Copyright Jan Burgers printed on 250gsm Kodak paper
 
Sochiro Honda described it “like perfume”. Like Honda-san, Dane Rowe’s intial attraction to motorcycles was the smell of oil. Brought up on the Lancashire coast, 11-year-old Dane was staying with her grandmother when she wandered to a nearby motorcycle shop and watched a mechanic lying beaneath a bike. Straining to reach a spanner, the man asked Dane to please pass it to him. She was transfixed, and soon fell into the down-to-earth charm of motorcycling. “He was extremely kind and his kindness and respect was a huge influence on my life.”
 
In her late teens, Dane attended a couple of motorcycle races and was fascinating by the sidecars. “I saw the passengers hanging off, and I thought, ‘that doesn’t look hard, that’s something I could do.’ Dane ventured to future meetings in the hope she would get a pick-up ride with a sidecar team. She got finally the call up and that’s where it started in 1967.
 
Dane moved to West London in 1968 to study photo-journalism. She bought a Triumph 3TA 250 and joined the 64 Club after being unable to join the rockers at the 59 Club turfed at the Ace Café where she met a bloke named Lemmy... the future lead-singer of Motorhead.
 
Flicking through MCN one day in '68, a small ad caught her eye – ‘Sidecar Passenger wanted for TT’. Out of all the applicants angling for the ride, Colin Bird chose Dane. “I still rermeber how I felt when Colin said he had chosen me.”