenly appears in front of me.
My lane was perfectly clear and I must have been cruising at over 50mph. My instincts still the same but my reflexes now pretty firmly adapted to Bigstuff, the bike obviously reacted differently to all my expectations. A few things were clear to me by now, 1, the machine was not going to stop in time, 2, the impending impact was going to smash my right leg. I took the decision to jump after I had instinctively banked left. The helmet strap yielded and it flew off. I was airborne for long enough to see the taxi smash the bike and I landed in the grassy drain to the side of the road, thank God for no concreted pavement then. Yes, I heard the screams and shouts as I lay there and I knew I must be alive, I was in a way, enjoying my moment of sympathies now flooding in from the gathering crowd. They handled me gently and lay me on the back seat of a volunteer Peugeot 504, then rushed me to the 37th Military Hospital.
I got away with no broken bones and recovered over the next 2 weeks.
After all the electrics were sorted, Bigstuff was now trouble free … really? Or did he have more surprises for me..
One night, I was on my way back home, about 16 km (10miles) out, all ignition cut out and nothing would make Bigstuff restart. The road was narrow, busy and dark. Void of streetlights. I took the decision to push it.
This machine is super heavy and after a few miles I was quite exhausted. I eventually left it at a Police Station and the following morning, with a few tools I soon traced the fault down to a broken centrifugal governor spring.
There it lay shorting the capacitor and CB (contact-breaker) points.
The R27 has a solid build and the front suspension is a leading swing arm type, returning good comfort on the straight but is rather dangerous on an uphill curve, worse if it is corrugated and you have a non sync pillion rider.
The shaft drive is all precision engineering, quiet and reliable.
The 17hp was nowhere near enough to make you feel an adverse torque effect.
Due to constantly chasing parts, I became well known at Mechanical Lloyd, the BMW agents, and it was there that one day I saw a similar BMW bike, horribly scrapped. It had belonged to a Catholic priest in the North of Ghana who, upon his departure from the country, had left it there in Accra for sale as scrap to any willing person. I did not need wheels at this stage but I could not also turn away from this engineering resuscitation challenge. But more than anything, I saw it as an orphan that desperately needed adopting.
So it was, that for 50 Cedis about US$20.00 then, ‘Santa Maria’ was brought into the fold.
The problems were endless, from gearbox, generator, piston rings and centrifugal governor all missing. But by the time it was finished she was sweet to ride.
About this time, I had to confront my future rather seriously and it seemed obvious that career was going take centerstage and most likely, involve geographic decisions as well. I began to give Ernie lessons on Bigstuff and had gotten him ready for a driver’s license as well, something I had to take heavy parental flak for as he was way under age.
He was a good student, quick mind and steady control with the big machine and needed very few lessons. My plan was to leave him Bigstuff but Dad seemed to be dead against it.
In ’74, I had taken a decision to get back in school so we sold Bigstuff. I was heading up to University in Kumasi, Ghana to begin a new phase in Engineering and could not keep both BMW’s. It was final, Santa would come with me.
Now in Kumasi, I fell into routine and socialized rather infrequently. At one stage, I got a side car, an original Army BMW original and getting used to the strange feeling of no banking to turn and a difference in left or right turns, we had many days of fun in it One night after a party, 13 of us rode Santa with the side car attached. However, one soon misses having just 2 wheels and soon enough parked the sidecar.
I was to have quite a scare one day in town.
At a very busy intersection, first at the line, waiting for the lights to change and many pedestrians walking across, I was in gear and clutched. Then all of a sudden, a dreaded sound, Santa lurched forward … clutch cable had snapped! I hit the front brake hard and fast, narrowly avoiding a horrible impact with the people now barely inches away. Luckily, it was a very dry day, the brake held and I hit the ignition switch which is conveniently no top of the headlamp housing, with my left hand. I eased the bike to the side of the road as the people were getting ready to jump me for ‘’attempted reckless riding.’’ They relented after they saw my predicament and I was now left with how to get back home with the machine. There is no way of changing gears on an R27 without clutching and I had no intention of leaving the bike out unguarded. So I did what came to me on the spur of the moment, push start in 2nd gear and take a careful slow ride home. The Gods now smiled down at me, all lights on the way back home were green as I went through the intersections.
