The Making Progress Blues

The Patient Leaves Intensive Care

2012-02-12T08:56:00.002Z

Just a little update for those of you following the truck rebuild.
Like a patient who's been hospitalised for a while the big news is she's now home. She's also insured, taxed and has a lovely new MOT. She's now my "car", in other words, with the A8 sold and my wife effectively annexing the XC90 for her/family use.

She doesn't look hugely different to the wreck we found at first glance, except for that hood, but actually she's a hugely different truck.
It's taken almost a month of hard work, marriage-threatening hours up at the garage working on her and, of course, large sums of Moolah to get her to this point and, if truth be told, there's still a huge amount to do - we've only really stopped the bleeding. But she feels less like a project now that she's getting used.
The major issue has been the bulkhead. It was not good and we struggled for a while to decide whether to replace it with a 300TDi version now, or weld/plate it up for an MOT.

In the medium term the plan is to remove the old 2.5TD motor, pretty much the worst LR ever made, and replace it with a 300TDi (from a Defender, not a Disco) and uprated gearbox. In the end we plumbed for bodging on the basis that a new bulkhead would add between £500 and £1000 to the bill, too much right now. We were happily stripping the wings off when we found a hole beside the servo box - instant MOT failure and requiring hours and hours of stripping out most of the top of the engine et cetera to get a welder in there.
Meanwhile the underside needed steaming clean, the handbrake needed unseizing, all the electrics needed overhauling to give us working lights and wipers (still only got one speed but that's a minor detail), the doors needed rehanging (and the mirrors replacing whilst they were off), the floor needed a weld, repeaters need replacing and securing, the battery needed replacing, she needed a new hood, one tire needed tubing, the brakes needed servicing, she needed a new exhaust, a new UJ on the prop-shaft, we had to build a bracket for the new tailpipe, door handles needed replacing, the dash needed securing, and she needed priming and painting (albeit by me with a brush, rather than a paint shop) in the areas we'd welded and where she was through to metal anyway.
And in all this she fought us every step of the way. Dozens of screws and bolts are missing, others have been replaced with wood screws and pretty much everything we needed to undo was corroded solid and needed lengthy "persuasion" or hacksawing off. All of this added hours and hours to the jobs in hand.
She bit and struggled as if afraid but in the end she was done, thanks to huge amounts of work and a very friendly MOT testing station...

Getting her working, though, is only the pre-stage. It means she'll be running and used and warmer, and that's all good, but the list of next steps is just as huge as the list of emergency operations we've just done.
First up she'll need servicing this coming week. Then we have the tire issue. All five tires are technically legal in terms of tread but very old and perished and need replacing, which brings us on to the wheels which themselves need either recoating or replacing. A set of wheels and tires, depending on what I put on her, will be anything between £650 and £1100.
The MOT spotted some nasty suspension corrosion which'll need sorting, although it's not too bad, together with rusted brake pipes.
The seats are torn and probably beyond repair, we'll see, and most of the dash needs urgently replacing as it's hanging on by a thread (four threads, to be precise). Some electrics still aren't right, back gate can't be locked, not sure why, and the wiper motor probably needs replacing too.
So all that's next, followed by the hunt for a new motor and gearbox and bulkhead (but that'll have to wait for a bit, as it'll cost a lot of money).
And eventually we'll get to the fun bit: paint, winches, snorkels and general silliness. I'm looking forward to that, obviously, but we have to kind of earn the right to make her pretty by making her healthy.
Nonetheless, driving up the snowy lanes yesterday with four-year old in the front in his child-seat pretending to be "in an army truck", dog bouncing about in the back and wife sat up on one of the rear jumpseats conceding, through gritted teeth, that "it's not as cold as I thought", it all felt great.

Perfectly sane people's love for Land Rovers, which are noisy, uncomfortable, cramped, unreliable, rusty and slow is a puzzle; but I get it. It's like a giant Meccano kit, rather than a rolling degree in computer science. Unlike my XC90 it doesn't furiously beep at me if I don't pop a seatbelt on, and then get so angry at being ignored it cuts the radio off and beeps even louder. It's my truck, it doesn't want to be in charge. It's more like the relationship between man and dog than man and wife.
Need to think of a name for her...

Know Your Enemy

2012-02-01T12:41:00.000Z

I remember walking into a military field hospital in Iraq a few years ago and noticing, above a door, a hand-carved sign that read “If you can’t take a joke, you shouldn't have joined”.

Staggering advances in battlefield medicine meant that, within that hospital, were young men with injuries so unimaginably appalling that just five years earlier they’d have been dead before they got near a casualty evacuation.

And yet there was that sign, a uniquely British way of dealing with hideous mental and physical trauma, and often death....cock a snoop at it.

I was gently reminded of that sign when I saw a document recently about how London is going to operate for those of us who live and/or work there during the Olympics. There was much to it but here are the highlights:

35 miles of London’s already crushingly congested roads will be shut to us mere workers, reserved instead for athletes, sponsors and VIPs.
A number of Tube trains at peak times will be closed to we normal folk, reserved for VIPs, Olympic officials and sponsors (so they don’t have to get squished in like we do, poor things).
Businesses in London, especially in the City and the east side of the capital, will be advised to close their doors and have staff work from home.

So, to summarise: if those of us who work in London try to come to work as usual and, er, work, the entire thing will grind to a halt. Despite their own private lanes to drive on and their own private Tubes to ride on, fat executives from MacDonalds will have to get stuck too, VIP sponsors or not. In other words, the success of the infrastructure element of the Games relies not on the razor-sharp organising skills of those in charge, but the goodwill of Londoners.

And here, I fear, the planners may have over-looked something.

I remember the day the 7/7 bombs went off in London. I remember, in the early evening, standing outside a bar near my north London flat and watching thousands of men and women walking, slowly, past me. Some had probably already done four or five miles. It was the only way to get home. Most were smiling, despite the horrors of that day. Local people were ferrying trays of cold drinks out to them from their houses, and the landlord of the pub kept a steady flow of free half-pints of lager appearing on the table outside, paid for by all of us having stuck money behind the bar.

When it matters Londoners can be absolutely relied upon to display incredible camaraderie, compassion, selflessness and grit (as the deeply moving stories of ordinary people’s heroics that day came to demonstrate). However, when they feel they are being put upon, taken for granted or mistreated I would contend that there are, in this entire world, no buggers more awkward.

“Bollocks”, is what Londoners will say when asked to queue for an hour to get a Tube their taxes pay for because the chaps from Sony don’t want to be late for their Champagne breakfast.

“Sod it”, they’ll probably exclaim, after 45 minutes in stationary traffic watching rotund American Nike executives swan past in chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benzs.

I’ve seen it happen. Crossing Leicester Square last year I heard a commotion. It turned out a number of security personnel, replete in black jeans, black t-shirts (bearing the word “SECURITY”, in case one wasn't sure) and radio earpieces, turning away crowds of commuters trying to get to the Tube station. Why? A film premier. The red carpet was laid in their path. “Go round” was the simple, rude, instruction (that’s round as in three streets round, by the way). Tempers were becoming frayed. Finally, as we arrived, a harmless looking chap in a Macintosh simply said, loudly, “You are a security guard for a film event. You have no legal right to bar my way. You have no more powers than I do. This is a public right of way, and, before you think about it, you have no right to lay hands on me for walking over your red carpet either. You shouldn’t have left it there. I’m getting the Tube. If you choose to assault me for doing so, so be it.”

And off he went. Four security guards leapt in like Ninjas, furious, but, as if he radiated static, none quite felt able to be the first to physically restrain him, or his little briefcase. And the floodgates opened, and through we all went.

Whilst they’re spending millions on air-to-ground anti-aircraft missile installations and retina scanners, I think the Olympic organisers are likely to be derailed not by the terrorists they fear, but by Mr Jones, on his way to the office, to do some important filing.

This lovely British trait, the refusal to conform to silly, bumptious or petty rules, has been under threat since 9/11. Every petty unofficial official in the country now considers themselves on the front line against terror and able to call for police support if so much as questioned (my favorite being the under-cover Westminster Council warden who threatened to call for police back-up when he tried to fine me for dropping a cigarette butt). It is exemplified by Chesterton’s poem “The Rolling English Road”:

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

Quite. And it is the spirit of Chesterton, not Osama bin Laden, I suspect, which will pervade when the bloated, arrogant, get-rich-quick leviathan which is the modern Olympiad arrives in London.

A Man Needs A Thing, Not A Task.

2012-01-27T12:01:00.002Z

At first glance today’s post should only appeal to petrol-heads and even then just a small proportion of those (if your idea of fun in cars is reading about the latest nickel-plated Bugatti in Top Gear you may wish to look away now).

I contend, though, that there is more to this post than some guff about the rebuilding of a Land Rover, although that’s what it amounts to really. Bear with me, at least for a moment eh?

Most people work in jobs that, given the financial choice, they wouldn’t do. Of those, the majority work behind a desk, staring at a flickering monitor, sat on a chair. Whatever they do, however much they change by doing their job, when they leave at the end of the day the desk looks much as it did when they arrived. I can’t speak for you, but I always find this a little sad. I feel there’s something primeval about creating something physical, looking upon something that wasn’t there when you started and thinking “I made that – I put it there – a small part of this world is down to me”.

I feel that when I cut a huge pile of logs and look at them, hours later, stacked against the wall. I think people, particularly but not exclusively men, need to feel this.

The only people I know who would continue to work at what they do if their Euro-Millions ticket came up make things (and I include tending the countryside in that).

Well, here’s what, for me, is going to slate that thirst.

She's a Land Rover 90 convertible from a year or two before they started using the "Defender" tag. She started life as a County (which is why there are what are now somewhat redundant switches for things like rear washers and heaters in there.)

She's seen better days, poor thing. Have a look.

I'd been hunting for the right Landy for six months, with no luck. I looked at a host of 110 Station Wagons to use as our second car. So, how did I come to take a 90 rag-top?

Well, generosity, actually. This 90 belonged to a friend who works abroad, these days in private security since leaving the army. He hadn't seen her in three years and has no plans to return to the UK for some time. So, when his brother, another friend, suggested I go up to Nene Overland near Peterborough, where she was being stored after the previous storage company went bust, I thought "why not?".

Sadly, the condition we found her in was, as you can see, not what any of us expected. The previous storage lot had obviously left her outside and this was the result. It's a crime, really, as she'd once been a wonderful truck.

He and I spoke and he took the view that whilst financially he could have her rebuilt by Overfinch, in Platinum, without noticing the expense (he's well paid, and rightly so bearing in mind what he does), he wouldn't be here to drive her. He wanted to see her not only returned to her former glory, but also loved again; used, enjoyed. He's a top chap, although he could probably kill you in 78 different ways.

So now she's mine. A project, certainly, but a lot more than that. She's my link with that physical thing I mentioned at the beginning. I'm going to make her right.

Initial expenses ran into a few hundred pounds to have her inspected, and then low-loaded down to me, but the bills are really flowing in now. She's at the local one-man-show mechanic's I use (he's that rarest of things, a brilliant but honest car technician, and also a Landy enthusiast). He also lets me work on her there and he does the stuff I can't do (which is lots).

When she arrived I went to see her. I spoke quietly to her, reassuring her about what would happen, and how she was going to be a family vehicle again. The car-whisperer. It's something I have always done with motorbikes - somehow makes me feel better.

Since these photos were taken she's changed a bit. We've cleaned her up underneath and although she looked terrible, actually the rust was mostly surface deep only. She needs a couple of very small welds, which will get done when the wings come off to weld up the bulkhead (which will last about a year - needs a new one really but the plan is to get her MOTed first, so she can be used).

She's got a new rear exhaust section in stainless steel, and today she'll get a new universal joint on the rear prop shaft. The door bottoms are going, we discovered when I replaced the handles last week, but they'll last a short while. Two new doors will be needed by the end of the year though.

Once all that welding's done a new hood will go on. The excellent Exmoor Trim supplied a sand-coloured canvas effort which I think will look great.

She also runs now, thanks to a new battery, and the engine's pretty strong, although it needs a service and O&F changes et cetera. The electrics need a total overhaul where the water's come in through the lack of a roof and a broken dash and wiped out all the connections too.

There have been some pleasant surprises. She's poly-bushed all round and has a later Defender rear axle with disc brakes and the four folding seats in the rear tub include two seat belts secured on the half roll-cage (will add a back half to that and two extra belts when funds allow).

There's a huge amount to do, and it won't be cheap, but when it's done she'll be a great truck, and a lot of fun. My wife doesn't seem to think the nipper (who's four) should be allowed anywhere near it but I suspect he's going to remember this vehicle with great affection in the years ahead. The dog will also almost certainly fall out of it, owing to a mix of dim-wittedness, inexperience with open vehicles and discovering what the wind does to Labrador ears when you lean out.

Security will be a big issue. Old Land Rovers are amongst the most stolen cars int he UK, with most being shipped to the former Yugoslavia and other central European states. I've taken care of that by spending a lot of money on physical security (Clutch-Claw, Disklok) and ordering a tracker.

She'll get a new coat of paint too, when the new bulkhead goes in later this year. Not sure which colour yet, but thinking a nice grey might work. Let me know your thoughts.

I also need to find somewhere to keep her in the village. The garage I rent for my (now sold) motorcycle isn't tall enough and I need somewhere I can work on her in the long evenings after a hard day bashing computer keys and having meetings.

And when she's up and running she'll replace the A8 as the second car, and my station run car. It's a practical choice: the Landy will be slow, noisy, uncomfortable, cold, bumpy and, of course, damp.

I'm going to love her very much.

To Protect And Serve, the public sector at its finest

2012-01-25T11:34:00.002Z

The DVLA HQ near Swansea.

Some lengthy telephone menus and lift music later...

"Hello. DVLA. XXXXX speaking how can I help you?"

Hi. I’ve brought a car from a friend. I need to tax it but I don’t have the V5 as he’s in Afghanistan and hasn’t seen it for a few years. So I need to apply for a new one in my name please. I’ve got form V62 filled out but I’d like to know how quickly I can get it done as until it’s taxed and therefore roadworthy I can’t get it home and fix it up properly, and it’s just out in the rain.

"Well we will write to the previous owner for confirmation, which will take around four weeks."

Okay. Would you like his address in Kabul?

"No."

Sorry?

"No. We will write to him at the address we hold for him."

Right. But he’s not there you see, he’s in Kabul. He hasn’t been there for four years or so, and he’s off to Africa next.

"We’ll still write to him there."

But he won’t reply.

"I understand what you’re saying."

Er, yes, thanks. So do you want his Kabul address and email and phone number too?

"No. We’ll write to him at home."

But he won’t reply, you see. He’s not there. What will you do then?

"We’ll write to him there again. We may write up to four times. At the end of that time we will take a decision on issuing a new V5."

But he’s not there. How long will you keep writing to him?

"I cannot say that. It may be a number of months. That will be a decision for that team."

Months? But that means I can’t tax the car for months. Look, I understand you have a procedure but there must be a sensible way forward. There’s no point in you spending lots of man hours and money writing to someone you know isn’t going to reply to you is there?

"I understand what you are saying."

Yes. So what can we do?

"Nothing. That is our procedure."

I understand that, but in this case it won’t work will it? Surely you could write to him at home and in Kabul? Or would you like me to get him to call you, or you could call him? What can I do to make things work?

"We don’t do calls. That is our procedure."

But it’s a bit Kafkaesque isn’t it? It won’t work, it’ll cost you and I time and money, it’ll take months and, at the end of all that, we’ll be back where we started. That can’t be a sensible use of your funds. Can nobody there apply a bit of flexibility to this and agree a workable solution?

"No. I’ve explained our procedure. I can’t really tell you again and again. We’re just going around in circles."

Yes, but that’s because you’re going to do something which makes things worse and won’t work. There must be a better solution.

"I’ve explained everything to you. I understand what you’re saying. Why not attach a letter to your V62 explaining the situation?"

Okay, great. If I do that and include all his contact details will that speed things up?

"No. We will work to our procedure."

So why am I attaching a letter?

"To explain the situation."

But you’ve just said it won’t make any difference!

"I didn’t say that. I said we would stick to our procedure. If you include a letter that team will see it."

Okay. Can they then make a decision to contact my friend in Kabul.

"No. They will write to him at home."

For Goodness Sake! This is ridiculous. Can I speak to a supervisor please?

"There’s nobody here."

What? There’s nobody there at all in a supervisory capacity.

"I didn’t say that. I said there’s nobody here who will tell you any different to me. This call is going around in circles. I think I am going to terminate this call."

...and then there were none...

2012-01-21T09:27:00.001Z

"'Tis better to have loved and lost", a man with an impressive beard once suggested, "than never to have loved at all".

To the lonely, the heart-broken and those who found themselves living in something of a void he was effectively saying: "Come on. Could be worse. It might always have been like this." Treasure the memories, in other words.

And so I tried to do this week, as I stood in the centre of a naggingly empty garage floor. Tool boxes, bits of motorcycle, old pieces of riding kit and, defying my attempts not to become emotional, a few tauntingly placed drops of oil - but no motorcycle.

"I ride therefore I am" might have been my mantra for years. I rode constantly, I rode everywhere. I rode all winter. I went to meetings in the driving rain 300 miles away, with a suit in the panniers, and changed in a disabled loo when I got there; and I loved it.

Moreover, I was the kind of biker who (mostly) privately, sneered at fair-weather and part-time riders. Biking Life and all that.

Motorcycling kept me sane, it kept me happy. It defined me, and I was happy that it did.

And now it doesn't. Because I'm no longer a biker. I don't own a bike.

The GSA you see atop this blog is gone and I have no plans to replace her, other than with a Land Rover 90 convertible I'm restoring.

My wife has been kind-hearted enough to suppress her delight. She's always hated motorcycles, never been on the back of any of mine and hated the fact that I rode, especially since our son was born.

I've made clear to her that the issue is just about good sense and money. My new job sees me leaving the village at around 6am every day and not coming home until 8pm at the earliest. Attempts to ride to London were fruitless as, by the time I hit the B-Roads near home, I was dangerously tired. As for weekends, when you haven't seen your child or partner all week you simply can't disappear on a bike for five hours.

So, there was a £10,000 bike in the garage, not getting used, but being paid for each month, and insured, and taxed, and serviced. Silly, right? Had to go.

All of this is true, but it's not the whole truth. That is more fundamental and, for me as a rider, more disturbing.

Those of you who ride know that you have lots of "incidents". Some idiot will try to kill on most journeys, or you do something silly, but you learn to live with it, to compartmentalise it as the Americans say. You laugh at it later. Rather like soldiers in a war-zone, if you actually thought about this stuff rationally you'd never get out of bed so you just macho it out and, you know what, it works.

Except it didn't any more, not for me.

I was out for a pleasure ride a few weeks ago. Nothing hardcore, and nothing off-road, just a trundle. Coming back into the village in the rain I came off a roundabout where there are two huge drain covers and two huge painted arrows - all like black ice to a bike. The front end went, fairly hard and a long way. There was a car coming the other way and, with a brain working at adrenaline-filled light speed, I knew what may be coming.

It stayed up. I like to think a few things I learned from the great Simon Pavey about front end slides helped but in all likelihood it was the German engineers who designed the bike that saved me.

Either way, I rode home, hopped off, sparked up a fag and sat on a pannier box. This is what I'd normally do. I'd then write a furious letter to council about drain covers, paint and spilt diesel and go to the pub.

This time, though, I didn't. This time I thought about my four-year-old son, involuntarily. I thought about what could have happened ten minutes earlier and what they'd say to him in later years had it done so. "Daddy was killed in a motorbike crash".

It's, well, shit...isn't it? What a rubbish reason to grow up without a father. Undertones of selfishness, a suggestion that I was prepared to risk that, for him, for my own pleasure but, overwhelmingly, just shit.

And at that point I knew my Mojo, my beating, pulsing, all-consuming biking Mojo, had simply upped and left, without so much as leaving a note.

In the weeks that followed riding wasn't fun. I avoided it unless logistics dictated otherwise but when I had to ride, it was a question of getting through.

And now a nice chap in Scotland has the bike, and I have an empty garage.

I miss it. Come summer I'll miss it so much it hurts. And come the days when my friends are loading tents and stoves onto their bikes and heading off to wonderful places for a little adventure, I'll probably weep. But it's right. I know it to be right, deep down.

Last summer I was at a dinner party and one chap, a deal older than me, said he was shopping for a new bike having sold his last one 16 years earlier. His daughter was now 18, he said, so he felt okay about riding again. We talked options and I tried to be helpful but, underneath, I clearly recall thinking he wasn't much a biker.

Perhaps he wasn't, and perhaps I'm not either, but I understand now he was a good father. I'm trying to be one too, and it feels good.

I'll need to decide what to do with my blog. I hope I can still write on biking, if not riding, if you see what I mean, but I guess I'll have to change the look. I hope you'll stay with me, not least because I so enjoy writing it.

Anyway. From Tennyson to Arlo Guthrie's "The Motorcycle Song", I think.

"Late last week just the other night,

"I thought I'd go up and I'd see Mike,

"So I went up and I saw Mike

"But Mike no longer has a bike."

The 2011 Making Progress Blues Awards

2011-12-30T12:48:00.002Z

Darn the holes in the red carpet! Prepare to have to pretend to find James Corden in any way funny in case the cameras are on you! Day-dream pleasantly of beating Jonathan Ross to death with half a house brick!

Yes, it's that time of year again! Welcome to the ballroom of London's glittering Grosvenor House Hotel (not, in any way, a table at the back of the saloon bar of the Lamb & Flag) for the 2011 Making Progress Blues Awards!

And what a year it's been for those of us who travel on two wheels. Our awards tonight recognise all that's wonderful, and much that's shit about biking.

We'll celebrate the highs, we'll remember the lows, we'll forget which awards we're at after an hour of sneaking off to the loo during the ad breaks to imbue cheap cocaine provided by the PR company and, let's be honest, later we'll be arrested for punching a paparazzi outside the Ivy.

Let's kick off the show with the award they all want to lose.

The "Yeah, I'm In The Car Mate" Award for worst driven car of 2011.

This award recognises the vehicle which presents the greatest danger to bikers by being driven most consistently with no care and attention, or any skill whatsoever.

The nominations are:

1. Last year's winner, the Audi A4: over-priced, under-powered, over-blinged and always driven with something to prove, this hideously aspirational shitbox excelled again in 2011 with endless tail-gating, fog-light use, under-taking and general needle-dick-with-issues-carrying uber-twattery.

2. The BMW 1-Series. Days after spending £35,000 on one, most 1-Series drivers realised it was a shopping trolley which could be out-dragged by a Mini and proceeded to try to drive it like the M3 it wasn't - badly.

3. The Range Rover Evoque. An unlikely entry as, thanks to the fact it's never seen outside central London, it never achieved more than 22mph at any point. However, judges were impressed by the haughty but mypopic driving style of the women involved and the ability to slam the brakes on without warning on spotting a parking space, a friend or Fortnum and Mason.

And the award goes to........

The Audi A4! An incredible achievement in turdishness as the salesman who thinks he's Fernando Alonso's favorite retains the award for 2011! Well done Nigel!

---------------------

The George Monbiot Award for Prat or Prats Of the Year.

Let's have a look at the nominees' work this year:

1. The Government - Coming to power promising to end the "war on the motorist", remove pointless speed cameras, shut down local camera partnerships and recognise the value of biking both to the environment and the economy the Coalition has done....that's right! Nothing! Zip! Sweet FA!

2. Suzuki's board of directors - Removing their last remaining bike from the 2012 Moto GP grid helped cement Suzuki's reputation as a bike company that was big in the 90s but is now just a bike company that was big in the 90s. Marketing gold.

3. Wim van de Camp MEP - the R1-riding fella who has helped drive through the EU Parliament some of the most restrictive, damaging legislation ever introduced around biking, helping to castrate the next generation of riders before they've even bought a bike and maul the industry at a time it desperately needs help.

And the winner is....Wim van de Camp!

Let's hear it for the man who shows us all why the EU Parliament really does work for each and every one of us!

-----------------------------

The "Shiny! Shiny!" Award for bit of kit of the year.

Judges argued long and hard into the pint, I mean night, about this one. Let's look at the contenders:

1. Hein Gericke Master V textile suit - elderly now but still the best value out there, and supremely dry and warm.

2. Garmin 660 Zumo sat nav - does it all, and more, right down to beaming tunes into your ears as you ride along.

3. Fags - A controversial entry but as the judges recently fell off the smoking wagon nobody could argue that a good smoke after a ride is pretty much unbeatable.

And the award goes to.....fags!

To borrow from Churchill, kinda, a good ride is a ride but a cigarette is a smoke.

---------------------------------

The Proper-Sized Penis Award for best driven vehicle of 2011.

This coveted award, previously won by such greats as the Porsche 911, recognises the vehicle which can best be relied on not to do something stupid and to be driven with a degree of skill and attention.

This year's nominees are:

1. The Caterham 7 - it'll probably be doing 80mph but as that feels to those aboard like 180mph they're usually looking where they're going.

2. The Land Rover 110 - oddly its shorter brother, the 90, is usually driven by mono-eyed maniacs in the middle of the road at full speed, trailing cider and Camel Trophy stickers, but the 110 seems to attract a different class of owner.

3. The Bentley Turbo R - despite being wider than Cornwall, and faster in a straight line than Mars, the venerable old B seems to be driven with a courtesy not seen on British roads since all cars were preceded by a chap with a red flag.

The dildo-shaped trophy goes to.....The Caterham 7!

Proof that men in bobble hats really are better drivers. Well done.

-------------------------------------------

The "I'm Going To Follow You Home And Feed You Your Own Collar Bones!" Award for properly deadly driving.

New this year, judges felt that the stratospheric scale of idiocy, selfishness and downright cockery behind some of the maneuvers seen in 2011 needed recognising. Let's have a look at the nominations:

1. The sudden change of lane or u-turn in traffic jams - a far from original way of killing bikers but still being finessed by turds across Britain. A classic, the judges felt.

2. Properly fast cars deciding that nothing could ever be faster than them and, thus, blasting out to overtake slower traffic without thinking there may be a bike behind them doing the same and bothering to fucking look. Incredibly dangerous and performed with particular panache by the Audi RS6 Avant.

3. The delivery of oral sex by passenger to driver. Deadly but utterly forgivable and therefore in with no chance of winning. At all. Ever.

The award goes to....lane changes and u-turns in traffic! Well done you selfish, evil, ignorant bastards.

