Any info on this one? I'm willing to bet he's Canadian judging by the peculiar habit of sitting on the tank.

Yep I already said that here Sam.

http://pub37.bravenet.com/forum/static/show.php? usernum=3155626639&frmid=16&msgid=1334614&cmd=show

I just can't imagine riding like that Ron

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Oops, hadn't caught that one. I tried sitting on the tank, doesn't work for me at all, but then again they were trained to do it from the get go, so I guess that's all they knew.

He could have been stopping to break wind.

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They weren't trained to do it Sam. In fact they were absolutely discouraged from doing it by the authorities, as can be seen from this page of "The Winged Wheel Patch" Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

It's an interesting debate this sitting on the tank thing. The book does list what the stand of the war department was regarding the custom, but doesn't explain how it was such a universal practice amongst Canadians. A friend of mine who made a career of the army and was in the RCEME took his motorcyclist course in Germany in the early 60's through the RCCS. He says the instructors taught them to sit as forward as possible of the saddle and to straddle the tank. They used TRW's at the time. The explanation given him by the instructors was that by sitting as far forward as possible, you get further away from the rear end bucking action of the bike in cross country riding. These instructors would have been either veterans or would have certainly been taught by veteran RCCS instructors who in turn would have served on ridged rear suspension bikes. Canadians had a way of doing their own thing, being that it was such a widely used technique sort of leads me to believe that the riders must have had some coaching in the practice early on during training. I cant imagine learning from the start to ride on the saddle and getting comfortable with it, then changing to riding the tank all of a sudden. It could very well be a practice started in the field and then imposed on new riders by the veterans in a sort of pier pressure thing I suppose. These are of course just my ramblings but it seems as if instruction in the practice had to be done somewhere along the line. Regardless, it's interesting how it's vestiges remained until certainly at least the 60's.

The odd thing about it is that siiting that far forward makes it harder to stand up...and standing up is the only way to put the weight on the footrests and thereby to lower the centre of gravity which is what's needed off-road.

I'm not really the right person to comment as Rob van den Brink once told me that I sit far too far back with my shoulders dropped and don't look at all military...but as soon as I get on a Norton single, I think that I'm Jimmy Guthrie...

I'd suspect that the answer may lie in Canadian training with WLCs and that a substantial number may have had horse riding experience with western saddles.

Is that front fender on backwards?

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