I moved back to Wilts and bumped into my old instructor, for one lesson, Harold. He was running a ROSPA bike safe riding competition in a couple of weeks and asked if I was interested in coming along. Might be fun. Might learn something. Why not?
The day arrived, the weather was nice and so I decided to go. There were three parts to the competition; an observed ride with some local advanced riding instructors; a multiple choice test of your road craft; and a manoeuvring test around some of my favourite things, traffic cones.
I did the multiple choice test. No worries. Easy. Not the Highway Code test but more like the modern theory test but with no computer. The one, and only, question that sticks in my mind after all these years was “What should you NOT do when approaching a zone of danger?” What the hell is a zone of danger? Is that the Kenny Loggins song from Top Gun? The answers were pretty obvious to me. Turns out I was alone in thinking that. (By the way you never accelerate into a zone of danger I was the only one who got 100% as the others got the zone of danger question wrong. Clearly not fans of Kenny Loggins.)
A watched others do the cones set out. This was trickier than the prior Part 1 test I did. There were spirals and a stopping box where one needed to stop. Sounds easy but you were not supposed to put your feet down. One point per second or possibly stay until the observer stays ok. I know later on we did the one point per second until someone came on a Suzuki 400cc single trail bike which had square wide tyres. Impossible to ride round corners but ace stop on. Feet up stop and counting past ten is quite enough to secure a win and on the Suzuki it was easy.
I managed the course quite well. No cones hit and a decent time stopped. The riding in traffic in Oxford had clearly made a massive difference to my slow riding skills.
Lastly the observed ride. I’ve done a few of these over the years and this was a little strange. The only comment I got at the end was that I didn’t sound my horn on a tight turn over a bridge. What? Really? Was that it?
The first competition I ever attended and the results were in. Winner in the theory test. Andrew Bailey. I won something! Awesome. Winner in the observed ride. Andrew Bailey. I won something else? No way. Winner of the manoeuvring. Me. Err. This is embarrassing now. Winner of the trophy for the highest overall score. Andrew Bailey. A large haul of decent sized trophies was mine to keep until next year. What the hell happened?
In the next few years the competition heated up quite a lot and I never managed to win more than one trophy. I could ace the theory test but not succeed in the observed ride. Or I could manoeuvre but not tick the right boxes. The last year I helped out on organisation and set the manoeuvring course which I could only just complete myself, with practice. That year went to the Suzuki rider by a metaphorical mile.
One sad point. The second year a friend of Harold’s was coming along to present the prizes. He had attended the prior year as a judge and was quite well known in advanced riding circles. He never showed up. I heard later from Harold that his friend had died whilst riding to the competition. Someone had simply driven into him at speed. He remains to this day the only person I have known killed on a motorbike. I hope that remains true.
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