SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

[High_Side]

congrats on the new ride sv. may it do ya well!

We won't be able to call him SV anymore. What shall we call him?

Big Bad Wolf ?

Dat Wolf?
Congrats on the new ride!

[Shorts]

Nice bike!

[noodlenoggin]

We won't be able to call him SV anymore. What shall we call him?

Tri-Wolf?
SV-Tona?

AUTHOR: Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
QUOTATION: Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,
Pursue the triumph and partake the gale?

[jstark47]

How do you put a price tag on fun, adventure, excitement, camaraderie, thrills, (no spills please), satisfaction, joy, comfort, power to spare, yellow, ....(British made)

Y'know, Richard, for someone who has herself ridden the Same Old Bike for at least Two Whole Years, Blues is certainly unscrupulous about throwing temptation in your path. Turnabout is fair play, I should think!

I believe she favors cruisers......I've read her comment favorably about Victorys recently.

[dr_bar]

How do you put a price tag on fun, adventure, excitement, camaraderie, thrills, (no spills please), satisfaction, joy, comfort, power to spare, yellow, ....(British made)

Y'know, Richard, for someone who has herself ridden the Same Old Bike for at least Two Whole Years, Blues is certainly unscrupulous about throwing temptation in your path. Turnabout is fair play, I should think!

I believe she favors cruisers......I've read her comment favorably about Victorys recently.

There was this really nice roadstar....

[blues2cruise]

How do you put a price tag on fun, adventure, excitement, camaraderie, thrills, (no spills please), satisfaction, joy, comfort, power to spare, yellow, ....(British made)

Y'know, Richard, for someone who has herself ridden the Same Old Bike for at least Two Whole Years, Blues is certainly unscrupulous about throwing temptation in your path. Turnabout is fair play, I should think!

I believe she favors cruisers......I've read her comment favorably about Victorys recently.

Ah, but in all fairness, I was a learner on this bike. You certainly wouldn't expect a novice to move up into a higher powered, bigger, heavier and wa-a-a-a-y-y-y-y more expensive machine until having some experience would you?

Besides I spent my money for my holiday.....

[sv-wolf]

Monday 30 October 2006

Saturday was a strange day, a good day but a strange one. Though, if I think about it, it wasn’t the day that was strange. It was me. I was in a strange and eruptive state of mind. Buying the new bike has thrown me into an almost constant and delirious state of excitement. I feel like I am fifteen again – though part of me is resisting it. Complicated or what! My world has suddenly gone all fluffy and sexy round the edges and taken over my entire mental and emotional state – OK call it an obsession. Other important things in my life have been squeezed out of the frame (temporarily, I hope) and have lost much of their significance. But damn! I feel good. And strange. In a day or two I will crash back down to a different, more mundane kind of ‘world’ and wonder what the hell had hit me (and my bank balance).

Buying the Daytona has brought home to me all over again, that bikes are not like other consumer items. They arouse personal issues of freedom and identity, masculinity and power, physicality and excitement, which things like fridges or CDs miss completely. And these associations don’t seem to go away as I get older. Like most 50 year olds I talk to, I still feel like I’m fifteen or twenty inside. I just ache a bit more, that’s all.

I mean, how come, just when I was beginning to think that riding the SV had settled down into just one more thing that I do, that I should suddenly and unexpectedly get the hots for a new bike and find my life turned upside down? How come all of this self-identity stuff should come bursting up to the surface again just as fresh and confusing as it did when I was a kid and still wet behind the ears?

I’ve tried to explain my feeling about bikes to non-bikers but the only words I can find to describe the experience always fall flat and fail to translate into non-bike language. Not all bikers understand it either. And parts of me find it just as incomprehensible as they do. When you try to explain to non-bikers about the specific kind of pleasure and excitement you get from a big bike, they will blank you and try to laugh it off, often in a dismissive way. It is often as though you had hit upon some deep seated fear or anxiety in them. And that I understand.

And in a different frame of mind I might have some sympathy for their point of view. There are many more significant things in life to think about, many that are more profoundly fulfilling or are more consequential but there is nothing that sends the mercury racing up the barometer like a good day out on a fast bike – not for me, anyhow. In a different frame of mind, maybe! But right at this minute the excitement of buying the Daytona is winging its way through my arteries and monopolising my entire nervous system. .

I feel slightly embarrassed to be blogging about this internal stuff, not because I’m afraid of how I feel these days or of revealing it to other people. As I get older I have fewer inhibitions, not more, and I’m less concerned about what people think of me. No, I’m slightly embarrassed because I feel just a little out of control with it and I am unsure where it is all taking me. And that, funnily enough is exactly the particular attraction of big bikes. You can learn to control them, but their power and grunt are always going to be bigger than anything you possess within your own body. You will always live in awe of them. And to gain control of what you are in awe of is just – awesome.

Bikers talk of the freedom of biking but I think ‘freedom’ is a rough and ready kind of word. It expresses a lot of very different and very complicated ideas and experiences. Among other things, it implies a particular kind of freedom that I am interested in. It’s the freedom from delusion and the freedom from fear. (And I suspect these things are closely related.)

