03/10/2021
Owned a CZ 175 roadster for three days in 1977, acquired under unusual circumstances.
My commute from "the sticks" to Liverpool (UK) was becoming impossible by public transport, and I was constantly late for work. Almost by accident I discovered that (at that time) I could legally ride a motorcycle up to 250cc on a provisional licence with no training at all. It was an option I could look at - female motorcyclists in my area were rare, but not unknown.
I still had to get the money to purchase a bike, though - this was a year before the Sex Discrimination Act in Britain, and wages for female office workers were notoriously low. A work colleague, Henrietta (who coincidentally had attended the same school as me), reckoned she could help. Her brother had brought a new CZ 175 from George Emsley (a CZ/Jawa dealer in Seel Street, Liverpool) two years earlier, passed his test on it and graduated to a Honda 550. Since then, the 175 hadn't moved from a back garden shed and was getting in the way.
Three recent consecutive weekends of trying to get it started had resulted in no success. Henrietta told me he was ready to give it away, and that she would arrange for me to have it if I swam a length of the local swimming pool underwater. (This was something to do with collecting money for the animal charity she was mad keen on. I didn't ask for details.) It was something I had managed quite easily during swimming lessons at school and I was approaching 20 years old by now, but I reckoned I could still do it.
Oh, and there was one specific caveat. To attract extra sponsorship money, I would have to swim nude.
It was fortunate that I was friendly with one of the pool lifeguards (she'd be called a "pool attendant" these days). When I told her about the situation she supplied me with the timetable for "women only" sessions at the pool when she would be on duty, and, perhaps more importantly, promised not to sling me out of the place when I padded to the poolside completely naked.
As it turned out, I completed my length below the surface watched by a good few of my female colleagues, who wolf-whistled unmercifully as I emerged from the far end of the pool and had to pad in a state of nature along the poolside. I tried to remain dignified but it was the longest walk of my life.
Three days later I swapped the CZ for a Honda C70. Result.