Farewell, friend. You served me well. Now that it’s over, it’s hard not to look back with fondness at the time we spent together. Deep down, I knew it would come to an end at some point, I just didn’t expect that moment to be now. When I heard the news, it was as if a part of my soul left my body. There will forever more be a small hole in the shape of a three-wheeled motorbike in my heart. So long, Honda 110. You were the best motorbike a young boy could ever want.
Farewell, friend. You served me well. Now that it’s over, it’s hard not to look back with fondness at the time we spent together. Deep down, I knew it would come to an end at some point, I just didn’t expect that moment to be now. When I heard the news, it was as if a part of my soul left my body. There will forever more be a small hole in the shape of a three-wheeled motorbike in my heart. So long, Honda 110. You were the best motorbike a young boy could ever want.
It arrived one Christmas. Without any particular fanfare, my brother discovered two helmets behind the couch. Perhaps it was the fact that the word ‘motorbike’ had not appeared on my Christmas list (instead I’d requested as many cassettes from the ‘Hooked on Classics’ series as Santa’s budget would allow) or that I had so often been accused of having chronic helmet hair that I so completely misread the signals. Cameron, however, understood at once. He took off as if he’d been shot from a cannon, up towards the shed. Several minutes later and after a lengthy explanation from my parents that involved diagrams and the kind of after-dinner pantomime that really ought to have been unnecessary, I followed.
We found it in the shed. Underneath the hip to ankle plaster cast that had encased my broken leg when I was six and which my father had decided to retain as some kind of keepsake for reasons that elude me then and now and the jar with a methylated reptile that had come to grief after tangling with the lawnmower. Bright red with a large headlight at the front was the Honda 110 three-wheeled motorcycle. My brother and I were dumbstruck.
Perhaps it was the sheer surprise of it. Not only had I never asked for a motorbike, my parents had often taken it upon themselves to remark on the motorbikes of others. As we were growing up, we’d often see other kids riding motorbikes across paddocks or, for those without easy access to land, up and down the driveway. At the first hint of their mosquito-like engine hum, they would dish up the tidal wave of opprobrium that is the simple shake of a parental head. So far as I could tell, they ranked motorbikes somewhere between dropping out of high school and pinball parlours in their Parental Hall of Shame.
In a technical sense, owning a motorbike represented a kind of freedom that a BMX simply couldn’t deliver. But actually owning one of these beauties came with its own set of challenges. The first of which was getting it started. Rather than a key or a button, the Honda 110 required you to yank on a ripcord with such muscle-shredding ferocity that the odds of actually starting the engine or dislocating your shoulder were pretty much even. It’s hard to feel free if you need to fetch an adult every time you want to go for a spin.
Having overcome the hurdle that was starting the engine, we had plenty of space to go riding. To get to the back half of the property, it was necessary to get over the creek; which took some measure of skill. Using a mix of intuition and aptitude, you had to thread a path through the water that was both cautious and yet didn’t give the engine a chance to stall. But once through, it was a quick trip past the blackberry patch up into the bush. My brother and I spent hours clearing pathways to create racing circuits. Blitzing around the trail, we would startle cattle as we tore around at what we regarded as high speed but, in reality, was probably something a notch or two above walking pace.
When we left home, the motorbike stayed behind. It was probably for the best. I doubt very much that the Honda 110 would have enjoyed University life. Attending a first year Russian literature tutorial was never going to hold its interest. Instead, the bike was put to work. My father attached a trailer to the back and it was used to cart firewood from the bush to the house. Over the years, its powers diminished until, eventually, its pace was reduced to that of a three-wheeled glacier.
The salesman was startled when my father told him of his Honda 110. They hadn’t been manufactured for more than thirty years; surely my father had taken extraordinary care of it to account for its longevity? My father most likely shrugged. Attention to mechanical details is simply not the McCullough way. We prefer to ignore such things and hope for the best. It was precisely this approach that resulted in my vehement denial that there was anything wrong with the Astra right up until the moment that flames started to leak out from underneath the bonnet.
The Honda 110 is gone, without so much as a farewell. My father replaced it with a four-wheeled motorbike that looks like a small car with the lid peeled off. There’s no ripcord, just a button. And whilst the Honda’s departure was thirty years in the making, it still felt too sudden. Neither my brother nor I had a chance to say our goodbyes. As I imagine it, we would have both strapped on our helmets one last time and taken the beast for one more trip around the block. It wasn’t to be. The Honda 110 has gone to the great car park in the sky. Ride on, friend, ride on.