Lockdown Fever - A Trial for the Addicts?
Q  By Andy Withers
Over eight weeks into the Covid 19 lockdown and not having any bike sport does not get any easier! Petrol heads and bike addicts everywhere are finding many different ways to try to satisfy their habit whether they are 7 or 87 years of age, getting back to bike sport will be the only true fix. Social media has been doing it's bit to satisfy the habit with a range of distractions to keep your mind off of the problem. Some enthusiastic parents posted their home schooling successes, Max Kopasz and Martin Price's were vying for teacher of the year with their trials sections in the back garden, certainly worth a look. Coming out of lockdown with improved trials skills would make it worthwhile! At the other end of the scale the top experts are offering entertainment, Toni Bou's posts of how he is practicing are something to admire and aspire to. Graham Jarvis is struggling to cope shown by a couple of videos destroying his garden as he tries to get his "extreme enduro" fix. In addition there are videos and photos galore as we all have a bit more time to reflect on the sport from the past years, Southern Trials Riders, Awsportsphoto are a mix of modern and classic whilst Deryk Wylde's "The Competition Motorcycles Reference Library and Photo Archive" is excellent for those with a longer memory. Mainstream media has helped, on TV, a rerun of the 2019 British MX championship was particularly medicinal and World and British Superbikes from previous seasons have helped to numb the pain. Some magazines have been able to publish with social distancing using up some of their "timeless" articles to soldier one. They hit the mat and are looked at from afar for three or four days until the risk of infection has gone. TSM has embraced the change looking to provide a possible light back to civilisation as we know it as well as giving us a transfusion of new content. Checking in on friends and fellow addicts has been a feature of the lockdown. Those who are already retired from regular work have not had their weekday routine altered much, but they tend to mourn the weekends and the midweek summer trials that should have started in May. Regular responses are "the bike has never been
cleaner than it is now", "all those maintenance jobs I've been promising to do are being done", those with bigger problems have sorted their nuts and bolts into sizes and relabelled the containers. Writing a list of what needs to be done on the bikes and getting to grips with the "backburner" projects are also common. The extraordinary has included a plea of help from a recently retired grass track sidecar rider's wife Mrs Hiscocks said he (John) was going up the wall. He was due an operation which would hopefully improve his trials riding, the delay has caused him frustration, or it may be he missed the speed so much he had built a wall of death in the workshop, so he may have been literally climbing the wall? Checking in on George Greenland gained the response of a true trials rider. At 87 years young and self isolating he normally rides every weekend and works on his machines every day of the week. Keeping going, keeps him going. In our first exchange he said he should have been in Belgium for a trial, so he was fed up about missing one of the enjoyable reunion events on the calendar. The good news was he was practicing hard in the garden on the Bantam to "keep his hand in". On the downside, the workshop work had slowed down a bit because there was more cooking to do, oh and the frame he was waiting for an important project was socially isolating at WASP's workshops. A second call brought some bad news, the practice in the garden had been curtailed for the moment, the petrol had "gone off" causing the bikes to "pink" and not run properly, but on the upside a new restoration project was underway with wheel building, because all the parts were available to make some progress. A further classic trial at Spa Francorchamps was cancelled, one of the real jewels in the calendar so that was a down, oh and more cooking. As bike addictions go, George has one of the longest, if not "thee" longest addiction, still getting regular fixes at almost 88. Lets hope times will change soon so George and the rest of us addicts can get our fix once more. With the lockdown easing we should be able to leave our back gardens and return to socially distanced events in the weeks ahead? 13
