Off On A Bimble

                                                                                  Old Pacific Highway   The year is 1984, or possibly the beginning of 1985, and in the next few months I will start my undergraduate degree, Bachelor of Science (Biology) in a few months. So  a significant chapter of my life was going to start, but right now I was a lot more excited about buying my first road motorcycle. I had ridden dirt bikes since I was 8 or 9 or so, but this was a big deal, I was about to follow my best mate Greg Dunn into being a road rider. I had read all sorts of reports in Two Wheels and AMCN, and had my eye on a few bikes. As an aside I had enough for a deposit saved up, but a loan would be required. A loan!!! I had never had one. ...

                                                                Our humble camp at the start of day 2  Part 1 left me and Jeff fairly satisfied with our pub meal after being saturated on the ride back from the coast, although I was later to be quite queasy and it wasn't the beer it was the fried fish. Oh well. The 11th commandment should be "Thou shalt never eat fish and chips from a pub, for though shalt be sorely afflicted yea verily I say unto you". Next morning after I had slept on what felt like a pile of golf ball sized cubes, with bruises everywhere, we had a hearty breakfast and eyed the weather, which was variable. We paid the owner a tenner for a load of wood for a fire, which turned out to be excellent value. After yesterdays exertions a lesser ride was in order and it was decide...

 My father hated me riding motorcycles on the road. Which is odd because he was the first person to sit me on one.  And Dad was a rider. When I got a little 250 to learn on in 1985, his opinion was that I woud kill myself within months. It turned out I did not, however I did give up road riding after a year following a disasterous trip out west where another person in the group convinced me I was not up to riding on the road. I believed him, and gave up, turning back to off road riding a few years later, competing in trials. Dad was most pleased with this turn of events. Then when I finally got my bike license after a year on a 250 in 1995, he wanted to come along when I did the test ride. He passed his opinion, I bought the bike, and rode it home in the rain. His verdict was the same - "you'll kill yourself".  Dad was born in 1932 and it seems from a pretty early age he had an affinity for internal combustion engines, so he rode bikes and as was the custom of the day, wo...

                                                      One of my most common destinations this weird year - Dream Machine                                                                  near Modbury. Its been a very strange year for motorcycling for me. After the highs of last year in Italy, and a few winter rides, I returned from a visit to my family in Australia in early March to a much changed UK. The government was giving different kinds of advice every day, and there were rumours of a “lock-down” - whatever that would entail. There was one reasonably fun day on the Guzzi and then that was it. We were not to ride unless it was es...

I have a lot of time to listen to podcasts, and one of my favourites is Front End Chatter, by Simon Hargreaves and Martin Fitzgibbons. I was listening to the FECers on my commute home in the horrible rain and darkness of the A379 and they were talking about riding a small bike fast, rather than say an S1000RR or R1 slowly (as far as the bike goes anyway) and it came to me that what would be great would be a lightweight 250 or 350cc cafe racer with a single seat and all that - really light. Best of all would be one I made myself, but an SRX250 or Suzuki Goose would fit the bill just as well. It would never replace the Breva for serious miles, but for a sunny short ride on a twisty local road - great fun.

Well, this year is a great improvement on last year as far as my personal motorcycling goes, and there have been some interesting developments in the wider motorcycle world too. Here are a few random thoughts; Big Trip - its really important (for me at least) to do at least one Big Trip a year. When I don't do such a thing the biking year definately has a "flat" feeling to it. This years trip was to Italy (as previously detailed in the blog) and was the trip of a lifetime - so far. I still think about the places we went and the things we did, months later. New foods, new roads, new countries, and new people. I learned that the Italian drivers are not mad, but they are pretty fast. That everyone rides a scooter. That the Guzzi brand is alive and well and a big deal in Mandello. That Switzerland costs a bomb. And that I really want to go back to lots of these places. British driving - I sort of doubted myself, but now having ridden overseas again, yes British drivers ar...