------------------------------------------------

The "Yes! I AM Nicky Hayden! Kneel Before Me!" Award for best road of 2011.

This award is somewhat dependent on the roads the judges have actually ridden during the year. The nominations:

1. The A260 from Banker's Hill to Banbury, Oxfordshire. Nominated last year too, but failed to win. Perhaps 2011 will be it's year.

2. The E21, dropping down through the Alps from Geneva into France through endless tunnels, huge cliffs and drop-offs and surrounded by cloud.

3. The N106, south through the Cevennes National Park to Florac - twisty, lovely, lovely and twisty.

There could only be one winner though, for sheer speed and scenery and the ability to drive through mile-long tunnels the E21 is the clear winner in 2011.

----------------------------------------

And our final award, as is traditional....

The Making Progress Blues Award for Biking Personality Of The Year.

The award goes each year to the individual who's had the greatest impact on bikers or biking.

This year - no nominations, no spiel, no jokes, no fucking justice...one winner:

Super Sic

20th January 1987 - 23rd October 2011

God Bless

That concludes the 2011 awards everybody. Ride safe, ride well. Let's hope we can end on a gag in 2012.

There's None So Blind As Them As Won't See

2011-11-18T10:47:00.000Z

"If you just left them all alone, nature would find a balance!" she said, showing evident distaste and pouting somewhat.
I think I'm right in saying she speaks five languages, including Russian, and has a good degree from Exeter. Quite why, then, someone so erudite and intelligent can be this dim is beyond me; but so seem to go many conversations I have about the countryside these days.
I'd been on the phone to a gunsmith, discussing the various advantages and disadvantages of two rifle calibers for dealing with rabbits and foxes. This led, after my call, to a discussion about the moral position on shooting things. Living things, that is, I'm not certain tin cans and paper targets are doe-eyed enough to warrant her sympathy, although one can never be too sure.

I tried to patiently explain to her that nature, in fact, wouldn't find a balance. Or more accurately, it would, but not the one she was thinking of in which hundreds of happy creatures frolicked amiably in the hedgerows, woods and fields, pausing only to team up and sing the occasional song in praise of frolicking, the availability of animal-sized yellow waistcoats and how good foxes look in cravats.
The habitats they live in, I said, are mostly man-made. Farms, shoots and estates have made them and they spend untold millions keeping them in good order. Even those which are natural need to be maintained.
Without this work, they'd collapse and many of the species, including quarry species, she took for granted would simply disappear whilst pests and vermin would flourish.
It was obvious she considered this a matter of opinion; a point, if you like, made to prove a point. It's not, of course, as I tried to explain. Shoots spend £250m every year in the UK on conservation of habitats and species - or five times the annual income of the RSBP to put it in perspective.
"You would say that" she said, which I thought gave me little chance here. Yes, I would, because it's true. Nonetheless, I changed tack.
Threatened species such as the Skylark, Corn Bunting and Lapwing, together with dozens of varieties of wild flowers, are vastly more prevalent on ground actively managed for shooting than on un-managed ground, I said.

This appeared to strike a chord, although I think she suspected me of making up the names of the birds, but I struck whilst the iron was hot and said that 61% of all new woodland planted in Britain is planted for shooting and that gamekeepers manage 17.5 million acres of British land, half of which is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest or SSSI.
Here, though, I'd made a fatal error. "Well there you go," she said angrily, "I don't suppose ordinary people get to see much of that do they? Just a few rich friends of whoever owns it."
In a second the argument had shifted from the realities, economic and otherwise, of managing Britain's rural areas to one of money, or more accurately, class.
I felt the fight going out of me. I wanted to tell her about Guy, who owns some of the shooting land near me, a man with an impenetrable Oxfordshire accent and more tattoos than David Beckham. Guy works all hours that God sends, driving combine harvesters and other big farm vehicles for people, and then when he's done an 18-hour day, goes out at night, and most weekends, to care for the few acres he bought with his share of the money from the probate sale of his deceased parents' home.
Guy is, and he wouldn't mind me saying this, as common as muck (something he's usually covered in).
So's Michael, a farmer on whose land I also have permission to shoot. He drives a 1993 Kia with a hole in the floor. His terrier escaped through it recently in the pub car park.
I didn't tell her, though. It was clear there was no point.
Country sports enthusiasts are a bit like politicians in that we're so often under attack we keep an endless selection of facts and statistics in our heads to defend ourselves. But unlike politicians we're not paid for it, and we don't do it for power or acclaim.
I feel bad for not arguing on, but my mojo was gone. Perhaps next time.
In the meantime, if you're like my friend rather than me, try not to get angry about it as you're driving out in the sticks and you hear the guns this winter. Those back-roads are icy and dangerous and you need to concentrate.
Of course they were a lot less icy when the big estates had enough workers to clean the drainage ditches out every winter to stop the roads flooding and then freezing. They did it as part of responsible management of the land, and as a favour to the local communities they lived and worked alongside.
These days many of them are struggling to stay in business, so they don't have the manpower.
Perhaps you'd like to stop your car and do it instead?

Scapegoats and Trolls

2011-10-31T14:38:00.001Z

My son, like so many children, loves the Charlie and Lola books; the everyday adventures of a young boy and his little sister. One of the elements he loves most is the character of Soren Lorenson, Lola's imaginary friend. He's fascinated by the concept that Soren can be blamed by Lola for any indiscretion or naughty act she carries out - not least because she so clearly believes passionately that it really was Soren.
For my son, this looks like a very sensible position to take.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could all do the same as adults? Whatever we do, however reprehensible, it was our imaginary friend. Always someone to blame, always on hand.
Well, it seems that now we can. The whole of Britain appears to be wandering about in the company of 65 million imaginary bankers. "It wasn't me, it was Giles, the imaginary commodities trader officer! He was driving. Honestly!"
The Occupy "movement" seems to be trying to formalise this approach. Capitalism, and bankers in particular, they say, are to blame for...well, pretty much everything as far as I can see.
It's easy to dismiss Occupy as being a collective of amusing Dave Sparts - the wonderful Private Eye character who sums up the particular humourless and clueless extremities of the Left. They are, however well-meaning, utterly ridiculous. Not one of them seems to know what an investment bank really does, or how the City of London (or Wall Street for that matter) actually works.
But their battle cries have power and resonance. Partly because people find it easy to dislike someone significantly wealthier than themselves, partly because Occupy presents a seductive argument that these peoples' wealth is somehow "unfair", partly because people are scared and confused and need someone to blame and partly, and this is what this blog's about today, because it deflects attention from something closer to home and much more difficult to deal with for people.
I'm not an apologist for the extremes of Capitalism, nor for the terrible behaviour of some bankers.
Did they cause sub-prime? Along with the people who took their money knowing they couldn't repay it, yes they did. And were it not for sub-prime would we have come into the Euro debt crisis in better shape, both as banks and as economies? Yes we would (although we'd have come into it regardless, it wasn't caused by sub-prime).
Deregulation of the financial sector and the introduction of technology was one of the great anti-establishment drives of the Thatcher governments, opening up the City to all, under a banner of aspiration, and taking away the power of clubbable old cliques of well-to-do banking families which used to run the place. It's easy to forget what a radical attack on the spiritual home of Conservatism this was when viewed from 2011.
It bought the great US investment banks to London, and turned the City into one of the world's greatest financial centres; but it also paved the way for a system based more on profit than anything else. It led to corners being cut, ever more competition, short-termism and, many believe, occasional sharp practice.
But the problem with the protests, and the wider anger about bankers which seems to permeate across the UK (and further) is it misses a rather inconvenient truth.
Let me take you back to Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, delivering one of his budgets. Times were hard, many expected cut-backs. Instead Brown committed to spend billions and billions of extra pounds raised from national insurance on the NHS, producing this surprise with a flourish and an actual laugh of triumph. The Government benches loved it; order papers were waved, cheers were deafening, the Conservative opposition was pointed and laughed at.
Nobody, of course, politicians or public, ever said "Er...how do we pay for this." Why? Because over 20 years we have forced upon politicians of all hues a spending arms race, with each party fighting to outdo the other on how much it would spend: more cops, more roads, more hospitals, more doctors, more nurses, more benefits, more ships, more aircraft, more soldiers. More. More, more, more and more.
Politicians, in the main, aren't stupid. They knew there was a problem but woe betide any of them who raised a hand and muttered "Um...look...sorry, but can we afford this?" They were instantly painted - by us, the public - as slavering right wing lunatics desperate to start "cutting" everything they could.
And how the nation loved it. More of everything, let the good times roll. Woo-hoo!
Where did all this stuff come from? Well lots of it was paid for with loans from the banks. This is inconvenient if you're trying to blame bankers for everything, but a handy solution has been found with the mantra of "reckless lending". Of course even an idiot can see that there can be no reckless lending without reckless borrowing, but oddly that phrase hasn't really caught on.
And what would we have said to banks who, at the time, refused to lend to our Governments? Think of the headlines as new hospitals remained unbuilt because multi-millionaire, Aston-Martin driving bankers refused to lend. So, lend they did, rather than get on the wrong side of governments. They may have had concerns but at least they thought nations could be trusted to repay what they owed (or at least most of them did, there were rumblings even then).
So now the money's run out, as that infamous memo from Labour's last Chief Secretary to the Treasury told the incoming government. The EU has found a handy solution in Greece, which is to order the banks to collect only 50% of what they're owed (although, to put this in perspective, that will still leave the Greek national debt running at 120% of GDP a decade from now). The downside of this is that if banks can't rely on sovereign governments to pay what they owe, why bother to buy their bonds in future? After all, they don't pay that well but at least they're safe...or were.
We know we all borrowed too much in personal credit - the rush for a new car every 18 months, bigger and bigger houses (a drive, let us remember, positively encouraged by everyone from the Daily Mail to Channel 4, the twin homes of property pornography), and an endless succession of "must-have" electronic gadgetry, changed every time a new model of whatever it was came out.
But whilst we were doing this, we were baying for our governments to do the same, refusing to elect anyone who didn't promise to spend and spend and spend.
Well they did, and now there's a bill.
Uncomfortable to think about, isn't it?
Much easier to blame the bankers, after all some of them have Maseratis and they often wear nice suits. The bastards.

The Arguments That Kill - A Short Essay On Speed

2011-09-30T11:03:00.004+01:00

There's many an argument raging today about the proposed rise in the motorway speed limit to 80mph.

The thing which increasingly strikes me about this, and the associated issues around speed cameras, is how polarised and political the argument is becoming.

It seems that those for it must all be raging Jeremy Clarkson style characters, demanding their right to drive at silly speeds anywhere, whilst those against are all sandal-wearing liberal fools in G-Whizzes.

It's becoming abusive, like the argument about global warming, and as with that argument this polarisation is obscuring the real issues, making it harder to examine the evidence and leading to agendas and vendettas which have little to do with the stated aims of either "side".

I'm a biker. You may presume that means I'm all in favour of relaxed speed limits, but you'd be wrong. I'm vulnerable. Most weeks some idiot almost kills me and I think about what they'd tell my four-year-old son. "Daddy died because some idiot didn't bother to look before pulling out" - "Daddy died because some idiot was tail-gating him" - "Daddy died because some idiot was going too fast".

Like all bikers, my interest in safer driving isn't theoretical, it's real and it's daily. It's also why the fixation with speed annoys me. Once in a blue moon one of my near misses is down to a vehicle going too fast, but mostly it's because they're on the phone, or over a white line, or turning without indicating.

I have a right to get home and I want these enforced too, but I know a speed camera can't do that. I also know that the police love speed cameras because they don't need to actually police the roads - it saves a fortune and in many places actually makes a profit.

On that motorway I'd rather you did 80mph in a legal car with tread on the tyres, kept a sensible distance behind me and looked where you were going than did 70mph, eating a Ginsters, four feet from my back wheel, trying to find Radio 5Live.

And through my village I want you to do 15mph, like I do (and not like the guy who came past my door when my four-year-old was coming out of it at about 50 last month - a guy who I saw a day later and very nearly fed his own collar-bones).

So that's why the speed thing annoys me - cards on the table. I believe it should annoy you too though. Let me try to persuade you.

What causes accidents? Speed can, certainly. Maybe too much speed around a corner leads to a drift across white lines and a head-on, or too much speed means a car can't stop in time and hits something or someone. Going too fast is, clearly, an inarguably bad thing.

However, the key word here is "too". What is too fast? Is it breaking the speed limit, or is it going fast enough to be dangerous? It would be nice if the two were the same thing, but a lot of the time they're not.

Near me miles of rural b-road which have been 60mph for decades (with no pavements, no houses, no pedestrians, no crossings and, crucially, no significant accident rates) have been lowered to 40mph.

Why? Because the perceptions of speed are politically significant at local level. If enough people badger a local councillor on speed limits, that councillor will act. The evidence is neither here nor there and no councillor is going to put the views, however well-supported with data, of those who disagree ahead of those of people who live in their ward or division and have a vote they can use.

You may think that's a good thing. Local people, you may say, ought to know and if they're worried about speeders then they've probably got a point. Sometimes that's true. The problem is, it's often not.

A few years ago there was a terrible crash in Berkshire in which three young men in a car died. The car left the road and hit a house. They were driving far too fast.

The local evening news led on the story and the theme was simple - residents had been demanding a speed camera on the stretch in question for years but had not got one; now, as a result, three young men were dead. It was a scandal.

Furious residents were interviewed, and a poor chap from the local council was given a torrid time.

Then, towards the end of the piece, a police officer was interviewed. He said that the car had been travelling at around 120mph in places and that it had been fitted with false plates. He speculated that the driver and passengers had been out for an evening's racing.

120mph. False plates.

What, exactly, would a speed camera have done to stop this horrific accident? Nothing, of course, but the question was never asked. So accepted is the position that speed enforcement is everything that nobody ever suggested that better training and education for this young driver might have saved his life and those of his friends.

Enforcing speed is easy, changing driving behaviour is hard. Really hard. And expensive. And takes years. Not very politically attractive, you see.

So, back to those roads near me. They're 40s. Of course many people travel below the speed limit, and quite right too. So in the morning many people are doing 30-something miles an hour.

And behind them snakes a huge, stressed, furious line of cars desperately trying to get to the railway station to get to work. The consequence of this is endless tail-gating, weaving out to look down the traffic line (I was nearly knocked off my motorbike by a car doing this on Wednesday) and insane over-takes on bends, the brows of hills et cetera. All of this stems from a speed limit which sensible, normal drivers know to be artificial - i.e. it "feels" too slow.

Actually the government agrees, not that you'd know it (in fact I'm not sure it knows it). Its own legislation accepts that roads have a natural speed at which the average, safe driver will travel. Limits are meant to be set around this unless there's a reason why not such as blind cross-roads or a pedestrian crossing in an unexpected place.

So when a speed limit is artificially depressed, people become frustrated and take risks. They shouldn't, and they shouldn't break the new limit, but they do. Simply suggesting they stop it isn't the response of someone genuinely interested in lowering accident rates because such a person would ask themselves what the point of this lower limit was.

Speed is a contributory factor in some accidents (and certainly effects how badly injured or likely to die those involved are), but it's by no means the single biggest cause of death and injury. You know what is? You know what, according to the data, causes more accidents in the UK than anything else?

Not looking where you're going or, in government statistics speak, "failing to observe".

Simple poor driving, being distracted, not concentrating, fiddling with the radio, texting, looking at the kids in the back: all of these are far bigger killers than speed.

So no doubt those who campaign for lower speeds are all over this huge killer? Erm...no. Why? Back to our old friends "complex", "difficult" and "expensive". To change this kind of behaviour would mean more strenuous driving exams (akin, perhaps, to those bikers have to take), more training after the test, a huge educational push to affect behaviour such as that which has been aimed at drink-drivers and, like drink-driving, effective enforcement.

Effective enforcement, by the way, translates to trained traffic cops in cars on roads. A tad pricier than a yellow box on a stick, sadly.

So this kind of thing continues, and people continue to die. Meanwhile speed limits go down, cameras go up and if anyone should suggest otherwise, like today, suddenly the airwaves and social networks are jammed with people very concerned about "road safety".

They don't mean "road safety" though. They mean "speed".

A Word On Service

2011-09-26T15:50:00.001+01:00

This is partly a biking post, and partly a post based on professional curiosity (although I'm in PR I don't do "product" - *turns nose up at thought* - but I am interested in reputation; read on).
Way back I owned a Moto Guzzi, bought new. It broke a lot. I got rid of it though not because of that, but because of the service I got when it did break. The stress, the arguments, the fact that I was made to feel like an inconvenience to the dealers. If you're so-minded you can read about that experience here .
I swapped that bike for a BMW, the first I'd owned. I'm on my second now. Both have been great, but not without their issues.
In the last month the battery has failed on my GS Adventure, as has the fuel-sender. Twice in a fortnight in fact.
I should be fuming, it's an expensive bike and I use it a lot each week for commuting on amongst other things, but I'm not. Actually I'm pretty happy. Why? Service. What's happened to me is a lesson to anyone running a customer facing business and that's why I want to briefly share it.
My bikes were bought, and are looked after, by North Oxford Garage, my local BMW Motorrad dealer, known for short as "NOG".
When the GSA battery went they remembered that the same thing had happened on my K1200S after a few weeks of ownership. It's not covered by warranty so I arrived ready to shell-out £105 for a replacement, a bit grumpy. At which point they handed me a new one, fully charged, on the house, with tea and moderate mickey-taking. Perfect response, perfect tone.
I got it home and couldn't fit it. Turned out there's been a change in the shape and I needed an extra bit. I got the bit, went home, fitted it and then it wouldn't start. I tried everything, convinced I hadn't done anything wrong and then, exasperated, called NOG.
They came to get it the same day and called back to say the reason it wouldn't start was it was out of fuel, despite the gauge showing 2/3rds of a tank. Fuel sender failure.
They were hugely apologetic, offered to van out another bike (declined), fixed it in five hours and dropped it back.
Before I went abroad for business on Tuesday night last week I had to ride to Newport and back (yes, yes; the passport thing, I'm a bear of little brain). Fuel sender went. Again.
Bike off today, it'll be fixed and back later, apparently.
Matt, their service chief, has consistently struck the perfect balance between sympathy and apology, but always combined with a swift, clear plan to put things right, fast. Yes he jokes that the van driver probably has keys to my house by now, but he also makes clear without reading from a script that what's happened to me really isn't good enough and he knows it, and will do all he can to make it right. No fawning, but genuine determination to make good (plus the now requisite mickey-taking).
Stuff breaks, deep down we all know that about highly-strung machines. As I said in that post about Guzzi ownership, all I really want is to feel appreciated as a customer (not fawned over) and for the dealership to do all it can to take the stress and difficulty out of any problems as much as it can and do their best.
That's exactly what NOG have done. Despite mechanical failures I feel better about them, and better about the BMW Motorrad brand, than I did before.
Sure, I don't expect to see too much more go wrong, and I'll be increasingly miffed if it does, but in the grand scheme of things 90% of my potential anger has been dealt with by NOG before it ever began.
I will almost certainly buy my next bike from them (again) for the same reason, because they're professional and dedicated, as well as friendly and personal. The experience has been the same from sales to service on both my bikes - even the guy who drives the van always stops for a natter and I usually learn something (he's also a GSA owner).
So, there endeth the lesson. Top quality service can be, in itself, a pleasure, even when it's trying to put right faults in the product. Plenty, sadly, in the bike trade don't seem to grasp this and that may be one of many reasons why BMW is putting bike sales on as others see their order books shrinking....

We Few, We Happy Few, We Band Of Brothers

2011-09-12T16:12:00.002+01:00

Forgive me reader, for I have sinned. It's been almost three months since my last confession.
Or, put another way, I notice the end of July was the last time I wrote a proper biking post here.
It's nice when terribly important folk like MPs link to one's blog but this is a biking blog first and foremost and nobody's more important to me than the bikers who read it, so I shall start to redress the balance somewhat today.

There may have been a summer in some parts of the UK but, whether you personally saw any or not, it's gone now. Sorry to break it to you like this. Many of us, me included, are up in the dark and home in the dark already.
This morning I noticed how much conditions have changed. The b-roads which take me to the motorway were sodden and deeply strewn with treacherous wet leaves; the mud and horse muck was liquid and the whole scene was topped off with billowing trees as gusting winds blew the bike about the road, forcing me to take tighter lines in bends rather than start out at the verge.
My whole riding style has changed into "winter" mode already, like flicking a switch on the dashboard: less speed into corners I can't see through, subtly changed braking balance, expecting little front and rear slides, gentler on the throttle when standing the bike up, more aware of paint, muck and over-banding.
It won't be long before it's cold, too, and icy. In many ways none of this is much fun when you're on the bike (although I secretly love a good downpour), but it feels great when you arrive.
A few bikers know this - they know how much more beautiful a sun-baked b-road is when they've also ridden it with ice on the verges. They know how much affection they have for those old textiles when they've kept five months of rain and sleet out.
There's also something more. Riding in bad weather and poor conditions requires a different skill set and mitigates against auto-pilot (not least because one's riding differently to "usual"). All of that helps to improve riding in my opinion - it certainly makes me smoother and faster in good weather and I'm no kind of talent on a bike.
This summer I was on the Fosse Way one Sunday in glorious weather. Suddenly we had a monster downpour, on previously bone dry roads. No fun for anyone. I came up on a GSX-R1000 which was all over the road, doing about 30mph. I presumed he had a problem but he shook his head, "no".
His arms were like two bridge supports - straight and locked - and he was clearly struggling. I suspect he was plain terrified.
This is the problem with the UK. Fair-weather riders can never depend on fair weather. Being scared of various conditions is asking for trouble when they come; which they will.
We're all guilty of it to some degree, of course. I used to drop a brick when the front end of my bike slid out, awaiting the impact with the Tarmac. That was until Simon Pavey, on BMW's off-road course, taught me to drive a GS1200 through mud and gravel with a wholly locked front wheel, still driving the rear. The sense of achievement when I "got it" was stratospheric (more on this whole experience in the next post, btw). Transfered to the road, I'm more in control when I suffer a slip now, less terrified. I'll probably still crash though, I never said I was any good...
All this isn't to say we should all ride throughout the winter but there has to be a question about the wisdom of jumping aboard a 170bhp machine attached to the road through two tiny spots of rubber if you don't, well, "practice", no?

Anyway, winter's-a-comin', which means fewer bikes on the road but more glory for "The Few"; a sodden, secret club who gather together in the nation's service stations, making roll-ups with shivering hands warmed by tea in polystyrene cups, but who look in to one another's eyes and see the respect of fellow warriors against the elements, and the slow burning of the fire of battle.
To borrow from the young King:

"If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
"To do our country loss; and if to live,
"The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
"God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more."

See you next summer Harley owners!

I Have Business To The South, At Marwar Junction.

2011-08-23T19:24:00.001+01:00

A brief moment of melancholy - for which I ask forgiveness.
I was reading today about literacy amongst parents and how its level affects educational achievement in children. Inevitably, this was further post-riots analysis.
As I read the article I thought about my own experience. My parents were both literate, especially my father, a classicist.
I thought back to his constant quoting of poetry, and passages from novels and great (and minor) works of literature. He didn't do this much in the home, as a form of education, but in context; out in the world to add to the occasion of something or somewhere or to brighten up something otherwise uniform and dull.
He would suddenly strike up a passage from a poem, play or book which would encapsulate the world around us, or bring it further to life, or bring hundreds of years of history to bear upon it.
I'm not sure it helped me "achieve" educationally, but it lit up the world around me and gave me a lasting sense of romance, a passion for history, and a love of the natural world. It's probably also why my house heaves with much-loved and read books.
Is that the same thing? I don't know. But I do know I treasure the memories. I hope I can do the same for my son.
Take a moment, from what remains of my memory, to join a young me and my father. These are just a few of those I can bring to mind as I write.

Walking in the New Forest towards the end of the day as the sun is westering through the trees at Linford:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

(Thomas Gray, Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard)

On learning of the storming of the Iranian embassy by the SAS.

"We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further; it may be Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea"

(The Golden Road To Samarkand, James Elroy Flecker - a passage inscribed on the clock-tower at the SAS base at Hereford.)

On leaving the house very early to drive to the West Country on holiday:

Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight;
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Edward Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

On walking through the wending streets of a Cornish village:

Five and twenty ponies
Trotting in the dark -
Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
Watch the wall my darling while the gentlemen go by.

Rudyard Kipling, A Smuggler's Song

There you go. Melancholy over. Promise*

*Except....let nobody say children can't be excited by words. My father, who's still going wonderfully strong, was a prop forward as well as a classicist. I liked the juxtaposition, although I only managed classics and inside centre, being a wuss with nice hair.

Pie Jesu Domine, Dona Eis Requiem (Bonk!)

