Forward and Back

As you might imagine, there’s a tale behind these photos.

They were taken at a rally held at a rugby club that I attended a few years ago. Someone asked if they could have a go on this quite tidy Jawa 350 sidecar outfit as they'd never ridden an outfit before and were considering buying one. Being a nice chap, the owner said yes.

The newly-fledged sidecar pilot trundled around the rugby pitch for a bit gaining a bit of confidence, as you do when nothing goes wrong. He then decided he'd better turn around and come back so he rode the bike between the uprights of the goal posts and began to turn around, unfortunately forgetting that he had a sidecar attached to the bike he was riding.

Yes, that’s right; he rode into one of the uprights! Luckily, the sidecar was mostly undamaged (see the scrapes in the third picture), but the chassis and mounting brackets got bent somewhat.

The only option was to take it all apart, fix the damage and put it all back together. This with a selection of borrowed tools, on a rugby pitch, surrounded by interested onlookers giving quite contradictory, but well-meaning advice.

This is what happens when you’re trying to do something like that in a hurry!