When were the 'good old days'?

[Ste]

[hellkat]

[Polarbear]

70's and 80's when I was first at sea exploring the world. Weeks in various ports. Unmarried. More money than sense.

Wonderful.

What was it like in the UK? Well, no internet, no mobile phones so all you had was TV and newspapers which were recycled for firestarters.

So we heard what they wanted us to hear I suppose.
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Triumph Trophy Launch Edition

[Sister Sledge]

Any time before thatcher (doesn't even deserve a capital letter) came to power.
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CCM 404 DS

[Howling Terror]

Good ol days for me or the UK or the world in general? <<<I can only answer 1 question confidently.

On a personal level I think the best is to come. To ride better, to write better songs, to fuck better and...………...Nope, that'll do.

I certainly did like things from the past but can easily recall plenty I didn't.
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Diabolical homemade music Bandcamp and Soundcloud
Singer songwriter, Artist and allround good bloke Listen to Andrew Susan Johnston here
The Harry Turner Project

[hellkat]

Got to admit, I'm kind of pissed off at everybody blaming the baby-boomers for all the world's ills. I'm working myself up to a BIG social media rant about that one for the purposes of annoying anybody who happens to bother reading it. I've not written it yet, still refining what I want to say, trying not to turn it into some sort of woolly jingle-bell activist rap/poem.
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[M.C]

[stevo as b4]

MC, so when exactly was the best years for you, or are they in the future and have not happened yet? To say life has always been shit, is either a certain type of personality trait (glass is always nearly empty) or its because of the location your in, or a regime you've been trapped in for most of your life?

For me yeah I'd say every decade from the 80's to the 2000's have had good periods for me. I was too young to notice the 70's, and I was too young to really appreciate and enjoy alot of it.

So for me it's 95-2005 which is because they were the years of me having the most disposable income and enjoying my work and social life. It just happens to be the greatest time for biking I've ever lived though too.

1, Huge bike meets, pub nites, and 90's hooligan lad culture with that spilling over into biking (nutters on Fireblades and loads of illegal fucking about and lunacy on the roads). You can't be a dick like that today no matter how hard you try. Stuff like long police chases, false plates, the helicopter up over big bike gatherings every week where there was showboating and carnage on the surrounding roads.

2, same as above, but fewer speed cameras no ANPR and a feel good factor for bikes and they wernt seen as irrelevant and irresponsible or pointless.

3, I had alot of mates that rode bikes, and I knew many more through friends of friends. I went on UK and European trips and did more stuff like off road days, a track day and went to a few race events too.

4, Bikes were better, no daft electronics and modes, and stuff like the 98 R1 and 2004 ZX10R were seen as fucking daft crazy machines that took no prisoners and didn't tolerate noobs with no talent or experience well. Whats the point of a 200bhp bike that's nutured and artificiality calmed down so that your gran could ride it?

5, Racing was better (we still had 500's that filled the grids with blue smoke). And also there was more appreciation and tolerance to two strokes on the road, without feeling like your a nasty evil planet killer.

6, Bike choices were so much more interesting and varied. Manufacturers still had the balls to come up with some interesting and innovative machines instead of parts bin specials. We had a decade of very trick and tasty grey bikes too.

7, Nutter magazine road testers that used to regularly test/destroy brand new sports bikes and make videos about mad European exploits, that often landed them with bans or jail time.

Yeah those were the days, I was there for some of them, saw it happen and enjoyed it massively. Biking will never be like that again, so I've had my best years on two wheels now as part of a big scene.

Now it's more about shed time, and buying old bikes to try and make me feel 17 again, but without the places to go, the mates or the freedom to enjoy myself like then. I can't believe in 2019 that I used to once do 5000-8000miles or more a year on bikes. I've done less than 600miles in the last 5years in contrast.

[M.C]

[AdamEf]

I read something a while ago about them often being the point in life where you have new freedom but the least responsibilty. Lots of people cling on to music from this era of their life. Looking back though, for me that would be when I was 19 ish in the 90s and I wouldn't want to go back to being that age again.

