Because I made the mistake of allowing a woman to convince me not to, because then she would worry less about me.

After a while I simply got out of the habit.

Moreover, I’ve managed to nearly kill myself in the car more than enough times, never mind on the bike and … I’m really not joking … pulled off maneuvers that to this day I cannot explain because they defied the laws of Physics ¹.

I drove my cars like they were bikes and kid you not when I say I even made an Astra 1.4 leave the lights from a standing start faster than a bike … so you can imagine the kinds of trouble I got into when I graduated to 1.8 and 2.0 litre engines!

Can you imagine, therefore, what my life expectancy would have been, had I ever got back on a bike?

After the last close shave ² … after which I, once again, could not explain how I managed to get the vehicle back on track, pointing the right way, in one piece and moving in the correct direction of travel, because there wasn’t actually time to pull off such a maneuvre … I swore I was going to stop taking the piss, stop tempting Fate and drive sensibly and cautiously.

And even so, one day, whilst driving along a particular road I hadn’t been on in around twenty-five years, I got to the same point where, on the bike, I used to get exasperated by the tailback, whiteline it with a centimetre’s width either side of me and dodge back onto my side of the road if the oncoming vehicle wouldn’t give me even that much space … and found myself edging out to get a view of oncoming traffic, with the intent of leapfrogging forward, just like on the bike.

Wen I noticed what I was doing, I realised that, no, I should never get back on a bike — I can’t help myself and will end up dying (if I‘m lucky)

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¹ I’m not convinced some of them could even be done on a bike!

² In which I ended up heading across two lanes at 90 degrees to the flow of traffic and towards the central reservation … after which there were another four lanes of oncoming motorway traffic to contend with.