2011-08-14T12:19:00.007+01:00

The British voter, 2011

I've been meaning to write this for years, but a post on Twitter from an MP (Labour's Tom Harris) finally uncorked the bottle this morning.
So no motorbikes or cars today, just politics and a firm telling off. For you.
Yes, you. Don't look shocked. You know what you've done.
You don't? I find that hard to believe. Let's go back over what happened.
You say that the terrible state of politicians and politics in this country is down to the election of hundreds of selfish, grasping idiots to the House of Commons, that they're "all the same", that they shout and scream at one another like children and that you loathe them.
I say you did it.
You see whilst it's true that politicians can be drummed out of a job at the ballot box, your actual power as voters is a smokescreen. Why? Because we can only vote for and against those who put themselves up for election.
It is the elections we're not eligible to vote in which dictate the quality of our MPs - the family poll carried out around a kitchen table by the dedicated, driven, honest, intelligent person who cares passionately about what they believe in and is considering a political career.
All too often those elections are lost by us, the public, when good people we don't know decide that a life of abuse and vitriol, combined with the attentions of the tabloid media into their children, spouse or friends, and rewarded (in terms of highly-capable professional people) comparatively poorly, isn't worth it.
We know that politicians are down there at the bottom of the list with journalists when it comes to public respect (a trend only welcomed, presumably, by the nation's estate agents).
"They're all the same" is the acceptable call, or "they never say anything, they just spout the Party line".
You want politicians who can think for themselves? Have a think about the way any show of individual views separated from the Party leadership's by so much as a fag paper is met with a furious chorus of "Gaff!"across the airwaves and in print.
You want politicians to admit they got something wrong? Think about the way any change in policy is met with gleeful screams of "U-turn!" or "Poor Judgement!".
Listen to a senior politician being interviewed by John Humphries or Jeremy Paxman - it may, occasionally, be a searing examination of their position but most of the time it's just plain rude and sometimes it's simply abusive in a way neither man would be towards a member of the public.
You listen to and watch the programmes, and you buy the papers. More importantly, if you're honest, you like it when a politician from a Party you don't support falls victim to this kind of coverage, don't you? It's a point to your lot, right? Wrong. It's a point off all sides.
So we don't ever see half of those who might be wonderful politicians, and we don't allow those who do get through that first filter to think for themselves.
Now there's a third, and even less attractive filter.
Last week Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, went on holiday. I worked closely with three defence secretaries (well, two and half if you count...actually never mind) and I can tell you that done properly that is a crushingly tough job. Twenty hour days are normal, the pressure is immense, the decisions you take have potentially horrific consequences and if you try to be a good constituency MP too you can write any kind of life outside the office off.
The Prospect union, however, decided that the fact Dr Fox took a special advisor, his military adviser and a secure communications officer with him was an outrage. Morale, they declared, would plummet.
We must presume, then, they either they want a defence secretary who never goes on holiday or, perhaps, one who does but is then unable to work when required whilst the nation's armed forces are involved in three conflicts around the world.
It is, frankly, a cheap and brainless accusation. But so low is politicans' stock and so accepted is the practice of decrying them that it could be made without anyone at Prospect suggesting, at the relevant meeting, "er...are we not being a bit, you know, petty and stupid here?"
This kind of thing is representative of a wider neo-puritanism about MPs. People don't want them, whilst in London for work, to live in any comfort. They don't want them to earn a reasonable living. They don't want them to go on holiday. They want them to be poor, miserable and to present their backsides for a good kicking on demand.
They do, though, want them to be dedicated, massively hard-working and completely selfless.
Yes, many MPs didn't help themselves during the expenses scandal - in fact many behaved so disgracefully they went to jail and others were morally, if not legally, on the wrong side of that line.
But firstly not all of them are like that, secondly this loathing of MPs predates that scandal and thirdly the swiftest way to ensure that all of them do become like that one day is to make being an MP such a miserable, impossible, nasty experience that the only people who want to do it are those for whom it's the best job they'll ever have - power-crazy, partisan low-achievers who'll do anything the Party says to hang onto their seats and to whom no employer would pay a fifth of an MP's salary to if they didn't.
The people you hate, in other words.
Unless there's a military coup, the truth is that we get - in the main - the politicians and the politics we deserve in this country. I think, the way we've behaved for the last 20 years, we have.
If you expect more from your elected representatives, give them a chance to deliver it.
And don't stand there saying "He started it!". He didn't. You did.

"Thomas", said the Fat Controller, "Pass the iced Cristal and the cigars".

2011-08-10T09:25:00.001+01:00

From Sept 1st my job takes me back to a London office full time. There's a reason why I tell you this, but first a little, brief background.
As a family we left London in 2009 after 15 years. We live in a lovely little village, which we wouldn't change.
So, I need to become a commuter - a journey of 70-odd miles (each way) from our home, or 45 from our nearest rail station.
For years I rode a motorcycle in London, but with long hours each day ahead the idea of riding in and out of the capital, and then down a motorway every day at rush-hour whilst exhausted, doesn't appeal. It's asking for trouble. Moreover, I have a huge bike these days, not the nutty but lithe supermoto I used to run in London. It's too big for the urban commute, and too valuable to expose to the batterings a London bike gets.

The family XC90 is just that, the family car, so I can't use that. However, I do have a big Audi A8 barge I bought and "did up" as the back-up second car for the snowy winters out here.
It's about the size of Kent and, unless driven like a nun, refuses to return anything much more than 25mpg. It also costs £400+ to tax and wears tyres wider than Del Trotter.
So the answer is surely the short drive or ride to the station and a train - which takes 40 mins - and then a Tube.
The train service is very busy. A standard ticket can often mean no seat at all and standing crushed between carriages, enjoying other people's aftershave or perfume and listening for your entire journey to one side of an inane phone conversation.

Consequently it was with some surprise that I learned that for these privileges I would be asked to pay £5,360 for an annual season ticket (plus another £50 a month in Tube fares).
To put that in perspective, that's twice as much it cost to buy and rebuild the A8, a 155mph car dripping in luxury features, quiet, and gloriously comfortable.
In fact, even with its huge thirst for unleaded, I can still do the journey for less money than taking the train and tube and that includes buying the car. Seriously.
So, to recap: you can buy a luxury car which has everything from electric window blinds to a heated steering wheel, and run it for a year, for less money than a standard train ticket. Of course, unlike your train ticket, you can also sell it at the end of that year and recoup most of your original outlay.
Why do I tell you all this?
Because the government doesn't want me to take the car. It's ecologically unfriendly (undeniably). So they make me pay a fortune for fuel, ramp up the car tax, charge me for driving it into London and charge me a bomb for parking it anywhere.
Meanwhile, they sit back and allow those providing the green alternative, the train operators, to charge obscene amounts too.
That hardly seems like a fair policy if behavioural change is the aspiration, does it? Hit me financially to disuade me from using Option A, but allow Option B to be even more expensive.
A child of ten, for example, might suggest that it kind of dooms the policy to failure, whilst battering the poor old worker financially either way. But what do children of ten know? Perhaps when they've got a degree in transport planning they'll understand. In fact, if anyone does have a degree in transport planning, perhaps they'd like to explain it to me?
I'll probably ride the bike to the head of a Tube line, to be honest. Cheaper, more fun. But few people have that alternative, which is why I write this and why it would be nice if folk stopped for a moment before shouting at drivers who, often, are priced out of a Green choice.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, what's going on 'ere then?

2011-07-30T08:20:00.002+01:00

The Times newspaper's main story today (Saturday 30th) is the revelation that police in England & Wales don't investigate a third of the crimes reported to them ( http://twitpic.com/5xurpu ).
The paper found, using the police's own figures, that 32% of reported offences were never even looked at, often being screened out by civilian "call screeners" before they got near a police officer, as they were considered "unsolvable"
Burglary and car crime, especially in London, were high on the list, the Times said.
Of course these aren't "unsolvable", they're just difficult to solve and take time and effort. That, it seems, amounts to the same thing for the police.
The main reaction to the story has been that this is effectively a manifesto for burglars and car thieves, who operate in the knowledge that they won't be caught. I'm sure that's true, and the distress (as someone who's come home with his family to find his house ransacked) caused is real and painful.
But there's a more subtle, and I think vastly more damaging, effect.
If one is a law-abiding citizen in England & Wales then, increasingly, one's interaction with the police will not be as a victim of crime (even when one is a victim) but being penalised for minor offences.
Ever more, the police becomes a police force, not a police service, to the law-abiding.
As a result, trust and faith in the police disintergrates.
Growing up, I was taught that the police were to be respected, listened to and obeyed. The unspoken flip-side of this position was that, when I needed them, they were there to help me. That seemed fair to me as a child, I understood the trade-off.
Today I don't feel that way. In recent years we've suffered repeated knife-point robberies of piza-delivery boys called to our house by criminals (London) and a nasty burglary (Oxfordshire). Nobody was ever caught, and, frankly, beyond filling out some forms the police response was, at best, resigned.
One Metropolitan officer confined to me "To be honest, none of the cops you've seen today would know where to start investigating a crime; they just run about London patching things up and jumping on anyone who's there to jump on when they arrive."
The reason millions of us are increasingly angry about endless speed cameras, fines for "incorrect recycling" and so on isn't that we think we should be able to drive everywhere at 100mph or throw rubbish in the streets, it's because we feel that we're a walking cash machine for the police and State, that authorities are quick to rush in and fine us for such things because it's easy, yet when we need them as victims of far more serious crime, it's just too difficult to bother.
In other words, we're the only ones being policed.
It isn't that way, but it feels that way and that's enough. The police are quick to demand the help of communities when they need it and, for now, they generally get it.
The day is coming, I fear, though, when law-abiding doors will become as closed to the police as criminal ones and they'll only have themselves to blame.

Like The Man Said, You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)

2011-07-27T10:28:00.001+01:00

My wife swanned off to St Tropez with her girlfriends last week to stay at the house of one of them, leaving me in sole charge of our nipper. That meant five days without going near the bike. Worse, work had meant it had been three days since I'd ridden when she left.
So, yesterday I climbed aboard for the first time in more than a week.
As I set off, with no destination in mind, my mood seemed to lift and change with each revolution of the wheels. Lighter, more carefree, a sense of perspective, a lifting of the everyday loads and worries, filed somewhere, for a time, and forgotten - even after 20 years of doing this.
I have no idea what drugs like Prozac et al are like, but if they're anything like this I can see the point.
Long story short, I came home about 5.30pm, hopped off in the garage, lit a cigarette and, involuntarily, smiled like the Cheshire Cat. Exhausted, hot and consummately happy.
Cars, which I love, don't have this effect on me. I've owned lots of nice, fast, classic cars. All fun but, set against bikes, not even close.
I've no time for fatuous argument about which is "better", two wheels or four. It's a matter of taste and it's like comparing cricket and football - they're wildly different. But for those of us who love both, why is one so much more powerful a drug than the other?
As I sipped a Peroni, sitting on a pannier box and listening to the bike "tick" and "ping" behind me, I think I worked it out.
When all's said and done, you operate a car. However fast, whatever forces are playing on you, you are one step removed. Steering, acceleration, brakes are, in the final reckoning, operated remotely by a series of buttons, pedals and levers. You operate those, the car does something, from an Allegro to a Zonda, it remains true.
Bikes you ride. You're an intrinsic part of the machine and its performance. Where you put your body, how you put it there and how much you trust it, dictate what the bike does. Left alone it won't just sit there like a car, it'll just fall over, stricken: a metaphor for your relationship.
You and the bike share the responsibility for making progress. You get it around corners, for example, not by simply turning the bars and letting it do its thing but by shifting your body forward, out, down, towards the rushing Tarmac, pressing down on the inner foot peg, committing your weak, fleshy frame to the corner as much as the bike commits its, much more solid, self.
It needs you to do this as much as you need it to do its part. Teamwork, in other words, in which either party choosing to down tools will see you pass through a hedge.
And because of this there's a bond there. Because of this you achieve things together. Sometimes the bike will do more of the work, saving you from oblivion. Sometimes you'll take it by the horns and subdue it to your will. You learn from one another, you help one another, and you're equal partners in doing so.
If they could bottle these feelings and sensations they'd sell faster than booze, and they're vastly more addictive.
I talk to my bike. I'm not alone in that. Before we set off I tell it where we're going. When we get there I give it a pat as I dismount. I thank it for looking after me.
I know, deep down, that it can't hear me, but after what we've just been through together how could I do anything else? We're partners. Together we've just done something amazing.
So when the bike-car argument comes around in the pub again, I'd humbly suggest it's not about speed, or lap times, or power-to-weight ratios. It's about soul.
Two souls, actually.

A Lifetime Of Joy - Worth A Quid?

2011-07-21T21:07:00.002+01:00

These days it seems any celebrity worth their salt, as well as those who aren't, needs to write a book (or, perhaps, "write" a book) at least once every 18 months.
Cookbooks with a "twist" (Rural Twattery At The Urban Table et cetera), the autobiographies of singers only recently transformed from spermicida, the footballers' collection of PR-department approved quotes: glossy, cheap and ideal stocking fillers for those without the time, inclination or intellect to do better by those they purport to love at Christmas.
The consequence of this is that books are decreasingly seen as art, and increasingly regarded as commodities. The ability to buy them by the yard at the click of mouse does nothing to help alter this perceptual shift.
But one of the overlooked consequences, I realised this week, is the effect on independent bookshops.
I know, and I know you know, about the impact of supermarkets, Amazon, the Fixed Book Price Agreement, eBooks and chain book stores on these little shops. I'm not going to rehash that, brutal and damaging to us all as I think it is. There's something else. Something worse, even.
My old local book shop in London was one of the best I've ever known. Brilliant range of books, hugely knowledgable staff, passionate owners and a haven for children too.
Jonathan, who jointly runs it, writes a beautiful, concise blog (which you can, and should, read here).
He wrote a short piece last week about a guy who came into the shop and asked for the details of a given book, its price, title, author and ISBN number. "I can order that for you", said Jonathan. The guy made his excuses and left, no doubt to order it on-line at a tiny saving. I like to imagine he left a shiny trail of mucus behind his slug-like body (Jonathan didn't say this, but then Jonathan's nicer than I am).
Who, I wondered, goes into an independent bookshop in the middle of a hideous recession and does that?
So what? I may hear you ask. Well, there is a what, and it's this.
I have books I adore, authors I've come to love, books which are part of a series I just can't wait for another of and characters I almost know like friends; and all of these, in recent years, are down to that little bookshop in London.
I have these joys because that shop is run by people who took the trouble to get to know me, to understand what I like, what I'm interested in. It's run by people who are also passionate about the books they sell, who read them endlessly, and who actually think about what to recommend to customers.
And don't think I'm some kind of wet romantic. I know Jonathan would love to sell 75 copies of Jamie Oliver's latest book (How The Masai People of Tanzania Taught Me That Masturbating in Salad is the Secret of Long Life - £17.99 - Michael Joseph) and buy a Porsche but he can't because the Sainsbury's three doors down buys it at half what he can and sells it at a loss.
But if he could, he'd retain his passion for real books and he'd still be a joy to talk to about them and he'd still stock them in their thousands. I still buy my books from him, despite having long moved away, as I no longer have a local shop.
Also, after he visited a local hostelry recently, he took the trouble to describe my wife as "hot" on a social network and lament her misfortune in "being married to a posh bloke who drones on about motorbikes". You just don't get service like that from Waterstones, do you?
Anyway, our slimy friend with the ISBN number and this shift in seeing books like white goods means that as a society we no longer seem to value the bookseller above their ability to save us a quid here and there.
That saved quid is costing us more than we could ever imagine. What haven't you read today, and what won't you read tomorrow?

Biking and the EU

2011-07-15T16:31:00.001+01:00

I've written a piece for the September edition of Ride magazine in the UK on new biking legislation coming out of the EU.
It's serious stuff, and could have a huge impact on riders, and the wider industry (particularly in the UK).
The magazine carries a shortened version of the piece which appears on Ride's blog in full, here.

Let's Talk About Bill

2011-07-11T09:34:00.001+01:00

Just occasionally I ask you to indulge me here when I write about matters other than bikes and cars. I'm asking for that indulgence again today and I hope you'll be kind enough to give it again, as gracefully as ever.
I shan't detain you long.
My father's widowed, in his 70s and lives in the sticks. He goes to his local Conservative Club a couple of times a week for lunch, especially on Sundays. Like many such people in small country towns he's not much of Tory, but it's a place to catch up with friends over a cheap bite to eat and a cheap drink. What a particularly British way for a political movement to sustain.
Speaking to my father at the weekend, he explained that there's a chap who's also there occasionally, let's call him Bill, who's in his 90s. Bill suffers from Parkinson's Disease and, thanks to his shaky hands, my father tends to get his meal for him from the buffet and carry it over. Sometimes they talk.
My father was struck by the way almost nobody else does really talk to Bill. They say a friendly hello, but they rarely stop moving as they say it. Bill's very old, and unwell, and Bill is often tired.
Part of the reason for this is that Bill's wife has Altzheimer's and is in a local nursing home. I believe it's quite advanced and she's rarely "herself". Every day, seven days a week, Bill visits her from 2pm to 7pm, the maximum visiting hours allowed. Five hours a day, seven days a week, with the woman you love - except it's rarely "her", of course.
As my father put it: "He's there, but people presume he'll only talk about being old, ill or his wife, if they think about him that long."
So, dad says, Bill's generally left to his own devices. As he was telling me this I thought, as I hope you're thinking now, "how sad". I said "poor chap". But as dad went on I realised he wasn't sad; he was bloody angry.
"Let me tell you something about that 'poor chap'," said dad, firmly. "Bill flew fighters and ground-attack aircraft in the war. Spitfires, Typhoons, Hurricanes, even a US Mustang for a while.
"He was shot down twice. Captured twice. He escaped twice.
"He was flying low-level over France one night and he saw a bloke come out of a shed and raise a rifle, aim, then fire. The bullet went through his air-cooling tank and he went down. One bloke with a bloody rifle!"
Dad asked him if he was captured.
"Oh yes," said Bill, between mouthfuls of beef and potato, "but it took them a week to get me."
A week, said dad, how did you avoid them for a week?
"Well I just walked through towns, rather than the countryside. With all the gear on people didn't really notice the uniform underneath and so long as you were bold as brass they presumed you were one of theirs. People don't want trouble, really.
"Mind you, shaving was the key. If you were unshaven you looked out of place, like you'd been walking for ages, so I smashed a bottle and dry shaved with a piece of broken glass every morning."
After Bill was eventually captured, he escaped and made it back to England via the French.
I don't know quite how he did that, dad hasn't said, but I do know he went straight back to his air-station.
Four months later he was shot down again, captured again, escaped again and came home again. Back to the air station to get flying, again.
I imagine Bill could tell a few tales more, too, but nobody asks, because Bill's just an ill little old man with a sad life and people don't want to risk hearing about that, do they?
Do you?
Do I?

The 198mph Good Samaritan

2011-07-04T18:59:00.002+01:00

This little post isn't about one-up-manship, or who's better than who.
Or, at least, not deliberately.
In fact it may be. But that's not my fault.
Tonight I was driving my car (a back-up to the bike when the family car is occupied: a 1999 Audi A8) down a B-road near where I live in rural Oxfordshire - not a motorway, or a huge A-road. Just a little country road.
It's a big, fat, German luxury saloon with all the bells and whistles - about the same size as Kent.
At about 4pm I hit something in the road, possibly a discarded wing-mirror I think. Either way, it tore two huge gashes in the nearside front tyre, which instantly deflated.
So, I parked up on the roadside, just outside the local town, placed the Audi warning triangle in the road 200 yards behind me and set about changing the wheel.
It was hot - 26 degrees - and the heat was shimmering in the field over the dry stone wall next to me. The road was busy too, or at least what we out here consider busy: a constant flow of traffic made up of people heading home after working or picking the kids up.
And in the hour I was there, huffing and puffing, I'd say about 100 cars or vans passed me, one way or another.
Not one stopped. In fact, other than to drive around me, not one so much as slowed down. They all looked - to a man or woman - but then they accelerated away.
Until, at about 4.40pm, I was passed by a bike. A Suzuki Hayabusa to be exact. The rider, I noticed as he slowed down and popped his visor, was a man in his late 30s or perhaps early 40s.
He was going the other way but, after a mirror check and a glance over his shoulder, he stopped. "Alright mate?" he shouted. "Need a hand?".
No thanks, I told him, I'm okay. Soon be on my way. But thanks.
And, nodding, off he went.
I wasn't wearing a biker t-shirt and, unlike the family XC90, the Audi doesn't have a "Think Bike!" sticker in the rear window. He couldn't have known I rode a bike usually.
100 cars. One bike. One offer of help.
That's not why bikers are a better breed than drivers - it's why it's just more pleasant to be a biker.
Karma. Innit?

Stuck In Traffic? Ask Yourself "What Would Billy Bragg Do?"

2011-06-16T11:19:00.006+01:00

Union organiser Joe Hill, shot aged 36

Some years ago I was at a discreet lunch with a special advisor to a senior Cabinet minister and two figures from business.

The conversation turned to what puts Ministers under pressure and one of the business people suggested questions from other MPs probably didn't.

The special advisor laughed. "A question from one of our own MPs is an issue," he said, smiling, "A question from two is a crisis and a question from three amounts to a revolution in the air."

In other words, if people can get MPs to ask questions of Ministers, they really do take them seriously. Okay, that's as much about managing their political position within their own party as anything, but that's politics and it works.

Lobbyists know this, which is why those who lobby for road users are in a constant state of simmering frustation.

Why?

Figures released in 2010 by The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), or "the car lobby" to you and me, showed there were 31,035,791 cars on UK roads, and there are more than a million motorbikes.

In other words, the biggest, most powerful, economically muscular group of people you could wish for. The concept of annoying all of them would send the average politician scurrying for a dark cupboard and a couple of Temazapam.

Except it doesn't, because it's impossible to annoy all of them, as it turns out.

Certainly they may all be annoyed - by speed cameras, congestion, fuel prices, car tax, potholes and so on, but they're never annoyed together.

Drivers are people first and drivers second, so despite endlessly moaning about these daily irritants, they come second to the education of their children, having a job, crime, immigration and the other "big" issues, naturally enough.

Politicians know this, so however much heat and light the SMMT, or driver-oriented companies like the RAC and AA, generate, it matters not. No political damage will be sustained.

Which is why the present government's about face on driving issues won't worry them a jot. And I say that's a pity.

In opposition the Conservative Party talked big about "ending the war on the motorist". They promised to champion the car driver who, they said, had for too long been the butt of revenue-generating policies from the Labour Party, not to mention the target of environmental anger which, they added, should be spread around all polluters, not just drivers.

A raft of policy promises were run up the Tory flagpole: an end to unfair use of speed cameras (those which just generate income, not improve safety), no unnecessary roadworks, no further average speed cameras, more intelligent traffic calming, no more arbitrary speed limits, help for rural drivers with no public transport option. Et cetera ad infinitum.

A year into Government, what's happened? Well, if you are one of the six people who live on the outlaying islands half way between Scotland and Norway the cost of your fuel will be cut by enough that, after a year or so, you'll be able to spend the savings on a Curly-Wurly.

Otherwise, nothing.

Yes the Coalition cut grants to local Safety Camera Partnerships, but when councils acted by turning off the cameras the police had kittens, realising they'd actually have to police the roads properly and look out for drunks, dangerous driving, drivers on drugs, homeward-bound burglars and so on, rather than only policing speed (by machine). So they quickly swerved around the problem by saying they'd use the profits from "speed education courses" drivers would be offered instead of penalty points to keep the cameras running. As councils meekly rolled over, the Government said nothing.

And here's the irony. The reason so little has happened is that the anti-car lobby is highly, highly effective, as is the green lobby. Between them they do mobilise people to harras MPs, who in turn harras Ministers.

They are, compared to the UK's drivers and riders, a miniscule, tiny group of people. But the key word there is "group". They're organised.

We can bemoan the relative ineffectiveness of the car lobby (although believe me they're effective enough when it comes to issues around their members' own profit margins) but the reality is drivers need to either act, or stop complaining.

If it matters to you, do something about it. Otherwise, like the Punk movement, you're all fury and no solutions.

Bikers are not a unified group, despite riding being more akin to a lifestyle choice than a practicality for most, but they do share a lose esprit d'corps and they do have representatives like the BMF and MAG in the UK and FEMA in Brussels who lobby for them, pretty effectively. Still, as one FEMA executive told me last week: "There are 35m riders across the EU and we're simply not exploiting that."

Car drivers, though, don't even get this far.

Just think what a local MP would do if 5000 constituents signed a petition complaining about the state of the roads, or speed cameras designed only to make money? Sheer electoral terror. And the Secretary of State would hear about it by dawn.

The great Swedish-American union organiser and musician Joe Hill was framed for murder in Salt Lake City, to shut him up. The night before he was shot by firing squad, his friends received word from him: "Don't mourn. Organise."

Go Greased Lightening! Oh, You Are. Sorry.

2011-06-02T11:10:00.006+01:00

So, for reasons I won't bore you with, I was one of the "testers" for BMW's electric MINI-E last year.
This entailed driving a free one about for a few weeks, then filling in questionnaires sent from the psychology department at Oxford Brookes University (note it wasn't the engineering department).
As a bit of a petrol-head who thinks a car isn't really a car without eight cylinders, or, even better, unless it's a motorbike, I was probably a tough audience.
As the results of the project are now being made public, I thought I'd share my experiences with you.
Have I grown a beard? Do I now read The Guardian? Do I think everything's too serious to be funny? Have my dinner party invitations completely dried up?
Let's see.
What do we know about the MINI-E? Well it's 100% electric. It's a normal MINI shell, but the rear seats disappear to make way for the batteries, which weigh the same as Belarus and give the car c.200bhp through its front wheels.
We also know that it's BMW's attempt to get lots of green publicity whilst also examining the psychology surrounding electric cars - i.e. what will sell? What won't? What are potential buyers' "buttons" compared to traditional vehicles?
And it's never going to hit production. A MINI-E, according to estimates, costs the Munich car-maker more than £100,000 to produce. Consequently, in its present form, it'll never be commercially viable.
Nonetheless, BMW deserves great credit for trying and for testing the car in the real world, by giving it to people like me and asking them to live and work with it and see what happens.

The first and most important thing to deal with, I found, was trying to get past the novelty factor. It looked great, and was impossible to park anywhere without being asked questions or, best of all, for a "look under the bonnet".

With a Volvo XC90, a Audi A8 and a 1200cc motorcycle at home, I had to work hard at seeing the little car as anything other than something to drive to parties as a conversation piece, not least when you remember there's no back seat for children, and no boot (because that's full of batteries too).
The same was true of the driving experience. BMW clearly chose to make the car comparatively fast (and it really is) to circumnavigate perceptions that electric vehicles are worthy but dull and to avoid tarnishing the 50 year old MINI brand with mental images of hessian sandals and grow-your-own trousers.
Problem is that pumping 200bhp (and remember, thanks to the way an electric motor works that power is instant, not built up to) through the front wheels of a car with huge weight over the back makes handling and behaviour...interesting.
Understeer and wheel-spin in corners was catastrophic in the dry. In the wet or on low-traction roads I generally rolled dice and turned in according to the number which came up - totally random. It would make no difference.
Put into production and sold to the kind of people to whom green cars most appeal, the MINI-E would kill more people than the Ford Mustang ever has.
The overwhelming sensation of the MINI-E, though, is speed and noise, or the lack of it. It fairly rockets along in a straight line in total silence, like the world's fastest dodgem. I tried making Chevy V8 noises to compensate but eventually it made me cough.
It's a strange feeling and one needs to recalibrate all those sub-conscious signs that one's going fast - revs, engine note et cetera. With this it was all about the speedo. And herein lays another problem: if the speedo is your only way of determining your speed, and you live somewhere dripping with speed cameras, you spend an alarming amont of time not looking at the road.
The questions from Oxford Brookes were interesting too. Nobody ever asked what it was like to drive, whether it handled, or whether the power was aceptable. Instead the researchers were obsessed by "range anxiety" - whether one was constantly worried about running out of electricity, and would therefore take a petrol car instead. They were interested in the ownership experience, not the car.
Essentially the project wasn't testing the MINI-E, it was testing the testers. A giant exercise in market and customer research, with a huge price-tag.
I needed a lot of persuading to get involved. My friend Mark, another tester, did vastly more miles than me and absolutely loved the little car. It, and he, finally persuaded me I think.
I came to see the MINI-E not as the solution in its own right, but as a solution by default. Electric cars will never be as much fun to those of us who love driving as petrol cars. Petrol cars are noisy, smelly, complicated machines which shudder, shake and growl. The sensation of driving one is as much about that experience as it is about the vehicle's capabilities - something many greens just don't get.
But the oil's running out, and apparently the planet is being killed by car drivers (we'll brush over cows, airlines, badly insulated homes and heavy industry and just accept it's all our fault to save George Monbiot soiling another pair of pants) and the heyday of driving is gone.
The US talk show host and car collector Jay Leno is a huge advocate of electric and hybrid cars. Not because he thinks they'll save the planet, or that they're nice to drive, he doesn't, but because he sees a future in which those of us who love driving will spend our working weeks in battery or hydrogen powered cars and wheel out the old petrol car at weekends, as a leisure activity. He sees electric and hybrid engines as the future of petrol.
I think he may be right. If so, the MINI-E's not a bad way to travel. It's travelling, though, not driving.

