What do you get if you cross a bike and a washing machine?

No, it's not a spin cycle.  I was talking to my Mum on the phone the other day and somehow a story from my Dad's childhood that he'd told me years ago popped into my head and made me start laughing all over again.  To put this in context, my father is the son of an engineer.  He has three older brothers who are all very close in age to him and each other, and one quite a lot younger brother.  The brother nearest to my Dad's age is Uncle Simon (to me, obviously - he's just Simon to my Dad), the gap being just a couple of years.

When my Dad was about ten and Uncle Simon was about twelve, and they had been living in the US for a few years already, they thought the most fantastic thing in the world they could get hold of would be a motorbike.  They didn't have any cash and weren't old enough to drive, but they were enterprising enough (Uncle Simon) and scientifically-minded enough (my Dad) to have a go at making an electric motorbike.  Yes, that's right, a ten-year-old and a twelve-year-old making a motorbike.  Kids - don't try this at home.  Or at least, if you do, don't blame me.  Or sue me.

I can hear the cogs whirring from here: just how did these two young enterprising engineers make a motorbike? Well, it was quite simple, really. They got hold of a normal, average pedal cycle and an old washing machine motor and mounted the latter onto the former.  I'm led to believe that there may have been a little tinkering about and then the contraption was ready for its inaugural test run.

One of the brothers (I'm not sure which) got on the "motorbike" and fired her up.  He set off down the driveway of their parents' house and the two were amazed at both the fact that the thing actually worked and how fast it would go.  It was incredibly fast, a feat of youth engineering, and it made it almost until the end of the driveway....

....and then the plug pulled out of the socket.

Yes, my enterprising uncle and my "daredevil" Dad had either forgotten to take account of, or had simply decided that they didn't care about, the fact that plugging the washing machine motor into the mains would somewhat limit the range of their vehicle.

The way my Dad remembers it, the intention was to prove that they could make the motorbike work in the hope that they could somehow acquire a battery pack capable of making it go.  Whether they had considered that to obtain a similar speed from battery power, they would need a 120V A/C source, I am not certain.

If you'd like to hear more hilariously funny stories like this (I confess, I flatter myself), please feel free to make a donation to British Heart Foundation by clicking the button at the top right of this page!