[Courier265]

[Pigeon]

The mind seems to constantly fight against appreciation of the present.
Looks back to a perfect time, or potentially looks forward to something better/else/place.

The good things we remember are the very brief periods it was happy to just be in the moment (brain does seem wired to recall negative first).

When you are younger, new/exciting things hold that anchor in the present. But the older you get, the less exciting things are as they lose their newness and intrigue. Those moments anchoring you in the present become smaller and shorter, until you are constantly looking back.

Once you realise there is no salvation in the future and you stop looking forward, if you haven't reconciled with the present, you are bang in trouble.

[M.C]

That sounds familiar, the power of now, I think it was you who recommended it actually? Oh yeah I'm definitely in that phase where even new things feel old and like you've done it all before

[hellkat]

*pats the bunny on the noggin*
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[Polarbear]

Bike wise, between the late 70's to early 90's. You still had the 2 strokes and what a choice. Kwak, Suzy and Yamaha triples and twins of varying sizes.

The end of the British bike was approaching but there was still the Commando, Trident and Bonneville if that floated your boat. Ducati were making (unreliable) beautiful exotica.

Then there was the genesis of the IL4 culminating in the race reps from the 90's onwards.

Mad creations like the Z1300, CBX1000, H1 and the RE5.

There will never be another era like it.

My bikes from those eras - Various yam strokers, a BSA rocket 3, Z650C3, FJ1200 in black and gold , GL1000, GL1200, ZZR1100C, GT500 , and a Ducati Paso 750.

There's probably more but being a senile old fart I forget things.
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Triumph Trophy Launch Edition

[mentalboy]

[Lord Percy]

[Sister Sledge]

I'm enjoying the mention of 2Ts here. I'd forgotten about just how special those days were.
One of my fondest motorcycle memories was a crazy ride through the center of Newcastle and on to Team Valley Trading Estate, Gateshead.
It was before mobile phones and every weekend we'd meet in smaller groups around the area - literally how we worked back then.
I'd met a few mates at Whitley Bay and a few other groups met with us. They told us of a huge meet that evening at Team Valley. Once we'd all fueled up we rode in a group which grew each time we stopped off at a known meeting point. The group was huge by the time we reached Newcastle.
We'd purposely time things so that traffic lights would hit red. We'd then bunch with the lesser powered 2T bikes at the front and each green light was a race. Huge clouds of blue smoke and a helluva racket later we'd hit the next red. That continued across the bridge and down to Team Valley. There were hundreds of bikes at that meet.
No speed cameras and a lack of police cars was fantastic.
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CCM 404 DS

[hellkat]

I just don't see it as something that you're never gonna be that happy again. I think that's a crock of shit.

Every single one of the decades I've lived through (I'm close approaching the end of my sixth) have had some proper shite moments, but also some fab moments of happiness and/or personal glory.

Every time I've thought about this, since the thread was started, I've thought, yeah, [whenever] was the best years of my life, my teens did have great music, no denying it, the birth of lots of exciting genres, great films. But shit things at home. My pre-teens were absolutely idyllic. Wait, but my mother kept trying to leave me behind. My twenties, they were "my own" years, time of my own making, of my own choices, but quite a lot of fucked-up choices they were, LOL. No, my thirties were pretty cool, look at all the amazing stuff I did back then. But I hurt people who didn't really survive as well as i did, etc, etc, what a bitch I was. In my 40s I properly discovered the benefits of weed, which pretty much changed my attitude about a lot of stuff (yay) but that decade was rife with madness and crazy times/people... and my fifties have (mostly) been awash with crazily overwhelming romantic love, but also a lot of unpleasant events or unexpected deaths to which I could have done without being even a tangential party.

So I couldn't say one time was any better or worse than another, it's totally a juggling act.

