Paul Murphy and I have been friends for as far back as I can remember. We liked the same music, mostly, but the one thing we always agreed on was bikes. We loved bikes, he was the first to get one, a Suzuki GP100 and I followed shortly afterward with a Kawasaki KE125 . we would ream of the day we would be able to travel by bike in the US like in the movies like Easyrider . When Paul finished college he moved to England, the bikes we owned got bigger, the trouble we would get into got faster and boy did we have fun biking across to see each other between Ireland and England. The A5 through the mountains in Wales was a road he told me to take on the way to London after getting off the ferry and it was absolutely fantastic, twisties in the mountains through town I could not hope to pronounce.

Still all the time we talked about going riding in America but something always seemed to get in the way. In 1989 a driver in a van killed my Suzuki GSX750, which set me back a bit but still we manage to have fun and the dream never went away. Paul got to ride solo over in the US and came back and told how great it was. I got married and he became godfather to my oldest girl. He sold me his tricked out sporty and this was my first Harley and it is still in the family, it is now his again and is currently in a state of change.

In 1999 Paul had a near fatale accident while formula 1 Go-Karting. I will never forget the day when his sister rang me and told me that he was in hospital in England and he was being kept alive by machines and that if we wanted to say ‘good-bye’ that we had better get there quick. Needless to say my wife and I jumped on a plane to London and then borrowed a friend’s pick-up and went to the hospital. I remember standing outside the intensive care room looking through the glass at him lying there being kept alive by a machine. My wife went in to see him first as I stayed outside watching. It is a very strange feeling looking at your best friend lying motionless as my wife spoke to him, the whole scene was both surreal and yet quite slap in the face and kick in the nuts real. When my turn came to go in and say “good-bye to my friend I was not sure I could but in I went.

As I approached the bed, he was lying with just a sheet over him, I suddenly started to grin, it was like a scene out of one of his favourite movies “The life of Brian”, any moment he was going to sit up and shout ‘Go away- I am not the Messiah’ but I knew he would not. I sat down beside him and took his hand and whispered in his ear “You can't die yet, you still owe me a pint” daft I know but it was all I could think of. His body jumped and leapt on the bed, The nurse rushed over and told me it was just muscle spasms and that it had nothing to do with anything I said to him. I walked out of the room and I knew……I knew they were wrong. I said he is going to be ok, they told me I had not really grasped the situation, but I did and to this day I can’t explain it but I knew that he would survive.

The next day they turned off the machines and Paul breathed on his own. His road to recovery has not been easy nor has it been quick and indeed it is not finished yet. Life moved on for us both, I was as proud as can be when I stood as his best man at his wedding to his beautiful wife. He had to give up his license and still cannot ride a bike but his  interest in bikes never waivered. The sporty, his first Harley and then my first Harley is now back in his ownership, which I am building for him. He has put all the thought work in as to what type of style and what kind of things he wants done to it. There is a thread on it here somewhere but no more pictures will go up until it is finished, but trust me when I say that this sportster that started life as an 883 in 1989 will look nothing like any of it’s previous incarnations.

The dream of riding across in the US had gone to the back of my mind until Paul telephone me one day recently and said how would I like to do a charity ride in the states for Childline and Planet Rock Radio, the only drawback was that I would have to bring him pillion and of course I jumped at the chance. So this July we are going to ride in the PlanetRock/Childline –hands across the water run and fulfil the dream of biking together in the US.

To see photos of last year’s run follow this link;   http://www.planetrock.com/photos/childline-rocks-hands-across-the-water-624177/