All was going superbly to plan. Ruins got looked at, weird food got ate, beverages got drunk. But then an affable Rhodian waiter mentioned that just down the road from his restaurant was a Harley shop. ‘That’s nice,’ I thought in a distractedly, disinterested kind of a way. Then the waiter says, ‘A Harley hire shop.’ That changed the whole scenario completely, I wolfed down the rest of my stifado and shuffled off to see what this Harley hire shop was like. Even Mandie thought it sounded like a good idea; what better way to see the island? No dodgy mopeds for us, let’s do the idyllic island of Rhodes on a hog.

There was absolutely no question which motorcycle I wanted to hire. As soon as I clocked the row of bikes outside the shop, the FXSTSB Bad Boy, a rare bike I’d never ridden, beckoned.

Introduced in 1995, the FXSTSB Bad Boy should have been a sure-fire recipe for success; take a Springer Softail, a fairly popular model and a hugely attractive motorcycle in its own right and paint it black all over. Then add a solid, slotted rear wheel and wide low handlebars and watch them fly out of the showroom door. But they didn’t fly out of the showroom door, Harley-Davidson had made a rare model mistake, the FXSTSB didn’t sell particularly well at all and was pulled from the range two years later.

Why the FXSTSB failed to catch on is something of a mystery, it is after all one of the finest looking stock motorcycles Harley has ever produced. Was the Bad Boy hard to handle? Prone to explode in sunlight? Or perhaps it was simply the name. ‘Bad Boy’. Could be! I remember wincing and swearing when I heard what they’d called the poor beast, it was like calling your Rottie ‘Twinkle’. Good grief, how Harley-D ever thoughtthat anyone could hold their head up in a pub and say proudly ‘I’ve ridden my Bad Boy really hard today, but my bum’s a bit sore now!’

But on the other hand, in Harley’s defence, ‘Fat Boy’ has obviously caught on okay as a model moniker – and ‘Fat Boy’ is just as screamingly dodgy.

… well it is.

So name aside, was there some other fundamental reason why the Bad Boy proved unpopular? This FXSTSB for hire outside a sun-drenched Harley shop in downtown Rodos would be a chance for me to find out for myself. I, of course, accepted that it wouldn’t be a true glimpse of the bike Harley offered from that showroom floor: this Greek Bad Boy was now at least 6 years old, its 1340cc Evolution motor had seen an awful lot of miles, had been opened up, used and most probably abused. The leather stepped seat looked non-standard and the mini sissy bar and chrome O-ring handlebar grips were definitely not on the original offering.

But for 120 Euros the Bad boy was mine for 24 hours – that was about £90 at the time. Not cheap, I know, but sod it, I was on holiday and it’s not everyday I get to ride such a bad-ass looking motorcycle in blistering sunshine, past azure seas, huge cacti and over pine topped mountain.

Resisting the urge to say ‘I know!’ after each control was pointed out, I started up the Bad Boy with a thunderous roar – aye, true enough, the pipes had had a coat of looking at. Settling into the leather seat the motorcycle immediately felt right and familiar enough to relax on the wrong side of the road, even surrounded by ... er, enthusiastic, Rhodian riders and drivers. Mandie settled in behind me and it was time to move away. Unsurprisingly, given the Bad Boy’s present employment, a more positive clunk than usual saw first gear, but the throttle was responsive and I fed out the clutch.

Ooer, the front end felt massively heavy as soon as pulled away, this was going to be hard work! I put the heavy, ponderous steering firmly down to the stigian Springer forks gracing the front and the low, though wide, handlebars. I never remembered the Springer Softail to be this evil, but the Bad Boy was – ‘Maybe this is how the FXSTSB got its name!’ I thought to myself.

Full of petrol now, it was time to explore the island tip to toe and we headed West out of Rodos town along the Northern edge of the island, heading South through Trianda and Kremasti. Even sticking more or less to the speed limits as we passed through the last of the touristy towns, Paradisi, set along the top of the ‘windy’ Mediterranean side, the big 1340 Evo felt more reluctant than my own, older and significantly heavier, Road King. More indicators of hard use perhaps and possibly less than conscientious servicing – a shame, but never mind. We swept past the airport and almost immediately were to all intents and purposes alone on fine sweeping country roads, in breathtaking scenery. Even this Bad Boy was easily capable of cruising at 70mph and, believe me, given the bends, I didn’t want to go much faster!

Now we were really cruising, making excellent time for our lunch date at the Southernmost tip of the island – Prasonisi. However the route around the island required that we had to follow a mountain road, rather than following the coast. Normally I wouldn’t have minded a jot, I had a good map and I definitely knew where I was, where I’d been and a pretty certain idea of where I needed to head to get back to the coast. The one massive worry was the steering. I couldn’t swear to it but I was sure it was getting worse, heavier and heavier. Was it just fatigue? Was I simply getting used to the machine so its faults were becoming amplified? Er, no, the front end was suffering from a slow puncture and I needed air FAST.

All very scenic, these mountains, but the narrow winding roads had no Armco, and avoiding looking at the sheer drop on my left only drew my attention to the sheer drop on the right. Fighting now to get any form of steering by physically throwing the rear of the Softail into a corner and gunning the engine I was only too well aware of the danger of the situation. Where to get air from though, that was the real problem. The closest village, Siana, was 20 kilometres away and the map indicated that the next garage that could handle tyre repairs was another 80 kilometres beyond. My desperate hope was that Siana boasted a modest garage or a workshop with an airline. Atheist or no, when I passed a tiny chapel set upon a pinnacle of stone, I crossed myself just like a local.

