Motorbikes & ME by Bear Lawrence

01st April 2022

Bear Lawrence describes his high-octane life before developing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and M.E.

Ever since I was a youngster, I’ve been mad about motorbikes. Forbidden from riding a motorbike by my parents, I cherished every opportunity to surreptitiously ride a motorbike, even if it was on the back of a pit bike. At eighteen years of age, I left home and promptly bought my first motorbike, a Montessa Cota 200. I learned to ride and started competing in trials competitions.

A couple of years later I had moved to university in London. Faced with traffic congestion and emboldened by the confidence I could now ride, I bought an old Honda CG 125. It wasn’t quick, but faster than the brakes were capable of, and the handling was best described as bouncy. That didn’t stop me trying to race anything, and the footpegs regularly dragged through the corners. Within a few months I passed my test and immediately bought a Kawasaki GPz 550.

As a mad-keen biker and impoverished student, I decided to buy and sell motorbikes so that I could satisfy my desire to try different bikes, and my need for cash. Being young, a student and living in London, my insurance restricted me to a maximum of 600cc. In the next few years I bought, rode and sold Kawasaki GPz and GPx 600s, a KLE500, a GPx 250 and a GPz 500. Although a Kawasaki fan, I didn’t restrict myself to the brand, and I had a Yamaha TDR 250 and FZR 600, a Honda CBR 600 and a hateful 250 Superdream.

It was during this time that I met Dave P, who raced motorbikes. I started going to watch him race and I spent weekends helping in the pits, watching racing, and meeting other racers. Another Dave (H) had recently bought an old air-cooled, twin shock Honda MT 125 race bike, and invited me to ride on a track day at Three Sisters race track in Wigan. So, I borrowed a set of leathers from Dave P, and had my first taste of riding on a track. Not long after this Dave H’s wife fell pregnant. He decided to stop racing and he generously offered me the tiny MT 125 and all the spares he had. Dave P also chipped in by offering to keep the little MT in his garage and take it to meetings when he was also racing. The least I could do was accept, buy my own leathers and start racing.

Over two seasons I competed at four meetings and picked up a few Best Novice trophies. It was during the second season that my then girlfriend had a bad motorbike accident. She T-boned a car that had pulled out on her, breaking her wrist and pelvis in four places. She spent six weeks in hospital and then used a wheelchair for months afterwards. At the season-end trophy night celebration, Dave P picked up yet another trophy for Forgotten Era 250cc champion. He announced that he was moving to the 250 Factory class to compete on a Yamaha TZ 250 A. He also offered me his multiple championship winning Suzuki GT 250 for the following season, which I immediately accepted. It was shortly after this that my best friend had a really bad motorbike accident. A van turned right across him and he hit it almost head on. I was told to get to the hospital as soon as possible as he was likely to die imminently. A few hours later, I was told he might not survive the night. He was in intensive care for a month. He broke his neck, his ribs and his leg, and his liver was split in half. He recovered but lost the use of his right arm and walked with a limp as his right leg was now shorter and twisted out.

These two accidents to the people closest to me at that time had a profound effect on me. When I started racing the next season on the 250, I found I wasn’t enjoying it, and I rarely rode my 600cc road bike. One condition of riding Dave P’s 250 was to mechanic for him at the Manx Grand Prix on the famous Isle of Man TT course, which I gladly did. Dave P kindly took my road bike in his van to the Isle of Man, so that I could ride around the TT course on it. Unfortunately, I crashed when it started to drizzle. I was going too fast, the 600 was more powerful than the 250 I had been riding more frequently, heavier, and the road tyres were less grippy than race tyres. I ran out of talent and ran out of road, crashed through a stone wall and only just missed a tree, which would surely have killed me had I hit it. A few days after the crash I had a nightmare, started vomiting and was paralysed with fear. Thirty years later, I still have nightmares about this. For years afterwards, I described how I had what I called ‘delayed shock’ from the accident. Eventually, I learned of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which was what I had. I continued racing but I had lost my nerve. All year I had been pushing myself, getting faster and faster, and now I rode at the pace I knew I could run, but was no longer comfortable with.

At the last meeting of the season at Mallory Park, a bike dropped oil on the racing line at the Lake Esses. I went to a vantage point with my dad to watch the next race to see whether the racers were using a different line so that I might have an advantage over my competitors in my forthcoming race. Whilst we watched, a bike went straight on at the end of the back straight and crashed at the Esses, hard into the tyre wall. It was immediately obvious he must have been killed. He was taken away in an ambulance, and once the ambulance returned to the track, racing resumed. I cannot imagine how my dad must have felt having to now watch his son race after seeing someone be killed racing. At the end of the race, I decided to quit my short motorbike racing career. I finished fourth in three championships that last year, with a best finish of first in class in the wet at Cadwell Park.

