OFF THE WIRE
Ron Hebberd transports a step ladder on his Royal Enfield 500 in 1955.
In his 58 years riding motorcycles Ron Hebberd has crashed through flaming fences, traversed the length and breadth of New Zealand and collected more than 100 bikes.
But as the Marlborough Motorcycle Club celebrates 90 years this month, the 74-year-old's proudest achievement may well be the compilation of a 260-page history of the club.
Ron has been collecting and writing on the club's history for about 20 years but it was only after a knee operation reduced his mobility last March that he finally set about collating the vast wealth of information.
"It's not quite as simple as writing a story," said Ron. "You can just spend so much time on just a small bit of the history.
"My wife and I spent three afternoons looking in the Express records looking for the particular date that the club started up again after the war but we never found it."
The book will have about 200 photographs, from 1921 through to 2011 and includes a fascinating glimpse into the lives of those first members.
"Alan Woodman [who was racing in the 1920s] lost his right leg racing his bike, but he still raced – as long as they were going anticlockwise round the track so that he could stick his left leg out," said Ron.
Ron bought his first motorcycle – a Royal Enfield 500 – when he was 16 in 1953. A year later he was a member of the Marlborough Motorcycle Club and hasn't looked back.
President for two periods of three and five years, and on the executive for 19 years, Ron now takes a behind-the-scenes approach, but still rides the vintage bikes from his motorcycle museum on the roads.
The museum has bikes nearly 100 years old, such as the 1913 New Hudson, of which Ron proudly states he is only the second owner.
Ron was a mechanic by trade, working for 52 years on cars and motorbikes. He owned a service station in Seddon, selling Yamaha motorbikes.
"I still have a soft spot for Yamahas," he said.
They make up about half his collection of bikes, which has examples of weird, wonderful and extremely rare machines.
He also has examples of early leather and papier mache helmets, an exhibition of mangled engine parts and biking paraphernalia of all descriptions.
And the end of the road is not in sight for Ron's motorcycling passion.
He and Shirley, his wife of more than 50 years, will be part of a group of 16 motorcyclists from Marlborough who are doing a two-week tour of Vietnam in May.
But before that, the club of which he is a lifetime member will celebrate 90 years of biking enthusiasm – the icing on the cake being the publication of Ron's definitive history of the Marlborough Motorcycle Club.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/community-papers/4822674/Motorcycle-club-history-in-a-book