A Taste Of Genuine Olde England And Gravel In Your Teeth

2011-04-05T08:57:00.000+01:00

With the Spring having sprung, many people are thinking holidays. Let us help. Come to the world-famous City and county of Oxford and Oxfordshire.

Marvel at the historic university, the magnificence and scope of the architecture, the labyrinthine old pubs, the stunning and ancient countryside and, of course, don't miss the chance to experience our genuine Medieval roads!

That's right! Be the envy of your friends! Tell them how you experienced travel in exactly the same way as a 14th Century cart driver! Thrill them with tales of breaking a wheel and then having to stop at a genuine roadside inn and wait for the AA to come and fix it!

Make sure you get some pictures when you break a wrist on the steering wheel and have to go to the emergency room! Be the darling of dinner parties as you regale friends with the story of how you were catapulted 20 feet down the road off your bike and then run over by the tail-gater in the car behind!

Don't miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance (which is certainly what it might be if you try doing it on a bicycle or motorcycle) to go back in time 400 years to a world when the roads were fit only for goats, sheep and cattle.

Here are a few tantalising pictures of the road in just one Oxfordshire village, from your humble scribe's front door to the local shop - 400 meters - to whet your appetite.

That's right, these deadly, broken, worsening and collapsing holes aren't picked from the best the county has to offer, but just by walking from my front door and down the street!

That means wherever you go in the county, we GUARANTEE genuine Medieval roads your friends just won't believe when you show them the pictures and the bill for damage to your hire car!*

Oxfordshire: Proudly Heading Back To 1491!

*NB: whilst every attempt has been made to provide you with a genuine Medieval roads experience, you should be aware that the county is dripping with a multi-million Pound system of more than 150 fixed and mobile speed traps. We apologise if the subsequent raft of tickets ruins your otherwise genuine Olde England experience.

An Adventure In Your Own Back Yard, Every Day.

2011-03-29T10:54:00.002+01:00

This is why bikes rock.
There's nothing "special" about this at all - nothing. A normal ride from a shop to a shop. No attempts to show off, not going silly fast, not taking risks. Just an example of why riding is such fun.
The bike's a BMW R1200 GS Adventure, and although you only see them at the end there are three huge metal panniers on the back, which are a tad limiting in traffic (although the last seven or eight mins are quite...erm..."making progress").
Also, my PoV isn't quite the one you get from the camera - I'm looking over the screen, not through it like you are, and I can see a lot further. Camera's stuck to the side of an old motocross helmet, so it's a bit skew-whiff.
Apols for the wind noise (can't hear it on the bike, just because of the microfone), but you do pick up some lovely Boxer twin action from time to time.
Anyway - bikes: turning the mundane into the fabulous...

Lewis Hamilton Staring Back From The Nation's Shaving Mirrors

2011-03-25T08:31:00.000Z

There's an old piece of accepted wisdom which says that when you poll male car drivers on how good they are behind the wheel, they all place themselves between "average" and "Senna".
Nobody ever says: "You know what? I'm a bloody liability, me."
It's not really their fault. Ninety years of marketing departments and Hollywood studios telling them their driving ability is a metaphor for their sexual ability takes its toll, no doubt.
This morning I was spending some time on a motorcycle forum I use and taking part in a thread about rider training - part of a permanent section on training and skills on the forum (which, as you'd expect, is otherwise mostly about wheelies and beer) - when something occurred to me.
Most of the riders I know love speed, and most of the bike magazines I read centre on that same thing; performance.
But here's the thing: all of those same mags, without exception, always include a section on better riding, on improving skills, on mistakes we all make. Same goes for web forums. And most of the riders I know have done some kind of extra training, even the mad-fast sports-bike guys with two interchangeable brain cells ("on" and "off").
To motorcyclists, who are as "performance-capability" sensitive as car drivers, it's just accepted that you can always improve, you can always learn.
Can you imagine what would happen to sales of Top Gear Magazine or Evo if they introduced a section called "Be A Better Driver"? Can you imagine the internal outrage of the readers at the mere suggestion that they're not already perfect, that their ability was in some way being challenged?
I'm serious - and I bet drivers reading this who don't also ride know, in their hearts, that that's how they'd react.
So why is this? Why the difference?
Partly it's about vulnerability. Coming off a bike is likely to hurt more than crashing a car, in general. Bikes, thanks to the laws of physics, are also more vulnerable to road conditions, spills and so on than cars. It tends to breed a healthy respect for the skills needed to stay rubber-side-down.
Bikes are also more vulnerable to other drivers mistakes although (and riders hate to admit this) the statistics show that the majority of KSI (killed or seriously injured) accidents are caused by loss of control of the bike (mitigated by the fact that this can include external forces like pot-holes or spilled diesel).
It's one reason why bikers are so chippy about bad car driving. When you pull out in front of us and we go a bit nuts it's partly a release of frustration - why, we ask ourselves, are we working this hard to ride well when you're not bothering to even think about what you're doing?
Of course even amongst bikers there's a machismo line. The bearded gent in day-glow clothing on the Honda Pan-European adorned with fluorescent stickers is the guy who gets it in the neck from us - too much, we giggle to one another.
But secretly, privately, we think for a fleeting moment, as he chugs away at a steady 40mph, that he's going to survive longer than us.

17 Minutes - A Time For Heroes

2011-02-16T12:32:00.002Z

In a few months' time, on a nondescript little island, a group of men will do something truly amazing. Not "amazing" in the sense that footballers use the word, to mean "quite good". No, amazing in the literal sense. Something which leaves the average person stunned, open-mouthed.
By the time they do this, the world of motorport will be in deep obsession with watching multi-millionaire F1 drivers bomb around baby-skin-smooth, purpose-built tracks with huge run-off areas, wrapped in space-age composite protection. And fair enough, it takes immense guts and skill to do so.
Meanwhle, though, these men will be doing something which makes that look like driving to the shops.
The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy, the "TT". To some, those with penile erection dysfunction and a passion for golf, it's the name of their car, to others it has simply been the greatest motor race on the planet for more than 100 years, and remains so.
It shouldn't exist. In a modern world in which safety is king, in which it must be shown that every risk has been considered and addressed, how can a group of men on modified road bikes thunder through the streets, lanes and roads at speeds of more than 200mph?
Car racing had its versions, such as the wonderful Targa Florio. They were all stopped decades ago and, regardless, never came close to the TT for raw, pure risk.
All sports fans advocate for their sport, and rightly so. The argument about which is best, or bravest, or most difficult is fatuous. But I think this select group of men may well be the most over-looked sporting heros in the country. Not for them the glitter of BBC Sports Personality nominations, nor the glamour of a Monaco-moored yacht. They just have the racing, and that's why I wanted to draw attention to them outside the biking community.
A quick lap of the TT course on a suprbike takes 17 minutes. It's 37 miles long. An F1 driver is often described as at a disadvantage because he's yet to "learn the circuit". That circuit, on average three miles long, could have as many as 15 corners, each of which has a braking point, line, entry point, turning-in point, apex and exit point. How much does a TT rider have to learn, in those 37 miles? Plus, of course, jumps, road cambers, obstructions, street furniture.
In 2009 the mercurial John McGuinness, on a Honda Fireblade, completed that distance in 17:12:30 at an average speed of 131.578mph. Think about that - through villages and endless hairpins and switchbacks his average speed was 131mph.
That 17 minutes is a constant diet of full-bore physical and mental Hell. 17 minutes in which any tiny, tiny error can kill you. And it does, all too often. Between 1907 and 2009 the Mountain Course has killed 231 people and crippled countless more.
That's 17 minutes of powering past brick walls, phone boxes, houses, steel road signs, often just inches away. 17 minutes of flashing over slippery road markings, drain covers and mud. 17 minutes of hoping today isn't the day the rabbit makes a dash for it - all the while reading the circuit just as accurately and with as much planning as any F1 driver.

Record-holder John McGuinness nips out for a paper

And yet it endures, the TT. It grows. It's both a celebration of incredible, and I choose the word deliberately, skill and courage, combined with an annual pilgrimage to people's right to take risks, to die, even, doing something they love. It's an event that welcomes those watching from the sidelines, but asks armchair critics to remain silent.

And if anyone doubted the spirit in play here, then they might like to think about Mad Sunday, when anyone on a motorcycle can ride part of the mountain section of the course. They do so in their hundreds, and sombody usually gets hurt. Can you imagine that at Estoril on F1 weekend?

You can watch about half of a lap in the company of the wonderful Guy Martin HERE. I suggest you do. Make a cuppa, turn up the sound, and watch something very special.

Seeing The Wood For The Trees

2011-02-02T09:42:00.001Z

The presumption implied today, as MPs debate the forest sell-off plans, is simple: our lovely, beautiful, accessible, forests are to be taken from us by evil loggers who’ll close them and turn them into nothing more than a way of making money.
Nasty, nasty government. Bad, bad loggers. How naughty.
Of course, to political junkies, there’s a worrying flaw in this argument. Ministers are not stupid, nor are they lacking in political skill, so why do something so unspeakably horrid and unpopular at a time when they’re implementing already unpopular cuts?
The truth is that if you know anything about British forests, as ministers clearly do, there’s nothing nasty about what they’re doing. What they’d underestimated was both the population’s ignorance of the facts and the Opposition’s willingness to exploit it.
I should make clear this isn’t, in any way, a party political argument. It just happens that on this one the Labour party is playing somewhat fast and loose.
The problem which wholly undermines the “anti-commercialisation” argument about the forests is they are...er...already commercialised.
As in so much related to rural issues, the majority of people (who don’t live in rural communities) use and access the countryside as a leisure activity without ever really understanding why that’s possible, how it works. To them it’s just a giant CentreParcs.
Forests to which the public has access in the UK are all either commercial or provided by the largesse of wealthy land-owners. That’s the only way their owners can afford to keep them healthy. And this is the problem; most people think forests are things which grow and, left to their own devices, turn into enchanting woodlands in which deer skip through the undergrowth, pausing only to chat to squirrels and, no doubt, dancing rabbits. Why do they need to be kept healthy?
In fact, left to itself, a British broadleaf forest would soon crumble and die, at least in the form we understand it.
Trees spread, blocking out the light to what would quickly become an undergrowth so dense it would only allow a very few things to grow, and only the fastest growing would flourish. That has a terrible knock-on effect to wildlife, from birds to large mammals - feeding is reduced, space disappears, things die. It becomes a dark jungle, not a light-dappled woodland.
This is also true of those lovely meadows, hedges, grouse moors, uplands, wetlands, downs and a hundred other places it’s nice to visit of a weekend. They’re not just “there”, the are made, and maintained, by people working with nature, at a cost.
So to keep the forests as people like to find them requires management, keepers, staff, expense, time, equipment. All of this is hugely expensive.
And that’s to ignore the other “natural” things people like to find in their forests: car parks, walking and cycle tracks, fences, gates, signs et cetera.
If this is the way the population of this country wants its woods to be, fair enough (I know I do); but someone has to pay. That’s why most of the forests in question (including - shock-horror - those owned by the Forestry Commission) are run commercially.
That means wood is grown, felled and sold and new trees planted as part of a wider managed plan for the wood in question. The days of endless pine forests being planted (again, including by the Forestry Commission) have given way to a more balanced model involving a mix of fast-growing pine and spruce, together with oak, ash and other woods required commercially and, of course, the introduction of tourism as a revenue generator, itself mitigating against too many pine forests.
So what the government is saying is it’ll sell a lot of commercial forests owned by the state to companies which own and run the rest of the forests already, or locals, under strict rules around access guarantees.
The deeper and more upsetting part of the argument raging is how it makes those of us from rural communities feel. As in the hunting debate, shooting debates, land rights debates and a hundred others, our voices are ignored unless, of course, we manage to shout loud enough, in which case we’re demonised instead (remember how various Labour ministers described the Countryside Alliance? Language which, had they used it about any other group in Britain would have led to a visit from the Old Bill, but it’s fine where country folk are concerned).
Listen to a liberal comedy show, such as Radio Four’s wonderful News Quiz, and you’ll notice how the Jeremy Hardys, Mark Steels or Sue Perkins’s of this world, usually so passionate about equality and defeating prejudice, are happy to paint anyone holding a non-urban view of rural issues as an unreconstructed fascist.
Actually, that’s not a lot of fun to listen to in your kitchen of an evening, but of course my objections are those of a rural type and, therefore, don’t count.
When we complain, we’re quickly painted as all old Etonian, millionaire, hereditary land owners in Range Rovers, not to mention unspeakable right-wingers. We’re not, of course, but by then the damage is done.
In my experience, growing up in the New Forest and now living in rural Oxfordshire, the countryside isn’t a hot-bed of right wing thinking, it’s a place utterly exhausted with the political system, disenfranchised on a grand scale. Most people feel there’s little point in trying to explain ourselves.
I’m still trying, but to be honest even my energy’s running low.
Anyway, enough, I need to nip out in my Range Rover and beat a badger to death with a spade before drinking its blood.

Mouton-Rothschild, no doubt, but why the Babycham bottle?

2011-01-18T19:25:00.001Z

We want to change our Volvo XC90 for a slightly smaller car. How hard, to borrow a phrase for a moment, can it be to give a car manufacturer a large lump of your money?
Our requirements, with a child and a large dog, are pretty simple. Proper big boot, safe, well-built, comfy, not insanely thirsty and nearly, but not quite, new (not paying George Osbourne c.25% of the purchase price).
However, there's an x-factor. I also want something with a little class, by which I mean capable but understated. Not crass, not showy.
So, pretty simple then? Well, no. As it turns out it's harder than standing as the Lib-Dem candidate for President of the Student Union.
To my local Audi showroom: various vehicles dripping with so many grills, LEDs, bling and chrome I thought the whole showroom had been taken over for the day by Pimp My Ride. Shouty, tasteless, crass, gauche, and that's just the staff.
BMW? The new 5-Series is just that, new, and thanks to BMW finding its 5-Series mojo again, the old one will soon be worth less than the cost of filling it with fuel. So, the the only car the Munich company makes which fits the bill is the X3 and finding one of those without bling is like finding a girl in trousers in Newcastle. And when you finally do, it's an X3. People would think you were an X3 driver and they'd be right, so you'd have to take your own life immediately.
Mercedes Benz? The old ML was built in the USA. Used prices only hold up because 84% of them fell apart on the boat over. It also drives like a pregnant stoat on a buttery skateboard. The new one, I discovered today, has a grill on the front designed by a six-year-old - it lacks only a whippy ariel and two forward-facing machine guns. It should be called the "G.I. Joe - Middle Management Edition". And even the once reliably-understated E-Class estate has fallen victim to the bling revolution, with more LEDs than Hamley's shop front in December and even a front splitter.
Perhaps, I thought, the problem is that I'm still looking at "prestige" cars. Maybe the answer is just to buy something more utilitarian. It's not like either of us minds.
So, to the Ford showroom to look at the much-praised S-Max.
Initially it was going well. The fit, finish and general cabin ambiance wasn't close to what we've been used to but that was okay if it ticked all the other boxes. I was about to sign up for a test drive when I spotted something.
"What's that?" I asked the salesman, pointing to a the huge, mesh-covered brake ventilation gaps above the front wheel arches. "It's for brake cooling" he said, knowledgeably.
Ah, I said; like the ones you normally see on LMP1 racing cars, designed to help cool their massive carbon race brakes as they slow from 220mph to 40mph solidly for 24 hours, rather than on MPVs? "Er, yes," he said, before attempting to rescue his sale by adding "Except they're fakes on that, obviously".
So, looking for a mid to upper market, well-built, comfortable large estate car which is also quietly understated is not easy.
In wine terms, I've rejected all the old-world options. I will now try the Aussie Chardonnay from Skoda and the Argentine Malbec from Subaru, and if the Scooby has lost the agricultural feel of its forbears, than I'll probably buy one.
And here's the irony: thanks to the loads-a-money ostentation of the "prestige" car makers, it'll have the quiet class of a Chateau Giscours Margaux out here in the sticks.

The 2010 Making Progress Blues Awards

2011-01-13T21:18:00.002Z

January is traditionally a time of glittering award ceremonies and, consequently, a chance for Jonathan Ross to buy another house. TMPB is not a blog to buck a trend so, live from London's formerly exclusive but now frankly a little gauche Grosvenor House Hotel and revealed before a live audience of B-list celebrities running on a heady mix of PR company induced ego and low quality cocaine, it's the 2010 Making Progress Blues Awards!

All our winners tonight were decided upon by a top panel of Oscar India himself and, when they agreed with him but not otherwise, some of his friends, and are based on 12 months solid motorcycle riding throughout the year over approximately 12,000 miles.

The 'Yeah - I'm In The Car Mate' Award for the worst driven car of 2010

A tough category to excel in as White Van Man will always be there or thereabouts. Here are the nominations for the vehicle driven most often with the least care and worst competency on UK roads this year:

1. White Vans
2. The Audi A4 (anything below 3.0ltrs)
3. The Vauxhall Zafira

And the winner is...the Audi A4!

Judges considered the vastly over-priced but laughably underpowered car, complete with wide arches, low profile tyres, big wheels, skirts and absolutely no go whatsoever to be the new champion in 2010. More undertaking, driving with the fog lights on in daylight, tailgating and desperately trying to go fast but failing except in built-up areas than any other vehicle. Properly dangerous. Well done.

The Waste Of Space Which Could Be Used For A Filing Cabinet Instead Award for prat or prats of the year.

So many choices, so little time. But:

1. Labour MP Barry Sheerman, for the series of unhinged anti-biker rants which were so poisonous his own party apologised.

2. Westminster Tory councillor Danny Chalkley, for the decision to scrap free bike parking which led to the most high-profile and sustained series of protests in the borough's history (Cllr Chalkley left his Cabinet post soon after in a reshuffle he wasn't included in).

3. The Association Of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). Giving evidence to nothing less than the House of Commons Transport Select Committee ACPO officers called for a ban on large motorcycles, claiming many production machines can hit more than 200mph (none can), vast numbers are untaxed (they're not) and dozens of other statements which proved to be wrong. So bad was the session that, weeks later, ACPO was forced to pen a formal, written apology to the Committee in which Deputy Chief Constable David Griffin admitted that virtually every paragraph of the original submission needed "factual clarification". To serve and protect, eh?

The winner is ACPO!

An organisation not adverse to lying and which gets hugely angry when anyone points out that it's run as a business, with senior police officers as directors, and makes a profit.

The Bit Of Kit Of The Year Award

The panel was delighted to see such high-quality entries this year, particularly as it confirmed to them that now they're old they can afford good stuff. The nominations are:

1. Kriega R35 rucksack
2. "Bikers" Suzuka textile suit
3. Sidi Vertigo Gore-Tex boots

And the winner is..... "Bikers" Suzuka textile suit.

Top quality components, works brilliantly, warm, dry, clever, looks good and does the job of a suit costing twice the price.

The Proper Sized Penis Award for the best driven car Of 2010

The award which recognises the vehicle which can best be relied upon not to do something stupid, to be driven with some skill and, crucially, by someone keeping their eyes open and acting accordingly. The nominations are:

1. Porsche 911
2. BMW M3
3. Bloody Great Lorries

The judges were pleased to see Bloody Great Lorries nominated after years of not making the list. Truckers seem to have found a new sense of camaraderie with bikers and have become terribly helpful. However, the stand-out entry this year, and the winner, was the Porsche 911!

Almost always driven "with nothing to prove" - the opposite of the Audi A4 - driven well, and happy to move aside for faster bikes. It's not the 80s any more.

The 'Yes - I AM Valentino Rossi! Kneel Before Me!' Award for the best riding road of 2010

A tricky category this year thanks to a general lack of touring amongst the panel. Nonetheless, three gems emerged. The nominations are:

1. The A260 from Banker's Hill to Banbury, Oxfordshire.
2. The A39 from Bridgewater to Carhampton, Devon.
3. The A43 from Kettering to Stamford, Northamptonshire/Lincolnshire

All great contenders, with the sheer, sweeping speed of the A260 almost winning the day but in the end the layout, lack of speed cameras and nice cup of tea at the end at the house of a proper petrol-head gave the A43 the win.

The Weighing Up The Cost Of Divorce Award for the best bike of 2010.

Strong entries this year, all of which the panel has ridden. Of all this year's awards this is the one which caused the judges to come closest to a fist-fight. The nominations:

1. Ducati MultiStrada-S

2. BMW S1000RR

3. Yamaha YZF450F

Agreement was hard to come by. The Ducati has genuinely moved motorcycling on in a leap thanks to incredible electronics. The BMW has set a new benchmark for sports-bikes, yet is ultra-forgiving to ride and the Yamaha is not only bonkers, but the first real step-change in motocross bikes for a decade. The award finally went to Ducati for producing a bike we thought would have an impact on what we all ride for years, whoever makes it.

The Bike Personality Of The Year Award

The annual gong for the man or woman who has had the greatest positive impact on biking this year. The nominations are:

1. Randy de Puniet - the LCR Honda MotoGP rider found the form he'd always been suspected of being capable of in 2010 before a terrible leg break dealt him yet another slice of hideous luck. Nonetheless, he managed to return for the Brno GP in record time, showing the grit and spirit which has made him a fans' favourite.
2. Jorge Lozenzo - the new MotoGP world champion looks to have the speed, guts and class to challenge the great Valentino Rossi in perpetuity. Outlandish celebrations, great Twitter account and sense of mischief only added to the package.
3. Mark Polin - The new Chief Constable of North Wales did something that force hasn't done in years - i.e. made a rational decision - when he agreed to end the weekly stopping of thousands of law-abiding bikers which had been force policy. The move came after 10,000 riders descended on the area to back Motorcycle News's "Reclaim North Wales" campaign.

There can only be one winner though and, perhaps inevitably, the cherished brass-plated trophy goes to No.99 himself, Jorge Lorenzo.

That concludes this year's ceremony. Guests may now retire to the Groucho Club to attempt to become intimate with undercover News of the World reporters in the lavatories.

Why Am I Here?

2011-01-06T19:34:00.005Z

It's south London, 2008. Mid-evening. Time to walk the dog.
Outside, dog on the slip on the doorstep. You make him sit whilst you lock everything up, as the road's too busy for him to walk down alone. Check the car on the way past.
Shoes, not wellies, although with the amount of dog mess on the pavements you wish it were otherwise. Around the corner, past a pile of fly-tipped rubbish and two mattresses. The whole place lit like a laboratory by a mix of headlights and streetlights and, occasionally, augmented by the "clink" of a movement-sensitive security light blinking on and casting unreal shadows everywhere.
The park's closed and locked, for your own safety apparently, so you can do no more than walk the dog a few times around the green. He needs to stay on the lead though. Four out of five dogs you see here are Staffordshire-Bull crosses, many barely trained and most hugely aggressive.
You give the two groups of youths a wide berth, walking past the graffiti-strewn toilets (also closed for your safety). The dog's time out is a constant litany of commands - don't go there, stay here, come back, leave them alone.
20 minutes later you're home. Check your shoes for dog crap, into the house, locking the door behind you.