These various events of the last few years rendered me a troubled individual. My relationship fell apart, I quit my job, and I moved back home after an invitation to do so by my dad. One morning, whilst reading Motorcycle News, I learned of the death of a young racer at the Olivers Mount races at Scarborough. We had become friends at the Manx the previous year. It prompted me to sell my road bike, cancel my Motorcycle News subscription, and I almost gave up motorcycling for good. Almost. Over the next couple of decades, I occasionally rode but now fed my adrenaline habit with driving too fast, racing yachts and racing karts. Years earlier, Dave P had remarked at my spirited driving that I should be on four wheels rather than two, and I was reasonably handy in a kart.

Life changed with a half-hour trial lesson in a helicopter. Having briefed me on how a helicopter flight controls worked, and chatted about my hobbies, the owner of the helicopter company offered me my money back. He said, ‘I’ve met people like you. If you fly this helicopter you’ll have no relationship and no money within two years. You’ll become obsessed by flying helicopters.’ How I laughed at his sage advice. Two minutes into the flight, I decided to become a helicopter pilot. The relationship didn’t last six months, and the money lasted only a few years. Within months I was living in Oregon in the USA and working as a helicopter flight instructor. Over the next few years, I lived in Oregon and Tennessee in the USA, Norway, and then had a wonderful time living in Aruba in the Caribbean, flying tourists around the island. And, I was again riding motorbikes occasionally too.

Eventually, I returned to the UK and in time I became chief pilot at a small helicopter company. This meant responsibility for other pilots, staff and customers, a lot of flying and even more paperwork. My love of flying was quickly ebbing away with the grind of the job. Perhaps all this contributed to my being in a helicopter crash. Helicopter flight dynamics are rather complicated to explain. Let’s just say that the front of one skid – those are the long ‘feet’ the helicopter lands on – made contact with the ground and pitched the helicopter forward extremely rapidly. Such was the speed of this that I only managed to shut my eyes before one of the main rotors hit the ground ahead. I have no recollection of the accident from shutting my eyes until coming to a stop. The crash was so violent that the rear of the tail, including the tail rotor and fins, was severed and ended up some distance from the helicopter. The main body of the helicopter ended up pointing in the opposite direction and on its side. To all intents and purposes, the entire helicopter was destroyed. During the crash, the side of my head somehow made contact with the rear bulkhead behind me, smashing my headset to pieces, bruising and cutting my head. The violence of the crash was over, but what happened next was truly terrifying.

I could hear avgas glugging out of the tanks and the air was thick with the vapour of the fuel as I sat trapped in the wreckage. I knew that most people didn’t die from the impact of crashing a helicopter, they usually burned to death. The engine coughed, spluttered and then started to race behind me. I knew I had to stop it, if I was to live. Given the circumstances, the emergency fuel cut-off valve was now rather inconveniently out of reach. I pulled another fuel cut-off control only to discover that it had broken in the accident as the knob easily came away in my hand from the facia. My next move was to reach for the keys to shut the electrics down. I was shocked to realise the entire centre control binnacle was missing. Looking around, I saw it lying upside down on the ground a few feet away from me, but fortunately still attached to the helicopter by an umbilical of wires and tubes. It was my last hope. I reached for the umbilical and started pulling the control binnacle towards me. Turning it over, I reached for the keys and prayed, quickly saying aloud, ‘please turn off, please turn off’. The engine died, and the silence was deafening. Soon after, I was pulled from the wreckage, and I was relatively uninjured physically. Within days I was flying again, but I wasn’t the same person; another large dose of PTSD for me. A couple of years later, I retired from flying, having lost all my love for flying. Never for a second have I longed to fly again; retirement was the right decision for me. And I bought a dual sport Honda CRF 250 L and started green laning and riding in earnest.

Years earlier, I had earned a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. A contemporary had remained in academia and was now a senior academic at a university about forty miles away from where I now lived. He invited me to begin researching and teaching again with him, which I gladly accepted. The CRF wasn’t the ideal tool for travelling up and down the motorway, so I bought a Honda CB 1300 S. It was comfy, but far too fast for someone with my lack of restraint. It was part-exchanged for a Honda CB 500 F and I would have happily commuted on that forever were it not for a ride on a Honda fitted with the automatic, dual clutch transmission (DCT). This clever piece of technology removed the need for me to change gear manually, hundreds of times each week, freeing me to pay more attention to the idiots on the road trying to kill me. So, I bought a Honda NC 750 X DCT, which was perfect for commuting. It was comfortable, economical and the ‘fuel tank’ was actually a luggage compartment, with the actual fuel tank placed under the seat.

