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Back in 1990 when I was 18 I got hit by a car whilst riding a Yamaha RD125 on L-plates. After many operations and about 5 years non-weight-bearing on crutches I eventually had my left leg amputated below the knee. After the accident it ‘really’ bothered me that I couldn’t ride, but through necessity, I ended up getting a car. I just assumed that I wouldn’t be able to ride again and that was that. Time passed and I eventually got used to the idea.
Now skip many years forward to 2003...
A friend of mine (Simon) was going to the Goodwood Festival of Speed and asked if I wanted to go. He was going to get there on his Kawasaki ZX7R and I was going to be perched on the back of it! That was it! By the end of the journey, I was bitten by the biking bug again and just had to ride!
After much deliberation (apologies to the many friends that I bored with various stupid ideas) I decided that the best thing for me to do was to buy a bike, modify it with a Kliktronic gear-changer and then have some lessons and finally do my test. To this end, I bought a 1998 Honda CBR 600 F-W. I then applied for a grant from the NABD and had the Kliktronic fitted by the nice people at The Motorcycle Workshop (Bolney 01444 882688), although I modified the fairing myself.
I got the theory and hazard perception tests out of the way and then set about the CBT. My problem here was that I couldn’t change gear on a conventional bike, but that was solved by Sussex Rider Training (Brighton and Worthing) who let me use one of their Vespa-style scooters with a twist-grip gear-change.
The next challenge was to get insured on the CBR whilst on a provisional licence so that I could have some lessons.
This proved to be more difficult that I had anticipated, but Mitchell & Partners sorted it out for me.
My first bike lesson... I finally got to ride my own bike with the Kliktronic fitted at the end of March 2004. It was absolutely fantastic! I did have to do some serious re-wiring in my brain to try to forget about changing gear with a foot that was no longer there (hey, it’s only been 14 years since I last used it, these things take time!), but it soon started to make sense. I had a couple of moments where it wouldn’t go into gear from neutral (which is usually easy to get into), but I think that’s due to a worn clutch joined to a clunky Honda gear-box, rather than the Kliktronic. I think that the biggest problem that I’m going to have with the Kliktronic is stopping Simon from nicking it to fit it to his RD350-powered go-kart!
I took my test and passed on 07/04/2004, just before a long bank holiday weekend. Needless to say, I got a lot of riding in over that weekend and ended up clocking up about 1000 miles. The Kliktronic is behaving very nicely (which is more than can be said for the rider), although I did manage to hit the down-shift button once instead of the up-shift due to a bad case of brain-drain.
Anyway, I can’t sit round here all day writing articles for magazines, I’ve got a bike to ride!
Steve Bray
This NABD grant of £400.00 was sponsored by The You’ve Been Nabbed 12A Rally
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