Siana in fact was a breathtakingly beautiful mountaintop hamlet. How much of a hamlet though I wasn’t aware until 15 seconds after arriving we were leaving again. Dammit, no garage, no nothing, I was exhausted and even Mandie was ruffled. Front tyre virtually flat I had no option but to turn the Bad Boy around and make for the only sign of hope I’d spotted – a little shop selling honey in an eclectic collection of recycled jars. We pulled up across the narrow road on a three foot by seven lumpy rectangle of dirt, next to an impressive void that geologists like to call a bloody big drop, stepped off gingerly and made for the shade.

Praise be, the chest crossing had worked, the honey shop opened up into a cool canteena complete with Grannie in Black and the Greekest-looking Greek bloke I’d ever seen. Encouraged, I grabbed my trusty Greek phrase book and asked, best I could, for water, frappe (ice cold coffee) and did he know of anyone I could borrow an air pump off of?

‘Shurewuh,’ answers the Greek-est guy in fluent Noo Yawk English, ‘I gotta pump, you need air or what? Whatyagot, a slow puncture? You gotta be careful wid it mind, it don’ have no air guage.’ I grinned ‘S’alright, I do.’ And he was impressed. ‘You don’ see too many riders wid an air guage no more.’ Perplexed, I looked around at the décor … a map of Manhattan and several photos of the Greekest guy with various NYC outlaw club members. Fair play and bloody unbelievable luck for me and Mandie.

Refreshed and with both tyres inflated to something like recommended levels, we set off quickly towards a town called Kattavia which both the map and the guy had indicated had a garage which could fix punctures.

Over more pine forested mountain we twisted and the Bad Boy’s steering was, unsurprisingly, appreciably better, we gained a small mountain village called Monolithos without too much trouble but the puncture was getting worse over time and another 20 kilometres saw me desperate to get it fixed. The next settlement actually did claim to have more than one way in and out of town, and even a garage! A village called Apolakkia.

Apolakkia’s garage was a proper garage. Almost certainly owned by the local co-operative, it had one hell of a workshop, which was, unfortunately unmanned. The garage did have an airline though, linked to a serious compressor probably left by the Italians in WWII. Uncertain how to work the gizmo, I grabbed the line up from the floor the compressor started. If there was life other than the obligatory dog chained under the cart, I just couldn’t see it.

Presently a lady appeared and soon after explaining my problem, she was off on her bike to rouse the mechanic from his siesta. ‘Can you fix punctures here?’ I’d asked, ‘It doesn’t say so on the map.’ ‘Of course!’ she’d replied somewhat amazed I’d asked such a dumb question. Perhaps half an hour later he appeared, speaking less English than my Greek and we proceeded to silently jack the hog up onto an old car battery. His mate arrived and was just as silent, so I busied myself with steadying the handlebars.

In this day of motor technicians it was gratifying to see a real mechanic at work. He had absolutely no idea of how to set about removing a Harley-Davidson 21-inch spoked wheel from between a set of Harley-Davidson springer forks, so he sat on the floor in front of the machine and just looked at the problem. Presently he stood, wandered to an impressive tool box and came back out with a single spanner. Needless to say it slotted over the spiked chrome spindle nut perfectly. It was the same story with the allen key for the single pot front caliper.

All in all, with looking, working out, trying, wriggling and learning it took the mechanic, me and his mate, a good 25 minutes to remove the wheel from the embrace of the springers. It then took the pair of them 5 minutes to fix the puncture and all of 3 minutes to refit the wheel. A lesson straight out of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Apolakkia’s own Zen master required just six Euros for his work – I made damn sure I left more than that before we went on our way.

The riding was sweet now, the carburetted Bad Boy seemed to appreciate the cooler, rarer mountain air and obviously handled a whole lot better. We rode through an idyllic mountain pasture, a shallow valley much cooler and much more lush and fertile than I’d yet seen anywhere on the island. It went on for miles and nobody farmed it, nobody at all lived there, we were bemused, amazed and captivated.

Abruptly the valley ended at a cliff face and a spectacular sea view, the road dropping off the mountain, now rough fields and scrub and lots and lots of rocks before turning South again at Kattavia towards the sea onto an unmade road.

Prasonisi was a magical place, just a couple of restaurants, a massive beach and between an impressive tidal island mount and us the Aegean and the Mediterranean seas met. Green sea, meeting blue, choppy meeting calm.

Over the later than planned lunch Mandie leant across the table and asked whether I’d noticed that the garage we had been heading for originally was at the point where we’d left the tarmac and was actually derelict. I had, and if we’d not stopped in Apolakkia we would have been truly stuffed. More than two miracles in a day was pushing it we decided, saddled up and thundered back up the hotter, more developed Eastern coast of Rhodes, North towards home.

No more worries from the Bad Boy; yes it still handled heavy and the motor still felt ponderous, but it was also still massive fun and the scenery still spectacular. The FXSTSB had obviously suffered from being a hire bike, but it was not enough to dislodge my misgivings about the handling. Perhaps that was the chief reason why the machine didn’t sell in great numbers, but I very much doubt it. Many potential owners didn’t have the opportunity or inclination back in ’95 to roadtest the bikes they wanted to buy, the FXSTSB certainly always looked the part and the Bad Boy isn’t really a bad bike – so the mystery continues.

… how much did it cost? Seventy five pounds cheaper than the FatBoy when launched, but a full two grand more expensive than the Night Train that replaced it. Now there’s a thing!