In my usual fashion, I put my efforts into teaching and research, which I loved. This led to my contract being increased over the years and eventually I was full time. Responsibilities were heaped upon me and again I found myself overloaded. I needed an interest outside work and one day I read about the Northern Ningers in Motorcycle News, which I had recently subscribed to again. The Ningers are a collection of motorcycle enthusiasts, with a love of small-engined motorcycles. Their name comes from the sound of a small 2-stroke engine, as in ‘ning, ning, ning’. I looked to buy a small-engined motorcycle and I quickly realised that for me, I had only one choice, a Honda CG 125, like I had owned about thirty years earlier. Good times were had on my little red Honda, not unlike myself, somewhat battered from experiences over the years.

Already suffering from stress from work, I caught a viral infection and was then in bed for seven weeks. Afterwards, I found I was extremely tired all of the time. Doing ordinary tasks like vacuuming or mowing the lawn would leave me completely exhausted, my limbs shaking with fatigue so much so that it made drinking and eating difficult. I thought it might be as a result of being in bed for so long, so I persevered. The NC 750 X was far too heavy for me to push around so I sold it. Twice I fell off the CRF 250 L, simply because my legs were too weak to support myself when I came to a stop. Even the CG 125 was difficult for me to manage. Five months after the viral infection, I was no better and my GP diagnosed me as having Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.).

M.E. is also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), or M.E./CFS. It’s probably been around since the dawn of mankind – Florence Nightingale had it – yet it is relatively unknown to most people and it is not well understood. Whilst it can have many symptoms, the primary symptom is fatigue. It can affect anyone, including children, although it is much more common in women, and people aged between mid-20s and mid-40s. Whilst some people do recover, most have it to varying degrees long term, and some are bed-bound and dependent on the care of others.

Most people develop M.E. after a bacterial or viral infection, trauma or stress, and particularly combinations of these. Symptoms can be wide ranging, vary from person to person, day to day, and even hour to hour. In addition to fatigue, I suffer muscle ache and joint pain, joint stiffness, nausea, headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, sore throat, and sleeping difficulties, to name but a few symptoms. One very common symptom is ‘brain fog’. The combination of fatigue and cognitive difficulties can be debilitating and extremely depressing. Yes, unsurprisingly, mental health problems are common with M.E.

Physical exercise is good for the health and recovery of healthy, sick people and even those with chronic conditions. This is in sharp contrast to people with M.E. They can experience a significant worsening of symptoms after physical, mental or emotional activity, such as stress. This can begin up to seventy-two hours after the activity occurred and is a hallmark symptom of M.E., called Post-exertional malaise (PEM). Recovery after activity in M.E. people is prolonged, varying between individuals, lasting days, weeks or even months. These periods are commonly known as ‘crashes’.

To be a university lecturer, helicopter pilot and motorcycle racer has required me to be variously articulate, intelligent, strong, have an ability to multi-task and have excellent spatial awareness. Now, some days I can have trouble speaking, reading, writing, or counting. My concentration span can be miniscule, I can have poor short-term memory and long-term memory recall. On another day, I can write an article such as this. If you were to see me walking my dog Rosie, I probably look healthy and well. But I am disabled; some disabilities are not visible. If we were to stop and talk, I may not remember your name, or even who you are, even though we may have met many times. I no longer trust myself to cook when home alone for fear of starting a fire, or to turn on taps in case I cause a flood.

There is no specific test for M.E., it is diagnosed by symptoms and ruling out other conditions. There is no cure for M.E., although some symptoms can be treated. The most effective treatment for most people is to manage their own energy levels by pacing themselves. I describe my own M.E. as ‘five and two’. Let us say a normal working week is five eight-hour days, plus two days for rest and relaxation. My illness is such that for two days of light or moderate activity, I need five days recovery, lying in bed or on the couch, which is not the same as relaxing. To give that more context, if I walk Rosie twice a day, say for a little over half an hour in total, that is four hours over a week, or a quarter of my available energy for a week. Every day I have to make decisions about what I will do, or not do, to pace myself. Do too much, and I ‘crash’, bed-ridden until I recover.

Eventually, despite loving the little Honda CG 125, it was a little too big for me to handle. I bought a tiny Benelli TNT 125 instead, but changing gear was still causing me problems, quickly fatiguing my left hand, ankle and foot. Cleaning, oiling and adjusting the chain was also causing me difficulties. Another Ninger, who also had M.E., suggested I try a scooter. Light, easy to get on and off, no gears and no chain, just twist and go. After a couple of rides on 125 scooters, the idea was sold on me; I did my research and bought a Honda PCX 125. I don’t get out to ride that often now, as I don’t have the energy. When I do, I have to limit how far I go so that I don’t overdo it. But the little PCX still affords me freedom and a smile on my face, and a chance to get out with my mates in the Northern Ningers. Riding is good for the soul and your mental health, as is having a laugh with similarly minded friends.

I call myself an Awarenessist and Author and my aim is to raise awareness and help those touched by chronic illnesses and hidden disabilities. I have a series of articles and books available on Amazon, and I’m currently working on my first fiction novel about a detective who has M.E.

Be kind to yourself and to others. Keep on riding and keep on smiling.