So I think its daft to say "This was the best time of my life". Its all very well looking at why you were so happy "back then" ... but it still ain't coming back. Even if you tried your best to recreate it, its never going to be exactly the same. Best look around for what's great about life *now* ... hard to believe, no doubt, that some time in the future you might just be able to go "I thought 2019 was gonna be rubbish but it turned out all right, compared to [whatever before/after].
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[M.C]

[1claire]

Back when I was young, wherein I will sneak out just to ride a bike with my cousins and then we will go home before dawn. That was 15 years ago, now I can't even ride my bike on a daily basis since I work from Monday to Friday.

[Hetzer]

[Hetzer]

[stevo as b4]

Hellkat I do agree with much of what you said, and yeah you do have to look to make your own good times. Im guessing some people sit at home playing on-line gaming and waiting for or expecting good things to come to them/happen.

My post still however is valid in that especially from a biking point of view I've had my best ever years and really enjoyed them. I won't ever see another time like that, but it's fine and I'm glad and happy I was there at the time. Its just like anything else that when you look back you only ever regret not doing more, going more places, buying more bikes, meeting more people etc etc.

As for todays world of doom, sure the world isn't a nice fluffy friendly place and some terrible shit goes on and we hear alot more about it in this 24/7 news always on-line culture we have. But you can still have good days, visit cool places in this country where we are free to roam, and have good times out with friends, see good events/gigs etc.

Maybe the bad/depressing news and the rise of social isolation, social media bullying and the mental issues it creates
has made us feel like now just very ordinary and there's no future or nothing to look forward to as MC was saying. But I don't get social media being so controlling/evil/deadly as you can turn it off and ignore it.

As Hetzer said some of the future tech and AI/automation and job taking by machines will make today's problems seem trivial in time.

[woo]

Good old days for me has to be from when I was a child from nursery to the end of primary school as everything seemed like an adventure. So that would be 1984 to 1992
The abundance of childish ignorance was blissful at the time as all that I knew and that mattered was playing outside with friends and going to school.
I used to get so excited about any school trips that I actually would struggle to go to sleep the night before and Christmas and Easter were fantastic times.
Being at home with just me, my brother and mum was the best thing in the world.
We used to walk to school everyday and walk through Norwood park and the journey was nice especially in the summer and winter as the grass would be covered in a white frost and in summer the paddling pool was open to have a little paddle in.

Our council estate had very few cars and we used to play in the road infact our estate was so closed off from the main road looking back it felt like a mini version of Gondolin

A lot of our time was spent in the library inside Kingswood house which looked like a castle in the middle of a council estate. They had so many books for us to read and my imagination would run wild and then when the library got a BBC Acorn Micro Computer I fell in love with gaming.

Don’t get me started on when it used to snow, this was the best thing ever!!
Walking to school in the snow, playing out on the estate in the snow.
Half term and summer holidays were simply the best as we used to go to play centre and go on various trips and just hang out.

I remember when Maggie took my milk away lol, I was like WTF!

Our teachers were allowed to hold our hands, hug us if we were upset, now days they would probably suffer a court case for simple human acts of normalness.

The funny thing is during this time we were so financially poor but rich in the things money can’t buy, we wore 2nd hand clothing and shoes to school and it didn’t bother me in slightest as we had food on table presents at Christmas and chocolate eggs at easter.

I was so happy when my mum kicked my dad out in 1985 and I knew he was not coming back, the man used to go to the pub at 12pm and put me a 4yr old and my brother a 1yr old in bed, plus the bugger left my mum with rent arrears of around £800.
Hes the reason why I have no interest in football and why I hate the smell of cigarettes and the smell of stale alcohol, as all I wanted to do was watch cartoons and talk with him whilst he would sit there smoking, drinking and watching football and doing the pools thing.

The only thing I seriously hated back then was the amount of church I had to go to, it was far too much!!!
Friday 7pm to 9pm prayer meeting at ghanaian church
Saturday 6.30pm to 7.30pm altar boy at catholic church
Sunday 10.30am to 11.30am altar by at catholic church
Sunday 1pm to 5pm church at Ghanaian church


TDLR my best years were my childhood years 1983-1992, nothing beats this until maybe I have kids of my own.
Only thing that gets me excited again like a child is when I go on long motorbike tours!
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Elen sila lummen omentielvo!