It's 2011. South Oxfordshire. Mid-afternoon. Time to walk the dog.
Out of the door, dog a few yards ahead, and set off through the village, past the ancient stone-built houses with their honey glow, past the manor with its new, young, Silicone Valley enriched owner, cut through the lane, let the dog swim a bit in the stream, out across the fields and then, because it's there, strike out over a stile and into what is unknown territory. There must be a path north west off this, stands to reason.
You stand still for a moment looking up to the hills in the distance, perhaps eight or nine miles away, across a patchwork quilt of fields with the hamlet up the road nestling in the centre like model village from this distance. The sun's just beginning to wester, but it's still light and it won't be dusk for another hour.
Two fields and a muddy track later you find it, hidden amongst brambles. There's a rusted post without a footpath sign, but a bracket showing where it once was and the last flakes of the council's green paint, a steep muddy bank invisible from the road, and a broken, overgrown stile encased in a wall of brambles and barbed wire.
You check your bearings with the hamlet, now just a few hundred yards up the road, and make a note of the big, imposing Georgian farmhouse on the hill.
Dog goes under, you go over. There's a stream to your right, burbling and trickling, and acre upon acre of open fields ahead of you, run through in the centre by a thin line of broad leaf woodland.
You've been walking perhaps 20 minutes and, thus far, you've seen nobody.
You strike out on the path, which is only lightly marked at all thanks to infrequent use and the churned up clay soil of the field.
Suddenly the dog goes rigid, tail straight up like a periscope, ears cocked like the hammers of two muskets, hackles up. He seems to double in size. He looks like the black labs you see in magazines for a moment.
Bounding towards you across the next field, across the stream and over the fence, is another dog; mangy, yellow-eyed, muddy - no Crufts winner this. There's a farm perhaps half a kilometre away, but not a human soul in sight.
Somehow the two of them know they're both friendly, despite being 100 yards apart. Off they go, at full pelt, racing one another along the fence line, doing turns in the mud a rally driver would be proud of, consumed with utter joy, until they both come to a gate where the path crosses the stream and then they're together, bounding, rolling, jumping, chasing one another in ever decreasing circles.
You catch up, walk your dog on, say hi to the farm dog and enjoy it joining your walk for another half mile or so until you cross a stile where the path sign is still visible. The farm dog seems to sense this is where its own hunting runs end, and turns on its heel without so much as a goodbye.
The path is barely visible now, and the gates don't have signs on, but you've worked out the route and you know you're on an old footpath. The next field is huge, so you stick to the tree line, with the stream running playfully away at the foot of the steep bank and the woods to your left. Every few yards the dog ducks under the fence, slithers down the bank and disappears from view, leaving you to work out where he is by the cheerful splashing alone before re-emerging, checking with you that all's well and pelting off again, full of adventure and glee, keeping a steady 50 yards or so in front and checking back from time to time before he makes another solo dash for the stream or the woods.
You come to a clay road leading into a quarry to your right, hidden behind huge man-made grass banks which look like a Saxon hill fort. Cross the road, over another stile and this time you leave the path, striking out 90 degrees off it across the field towards the almost vertical banks of the quarry. You stick to the tractor tracks, to preserve the farmer's crop, and then scale the bank, hands and feet seeking purchase on the long, untrodden grass. At the top is every little boy's dream - a view of a lunar landscape of hellishly deep trenches full of water, sheer faces of rock and soil and a dozen huge, almost insanely huge, earth-moving machines working away. You take a nip from your hip flask, and make a mental note to find a way to drive to that last stile on the clay service road so you can bring your young son here. The dog looks less impressed and, after another scramble, you head back for the tree-line and press on.
The sun's sinking off through the trees, beginning to spread thick, glowing light across the horizon and giving the hills in the distance their own orange borders. The birds are also on a clock, announcing either the end of their day, or the beginning of their night's work, depending. In the woods to your left the occasional terrified screech of a hen pheasant, jumping at shadows. You've seen the pegs in the field, and you know there are covers in there. You make a note to keep the dog out.
Suddenly there's a crash and, no more than 20 feet ahead of you, two female deer break from the trees. The dog's spooked them and they're going hell for leather across the field, white tails bouncing like targets. The dog checks for permission, which you give, knowing he has no chance of catching them, and then he's off too. He gives it 100 yards and then, satisfied with his machismo, gives up and jogs back.
Some long way ahead you can hear the faint, but constant, rush of traffic and after another mile or so, as you stand under the overhanging oaks, you see the lights of the main road in the distance. Another 15 minutes and you reach a cross-roads in the midst of the fields. This is firmer ground, flattened by constant farm traffic. In the middle is a metal five bar gate, once painted white but now firmly rust brown. It's not attached to a fence either side and seems marooned. You see the a path which strikes out diagonally across the fields, leaving the stream and the tree line, and heads towards the little market town you shop in, via a steep hill topped with a crown of pines and a folly tower.
You also see another person, finally. He's half a kilometre away, walking a yellow Labrador but not coming your way.
Time for a smoke, leaning on the handily placed gate, and a decision. Strike on for the town and find a pub, or turn, noting this walk for next time and head home? The sun's setting fully now, beyond the road where the never-ending stream of drivers are also headed for home, no doubt listening to the litany of bad news from the wider world and not noticing the treacle skyline.
Home, you decide.
The walk back is dark. The dog, being pitch black, is invisible more than 30 yards away. The path, too, can't really be seen. But you know the way back and having been this way once already you step on - as does the dog, delighted to be able to follow the trail you and he have just laid and bounding along like the pup he no longer is with his nose in the ground.
And, after a while, as you approach the Georgian house again, you realise you haven't touched the torch in your pocket. Your eyes, vastly more capable than you have had cause to remember in years, have adjusted, widening, taking in the light. There's no moon thanks to the cloud but you can see perfectly well.
As you approach the hamlet, silhouetted against the skyline, all chimney stacks and odd roofs, something's nagging though. And then you have it. There are no streetlights. Not one. The hamlet is in pitch darkness, except for a few lit windows which seem to offer a natural welcome in the gloom. You'd forgotten how much of a leveller darkness is, having spent too long in places where they try to eradicate it. It's lovely, and peaceful, and a window on a whole world you used to love in your younger days in a place like this but left behind.
By the time you hit the lane again it's night proper, and even the taller buildings are only visible by their lit windows. But you can smell the woodsmoke strongly now, and you know you're close to the village and to home.
Slower under the trees in the lane, where there's no light at all. You have to keep the dog close and follow his rump in the murk.
Then you emerge, beside the manor house, with it's gate lanterns pointing the way to your house a few yards up the road.
And then you're back. You've been out two and a half hours, walked quite a few miles, not used the slip lead once and, as you pull off muddy boots and head for the log pile with your son, you know, absolutely know, why you're here as opposed to there.

I Need To Be Told What's Good For Me

2011-01-06T14:11:00.001Z

There's an intrinsic conflict within all of us when we try to apply practical thinking to an emotional issue. Houses, animals, jobs and even our relationships get put through this cerebral blender before, finally, we weigh up the pros and cons, look in the mirror, have a stern word with ourselves and make a decision.

Except, on this occasion, I can't; which is where I need some help please.

For me motorcycle ownership has always been an emotional thing. I've been able to tack practicality onto any bike I emotionally wanted, and oddly it's tended to work out. But that was when I knew what I wanted.

It's this simple: I need to change my bike. The K1200S I love has to go and be replaced with...er...well something...um..more, or perhaps less...er...bugger.

It's like this: new career move means no more commuting by bike and a wife and child mean not very much disappearing off for long weekends with the boys. So there's little point in having a 170bhp mile-eating rocket sat outside for the odd evening or weekend blat. So, with a heavy heart, off it goes.

But what replaces it? Needs to slow me down a little, but be fun, not dull, able to step on a bit when needed and be capable of the odd weekend at the MotoGP or similar with a bit of luggage (albeit bungied on). Finally, I want ABS, which I've come to love.

It also needs to be sub £7k, so am definitely looking at used metal.

I admit, in the interests of confession, that I've been thinking about a cruiser. I even test rode a Harley Fat Boy this week. It was fun, in a silly way, but vastly too much money for such a basic, unsophisticated pile of bolts. I don't wish to pay thousands to "buy into the Harley family". I'm a marketeer; I know a distraction sales pitch when I see one ("Forget the fact it's crap and vastly over-priced, you'll look like a Hell's Angel, really you will, stop looking at the rubbish brakes and look over here! Shiny shiny!").

So if a cruiser's out (including the much better Victory bikes), and a pure sports bike's out thanks to the need to slow down, what's left?

I've run a big trailie before (Guzzi Stelvio) and might consider a 990 Adventure, I guess. And I've run a Supermoto too (Aprilia Dorsoduro 750) and loved that (but that was in London). I'm attracted by a Hypermotard, although having ridden an 1100 model I don't think there'll be much slowing down (or much time with the front wheel in contact with the road).

Never have been able to love Brit bikes, including the new/old ones and most of the big nakeds are either too dull (Bandit), too nuts but limited (Speed Triple) or too naff (Z1000 etc).

The Ducati's winning at the mo but, essentially, I'm stuck. Really. Help....

The Story Of Geoff

2010-12-02T22:29:00.000Z

I'd like to tell you the story of Geoff, as told to me on the telephone by a mutual friend in some detail today.
I suppose I ought to start by introducing you to Geoff. Where are my manners?
Geoff, as his name suggests, is a pretty middle of the road guy. Geoff is inoffensive, at least at first glance. Geoff is not stupid. Geoff seems like the kind of bloke for whom golf is perhaps a little too important.
Think polo shirt and chinos, slightly over-large watch and a slight refusal to admit that those mid-40s have arrived and you've got Geoff. All in all a bit dull and predicable, but essentially harmless. Geoff also drives a Range Rover Sport and drinks in what was, until recently, my local pub.
It's surprising, then, to learn that Geoff is, in fact, a ticking time bomb, and this week Geoff exploded.
This has been an important time for him. He's been looking forward to this last week for months. This week has been a time for introspective celebration.
It has snowed a fair bit, and this makes Geoff very happy. It makes him happy because his car is extremely capable in slippery conditions and lots of people in the pub like to tease Geoff about spending £45,000 on an off-road car to drive to London every day on the M40. Geoff laughs good-naturedly at this teasing, but it's clear he worries about it a bit. Geoff is not as confident as perhaps he seems, which may explain the watch.
Between the seats of Geoff's car is a dial which Geoff can turn to tell the car which surface he's driving on. It doesn't have a setting which says "British Motorway", but it does have one that says "Snow", and Geoff's never been able to use it until this week.
So, on Monday Geoff set off for a meeting in the north of England. The weather wasn't good, but Geoff knew he had the equipment to deal with it.
As he approached his destination the snow was deeper and Geoff turned his magic dial. In seconds, engine maps changed, gear rations altered, suspension and ride heights changed, throttle response was fiddled with and steering input was adjusted. It was, it has to be said, impressive stuff.
Geoff found that, unlike the "normal" drivers around him, he could get up a fair amount of speed once he got used to the slightly odd way the car felt. Geoff was happy. Every car Geoff passed felt, I suspect, like a little justification for his car choice and a rebuke to those of us unsporting enough to doubt him.
He was somewhat surprised, then, that when he came to a tight-ish right-hand bend driving on compacted snow and ice and turned the wheel, the car under-steered massively, responded to an attempt to correct the slide by fish-tailing wildly and then crashed, mercifully lightly, into an oncoming van but, significantly less lightly, into a wall.
Geoff is fine, thanks in the main to travelling in a huge car dripping with safety features. The two men in the van are also, I understand, okay (although, presumably, very angry with Geoff).
And this is the point where I'd like to explain why I have told you the story of Geoff; a story I somewhat pompously consider to be a modern fable. Geoff called a mutual friend of ours that night to explain what had happened and, at the point when he was explaining the crash, he said: "It just shouldn't have happened in that car".
Quite why Geoff thought it shouldn't have happened wasn't explained, but we can presume that he firmly believed that a two tonne car driving on a surface with no grip ought to go around corners normally because all four wheels were being driven, as opposed to the traditional two (or, in the case of a Fiat Strada I once owned, one).
Four wheel drive, particularly clever, electronically controlled four wheel drive, will seek out grip in milliseconds and ensure it's used. But when there's no grip, there's no grip. The laws of physics, unlike, say, the laws of football, are not really up for studio debate with Jim Rosenthal and friends. They are what they are.
Geoff was looking for the great ref in the sky to play advantage, but he just blew up for the foul.
In Geoff's case, the laws of physics decided that when there was no friction or traction involved any longer, momentum should, quite rightly, have its moment in the spot-light and, with a brief and unknowing nod to kinetic energy, Geoff crashed.
I happen to own a modern 4x4. It's been great this week. I rather like 4x4s and I've had three now, of varying types. However, I do recognise that while they have all been capable of getting me through some terrible conditions a normal car wouldn't have managed, they are not powered by magic beans.
So when the next one comes hurtling past you in the snow this winter, throwing up sheets of ice and water, don't get angry with the Geoff behind the wheel; drop a line to the manufacturer's marketing department asking them whether all those adverts of the car crossing the Tundra at 70 mph still seem like a good idea.

Why I Should Be Taken Outside And Shot

2010-11-19T14:10:00.000Z

"Now Clay lands with a right,
"What a beautiful swing, and the punch raises the Bear clean out of the ring.
"Liston is still rising and the ref wears a frown,
"For he can't start counting till Sonny goes down.
"Now Liston is disappearing from view,
"The crowd is going frantic,
"But radar stations have picked him up,
"Somewhere over the Atlantic."
So said the great Cassius Clay ahead of another fight for the Heavyweight Championship of the World:

"He's like... 'Errrrrrkk'."

So said Audley Harrison, in an attempt to achieve the same thing ahead of his fight (and I use the term loosely) with David Haye.

Now Clay/Ali was as exceptional a wordsmith as he was as a fighter, and perhaps we might now conclude Audley's the same, but there's something wider here which has been niggling at me this week.

Last weekend Sebastian Vettel, who's probably lovely, became the Formula 1 World Champion. What did he have to say about that? Exactly, I can't remember either. What did he do? Yep, that's right, he said something. We're unclear as to what it might have been as we've forgotten.

For a while now Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United FC, has refused to speak to the BBC thanks to a dispute about a number of unsavory matters. Sir Alex thinks this is quite a thing to do, and is sure the BBC is upset by it. The BBC probably is, but why? What are we missing? Banal, obvious, egocentric nonsense bumbled out without any grip on reality. Do we miss him? Is our viewing experience any the worse for a lack of Sir Alex's views at the end?

The reality is that sportsmen generally say exactly the same thing, in exactly the same way. That's because they're taught what to say by the same people. In doing so, they really say nothing at all, which is the point of course. Middle of the road, uncontroversial. Whatever you do, don't stand out.

This is my fault. Partly. I work in PR, and it's PR advice which teaches these young men and women to say nothing, to use up the interview time and leave no stone unturned in the search for mediocrity.

It wasn't always this way, of course. Race-drivers of old (and not that long ago - think of Elford, Andretti and Hunt) were as likely to be interviewed about the state of the nation at a beach party 24 hours before the race as today's drivers are to be asked whether they hope to win or not in an anemic fake press conference in which there is, actually, only one approved journalist.

Which is why I want to celebrate the oddballs today. They're not odd, actually, they're normal and they have roundly ignored the likes of me - and good thing too.

The MotoGP racers - Rossi, Hayden, Lorenzo (and most others) whose joy in winning leads to ridiculous celebrations involving re-enactments of the Moon landings or the use of live chickens.

The dart players who still speak to the BBC like they're speaking to a customer in the pub they used to run.

The rugby players who, fighting the tide of PR in rugby, still manage to suggest their opponents are ugly and stupid before going for dinner with them.

To all of you I raise a glass and I say "Well done for treating me with the disdain I clearly deserve (although I wouldn't say that on camera if I were you)".

For God's sake, will nobody think of the children?

2010-10-30T00:19:00.008+01:00

This post has but one mention of motorbikes in it. Sorry to those hoping for an update on my attempts to become Ben Spies.

Someone on Twitter this week set me thinking about Top Gear Magazine, the ubiquitous Magazine-of-the-Show glossy stacked high in every garage shop, news agent and train station in Britain. The Coca-Cola of car mags.

I haven’t bought TG in some time, perhaps five or six years. It’s not because I’m now a family man going to seed (although, in the interests of transparency, I should admit I am a family man going to seed - but I do knock about on a 178bhp motorcycle in all weathers, so my passion for speed is unchanged).

Equally, the success of the magazine allows it to continually employ some of the best talent writing on motoring out there, which is why the excellent Tom Ford is there amongst others. It’s anything but a poor quality magazine.

The Twitter chat (the wonderful @RalphHosier suggesting playfully that TG needed an engineer aboard) set me thinking, “why don’t I buy it?”. I grew up on a diet of Motorsport, Classic & Sportscar, Car, Performance Car, Autocar, the odd edition of Autosport, various bike mags and, latterly, Top Gear.

At first I thought I had the answer. Thinking back, the time I ceased to pick it up was about the same time I ceased to care whether the new Pagani Zonda XF(9)D-DELTA-46 could beat the latest similar creation from Maranello or some Swedish industrial estate by 0.002 of a second to 60mph in an “explosive shootout” between £300,000 cars built for the scattering of super-rich clients neither too old, fat or dead for tax reasons to fit in one.

I don’t care about the new Bugatti Veyron Supersport. Admire the concept, the engineering, the machine, the balls to build it? Certainly. Care? Not a jot.

So, there it is. I stopped buying TG because it’s essentially the only beacon of escape for sad salesmen eating a sodden MacDonalds out of their lap in an Audi A4 at Warwick Services, and for 14-year-olds. And I’m neither.

And that would have been that had I not also begun to think about why I used to buy it.

And then I had an epiphany - a moment on the road to Damascus.

My boyhood love of cars, forged through the 1980s, was as much about lusting after 325is, or whatever we wanted that week, as all lads of my age (as well as having evil thoughts about spoilers and splitters, I admit). It was about the latest 911, or the new Ferrari, which was faster, which better looking. Of course it was. Car Top Trumps, literally and then figuratively (and then, when they became retro-cool, literally again).

But at school my torch-light reading was often about the Bentleys at Le Mans, or Moss on the Mille Miglia, or Elford on the Targa Florio.

My love of cars was also about lusting after XK120 Jaguars, luxuriating in the classifieds wondering if old Park Ward Bentleys would become affordable.

It was about finding endless excuses to buy cans of WD40 and similar tiny items from the old Morgan garage three villages along, just because behind those huge, wooden, peeling green doors was a slice of the excitement of early motoring, a secret haven of 1930s England in which the car was not teetering on the brink of extinction and social unacceptability, but teeming with promise and possibility.

It was also, aged 18, about driving through the snow at night to Beaulieu, home of the National Motor Museum, to hear Denis Jenkinson, Alain de Cadenet and others debate who was the best driver of all time (an event to which one contender, Ayrton Senna, even sent in a film - Nuvolari won, just so you know).

I waited 50 minutes to speak to Jenks afterwards, and still treasure the time he gave me to this day (and God knows I wish I’d taken his advice), and then tried to follow a yellow Ferrari Dino home through the snow-covered New Forest until it lost me.

And it was about racing. Going, far too many to a Rover SD1 or Fiat Strada, to watch whatever we could, cheaply. If there was nothing on or we were broke, it was motocross. If not, we might get to Thruxton or, perhaps twice a year, Silverstone or Donnington.

I had a foot in both camps, you see. My love of cars - modern, cutting edge cars - was also rooted in my love of motoring and motor racing. I didn’t lust after a 911 as an object alone, but because of what it represented as much as what it did. I looked at a 911 and saw not only a wonderful machine which made my heart beat faster, but little flashes of the Monte Carlo, or the Mulsanne.

And you know what? Thinking back, the hyper car just didn’t really exist. Sure, there were vastly expensive sports cars aimed at the super rich but even the vast majority of these seemed potentially affordable to a day-dreaming schoolboy. Could I afford an Aston Vantage Volante? No. But if I grafted, started a business or went into the City and did well, yes. There you go.

Of course it was a fantasy, but it was a fantasy all the more powerful for being, just potentially, possible. Like buying a lottery ticket.

If you want a Veyron, or a Zonda Whateverthenewfastoneiscalled today you still have to start your own business, but you then have to work hard to get on the right side of the foreign and domestic intelligence services of a potentially failing State, butter up the president and hope to be in the right place at the right time when the natural gas concessions come up.

That was really my epiphany - for the TG generation it’s all about cars, not about motoring (wonderfully old fashioned word which I have happily used to describe going sideways in a V12 Vantage; it’s all in the definition). It's just about the metal.

The poor kids picking up Top Gear (and not just that mag) today are given an unremitting diet of consumerism - is it the best, how quick is it, what does it cost, this v that v the bloody other.

Every page, pretty much, will be relentlessly focussed on the here and now, or even better the tomorrow. Yesterday is corduroy and pipes, even if it’s last Thursday week.

And thanks to the oil drying up, the climate (or at least the social repercussions of the issue for car owners), traffic jams and the price of fuel, where’s the freedom? Where’s the promise and the excitement?

Even the new motoring technologies I marveled over as a boy seemed to take performance on via sports cars you might see in the streets - moving years ahead in a single bound of inventive genius. Now the exciting stuff is about electric vehicles and emissions, crumple zones and pedestrian safety (all wonderful, but not the stuff of adolescent dreams), or out in the Zonda hyper-sphere where it’ll never be more than words on a page or a You Tube clip.

I’m not knocking TG, or the new generation of petrolheads - I was simply overcome with a desperate need to let them know that it’s all still out there, alongside the Koenigseggs and Zondas: there’s brilliant racing, great cars (old and new), a century of history to sink into and, consequently, a whole new set of ways to look at the things you love and realise they’re not just things after all.

I'm Free, To Do What I Want, Any Old Time

2010-10-13T07:34:00.020+01:00

As a nation of consumers, we're all susceptible to advertising. In its simplest form it simply tries to persuade us that we need to own a certain product or service. But in some areas there's a cumulative, powerful effect from years of adverts in similar vein and the greatest of these is in car advertising.

It is also deadly - an evil, all-pervasive force which mains, kills and destroys.

Over-dramatic? Bear with me...

From the days of Henry Ford's Model-T, through the post-war years when people felt they'd earned a better quality of life, and then right through the 1950s when the car became both a status symbol and the tool which allowed people to live a different life, living further from their place of work, taking trips to places previously too far away for a day out, the car has been sold to us in a certain way.

The word which sums up the way cars have been sold to us for almost 100 years is "freedom".

The car represents the freedom to move, to travel, to escape, to have fun, to show off. Let's test this theory. Think of a car advert you know well - any car advert. Okay, got it in your head? Good. There's not a traffic jam in this advert is there? In fact I'd be mighty surprised if there's any traffic at all in the ad.

If it's for a small city car, it'll be nipping through the city at a steady 30mph before parking, effortlessly, outside the door of its destination. Anyone getting in or out of it is laughing, aren't they? Oh, think of the freedom.

Is a sports or luxury car? Probably, then, it's sweeping down a winding and dramatic road somewhere - perhaps California's Highway One, or somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. The power, the pace, the...freedom.

The media, in film, music and writing, have long accepted what is merely an advertising pitch as real. The road movie, the car chase and so on all perpetuate the myth that cars are about freedom. In fact no leading man in a movie is complete without a sexy car which he can drive better than the bad guys at some point. And never, not once, does our action hero ever, ever get stuck in traffic does he (unless, that is, that jam is but an opportunity for him to find freedom by jumping over a set of road works or a bridge - our man cannot be boxed in, or denied his freedom)?

And, so, we poor saps are fully indoctrinated. We talk about the 0-60mph times of our cars, we think about their top speed, we buy bigger faster, wider, lower, louder or more luxurious cars as we become better-off with age.

And we do all this by cleverly quarantining the reality we actually experience every day. It's an amazing feat of mental filing.

We forget that we have, in fact, the freedom to sit, for hours every week, in snaking, shimmering, growling, boiling lines of traffic, going precisely nowhere. The freedom, once in those jams, to be trapped in our metal box - too expensive to abandon and walk away from. Far from releasing us it often imprisons us. The freedom to worry, to be stressed that we're late (having planned a freedom-filled journey without traffic jams).

And here's the evil bit..

When this happens to us, when our 160mph, £45,000 BMW has been stationary for 20 minutes we're furious. We're outraged. We can't believe it. We have come to think, subconsciously, that we have a "right" to the image the car-maker asked us to buy in to. Roads should be clear, crashes should only happen to bad guys (who then walk away shaking their heads but otherwise unhurt). Christ, we should probably all have perfect teeth too.

So, a traffic jam is not just a physical obstruction - it's a psychological challenge, an affront.

On Monday there was a nine mile jam from where I live to where I work. I was on the bike, so not really affected. At the end of the jam, near a roundabout, a woman suddenly changed lanes without indicating. She missed me by about two feet. A few yards later I came along side her. Noticing two small children in the back of the car I was calm, popping my visor and saying through her open window "Come on, look in your mirrors eh? You almost killed me."

Her response went like this. Every work was screamed, and spittle came from her mouth (I do not exaggerate): "FUCK OFF! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCKING GO UNDER A FUCKING BUS! GO ON - ROAR OFF AT 100MPH! FUCKING FUCKING OFF! FUCK YOU!"

I think that about captures it. The two children were wailing, upset at the shouting and language. I could only think the poor things deserved better, and off I went (not at 100mph).

But here's the thing - that woman must have taken around 90 minutes to do those nine miles. She was probably desperately late for nursery and who knows what else. But what was it that caused her to unload on me like that? Would she have done it to me if I'd been in a car, or walking? No. What lit her fuse was that I wasn't stuck in traffic. I had the freedom to move. Unlike her. The effrontery! How DARE I be free when she's not!

And sadly this same determination to enjoy our "right" to drive freely on open roads also leads the salesman late for a client to feel justified in screaming down a bus lane after half an hour in a jam, ploughing into the mother and child on the zebra crossing.

It leads to the young man in the souped-up car deciding he's had enough and executing a furious, wheel-spinning u-turn from the line of stationary traffic - so furious he neglects to glance in his mirror - smashing into the moped rider filtering along the same line (or my friend Phil, to whom this happened earlier this year).

It leads to mothers late for the school pick-up thundering through villages and narrow lanes as they seek a rat-run escape from the jam on the main road, clipping the pushchair on the pavement as they do so.

And what is the message to the children left without a mother or father as a result? Or to the parents whose child is snatched away? Perhaps they should just accept, as Geroge W Bush said, that we all have to make sacrifices in the defence of Freedom.

When Good Kit Works: #2 - Duel review: "Bikers Suzuka Textile Suit" and "Rev'It Dragon Jacket" (£550 and £140 respectively, milage covered 13,000 and 600 respectively)

2010-09-15T21:26:00.003+01:00

This is almost entirely a biking post and it's essentially a kit review (actually, two kit reviews). I say this because I suspect it'll mostly appeal to the two-wheeled readership of this blog. However, and as ever, there's a little bit of something else. Don't, though, say I didn't warn you...
I decided a while ago to pen the odd review of kit I'd used for a long time and therefore properly tested, mostly because I found getting independent reviews of stuff hard to come by, as I said here.
Outside crashes, when the quality of kit like helmets takes on a whole new aspect, winter jackets and trousers are probably the single most important thing an all-year-round biker buys. Get it right and you can ride throughout the year worrying only about the outside world; get it wrong and you are wet, cold, miserable and, consequently, extremely unsafe as a result (your brain begins the hypothermic process of regressing to base functions in such circumstances - not good for the complex and focused thinking needed to keep out of trouble on a bike) - all of which is quite additional to the fact that you've probably also spent a fortune on rubbish.
As I've mentioned before on this blog, I am friends with a journo on one of the biking glossies. Occasionally he gives me stuff they've had in for review and hasn't been snaffled by him or others. Lucky me (genuinely).
In 2008 he gave me a jacket and trousers textile suit, made by a firm called "Bikers", of whom I'd never heard. I was grateful, but (and this will become clear), didn't think much more about it. Here it is:

I wore the suit through the rotten winter, and the next (which, you'll recall, was the worst on record for 30 years) in rain, snow, wind and anything else and it always kept me warm and dry. It was also comfortable, practical and generally well-made.
Crucially, it felt right when you put it on - fitted, substantial, clever.
It's made from Cordura and Gore-Tex. I didn't really think about this but, had I done so, I'd have noticed that the very few things out there that are made from both cost a bomb, and are made by names like Rukka (who can charge you more than £1,400 for a jacket alone).
And then I did something stupid. I fell for the marketing nonsense.
After two seasons the suit was showing its age. A couple of zips were iffy, there were bike cafe egg stains down the front despite washing it (can ANYONE eat an egg and bacon sandwich without doing this?) and, moreover, I began to assume that names like Alpinestars, Rev'It and so on would just make better stuff.
I fell out of love with something which had never let me down because it wasn't flashy, or known.
So I set about researching, and thinking, and asking, and it finally became clear that in my price bracket (upper end, but not Rukka) the "clever money" was on Rev'It - kit which crashes well, and keeps the winter out as well as looking nice.
Cut a long story short, I managed to get a Rev'It Dragon jacket in grey delivered to my door for £140. Very excited I was too.