By the end of ‘76, #1 brother, Ralph and I were settling our company in Accra and an offer of sale came up for a scrap bike, a Honda 500. It had belonged to an ex-patriate young man.
He had lost an arm in a motor accident whilst dangerously overtaking a truck on a corrugated asphalt junction at Nima junction on Ring Road, here in the city.
All in pieces, it came in boxes. It took some time to piece it together.
In Kumasi I was very reluctant to see Santa go in favor of ‘Boxer,’ as we had now named the Honda.
The ride was hard, the fuel consumption not too good, frequently misfired, exhaust pipes rusted easily. The only real joy was the electric start, tell that to any BMW R27 owner, a very heavy bike you had to pull back onto its center stand and side kick.
In ’78, it was a blessing when we got a first Police auction bike, a BMW R60 twin opposing. It gave me trouble-free riding till the end of my engineering course. It was a joy on a long journey and except for a flat, one crucial exam morning, it ran trouble free for the 3 years, requiring no tuning whatsoever.
There was also this one night when I was coming back home and it was raining very heavily. Kumasi has downpours and many valleys. I came up to a flooded section of the road and a few vehicles had stalled in the water ahead of me. My decision was to go … and I eased the BMW forward. The water came up as the cylinders sizzled sending plumes of steam up. I said a silent prayer so no part of the engine would crack from thermal stress.
Both cylinders were now fully submerged and I kept the throttle a little high while clutching a bit more, to forestall a shutdown and possible water ingression through the exhaust pipes, and as you may have guessed by now, both legs way up above the water.
Come ’80, I planned my last trip to Accra carefully and very excitedly mounted at 0515h, morning after the last “paper” (examination) for the 248 km (155 mile) journey to Accra.
Free from school at last … I dropped off a mate after 66mls in Nkawkaw, Ghana and now, Free at last … … I looked forward to a smooth trip along my usual scenic route through the Akwapim hills and into Accra.
Soon after taking off, any rider or driver’s worst nightmare occurred.
RED oil light alert!
Checked everything, oil level okay etc but nothing would let it go out. I let the bike cool down a bit and took off again and at a really slow pace it seemed to be okay for a few miles but then would come on again. I had awful thoughts of a bad oil pump, even took off my head gear so I could listen for the faintest betrayals of bearing knocks beginning, but none. I eased it gradually into Accra and let it out of my mind till the next day. Turned out to be a faulty oil switch!
We went on to acquire many more bikes:
8-BMW R60’s, 1-R100, 1-R80, 1-R75,
Yamaha 1100cc Midnight Special
Kawasaki Z1
Honda 750
The bigger BMWs had great torque and returned comfortable rides but at high speed the protruding cylinders seemed to have a dangerous airfoil effect.
The Kawasaki Z1 was most avoided by all of us, had the hardest ride and fastest acceleration. If you did not hold on to those bars tightly enough, it could take off and leave you behind.
The Honda 750 was by far the workhorse of the fleet and had a wide, stepped seat with raised bars, not my riding poise but we recommended this machine to the Ghana Police at the time and they were well appreciated.
As I write, 2018, I occasionally still see one around town with a Police Inspector astride.
Come ’84, I had quit active riding and have not mounted since.
The feel of a large machine under you is one that stays with you for life and for my brother Ernie, being blessed with having experienced them all consistently (more so than the rest of us) since the ‘70’s, today’s machines, with all the hi-tech must be an extremely bonding affair.
Anyone can be a rider but it takes a technical, hands-on, nature-loving person to fully appreciate the exhilaration of man, machine and nature.