This is mid-level for Rev'It. Like all their stuff it works on layers - outer layer, second layer is the waterproof one, final layer is the insulation. Each is detachable which, in theory, makes it a 12-month jacket.
First thing I noticed on unpacking it is it looks great. Nobody could accuse Rev'It of making ugly kit.
However, the very first time I put it on it didn't feel right. The internal waterproof layer is like a membrane-thin Kagool, and as such as soon as your body heats up it sticks to you.
I was also faintly surprised there was no phone pocket, no wallet pocket and only two external (hip) pockets. But I'd bought it, and bike mags like their stuff, so it had to be great or I'd be an idiot, right?
I started wearing it in June/July. Vents open and no thermal, obviously. Every time I got to work I was drenched in sweat, and my t-shirt sodden. I had to peel it off me and the internal, waterproof lining would reverse trying to get it off (when the various layers of Velcro weren't sticking together and causing it to become deformed) as it stuck to the skin.
It just didn't "feel" solid, or easy. The solution, I discovered in September, was to put the padded under-jacket in but, as it genuinely is hyper-warm, I just boiled. In zero degrees it's probably great, in nine degrees it's murderous.
However, the nail in the coffin came on two separate rides when it absolutely bucketed down - gales, driving rain, hail, the lot. On both occasions two things happened:
1. The design of the jacket in which the outer layer gets saturated but the thin, membrane, inner-layer keeps the water out failed me. When you're doing 90mph in a sodden jacket it's utterly freezing cold through the waterproof membrane. Sure you're generally dry, actually, but you "feel" wet as the cold, soaked material presses against your skin, it gets heavier and heavier and the water trapped in the outer layer, and chilled by the wind, lowers your body temperature.
2. I got wet in places like the neck and sleeves where the jacket simply didn't keep the water out.
So I thought about the Biker jacket. It had always been great. Crucially it is made of stuff that just keeps water out, that's it. No silly layers thing (except the thermal) - it's just bloody waterproof. And it's practical and well-thought out.
I did some research. It's tough. Whoever thought of the name for the company wasn't of the Internet generation - try typing "Bikers jacket" or similar into Google or Bing and see what you get: 821 adverts for nasty, tasseled jackets from 1973, mostly in pink.
But finally I found some stuff and discovered something surprising - this gear is proper expensive. Jacket is £320 and trousers more than £260. I was a bit taken back. I also texted my bike journo mate to apologise for not realising how generous he'd been.
So, here comes a brief review of a suit I've done 13,000 miles in, through two winters (including a record cold one) but was too much of a brand-obsessed idiot to appreciate.
The jacket is made from Cordura (think the Belstaff "Long Way Down" jackets of Charlie and Ewan fame) with a Gor-Tex membrane and Thinsulate thermal detachable lining. So basically all the very best stuff there is (yes, I know, I know, shurrup).
It has five pieces of CE-approved armour, including in the back (although I wear a Forcefield back-protector instead of this piece), has 3M reflective piping all over (subtly) and has adjustable straps to give a perfect fit in the chest, sleeves, waist and cuffs. All of which, by the way, work nicely.
The jacket has two hip pockets (Velcro fastening only, which isn't ideal), two zipped and Velcroed chest pockets, an internal phone pocket, an internal wallet pocket (cleverly placed between the Cordura and the Gor-Tex to give access wearing gloves) and a lower back pocket. There are more, too, inside.
It attaches to the pants via a zip (they're also Cordura/Gor-Tex/3M).
I've ridden through Biblical weather in it, with ice forming on the visor, and never, ever, got wet. It's solid (nicely), comfortable and well-thought-through.
Downsides - hip pockets could do with studs as well as Velcro to give confidence they'll stay shut. Neck could do with more adjustment a la the Rev'It sliding button system, rubber runners on the zips (some have them, some don't) to stop inner layers catching in the mechanism would be great.
That's it - otherwise absolutely top stuff. Warm, dry, quick-drying, practical, solid, confidence-inspiring (yes, I know, I'm an idiot not to have actually realised; leave it).
Oh, and they should change their name so people could actually find them online.
The lesson from all this, apart from "I'm a prat", is if you love it, if it works, and if it feels right - it's probably ace regardless of what it says on the label.
If it quacks like a duck, et cetera, et cetera...

What's In A Word?

2010-09-13T08:17:00.010+01:00

Today's blogpost is medium-sized.

It is larger than my small blogposts, but smaller than my large ones. It's in the middle. This honesty will please you later, as will become clear.

So to business. My bike runs on what we Brits call super-unleaded petrol. In other words, high-octane petrol needing at least a 97 octane rating. Normal unleaded makes the poor thing sputter and cough like Oz Clarke drinking Thunderbird pear wine. From the bottle. In a park. At night.

So when I pulled into a garage near my home with the fuel light going nuts and the electronic gauge claiming I had 13 miles left, I was pleased to see "Premium Unleaded" pumps.

Usually I fill up with my lid on but I'd been on the road a long time and took it off, planning to stretch my legs. Which, it turns out, was lucky because it gave me time to think.

The "Premium" pump didn't have any adverts on it claiming the fuel would make my vehicle faster. It didn't have a tenuous marketing link with an F1 race team. Put simply, it lacked the bullshit I have come to sub-consciously expect to find attached to a "Premium" brand. It said "Premium", but it didn't feel premium. So I checked.

Sure enough, it was bog standard 95 fuel. There was nothing "Premium" about it. Saved by my sub-surface knowledge of marketing bullshit and 30 years of being a customer.

I wondered in which language-mangling way the company badged its higher octane product if its standard was premium. Turned out that it didn't have a higher octane product. This was clearly a problem in terms of their offer, so they just whacked a high-octane-alike tag on the standard stuff.

So I rode away, doing the subconscious fuel light maths we all do when working out whether we'll make to the next known garage, and I began to rail internally against the linguistic mash-up which makes all our lives harder, this evil plan to change the meanings of words or, more often, simply ignore them altogether in order to sell us things.

Last week I ordered a pizza. I wanted a medium one so that's what I asked for. "Okay", said the guy, "but you do know medium is small, right?". There followed an interminable conversation in which we went through each size of pizza available, discussing measurements and comparative width to a copy of the Yellow Pages before settling on two Mediums, which were individually small but collectively medium, rather than a Large, which wasn't large either but was also not medium. They didn't do a Small.

It took about five minutes.

The same thing applies to coffee. I simply refuse to play the linguistics game in coffee shops. Forcing you to use words like "Grande" or "Venti" is about nothing more than persuading you that a cup of coffee can actually be special enough to be worth the best part of three quid. I don't want the "full coffee experience", I want a medium fucking coffee, please, and if I wanted fucking pastries I'd have fucking asked for them - do I look like I forget to eat?

Even beggars are trying this same trick. "Got any spare change?", "Got a spare fag?". Why would either be "spare"? They mean "Can you spare some change?" but have worked out that suggesting to us, Derren Brown style, that the thing being sought is surplus to requirements in the first place is more likely to make us give it to them.

Beggars are up there with Coca Cola's marketing department when it comes to brand suggestion, and should all be recruited quickly, solving everyone's problems on the spot.

Fight back.

Language, that most beautiful and flexible of tools, is on your side. It is yours, not theirs. The fatal flaw in their system is that whatever the buggers call something, it remains what it really is.

My local garage's fuel is standard, not premium. It just is, and there's nothing they can do about it. Something of lesser dimensions or mass is small. Say so. Take it step further, refuse to accept that toilet paper can be "luxurious", blatantly laugh in the faces of estate agents who describe a development as "select" and ask them who they've refused to sell one to, point out that something being old does not make it "Classic", walk out of a showroom refusing to buy an "Executive" saloon on the grounds that you're not an executive.

It feels great, and the look of horror, bemusement and sheer panic on the faces of the bastards who peddle this crap and expect us all to swallow it is priceless.

The revolution, when it comes, will not be guided by the spirit of Che Guevara, but by GK Chesterton.

Tonight Matthew, I Am Going To Be Tazio Nuvolari

2010-09-01T15:39:00.002+01:00

I was riding the bike back from Hampshire on Sunday, a long and difficult journey not helped by gale force winds (car drivers just don’t understand that bikes get blown about the road do they?) and low winter sun.

However, tricky as all this was, it wasn’t the most dangerous thing on the road. The real killer out there was memory.

About four hours earlier Lewis Hamilton had taken his place on the podium after winning the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa. I’d forgotten it was an F1 weekend (being a passionate fan of car racing, I obviously don’t watch F1) and, therefore, hadn’t taken the usual precautions – namely:

Don’t go out on the bike unless absolutely necessary. Drink beer with breakfast so as to avoid succumbing to the urge to ride later in the day.
If you do go out, break out the fluorescent jacket, flashing lights, spinning bow-tie and comedy air-horns.
Re-examine your atheism repeatedly throughout the day, covering multiple bases with prayers to all major Deities, cults and fictional characters including genies.
Wear every piece of armour in your collection and, if at all possible, carry a lance or other form of very long stick.

The problem, you see, is that behind the wheel of a car it is very, very easy to pretend to be someone else.

Rev the nuts off your 1.2 VW Polo and you may only be doing 50 in a shopping trolley but you can persuade yourself it sounds like Mark Webber’s Red Bull coming down the Hanger Straight. You really can.

Carry enough speed into corners and whilst you might only be wobbling along in an underpowered 3 Series, you can simply pretend to be skipping your Williams F1 through Craner Curves.

In the same way that grown men still play air guitar when listening to music when they think there’s nobody around, the ability to fantasise in the car is readily accessible.

It’s also bloody dangerous. You see Dave in his Zafira doesn’t actually drive down the road at 130mph after a day’s F1-watching; that would be scary and ruin the pretence. What Dave does, for example, is get closer and closer and closer to the car he wants to overtake, drop a gear and then snatch at the wheel with all his might so his family Vauxhall comes whipping out from behind his victim like Fernando Alonso does as he sets up back-markers.

The problem with this is Fernando Alonso doesn’t. He moves out fluidly, carefully, but happens to be doing it at 200mph so it looks very sudden. He’s also got more grip than a Geoff Capes handshake.

Dave hasn’t though. Dave doesn’t indicate because Fernando doesn’t indicate and why ruin a good fantasy. Dave screws the wheel over, hugely unbalancing the family runabout, shoots out unlooking into the outside lane and then plants his foot to the floor and tries desperately not to notice how long it takes to get past. Meanwhile Mrs Dave, I imagine, tries to remember what good sex was like.

Silly as it sounds, this really is a pronounced issue on an F1 weekend. More bad, aggressive driving, more pathetic late braking, more fog-lights left on in daylight. It really is noticeable.

The driving fantasy is a powerful thing, and I don’t blame drivers completely. Why isn’t it embarrassingly ridiculous, for example, to buy a Ford people carrier with vented wide arches (like a LMP1 Le Mans car has to allow its huge brakes to cool)? Why isn’t it embarrassing to drive a family saloon with giant wide wheels and a spoiler, but no actual power?

The reason is we accept the fantasy as legitimate. We all do it in our own sphere of interest – it’s just that they’re not all dangerous.

Do I do it on the bike after a MotoGP race? Actually, no. Not because I’m terribly good, or not susceptible to this kind of thing (I am, for example, Jack White whenever my family goes out and leaves me with a guitar). I don’t do it because you can’t really on a bike. Either you’re fast and skilled and brave enough to get your elbow down around a corner or you’re not. Nicky Hayden is. I’m not. That’s why he races MotoGP and I, if I tried it, would bounce down the road on my head.

Bikes take that extra element of control to do anything with. You go a little too fast into a bend, beyond your skill level, you probably crash. The electronics don’t bail you out.

That said, I have a Ben Spies helmet and can do a mean Texas accent.

Bugger.

Appearing for the Defence

2010-07-23T09:06:00.000+01:00

This week my blogging takes a somewhat different turn. Rather than highlighting an issue, or writing about something that's happened, this article appears in anticipation of a broadcasting event. So, whilst casual observers looking up may think I'm jotting on the balcony over a smoke and a coffee, I am actually kick-starting a multi-platform new media extravaganza. Or something.
The next installment of the excellent Gas Station Podisode, recorded by motoring journalists Alex Goy and Jon Quirk, together with their chum "Camerman Phil" (the Mutley to their Penelope Pitstop and Dick Dastardly respectively) is to feature a robust discussion (or, in modern media parlance, row) about the relative merits or otherwise of motorcycling.
If you don't know of the podcast you can find it for free on iTunes here - and I humbly suggest you give it a go if you have a fluid ounce of petrol in your veins.
Via Twitter both have asked for ammunition to use against the other with Goy (@A1GOY) taking the side of four wheels and Quirk (@Jon_Quirk) two.
Like most of what they do it'll be overtly light-touch and funny, no doubt, but at the same time it'll be a thoughtful argument (okay, sporadically thoughtful). There'll be lots of abuse about "leather romper suits" and so on, and no doubt a ding-dong about which is faster (although let's hope they avoid the infamous Top Gear test in which a road-going race car was pitted against a mid-market 600cc bike, rather than its actual two-wheeled equivalent, which would have mauled it).
So, clearly lining up behind Quirk, I thought I'd simply fire him some killer lines on why biking's better, and why we all do it. And therein, it emerged, lay the problem. I couldn't really think of any at first (aside from the fact that I like it).
I was pretty stunned by this revelation, and it forced me to think about it afresh.
It's dangerous, it's often wet, it's expensive, it's often genuinely scary, and, to reluctantly agree with my wife, it's undeniably selfish to ride a bike when you have a young child, as I do. I don't actually "need" to, although it has benefits in terms of commuting time and fuel costs, but they hardly out-weigh the potential downsides, which are catastrophic. Moreover, I have a passion for cars too. It's not like the two things are mutually exclusive.
Oh dear. Sorry Jon.
But the more I thought about the fact that I just know, practicality aside, that I'd take a bike over a car if I was forced to choose, the more I began to realise why.
Both share that same visceral power to connect with our most base instincts. Both, ultimately, are unnatural and therefore take us outside the comfort zone of out modern lives. We don't hunt our own food, most of us don't fight wars, but that chemicals released by our brains when we're doing 80 miles per hour in a tin box or on two wheels are the same. As I wrote here, they connect us to the "fight or flight" instinct which evolution hasn't quite managed to leave behind. That's why ten-year-olds have pictures of Ferraris on their walls, not Toyota Priuses.
But if both do this, why is biking "better"?
Firstly it's a question of scale. Drivers, even of the fastest cars (and I've driven special-build TVRs, Porsches, Caterhams and a host of other properly quick metal), have no conception of the speed of a motorcycle, especially a quick one. Mine knocks out 178.8bhp and weighs not a lot more than 200kg. You do the math. Despite its technical sophistication, putting the throttle on the stops in 2nd on my bike is to enter the world of Brunel, not Bill Gates: instant, chest-slapping acceleration which tries to hurl you off the back of the bike. Your body shoots back to the seat-stop and you need to combine using all your upper body strength to just hang on with keeping the front wheel on the floor, steering and actually looking ahead as the wind rushes over you like the backwash of a turbine, the roadside turns to a blur, the race exhaust screams and howls through your helmet and earplugs like a wounded Mammoth and, within perhaps three seconds, what used to be the horizon slams past into history.
So, bikes are very, very quick.
Secondly, there's the physicality of thing. I admire quick drivers, those with real skill and car control, and I respect their ability. But the truth is that even great race drivers "operate" a car. They sit inside and work the controls to make the car do what they want. At the highest levels of racing this is done in an environment of huge g-forces, but even then it's about turning wheels, pressing pedals and flicking switches. Drivers talk about feel, and being "at one" with the car, but there's actually a remoteness there which you really only come to understand when you've ridden a proper motorbike too.
You don't "operate" a motorcycle. You ride it. You're perched atop something which is inherently unstable. Left to its own devices it'll just fall over. Your body is, genuinely, an integral part of the machine - from putting a foot down to stay upright to finding the skill and courage to almost climb off one side of the thing at speed as you enter a corner, feeling it "fall" into the bend as a result, and then pushing down and away on the inside bar to have it fall even further. It's like allowing yourself to fall over backwards - your brain screams "WRONG!" but you don't stop, and as the bike cuts in towards the apex the mix of g-force and centrifugal forces snap you to the corner, the road rushes up towards your face, you're utterly committed, you've placed your bet on yourself and your bike, you're going around this bend or you're crashing because physics doesn't offer a third way.
And then you're through, you did it, but here comes the next turn; calculate, braking point, entry, line, where does the road go, what are the clues, body back up, burst of acceleration, front brake, massive pops and bangs on the over-run, and over you go again, the whole bike swinging across the other way and you know, you really feel, how tiny your foothold on the world is, as you and this huge machine pivot on two tiny contact points of rubber like a pendulum swinging, and you're in again, breathe, don't forget to breathe, hairs on your arms standing up like static, road's a blur, exit, turn in some throttle and the thing stands up on its own like an animal, not a machine, urging you on, revelling in the forces at play, screaming for more.
And when you're done, when you stop, you feel you've earned your exhilaration, your exhaustion, your smoke or your cuppa. Just as coffee cooked on a fire by a tent tastes better than the most expensive cup you can buy in a London restaurant.
Even when you've not been pushing it, arriving at your destination on a bike is different. After a long journey you turn the key to "off" and sit there, stretching, reliving the ride, the bike "tic-ticing" away underneath you. You haven't just arrived, you've stopped riding. It's a little event.
So it goes. It's like nothing else.
Which brings me to the final reason why I'd choose the bike. As a result of the things above, bikers are (lightly) bound together by something.
It's important here to be clear. Bikers are as different as anyone else. We don't think the same way, vote the same way, dress the same way or, often, have anything in common other than the bike. The same as car drivers then? Well, no. Thanks to an unspoken understanding that we share the same risks through appreciation of the same rewards, there's something between bikers. We're not a community, but we have a certain esprit de corps.
It's why 15,000 bikes rode through Wooton Bassett recently to pay tribute (and raise £100,000 for Help For Heroes) to the townsfolk there for turning out, rain or shine, to pay their respects to the coffins of service people killed in action.
These weren't members of the same bike club, or friends. And this wasn't fun for thousands, who rode for up to nine hours through rain and cold to trundle precariously through a town at 5mph, hand over some money and then go home. There were judges, policemen, Hell's Angels, racers, old chaps on Honda Goldwings...everyone. They came because this was an event to show bikers as people, not riders, and for the cause.
How long would you need to stand in the car park at Brent Cross Ikea with a megaphone to persuade 15,000 car drivers to do that?
It's why, if you break down, bikes will stop to help. It's why when you pull into a cafe you can go and sit with riders you've never met and chat, and be welcomed. It's why riders nod to one another on the road, move out of one another's way and clear traffic for one another. In short, bikers like one another, drivers seem to hate one another.
When Alex, Jon and Phil have their row they won't solve the problem of which is "better", of course. It's subjective, and personal. One man's better is another man's worse, but that doesn't make for good broadcast entertainment. It'll be good, I know that.
But what I've written here is, it turns out, why I'd choose a bike. That and the fact that I look great in leather, obviously.

Running To Stand Still

2010-07-10T18:09:00.000+01:00

The "little voice" we all have on board, the one which tells us when something is wrong (see Use The Force Luke ), has been uncomfortably chatty in my head recently. I know why, it's making perfect sense, I'm just not sure what the solution is. What I am sure of is that I need to find one if I want to avoid something nasty. Let me explain.
I ride all year, and I ride every day Monday to Friday. The bike is how I generally get about, rain or shine. Other than serious ice and snow, that's my mode of transport. As a consequence, I cover a lot of miles. In recent years this has kept my riding sharp. It's taught me a lot about the bikes I've owned too.
Now that we live out here though, there's a problem, and little incidents on the road which tell me I'm too comfy, too distracted or just not prepared for the unexpected are starting to make that clear.
In 2009 we lived in London, and I worked in Oxford. That meant long commutes a few days a week, and short ones (from a friend's place in south Oxon to work) the others. I was doing hundreds of miles a week, day and night, on a variety of roads and in all weathers. I was on top of my riding game.
Today my commute is from leafy West Oxon to Oxford, about 12 miles. I avoid the A40 since someone I know became the third biker in eight weeks to be mangled by cars doing sudden U-turns from the (daily) miles of stationary traffic, so I go on the same twisties each morning, at about the same time. Reverse this for the evening and I can honestly say it's a month since I rode more than 15 miles, or on a road I don't know every bump and corner of, and the previous example was two months before that. It's been three months since I traded the Guzzi for this monster and in that time I've never even ridden it in the dark. Not once. I used to ride at night three times a week.
Domestic circumstances mean the bike might get used perhaps one weekend in ten, perhaps. I don't get to do tours, or trips, or even ride-outs with friends to meets.
And what did I find when I went on that last, non-commute, ride out? A terrifying difference between my wholly confident and relaxed daily ride and trying to ride new roads. I was all over the place on corner entry speed, on braking, on acceleration points and just about everything else. It honestly felt like getting back on a bike after a long absence. Surely that's nuts for a daily, all-year rider?
Seems not. I had a chat to Ray, a friend who spent years as an instructor (nice bloke, very skilled, hideous SAS-style moustache) and he said riding short distances, and consistently the same routes, was in some ways worse than not riding at all. "You're not remotely nervous of the bike because you're on auto-pilot, so you're not thinking, or learning, or remembering." he said.
Then I spoke to my garage about an upcoming service and they were equally concerned. "The bike's too big for little hops every day. It's hardly warm, it's not working, and then you stop and it has to do it all from cold each time".
Great. So my little voice was right about a false comfort zone, and the dangers therein, and I'm not doing my bike any good either.
About two months ago I went for a blast down to Somerset on a day off. First hour was a 'mare, but once I was settled in and the aches and pains stopped it was a revelation in terms of performance, bike control, reading the road and so on.
I clearly need to do more of this before winter comes (in fact generally), but me going for a blast on a Saturday or Sunday leaves my partner literally holding the baby after a week of work and/or childcare, which is hardly fair.
The fact remains though that I listen to my little voice, and it's telling me I'm rusty, not learning anything and forgetting much of what I knew from the days when I rode all over the shop all the time.
I adore riding bikes, although I recognise the dangers; my stance has always been to do my best to keep my odds healthy. Right now I don't think they are.

I feel the need for a little something...

2010-07-03T21:54:00.000+01:00

More a note to self than a post. Been hunting recently for a very cheap second car (an E30 325i Touring is the idea) and as I cruised the websites I stumbled across various things which appealed. Got me thinking about the cars I've owned, so I made a list, something I've been meaning to do for ages (one of those pointless things which just seems like it needs doing).
What's almost certain is I've forgotten something, possibly more than one. Anyway, this the list, starting in 1987:

Lancia Beta Coupe, black. Rusted to bits and was scrapped. Great, but only in retrospect.
Rover SD1 2300, black. Flogged to a pub landlord who, interestingly, was shot three weeks later (he lived). Very cool car for a teenager - in fact for up to eight teenagers at any one time if I recall.
Fiat Strada, possibly a 1.3, not sure, red. No memory of what happened to it but I think it went just after I bust most of it getting lots of air on a bridge near Marlborough. Crucially the opening bars to ZZ Top's "Legs" started just as we took off. Willing, fun, great.
Opel Manta, lime green. No idea what became of it. Really. Not a clue. I may still own it.
Ford Fiesta 1.1, red. Sold to someone at little loss. Practical, if uninspiring.
VW Scirocco, silver (horribly chaved up). Fell to bits eventually. Last seen in Camden Town. I loved it until I realised the glass wasn't as dark as I thought from the outside and realised I could be recognised.
Jaguar Sovereign 3.6, British Racing Green. A car I loved to bits and still miss. Died on a motorway after it hit a spare wheel which had rolled into the lane from a layby whilst doing 80mph. Even now I recall driving it through the Dartmoor rain all night and wishing I had further to go when I finally got to my destination. One reason I lust after an XJS today. Or a Double Six. Or another Sov...hang on...
Triumph TR6 (1970, British spec), Midnight Blue. Gorgeous, if rubbish, but gorgeous. Looked fab, sounded lovely, never worked. Sold at crippling loss to north London poseur whose father owned a garage.
Land Rover Discovery II GS, Blue. Trooper of a car, served me well. Sold to a nice chap from round the corner.
Land Rover Discovery III HSE, Stornaway Grey. Only new car I've ever bought, at some expense too. Wonderful machine. Sold to a Land Rover dealership after three years to cut costs. Silly big.
Volvo XC90, silvery green. Outside on the drive. If I didn't own motorbikes I'd probably loathe it, but as I do it's a comfy family workhorse and that'll do.

Along the way, thanks to various issues around my jobs and other things, I've had fairly lengthy use of some proper stuff too, not least a number of Bentleys (one of which broke, significantly, in a flood) and lots of TVRs (all of which tried to kill me but only one almost succeeded, and that was the late Peter Wheeler's own car).

And yet of all of them that old Jag remains the true love. Not the best looking, not the best to drive, not the most well-equipped, not the best built, not the coolest and yet...it had something.

And that's the plan for our cheap second car. It must be cheap, and practical, and reliable and all of those things, but I am determined to have another car with "something".

As Jack White said, Truth Doesn't Make A Noise

2010-07-01T12:51:00.000+01:00

I noticed on Twitter this week that electric race bike manufacturer Mavizen has sold another machine, and good luck to them, they seem nice. The more I looked at the bike though, and it's pictured above, the more a nagging doubt started to take hold. Something was "wrong". Finally, I got it. The thing that was wrong was that I didn't want one.
This is almost unheard of. I want pretty much everything. I treat vehicles like records, or would given a chance; i.e. if I had the money I'd ride a Harley for when I'm in that mood, a Fireblade when in another, drive a Bentley when that mojo was upon me and an old Chevvy pick-up another time, and so on. Basically I could have ten garages full of vehicles and still want more - there's always another mood.
So why didn't I want one of these undoubtedly lovely looking and very capable machines? The honest truth, I discovered after a little soul-searching, is it doesn't make a noise. That's it. Pathetic isn't it?
Or is it? It set me thinking.
My son is just three. He loves his toy trucks, cars and bikes, and is delirious every time he spots a tractor or a digger. When he plays driving games whatever he's pushing about is accompanied by the requisite engine noise. Planes whoosh, diggers roar, cars go vroom.
His excitement about vehicles revolves around speed and noise. I'm 39, and now I realise that mine does too.
I used to drive my TR6 with the roof down in the rain, I love the fact that my bike pops and bangs so much on the over-run despite eating fuel as a result, I used to have the sound of a Maserati V8 as my mobile phone ring. These noises appeal to the most base elements of my psychology. The smell of petrol and oil or the note of an exhaust all suggest danger, speed, risk and fun.
They are the soundtrack of abnormality, of wandering too near the edge, of leaving your comfort zone. They touch something in me which evolution hasn't yet extinguished in most of us, the need to release hormones and chemicals to prepare us for "fight or flight"; as opposed to go to meetings and filter emails.
And this brings me to the point of today's blog, the Green movement's determination that we'll drive electric cars. Through no fault of their own, most Greens (although by no means all) just don't understand driving or riding. They think that a car which will get one from A to B without producing CO2 at the same speed as one that does must be a winner and they're outraged most of us don't agree. They approach transport from the head and the heart, but not from the pit of the stomach.
And that's the point - lots of us petrolheads are, shock/horror, not backwoodsmen. We recognise the issues around global warming and, even if we don't always agree, we know the oil's running out. We're not against change.
But we do understand that to change people's driving behaviour one needs to deliver them what they want in a different format - not deliver them what you want.
If I told my son about electric cars and the fact that they're silent, and then bought him a model Prius, he wouldn't play with it. He has no concept of climate change, but he has a perfectly developed concept of fun and excitement.
The internal combustion engine is a cultural icon not just because of the socio-economic changes it produced, but because it's a loud, dangerous, stinky machine which appeals to our most base instincts.
We don't need to swap it for batteries, we need to burn something else in it. Hydrogen is the future - hydrogen and taking the baffles out of your exhausts.

British MotoGP 2010, Silverstone. A punter's perspective.

2010-06-20T21:57:00.000+01:00

Just came back from three days' camping at Silverstone for the British MotoGP. Chores done in order of importance (clean bike, wash kit, wash self).
Those of you who like the sport will know what happened in the race, and I don't intend to mention it further (other than to briefly say that I felt for poor Nicky Hayden, but couldn't help but be pleased for Ben Spies).
Instead I want to say something about the experience as a whole, and service we received, partly because there's a story to tell and partly to offer some guidance to fellow riders who've never been to the Northamptonshire circuit but might think about it based on their experiences of Donnington and so on. Did they get it right, in other words.
For the uninitiated, this was a big deal for Silverstone because it was the first MotoGP, or equivalent, there in 23 years. It was there because Donnington, MotoGP's modern British home, decided to pitch for the chance to host Formula 1 (traditionally based at Silverstone), won the chance, lost MotoGP to Silverstone, and then promptly lost F1 too as they couldn't deliver on their promises to Bernie Ecclestone.
I declare an interest in as much as I've always had a major soft-spot for Silverstone, the wind-swept former RAF air station in the middle of nowhere. It's owned and run by The British Racing Driver's Club (BRDC), present chairman Damon Hill. The BRDC uses the profits from the circuit to support grass roots motorsport in the UK, as opposed to lining its own pockets. In an unashamedly romantic way, I like that. It's one of the reasons that Ecclestone hates the circuit so much, he can't do cosy deals with them in which he and they get richer still because Silverstone isn't about enriching individuals, it's about supporting motorsports. Bernie doesn't get that.
I declare a second interest in that Bernie once gave me two VIP tickets to the F1 GP too, which I took, and used (the TR6 broke down on the way almost ruining my relationship with my girlfriend, now my wife, who was forced to cross two fields in three inch heeled boots and jog to Copse Corner for the off). So, let's be clear, I'm a screaming hypocrite.
So, background dealt with. Silverstone was determined to show bikers a good time, to counter a natural cynicism that this was essentially an F1 circuit with little character. Donnington, on the other hand, was a genuine bike circuit, and didn't lack character, but was often attacked as taking biker custom for granted and offering rotten facilities.
So, what was it like as an event/experience?
Three of us went, on bikes, with "Gold" tickets which gave us three days' camping, access to all the really good stands for the Friday and Saturday (the only place we couldn't go was the covered stands) and specific seats in the stand at Club for race day, plus parking. We paid just over £130 each for these.
We got in easily (no surprise on a bike on the Friday) and were directed to our secure parking, which was excellent. We had a wristband for the camping area, and then another for the parking, which was bar-coded to match a tag placed on the bike so that both needed to be scanned, and match, with the bike running, to ride out of the circuit.
Next pleasant surprise was the fleet of quads with trailers like those you'd see on a shoot to ferry us and our kit from the parking area to the campsites. Cuts out that awful slog with piles of kit bikers dread.
The campsites were the next revelation. One could choose "lively" or "quiet" camping. We chose the former. The whole area had been open fields three weeks earlier (F1 fans do camp but not in anything like the numbers of bike race fans so Silverstone needed to vastly expand its facilities). When we arrived they'd mowed and rolled all the fields, laid solid stone roads everywhere, build whole area areas with Portakabin toilets, showers and free drinking water, beer tents, food stalls, huge stages for bands (which were generally great) and a massive big screen for the football/racing. It was fantastic. Better still, they'd put up big boards showing that for 2011 they would have built permanent new buildings with toilet and shower facilities just for campers.
One of the downsides of Silverstone is that it always takes ages to get anywhere, as there's a huge amount of walking involved. We suffered from this, although once we discovered the free double-decker busses which went around the main circuit (if not out to the campsites) it was easier.
A spend of £6 on a Silverstone radio worked well for all of us, listening to commentary from the practice sessions, interviews and background stuff when we wanted and hanging the tiny thing around our necks on the chord provided when football, beer, or the variety of Air Asia, Marlboro, Pit or Rizla Suzuki girls took precedence of attention.
There was a huge amount to do and we didn't really scratch the surface. Other than practice sessions, qualifying and racing, we watched the amazing Craig Jones do his stunt show, took in a few Motocross races at the bespoke off-road circuit, shopped a lot, watched the Red Bull X-Fighters, visited the California Super-Bike School, watched air displays, watched a bit of football, danced badly to bands, rode a bucking bronco in the beer tent (also badly) and so on. Bored you could not be.
It's also important to mention the track itself, newly altered/designed for MotoGP. It makes for fabulous racing, and the riders all said they loved it thanks to Silverstone opting for fast corners rather than the usual switchbacks you see at most "new" circuits. Viewing is brilliant and close, even without tickets for a stand (although you'd need to get in early for a good spot on the fences).
There were a couple of downsides. Firstly a few minor things which we all put down to experience, namely:

- The campsites need to be accessible from walking around the circuit, or the bus needs to run out there. It's a long slog to walk the whole track and get to a gate 50 yards from your tent, and then be told you need to go another mile or so to actually get there thanks to "health ad safety" issues with walking behind the big screen/stages.
- Secure parking is great but putting it right next to the motocross track in high summer means we all get back to discover our bikes caked in red dirt (not an issue, if we'd bought a cover, which is probably the solution - the parking scheme was brilliant other than that an should be applauded).
- There needs to be a greater variety of shopping. The same franchises selling the same things at each bit of the track becomes wearing after a while.
- Sell more Guinness!

The only major stinker of the weekend was security. The contract there is with Group 4 and they were loathed by everyone we spoke to. In our experience they were disorganised, aggressive, rude, over-officious, difficult and obstructive. And when you consider that you couldn't move without running into 20 of them, you'll understand how much this put a damper on things.
One example, of many we could have offered:
On Friday morning one G4 man showed us where to pitch our tents. On Friday evening I was awoken from a catnap (in the rain and bitter wind) by another three of them beating on my tent and telling me to collapse it and move it as they'd decided this was now "an access road". When I protested that all my stuff would get sodden, and that they'd told me to put it here in the first place, the boss guy said "Yeah? Well, my name's Kevin. Why don't you report me?", before laughing and driving off in his 4x4.
Between three of us we had about five examples of similar "couldn't give a monkey's" attitude from them, and others said the same. It really poisoned the atmosphere. As, effectively, the "face" of the circuit to customers, they did everything they could to ruin all Silverstone's good work.
However, despite G4's best efforts, we had a great weekend. It was clear that Silverstone had really thought and planned what would work for bikers, and pushed the boat out to provide it - which is really what this post is about, recognising hard work on behalf of me, as a customer, and taking the trouble to say thank you.
Across the campsite bars everyone agreed it was hugely better than the Donnington experience, and recognised the amount of effort which had gone into that.
Presuming they'll learn as they go, I for one think that Silverstone is set fair to become the home of MotoGP every inch as much as it's the home of F1.

There's A Killer On The Road (with apologies to Jim Morrison)

2010-06-16T13:20:00.000+01:00

Have a look at the picture below. It was taken on one of the small roads around Warwick University by the friend of a biker who'd been thrown off by diesel on a nearby road, suffering multiple broken bones.

I chose this because it's typical, not because it's unusually dramatic. This spill was traced back to a small group of builders' vehicles and for readers of this blog who ride a bike, it won't look unusual. For those of you who don't, it might look odd. In cars you just don't see this stuff. That's not your fault, you're not used to having to concentrate on the road surface like bikers, and anyway you have a car in the way.
Diesel, in whatever amount, is akin to black ice for motorbikes. With only two small contact areas of the tires touching the road, having one slip out suddenly on this stuff is deadly. The RAC Foundation estimates that spilled diesel contributes to more road injuries per year than excess speed. Odd the government hasn't thrown millions and millions of pounds at the diesel issue, but has done so at the revenue-generating speed issue eh?
Figures obtained from the Department For Transport in 2008 for accidents relating to oil/diesel spillage were as follows:

22 people died on the roads between 2000 and 2005;
595 serious accidents on the roads between 2000 and 2005;
3,020 accidents resulting in slight injury between 2000 and 2005;
Oil / Diesel related accidents in 2005 alone cost society £33,543,280

So it's not just a bikers' gripe. People are getting killed and maimed, and it's costing everyone a fortune. You'd think "something would be done", wouldn't you? More on that later.
What non-bikers won't realise is just how much of this stuff is there. Let me give you an example. One of my routes home from work includes an eight mile A-road stretch and then a mile or so through my town. Diesel, if you didn't know, only becomes visible when the road surface is wet. One night last week I rode home in the rain and there were massive, spreading blobs of diesel every 20 yards or so along easily 80% of the eight mile A-road. When I turned into the town it was worse, with literal streams of the stuff, unbroken, running down the roads which were on hills, or where the surface was poor and broken.
Surprise, surprise, this route is the same one used by the scores of double-decker busses which ferry people from the city I work in to the town I live in; and this is why I'm writing about this - it's utterly avoidable.
Busses and HGVs have holes cut in their diesel tanks as a requirement. That's not a problem, unless they are overfilled. But they're almost always overfilled because the more fuel you have aboard the further you can go without stopping and, thus, the less it costs you as a commercial vehicle operator.
Every time one of these over-filled busses or lorries goes over a bump, up or down a steep hill, brakes or accelerates hard or goes around a tight bend, the fuel slops out on the road. And there it stays. And stays. And stays. It takes days and days to clear. If that's a bus route with, say, 50 journeys a day passing over it, think how much fuel is on the road.
And it's not just hitting or missing the diesel which is a problem (although God knows that's a big one). To avoid it riders have to weave about, ride too close to oncoming traffic and so on. Add in trying to avoid potholes, drain covers, tarmac over-banding and so on and suddenly it's like trying to thread the bike through a minefield, whilst all the time trying to watch the traffic, junctions, signs, junctions, and plan ahead.
So companies' determination to make a few extra pence profit a day is responsible for numerous road accidents. Seems an obvious scandal, no?
Well, no. Firstly it's bikers who suffer the most and public sympathy there is limited. Secondly, large fleet operators of busses and HGVs have some serious lobbying muscle. When the British Motorcycle Federation (BMF) launched its "Kill The Spill" campaign in 2008 (details here ) it was well received by ministers. Then the Road Haulage Association and the bus companies piled in, and lo and behold it all came to nothing.
There are solutions though. Companies and local authorities could insist that providers don't overfill as part of their contracts. Local riders can complain to local authorities (and particularly to local councillors which is, contrary to popular belief, hugely effective). In fairness to many councils, they often have no idea this is an issue, the scale of the problem or the consequences - many have acted when lobbied by local riders with enough consistancy and organisation.
Finally, if you run a van, or a small lorry (I don't flatter myself that the chairman of Stagecoach PLC reads this blog), do something good today, don't overfill the tank. In that tiny act, you might save someobdy's life. Doesn't that feel good?

When Kit Works - #1: Kriega R35 Rucksack. £109.99. Most good bikeshops/online. Milage covered c. 10,000

2010-06-03T10:18:00.000+01:00

Kit is an important part of biking, as I said here way back when. Not only is buying good kit fun, but having kit which works, which keeps you warm, or dry, or comfortable, is a major safety issue too (freezing fingers, misted visors, aching joints and so on don't bode well for a good ride).
My issue with buying kit has always been which reviews to trust. Bike mags, through no fault of their own, have a funny view of things. Journos who get stuff free, and endless streams of it, don't always view items in the same way as we mere mortals (although they usually know more). So I've tended to trust the views of biking friends I respect (including a journo, it has to be said) and, to a lesser degree, forums.
So because getting your kit choices right is such a joy, I've decided to pen the odd review of kit which I really like, and have used in the real work for some long time. I hope it proves a little helpful.
I want to start with what I regard as one of the best bits of kit I own, and have ever owned; Kriega's R35 rucksack.

I've tried others, including from top-end brands like Alpinestars, but nothing compares. Mine's been through two years (I ride all year round, every day, so that includes two hideous winters) and about 10,000 miles.

The first thing to know is that Kriega makes products for bikers, they are bespoke-designed for the job. I think that makes a huge difference to begin with.
Everything about this thing feels like bikers have designed it and nothing more so, when you first put one on, than the unique "Quadloc" harness system.

This basically means two padded shoulder straps in the normal way (sort of - more later) but also two equally padded kidney straps. The four of them meet in the centre of your chest and lock together to ensure the bag doesn't pull at your neck, or move around. In the event of a spill, it also means your arms won't get pulled back as they can with normal straps if the bag hits the road first.

The locking point isn't like a car race harness though. All four are permanently joined (once you've initially set it up to fit you exactly as you want - you can always change it) so that all you have to do is throw it on, bring it together and do up one zip. And this is another example of Kriega being bikers themselves, because that zip sits in the centre of a flat, padded, soft "plate" which sits snug across the chest, Velcros shut to protect the zip from the wind and rain and includes two flat pockets with their own zips where you can put wallets, phones, security passes, licences and so on. It's super comfy, clever and really useful.
You can adjust the straps with steel D-rings on each shoulder - again designed to be operated by feel alone, whilst wearing gloves, and on the move if you wish.

The main bag is cavernous when fully utilised, and I'm constantly amazed at how much I can cram in. Every time I think those four tins of beer won't fit, they do. However, it has four outer compressor straps which means you can flatten it right down to whatever size you like. I've often wondered, thanks to this, why anyone buys a smaller one. I suppose the only downside is that if the bag's almost empty, it's still quite large, albeit flat, but as it weighs nothing it doesn't bother me.

Inside is a laptop pocket, a couple of clips for keys and so on, and a couple of mesh zipped pockets for stuff you don't want "in the mix" of the main bag. Only grumble I have with it is the 1000D Cordura it's all made from, whilst hyper-tough and waterproof, is black on one side (inside) so finding stuff at the bottom of the bag when there's lots in there can be like a lucky-dip at the fair. A white inner would be a brilliant upgrade.
Outside the biking-focus continues. Much of the bag uses Scotchlite Dynatech reflective material, although it doesn't look so in daylight which is nice. On the back, towards the outside on both sides, are two long zips which run the whole length of the bag, allowing you to pack huge amounts of stuff you might want to get to fairly quickly. I use these for visor wipes, earplugs, a disclock, smokes and so on - things you want to hand when you stop. Centre-back is a deep (non waterproof) mesh pocket with a compressor and securer at the top which you can pack things like waterproofs into, and there's a smaller one on the top which is zip-fastened which I use for things like keys so I don't have to have them in pockets.
The base of the bag has an even thicker, more stable piece of double Cordura, so you can sit it on the ground without causing damage.
Against your back is the most wonderful set of padding which makes the bag hyper-comfy, and also forms part of a mesh airflow system which stops that horrible heat/sweat build up on hot days.
The whole thing, like all Kriega products, is also capable of taking add-ons. I have a small pouch which fits on to the bag in lots of places, but I use on the right kidney strap for my two mobile phones. I've also got Kriega's waterproof wallet for tours and trips, which again fits onto the bag (inside or out) in a host of places. All these accessories are made from the same 1000D Cordura in the same colour as the bag (like buying a 1930s Ford car, Kriega will sell you any colour you like so long as it's grey/black).
Kriega's excellent tailpacks also fit onto the bag (as below) if you wish to expand it even more.

As if all this wasn't enough, the bag comes with a massive 10 year guarantee. Mine's faultless, but a friend of mine bought an R25 which, after four years, suffered some lose stitching and when he called Kriega he was told to send it to them and they repaired it and sent it back within three days.
Finally, Kriega is a small, independent, British firm which has out-done (in my view) the big-boys of this market and they have done that through making brilliant products, and providing great customer service.
So, that's my review. 10,000 all-weather miles of faultless comfort and practicality. Yours for under a hundred quid if you haggle.

Like The Man Said, You Gotta Dance With Who You Came With

2010-06-02T21:46:00.000+01:00

Confidence is a funny thing, according to most football commentators (and who better to offer wry observations on the subtle pathways of the human psyche then they?).
When you know you've stepped up a level or two, and you're constantly being tested as a result, how do you balance the inevitable moments when you're not up to scratch with a belief that you can be? Mix into that equation doing this on a bike, which can kill you if your metaphorical maths isn't good, and that's pretty intense.
My confidence on bikes has been fine, generally, but as regular readers of this blog know that's not been true of my new 178bhp K1200S.
I simply didn't realise just how quick the bike was going to be. It is, after all, one of the fastest motorcycles on the planet.
I know, of course, that it's only as quick as you ride it but in those split-second moments when you decide to overtake or have a play, the world suddenly turns into a blur (literally), accompanied by a Biblical howl of fury from the Remus full system which might have been the inspiration for Tolkien's Balrog, your whole body is massively shunted backwards and as you struggle to physically hang on you realise that you're not half way up the revs and the throttle's nowhere near the stops. It's just started to think about doing a fraction of what it can do. It's that quick.
So it's scared me since I got it, or perhaps more accurately my respect for it is so major that it borders on fear. It's not that I don't like it, I love it, but the sheer scale of the power on tap and the sheer ability of the thing, despite its size, in corners is vastly beyond my capabilities. Consequently I've either let myself get into situations I can't deal with or, more often, just gone far too slowly for fear of that and not really had as much fun as I could.
But things are changing, and I find the reasons why quite instructive.
The first major change happened a little while ago, on a gloriously sunny day. I had a free few hours ahead of me so I decided to go for a ride. It's not something I do often as I ride to work and back every day and weekends are predominantly for the family, so I rarely get the chance to just go and explore, or ride out with friends or go to meets (yes, I know, you're welling up).
For no reason I can, or could, think of, I decided to go and have lunch in Watchet, on the north Somerset coast. It's about 130 miles from where I live.
From here it's a varied mix of fast A-roads, bundles of motorway, and then miles of increasingly narrow twisties down to the sea. Bit of everything.
I hit the M5 and before very long my hands were getting so numb with pins and needles I couldn't indicate or even feel the front brake (a problem I have, to a usually lesser degree, most rides). Then my back started to ache and ache. It was miserable, really.
When it was actually getting dangerous the Gods smiled and provided a service station and I pulled in gratefully. At which point two things occurred to me: first that this was the furthest I'd ridden the bike since I got it in one go and, second, that whilst I do lots and lots of miles every week they're pretty much the same miles, literally - one of two or three commuting routes to work and back, none of more than 13 miles.
Or put another way: I ride a lot, but I don't do much riding.
The rest of the journey down was better, lunch was dreadful (Watchet, if you're thinking of going, should be regarded as on the way to somewhere else), but the ride back was a total revelation.
The aches and pains didn't really return, as I got used to a long time in the riding position, I went faster than I've been before and ate mile upon mile cruising happily at a steady 100/110mph. It was joyous. By the time I hit West Oxfordshire, sweeping through bends with real determination and taking the bike over further and further, it was only a desperate need for a cold beer which stopped me heading off somewhere else.
In the days since this ride my confidence has rocketed. I'm vastly more comfortable with the turbine-like acceleration of the bike, with trusting myself to lean it into bends properly, with hard braking, with not fretting so much about every bit of the road surface and so on. I enjoy riding more. Vastly more.
Today was a good example - I had a meeting in a town about 35 miles north east of here, which turned out to be at the end of some of the best roads I've ever ridden, and I blatted the bike more than ever before. The journey back was better still. Thanks to MCN's fabulous Ride Logger (available from the iTunes app store at £4.99 if you have an iPhone - brilliant thing) I was able to check my data and it was pretty solid.
After work I then headed down to my local bike cafe to meet and old friend. I didn't meet him through biking, but he happens to be a bike journo for one of the glossies and he'd been on a job up this way today. We'll call him Tom.
It was great to catch up with him after a few months, and to hear his news (all good). He's one of life's good guys and I owe him a huge amount. But the thing that I also always get from Tom is a confidence boost, and today was no exception.
Tom wouldn't call himself fast and, compared to club racers and so on, he probably isn't, but he's quicker than most and hugely capable on a bike. But it's not this which gives him this strange aura of confidence which seems catching, nor is some stream of cheap fortune cookie biking wisdom - it's just that he loves riding, he loves bikes, he loves enjoying them, and he has a totally unflustered, unconcerned attitude to danger. Not stupidity, he's not a nutter, quite the opposite, but he makes an assessment of the threat and than mitigates it as much as possible before saying: "Right - done that, now it's time to crack on and enjoy this" and just ceases to worry about it any more. Having done the worrying and acted upon it he doesn't let it ruin the actual event. Or at least that's my take.
It's a calmness, I think, mixed with an undiluted love of riding.
So having soaked up a few of Tom's rays of sunshine confidence, my ride home was even better. If the bike skittered under acceleration, I just thought I'd deal with it. Retrospectively, I'm not sure what I'd have done, but the consequence was that I relaxed, didn't react badly and therefore the issue didn't arise.
So miles under the belt, new roads, and the company of those who inspire confidence, and things are feeling really pretty good.
I know just how quick this bike is now - something I hadn't appreciated until recently - but that's fine. It's one of the quickest bikes out there, so I'm learning to ride and enjoy one of the quickest bikes out there.
I haven't morphed into Jorge Lorenzo, but I'm a better rider than I was a month ago and a vastly happier one.

Born To Be Mild

2010-06-01T10:45:00.000+01:00

Harley-Davidson seems to be a Marmite brand for most bikers - they love them or hate them. I've always had a middle view. I thought they looked nice, made a nice noise and were probably great for thumping slowly along having a cruise, but were not a bike to have to use rain or shine. Unlike many, I was never annoyed by the agricultural nature of the things, as I kind thought they did what they said on the tin. Equally, the silly faux Hell's Angel "Harley Owners Groups (HOGs)" and associated brand tomfoolery just made me giggle, rather than scowl. To sum it up - I've never lusted after one but often thought that if I had the money to keep a number of bikes I'd have a H-D for those days when that mood was upon me. Sadly I don't. Yesterday I rode two, my first Harley rides (in fact my first cruiser/feet forwards rides of any sort), and it was a bit of a revelation. The first bike I took out was a 1584cc "Fat Bob". It was miserable for me as the pegs were set so far forward I couldn't brake or change gear safely, so let's brush over it. After that, though, I took out a special edition Softail called the "Crossbones". This looks like a classic 1940s Bobber but has a hidden monoshock at the rear, ape-hanger bars and a few other little touches. It has a 96 cubic inch "motor". I have no idea what that means, but it's pretty sizable. Having established that I could reach everything I settled down to my ride. First up, it's really, really comfortable. You sort of sit in it, rather than on it. Once you've started ditching sports bike traits (like covering the rear brake - just makes your heel ache on a H-D so you use the flat foot plate and, low and behold, it's great) it starts to feel quite nice. It vibrates like hell, there's about sixteen miles of slack in the throttle and even then the response comes by post, the brakes are made, I believe, of Blue-Tac and your legs are heated like a pork roast after two hours in the oven. And over 60mph your sunglasses ride up your nose (I accept that this could be a design issue with my nose, rather than the bike). Yet none of this really matters. What's wonderful is the psychology of the thing - it dictates your riding style not just through its technical and mechanical limitations but just by the way it feels. I found myself thumping along about 30% slower than on the BMW (this was an urban ride), gently slowing for roundabouts and equally gently bumbling around them. I wasn't going slowly, just in no way rushing. The wonderful engine note becomes a real pleasure - I spent the first five minutes looking for the other bike on the six-strong ride-out that was clearly riding right up my jacksy, but couldn't see him; turned out the noise was me. The looks it draws (I'm sure equally spread between envy and hilarity, but who cares?) are fun to get too. I got a thumbs up from a car driver at one point, as he overtook me - two things which have never happened on the K12. So it slows you right down, and is a far more relaxing ride, at least for a few miles; how it would feel if you had 200 to go I can't say. My friend Mark, who was riding a V-Rod alongside me, summed it up afterwards by saying that unlike the bikes we both own, which we'll never be able to use to the limit of what they can do because we don't have the talent/courage, you'd be totally on top of a H-D in half a day. You'd never be nervous of the bike encouraging you over your skill limit, a constant threat with my K1200S. Getting back on the K12 to ride home felt like going from a black and white portable TV with an old coat hanger for an aerial, to a flat-screen plasma. I suddenly appreciated the performance and capability of my bike anew. But it's not that simple an equation is it? If the way things performed, their efficiency, technical ability and functions were the only deciding factors we'd all go on holiday to Tokyo every year. There's a reason we go to rural France, where nothing works, everything takes an age to get done and efficiency is a dirty word - it's pleasant to relax. I wouldn't swap (especially as I ride every day, all year, which would kill a Harley, or kill me with cleaning it) but I really appreciated why people are passionate about the bikes and the brand - they're just huge fun, in a slightly silly way. I think I "get" Harleys now. There'll always be a little nagging doubt in my mind every time I rocket past some portly, middle-aged guy dressed as Marlon Brando, doing 50. Is he having more fun than me?

Some Good News

2010-06-01T09:17:00.000+01:00

A quick update on my blogpost on the A40 crash, which is here. It turns out I knew the rider, whose name is Phil. He works for Harley-Davidson, which has its HQ for Europe in Oxford. I've been involved with them recently thanks to a huge charity ride in aid of Help For Heroes they were doing, and with which I was helping. Phil was one of the riders attempting to ride to all four outermost points of the mainland UK in 72 hours as part of the ride. Clearly he couldn't go as a result of the crash (I refuse to call it an accident, it wasn't accidental, it was callous and stupid driving). Anyway, I saw Phil yesterday at the end-of-ride party at H-D. He's got double compound fractures of both legs, a punctured lung and bust ribs. He's clearly in a wheelchair but, thank God, had movement in both legs and is recovering. He's also typically cheerful, despite the pain. The band at yesterday's event dedicated a cover of the Aerosmith/Run DMC classic "Walk This Way" to him - and Phil danced in his chair. He's a very brave, and very lucky, guy.

Utter, utter rubbish - I'll take one

2010-05-17T22:07:00.000+01:00

I was having a beery "dream garage" conversation in my local on Sunday with a friend. We were trying to do our "Real Dream Garage"; in other words not a fleet of £170,000 Astons but stuff you loved which, if you made a few sacrifices and were willing to be divorced, you could actually buy and run.

To give you an example: 1990 Bentley Turbo R. Best interior of any car ever built, and yours for under £10k - that kind of thing.

But then the landlord went one further. How about, he said, your "rubbish dream garage"? After questioning looks he explained: "You know, stuff you thought was great back in the day but you now know to be utterly shit and embarrassing, but you secretly still want."

This proved to be a three pint conversation involving most of the pub, so popular did it prove (sneaky landlord tricks they learn in landlord school, no doubt).

My XJS, early 3-series and similar suggestions were rejected as having been good cars in their day, or being retro-cool now.

In essence, said the man behind the bar, you have to choose cars you'd be happy as Larry driving along but desperately embarrassed to arrive anywhere in.

So, here's my "Rubbish Dream Garage". If you want to let me know yours, the rules are simple:

1. You have to be able to actually afford to buy it. 2. You have to have wanted one back in the day, when they were new(ish). 3. It can't be in any way cool, even ironically.

Early 1990s Toyota Supra Turbo (preferably with silly flared bits, dark glass and a big wing)
1980s Ford Ranger V8 pick-up (the American original), thanks to the fact that I built a Tamiya radio-controlled one aged about 14, or a lifted GMC equivalent thanks to Lee Majors in "The Fall Guy".
Mercedes 500SEC with alloys and all the toys
Reliant Scimitar (in Brown, obviously)
Rover 75 Estate (Definately in Bottle Green)
Renault 5 GT Turbo
Jeep Wrangler (preferably a LHD US V8, but I'd still go for the 4.0ltr Euro version

Beat that for rubbish...

If you cared you'd look. Time to care.

2010-05-12T17:47:00.000+01:00

More a quick mental download than a post today. This morning I was on my usual road to work and I saw someone very badly hurt. We're hearing he may have died - although that's not confirmed and I desperately hope it's not the case. Usual endless stationary traffic on the A40 towards Oxford. Came to a police road-block, plus ambulance. I'll tell you what happened, although it took me a while in real time to understand it. Biker had been filtering along outside the traffic lane when, according to the trucker who witnessed it, a car suddenly decided it had had enough of waiting and did a U-turn. Bang. Bloke was thrown a long way. Was on a stretcher when I got there. The car driver was a young man, perhaps late 20s. His car was stationary, pointing 45 degrees across the road half way through the turn. He was being escorted off into a police car right in front of me and about six other bikes which had filtered up to the road-block and stopped. He may have been sick in the car; at least the cops were using gloves to clean up something and he was bent double. If that is what happened (and I should stress I am only telling what I saw or was told), it's not unusual - people rarely look in their mirror before doing a U-turn if they can see the oncoming lane is clear. Three bikers have been knocked off in similar circumstances on that road this year that I know of - all seriously hurt. I filter down there every day - past perhaps 300 cars. Only takes one. But my overwhelming emotion was anger. Real, visceral anger. Fury at the injustice of it. Is the biker a father? Married? is he crippled? Will he live? What right did the driver have to do that? Why is it that when someone's refusal to take care with a car results in injury or death it's an "accident"? What was accidental about it? I don't shoot out of my drive in the car without looking. I brooded on it all day. I asked myself whether, with a young son and a wife, I should be riding at all. And than, coming home tonight, I came past the same stretch of road. Nothing. No marks, no signs, no tape. If this had happened in a street, perhaps thanks to a fight, there would have been. But on the road it seemed the important thing was just to get the carriageway open and move on. I was at a police event today, and I mentioned it to a copper. He was in his 50s, I think. he said he'd seen scores of them, and the system refused to take them seriously, the CPS were reluctant to prosecute because juries all thought "there but for the Grace of God go I" and even when they secured a conviction it was rarely followed by custody. I'm a little biased because I ride, so I'm vulnerable, but my anger is not that of a biker but that of a father, a husband, a son and a brother. If we can make drink-driving and speeding socially unacceptable, why can't we put the same effort into making bad driving unacceptable? After all, it's responsible for vastly more road deaths than drink or speed. Am I being silly? Do I need to have a drink and shut up?

Road Pricing: The Criminal's Ticket To Ride

2010-05-03T10:23:00.000+01:00

One of the unforeseen consequences of the Lib-Dems' recent surge in the polls has been a far closer examination of elements of the party's manifesto than has been the case for years.

One of the domestic issues which is increasingly causing angst is road-pricing.

More than 40 council leaders have written to a national newspaper to object today ( http://bit.ly/9gSwrj ) on grounds of cost and practicality. The Lib-Dem theory is that road pricing, where we are all asked to pay per mile for the roads we drive on, is fairer than hitting everyone through high fuel taxes. Let's hit people who do the most driving, say the Libs.

Opponents point out that the more one drives the more fuel one uses and therefore the more tax one pays anyway. They also object to hitting users of congested trunk roads and motorways because, they say, the alernatives just aren't there.

Let's leave aside the political argument raging about where the promised reductions in tax are, and concentrate on the flaw in this argument which has gained less exposure.

Fueling your car or bike costs what it costs regardless of how legal a driver you are. Road pricing, like speed cameras, relies on you having your car properly and legally registered, so that Big Brother can send you the bill.

Police in London estimate that up to 20% of the vehicles on the capital's roads are untaxed or uninsured, or both, at any one time. These drivers rack up tickets, congestion charges and fines for about a year, and then simply sell the car on for cash before the system catches them up. It's only at the enforcement stage (when crew-cut sporting men in bomber jackets are dispatched to your home at dawn) that these fines become in any way "real". To identify drivers of such cars or bikes costs a fortune in investigative time and effort, which a system designed to simple fire out computerised fines doesn't have the facilities to undertake. So it takes about a year for the police to be called in (and that only happens when a vehicle has racked up a huge number of fines). Offenders know this, thus the timing of their sale of the vehicle.

Met traffic officers have blamed the rise in speed cameras for the rocketing numbers of illegal cars, claiming that the drivers know that thanks to the vastly lower number of traffic police out there the chances of being stopped are slim.

Of course the real pain in this comes when one of these drivers is involved in a crash; in which case the injured party, despite paying huge sums in tax, insurance and so on, can kiss goodbye to what they're due. In the case of seriously injured victims this can be a life-changing issue.

So - what we know about road pricing is this: if you tax your bike or car, pay insurance, spend money to get it through the MOT and register it legally, it will cost you a lot of money. If you don't, it will cost you nothing.

Imagine the cost of running a car or bike legally for six months in a road-pricing environment, especially with the odd parking fine or speed camera infringement thrown in. Then decide whether the courts are likely to impose fines of similar levels on people who can show they have low income on the thousand-to-one chance they are actually caught.

Exactly - if you strip out the moral argument it just makes sense to take the risk; it'll never cost you as much even if they do get you, which they probably won't because a speed camera may know you're speeding, but it has no idea who you are.

So road-pricing will become the latest in a long line of legislation which whacks the responsible driver in the wallet again and again, and gives the irresponsible driver yet another free pass; in fact it will become yet another incentive to break the law which means a loss of income for the Government for every illegal car not paying its "pay-per-mile" fees whilst filling up on cheaper fuel - so the legal driver will have to subsidise the illegal driver even more.

I'm guessing they didn't think of this, or that if they did they don't care. After all, a cash-cow is a cash-cow and why let morality and fairness get in the way?

"Use the Force Luke, and watch out for that Smart Car."

2010-04-27T10:43:00.000+01:00

A few days ago I found myself having a cup of tea with a police motorcyclist one morning in a bike shop run by a mutual friend. Pretty much every biker I know respects bike cops for, if nothing else, their undoubted riding ability, me included; so I cheekily asked for some advice. What I got back surprised me. He asked me how long I'd been on the road, in a car and/or on a bike. Twenty years or so, I told him. "Absolutely trust your prejudices - all of them," he said firmly. He explained that over time we build up what some people might choose to call a sixth sense when driving. It applies to drivers as much as riders, but is more acute in motorcyclists and cyclists as they need to be more aware of what's around them and tend to display higher levels of concentration than car drivers. Sometimes it's obvious, he explained. For example, you know that a souped-up and lowered Japanese hatchback with dark windows, a huge exhaust and booming bass is likely to be driven aggressively and fast. But, he insisted, it's the subtle voices you need to listen out for hardest. These instincts, he said, are there to deal with threats for you. This was something everyone has to one degree or another and isn't limited to matters of driving. Police officers have them where people are concerned; the infamous "copper's hunch" about someone is nothing of the sort but an assimilation of data built up over years of experience. Soldiers just "knowing" someone's "in the trees" - same thing. He described it as "that moment when something happens and you say 'I KNEW he was going to do that!' - and you say that because you really did know." He supped his tea in an Obe-Wan Kenobish fashion. "It's about instinct," said PC Freud (NB: this is a weak gag; to the best of my knowledge the officer in question was not called Freud and, if he was, my apologies for probably getting him sacked); "Expensive but under-powered cars are often driven really badly." I thought about this but wasn't convinced I "knew" it. The PC smiled. "If you've paid twenty-five grand for a fairly rubbish 1.6 3-Series, having swallowed all the motorsport and Ultimate Driver's Car bullshit, you tend to need to compensate - to prove to yourself that you really have bought a sports car, not a shopping trolley, and you're not a prat. So you thrash it. If you're trundling along in an 450bhp M3, you probably don't have anything to prove to yourself, or anyone else. Doesn't mean M3s are never driven badly, but generally they're driven fast when the conditions allow, not thrashed to within an inch of their lives when they don't - it's occasional, not constant." Thinking about my experiences on the road, I began to think I did know this after all. Or at least I thought I did. Other pearls of wisdom flowed: your instinct that white van man will weave out to see what's holding him up an slow traffic, despite not having the power to overtake anything - spot on; he's probably on a clock and is infuriated that he can't affect the traffic, but at least knowing what the hold-up is gives him a sense of having done something. Green cars are often badly driven, the logic being that if you're happy to run about in something as awful as a Prius you're probably not that interested in driving for the sake of it - it's just a tool - and consequently you don't much think about your driving skills and drills. There were others too. We'd moved outside to have a smoke by this point, when Freud declared: "If you think about instances of bad driving, when you've had to compensate for someone, you can usually trace back the cause and learn to anticipate it in future - in fact you already do." Do I? "Sure - what do you do when you're following a little old Honda driven by an old fella into a set of s-bends?". I slow down and give him room, I suppose. "Exactly. And you do that because you know, although you haven't really thought about it, that he'll do all his braking in the bends, not on the approach to them." We parted with him saying the best ways to stay alive were "to respectfully listen to your inner voice, and not ride like a prat, but not in that order." I thought about this conversation later in the day, and I've been trying to see if it works. I'm beginning to think he's right. Of course there are always exceptions and I guess remembering that's important too, but my social prejudices about people based on what they drive have, during my experiment this week, been borne out pretty often (I'm thinking about YOU hugely fat woman in Smart Car on the A40 this morning who doesn't look in her inside mirror before changing lanes). Of course the worrying thing about all of this is, if our bike cop friend is right, what do people's little voices say about me on the road? Not sure I want to go there...

The Road To Nowhere

2010-04-23T11:32:00.000+01:00

The pleasure of riding a bike is mostly just that, the riding. Yet it's also true that for a lot of us the journey itself is important, the pleasure in arriving in new places and the sense of exploration you get from a bike even when you haven't really gone very far, a sense that cars just don't provide. Which led me to think this week about why I was so disappointed at the half-way point of quite a long ride. I arrived in a market town, at the end of a great road, full of thoughts about parking up and having a mooch about, a nice cuppa, and a sit in the sun...exploring. Yet when I finally found somewhere to park and looked about me it was like I'd not travelled a single mile from the place I'd left. Scores of estate agents, a couple of take-aways, a newsagent and then the ubiquitous parade of Boots, Next, Specsavers, Costa Coffee, MacDonald's et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseaum. I was reminded of lines written by the late, and much missed, Douglas Adams: "The trouble with most forms of transport [he thought] is basically that not one of them is worth all the bother.... the disadvantages involved in pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another – particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e. covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish." Typically beautifully put. If Adams had been a motorcyclist he might have added a litany about speed cameras, pot-holes, drain covers, diesel, paint, mad drivers and endless, endless queues of traffic. As I drank my cup of tea (a tea-bag plonked into some hot water by an equally ubiquitous, monosyllabic and miserable Eastern European) I thought about what it might be like for riders elsewhere. An one-day exploring trip on the bike in Montana, or California, southern France, northern Italy, most of Spain or, pretty much, anywhere, still has that sense of adventure surely? Sure, we can do it here, with enough luggage and enough time to get out into the less populated parts of the UK (although even here there's still no avoiding traffic, speed cameras, petty officialdom and so on), but those are full-on "trips" - not ride-outs. Partly it's a function of size. We are, after all, a small island off France when all's said and done, but more than that it's a function of a searing lack of ambition amongst people who seem happy to see the place where they live morphed into an identi-kit version of everywhere else. These are almost like prefabricated towns, almost indistinguishable from one another, dropped into the landscape to form domiciles for an emotionally-neutered populous whose only thrill is trying to cut 30 seconds off their morning commute. Unfair? Maybe. But regardless it's left me determined to get in a couple of proper long trips this year if I can negotiate them with my non-pillion-riding wife. It's not so much that I crave the open road, I can find that, I want to turn off the road to nowhere.

To answer Jonathan's question...

2010-04-12T15:30:00.000+01:00

Let me paint you a brief picture. There you are, humming along at about 70mph on a long, wide, dry A-road at about 8am in the sunshine. You have your massive three-bulb halogen headlight headlight on, visibility is excellent. You're having a nice ride, and enjoying yourself, and although you're speeding a little in this 60mph limit the conditions, your intimate knowledge of this road and your attentive riding don't make that an obvious danger. About 500 yards down the road, on the left, you see a junction. You check your mirror, do a quick "life-saver" glance over your right shoulder, and move out to the extreme right of your lane, by the white lines, for a better view. Sure enough, as you get closer a car appears in the junction, a white Micra, single occupant. There's nothing ahead of you, and nothing coming the other way. You glance in the mirrors, both of them, again, shift down to 4th gear in case you need to move suddenly, dropping your speed, assess the road for pot-holes, paint, drain covers or diesel, squeeze the tank a little with your knees and double check there are no other turnings onto the road on the right, in case you need that area as an exit point. All this takes a second or so and comes completely naturally. You do it a hundred times a day. You're not an advanced motorcyclist, you're just a motorcyclist. You're closing in now on the junction. You can see that the driver is a woman, blonde, maybe early 40s. She is looking to her left, down the road she wishes to drive down, the road you're on. Now she looks right, straight at you. She's smoking a cigarette, held on the wheel in her left hand. There's something hanging from her rear-view mirror. The car could do with a clean. She's still looking at you. You're about 100 yards away now. She's still looking at you. Somewhere, in the recesses of your mind, your sixth sense lets off a flare. Adrenaline is pumped. Not sure why. Oh, yes, that's why...she's pulling out to turn left. She's now stopped looking at you. If you did nothing, how long would you have before you smashed into the rear three-quarter panel of her car? Hard to say. Perhaps a second and a half. You don't do nothing, though, you do a million calculations in a fraction of a second to decide whether to move out right and go around her, risking coming off, or hit the anchors, risking skidding. You've prepared the ground, mentally and physically, so your on-board mental bookmaker gives you better odds on option one. You keep the throttle steady, not wanting any big changes of speed on the slippery paint that makes up those handy white lines, glace at your mirror (no time for another life-saver) counter-steer with the right bar, shift your body weight forward and right and push down with the right footpeg. The bike moves quickly out, skitting a little on the paint as you cross the white lines, slip past the back of her car (which is now doing all of 15 mph) and now you're on the wrong side of the road. Checks, reverse procedure, back in, this time in front of her. Gentle braking, allowing her to get closer behind. She looks genuinely surprised you're there. "How could you not have seen me?", you're thinking. Then you start to get angry. Either she saw you and didn't care, or she wasn't looking properly. Either way she could have killed you. On a sodden road you could well still be bouncing along minus bike. What gives her the right? You think about your young son, and wonder why this idiot has the right to take his father away. You're mighty tempted to wait until the roundabout you know is up ahead and pull her out and..... But you don't. You take a breath. You try to dispel the adrenaline as fast as possible because you don't need it now, it'll be more of a danger than a help. You remind yourself that you did everything right, which is what got you through, and try to calm down. Angry riders are rarely good riders. At the roundabout there's a queue of traffic. You're going right, so you're in that lane as the road divides. You can't squeeze through the middle or round the council lorry, so you wait. And then the Micra appears to your left. Beside you. You stare at the driver. She's smoking. There's a mobile phone laying on the dash, obscuring the instruments. The thing hanging from the mirror is a bag of something. She's oblivious. You pop open the flip-front of your visor and gesture. Your sudden plan is to politely shame her into realising she could have killed a young father in the hope she'll think twice next time. You gesture again, and the window comes down. "Hey, back there. Did you not see me?" you begin. "I'm..." A dismissive wave of the hand, and the words "Oh fuck off." And up comes the window. And off goes the traffic. You're surprised to be a little stunned. She really doesn't give one. She knew what she'd done, and she doesn't care. You feel a bit silly. And as you ride off you think about how carefully you have to ride to compensate for people like her. How much training you have to do. How much practice. How hard you have to work just to ensure that these people don't stop you coming home safe (quite aside from the diesel slicks from over-filling trucks and busses, the endless drain covers which act like ice stuck in the middle of most bends, the pot-holes, the broken roads and a thousand other things). And you get a little angry again. And that, ladies and gents, to answer a question my friend Jonathan asked on Sunday, is why bikers can be "a little chippy".

Hooligan In - Hooligan Out

2010-04-01T11:53:00.000+01:00

The psychology of riding is an odd thing. I'm in my late 30s, a father, and my days of haring about on an RD350 YPVS are almost 20 years behind me. I have a very, very fast motorcycle, and I occasionally go fast, but when I do I do it as safely as possible, mitigating the risks and doing what I can to get home to the family in one piece. I don't want the pain, the financial hit or the matrimonial issues which would result from crashing. I'm generally slow, safe (I hope) and sensible. Generally. However, this morning I have been howling about like an absolute lunatic; popping little wheelies, sliding the back deliberately, blatting through traffic like Nori Haga (in my head) and revving the nuts off the bike left right and centre and ensuring I'm always a gear down on where I should be to maximise popping and banging on the over-run. This is surprising as I'm an average rider at best and I can't do wheelies or slides, and am terrified of trying. It turns out to be quite easy. There's a reason for all this. I dropped my uprated K1200S (1157cc, 227kg, 178.8bhp) into the dealer this morning for a major service. They gave me a courtesy bike, an F800R (798cc, 177kg, 78bhp). It was painted what I think must be called "Lairy Orange" with an Akropovic can on its little twin. It's just incredible. Feels lighter than a 250 motocrosser (but isn't), comfy as you like, you can climb all over it in the bends and it's about eight inches long. It's so easy to ride it feels like a scooter to me, and sounds like one too. Okay, it's an 800 twin with a trick can, but compared to my monster engine running through a Remus race pipe, it's almost funny. It sounds like my toddler blowing a raspberry. As a consequence I was not in the slightest bit intimidated by it and, on my six mile run from the dealership to a nearby town where I had a 9am meeting, I was popping the front up out of corners like a hoody on a stolen Vespa. Honestly, I went from senior professional and family man to ASBO candidate in about five minutes. Moreover, the bike clearly loves it. If it could speak it would have been shouting "Yeah! Yeah! Get air over the bridge! Try a stoppie - you won't crash!", probably adding "That Volvo's unlocked - let's nick it!" in the same tone. I know it's a BMW, and I know they sell these things to people on the back of the incredible Chris Pfiffer's antics - here - but whoever designed it has got it just right. I'm not good enough to tell you whether it really is a great hooligan machine, technically, but I can tell you how it makes you feel and ride. Put it this way, I'm going to swing past the tattoo parlour near the office on the way to lunch....

Customer Service (Slight Return)

2010-03-29T16:27:00.001+01:00

A small addendum to my post on Guzzi ownership, with the BMW experience so far. I wanted to do the deal on the K12 on Saturday, so as to give myself a day or so to ride about at my own pace before I commuted through the traffic on it for the first time this morning - not least as it has been tipping down here for days and is forecast to continue. The dealer couldn't get the bike serviced and through its however-many-point approved-used checks by then. However, he suggested they MOT it and run a quick safety check for the important stuff, and then do the rest later in the week (offering, by the way, to come and pick it up, drop off a loan bike and then bring it back it I wanted - I didn't, but appreciated the offer). So that's what we did. When I arrived on Saturday they apologised and said that the V5 hadn't arrived in the post from the previous owner (to whom they sold the bike new), so they hadn't been able to tax it. Obviously an untaxed bike isn't road legal, so my insurance would be invalid. However, they'd considered this and promptly provided me with a trade plate so I could ride on their insurance (without the usual £500 excess) until the V5 showed up. It arrived today, and they sent a guy in a car to my office to pick up the MOT certificate so they could get it taxed this afternoon and I could drop in on my way home to pick up the disc and drop off their plate. All of this on a second hand bike which may be expensive for me, but is comparative peanuts for them. So; early days but so far the difference in service equates to the width of the Grand Canyon...

The early thoughts of a frightened/happy/frightened/happy man

2010-03-28T13:29:00.000+01:00

Yesterday morning I owned a 105bhp Guzzi Stelvio. It moved along fine, blatting cars in its laid-back way, and whilst it was a little uncertain in the wet it was also predicable the rest of the time and generally keen to thump along at about 60/70mph rather than exert itself. Like me it was a tad overweight and increasingly keen to sit about in its pants rather than do anything taxing. Later yesterday morning I owned a 165bhp BMW K1200S with a Remus race pipe on knocking out a grand total of 178.8bhp. Yesterday lunchtime I had dribble on my collar. Early thoughts: the Beemer is a stunning bike in grey and, whilst the big Remus pipe looks like the K12's been modified by a chav whilst it was sleeping, I'll take that for the noise which is, frankly, staggering. Mine has ABS, the ESA and various other bits (thanks vastly rich previous owner who did a total of 2100 miles from new on it in four years - seriously). It's already clear to me that even if I come to regard it as the best bike I've ever owned (and, on paper, it is), it will never have that Guzzi x-factor (see other posts). Like a girlfriend who was staggering in bed but would occasionally need talking down off a ledge, life with a Guzzi is never dull. But there's something about this thing. It's stunning, it's purposeful, it's got a back tyre wider than Yorkshire and I just want to look at it, then ride it, then look at it some more, then do both at the same time. I think we're going to get on very well indeed. But... I need to try to sort my head out with the Beemer before I hurt myself. Yesterday's ride, day one of ownership, was all over Oxfordshire where I live. Fast, duelled A-roads, sweeping single carriageway A-roads, snaking B-roads. Lots of potholes, endless awful surfaces, mud, shit and the rest of what you get on the roads for living somewhere this lovely. During the ride the roads were wet or damp, it was windy on the tops of the hills and on three occasions it absolutely pelted down. And yet I was going a deal faster than usual. Of course the bike's massively powerful, but I was deliberately trying to tip-toe about and I am, by nature, a careful and slower rider (lack of ability combined with being a father these days). Yet on the broken and pot marked A316, from Chipping Norton to Burford, in a deluge of rain, I glanced at the speedo and found myself sweeping from bend to bend at around 60mph. Three things about this alarm me: 1. I'd have been doing 40 on the Guzzi 2. I thought I was doing 40. 3. I have low confidence in bends in the wet, but was hugely enjoying this ride. That means either the bike's so good that I can relax or it just FEELS that good and I'm going to go through a hedge. It's not the speed when you open it up. I've got nowhere near putting the throttle on the stop and I have no intention of doing so any time soon. Even gently rolling it on, it's amazing, making you re-evaluate your overtaking style to deal with the gap you'll need 300 yards down the road. It's in the bends. It just turns in, goes where you put it, doesn't drift out and is almost shouting "Come on!" in your ear as soon as you've seen the exit point. I know how good a rider I am, which isn't very, so that means it's trying to get me to catch it up. If you wanted to think about it positively, it's teaching me. But that also means that I am going to need to keep a hawk eye on my confidence levels because right now they feel like they're going up far too fast, like my speedo. Is this normal when you get off a plodder and onto something this well built? I don't know. It's a first for me, but I aim to be very careful in finding out. Advice gratefully received.