Now, even in my middle-age, I can get really excited throwing a bike around a corner or gunning it up the road. Like sex, riding is about being in touch with something that is more primitive than the socialised self that we all develop and the social rules that eventually become part of who we are. One thing that, for me, links sex and riding a bike is a feeling of self-abandonment, a giving in to something inside that is genuinely and essentially me but not the ‘me’ that goes about my daily life, planning, defending, angsting, rationalising, arguing or saying ‘no’.

You can’t say ‘no’ too often on a bike. If you say ‘no,’ at the wrong moment you will end up in the hedge on the other side of the bend. A bike is the ultimate ‘yes’ machine. Paradoxically, we control our bikes only by accepting their rules and abandoning our own. Control and submission on a bike go hand in hand. As far as my understanding can grasp this matter, it is that exact combination of those things, control and submission together, that makes the experience of riding a bike so exhilarating.

Or perhaps that's not quite right. The play off of power and submission is true of everything we do, isn't it? We often speak of our bodies as though they belonged to us, but I suspect the truth is that we really belong to our bodies. We have control because we have this mind that gives us the impression, at least, that we are an independent centre of consciousness and can make decisions. But we also have this body which we didn't create, don't really understand and which governs us with its own laws and demands.

So I guess the particular excitement that we experience when we ride comes about because, on a bike, the stakes are so significantly raised and because the play off is so immediate. On a bike, the experience of power and force and speed and the knowledge of immediate consequence is heightened immeasurably. The play off between control and submission on a bike brings a particular kind of thrill because what you are controlling and what you are submitting to is just so much bigger than you are yourself in a very real and physical way. And there is no time to think about this. On a bike, you really are committed.

When we speak of being committed in the corner, for instance, the word ‘committed’ refers to the forces that we have set in motion and which we now have little choice but to obey if we want to stay alive. It is also code for our personal act of submission, the acceptance of powerlessness, the dissolution of self and the walking away from fear. Our commitment is almost total: to the forces around us, to risk, to the moment, to the body and to the experience itself. Ultimately, it is an act of faith in the bike. And like any act of faith or like sexual experience, riding your bike to your limit is a game of self-abandonment that you play for high stakes.

And the payoff of all this is that as soon as you abandon your own power to that of the bike, the bike's power becomes yours, the experience becomes total and the buzz is immense.

Ahem!

I spent Saturday morning sorting out all those things that go with buying a new bike. Working out the best way to finance it. Getting insurance quotes. Thinking about touring gear. Getting the best deal on an alarm. I have the SV insured with H & R, a Scottish firm based near Aberdeen. When I rang around last year they gave me a good quote. It wasn’t the lowest one I had, but it was pretty good. I went with them again partly because they already had all my details at the time when I was up to my neck in other things and didn’t want to have to go about getting all the information together again. And I went with them partly because they have always been very clear and informative about their policies and volunteered information that I found useful.

After all that was done, I got out the SV and rode her up to Birmingham to the International Motorcycle and Scooter Show at the NEC. It was a good show this year, much better than last year. I had intended to get there by taking the country roads out to Dunstable and then travelling up the A5, but I was late ( ), so just went straight up the M1/M6/M45 instead. Boring but quick. (I swear I can feel Motorways squaring off my tyres as I ride).

I did intend to buy one thing, a good back protector. I’ve never worn one (apart from the one fitted into my jacket), and always thought I should.

I sat on a Rocket III and had a species of vertigo, just seeing that massive tank expanding into infinity in front of me. I just couldn’t get my mind around this bike. I sat on a couple of Gixxers. I admired the new Tiger. I talked to the EnduroIndia guys for a while on their stand (it gets bigger every year. They are now doing an EnduroItaly as well as an EnduroIndia and an EnduroAfrica), I talked to the Ron Haslam racing school about getting some track tuition next year. I think I might just go for that. They provide the bike and take you out in pairs. I would probably learn a lot more from that than just haring around on a track day with a load of other guys including a fair few nutters. I talked to Nick Sanders again. This guy is truly nuts. Totally chaotic. I listened to a talk on road safety but Jamie Witham. I avoided Charlie Boorman. I gazed lovingly at a Royal Enfield Constellation – one of the most beautiful bikes ever made. I had my ear bent informatively by a Vincent addict. I talked to a New Zealand travel company who arrange flights and hire you a VFR when you get there. I bought the Knox back protector. And I bought another Arai Helmet. (Did I say that?) Yep, I bought yet another lid; the one I have been drooling over in the Luton Hein Gericke Shop for the last year. The black and white and silver one with the big spangly stars. It’s a four hundred quid lid and it was on sale at the exhibition at a very big discount. How could I resist? I will think of it as a late birthday present to me (thanks for that idea, guys). And as an investment in my future wellbeing.

The ride home from the NEC in the dark was brilliant. The motorways were flowing fast, and I had another guy tag on behind me for about two-thirds of the way home. I love that when it happens. The SV flew like a bird. I was in such a good mood to begin with and the brilliant ride made me feel even better. I never thought I would have such a good time motorway riding. But of course nothing goes on forever. Everything came jamming to a halt about five miles north of Luton. Not sure what the hold-up was but traffic slowed to about 10 mph. I filtered at about 20 mph through it for about fifteen minutes and then turned off early at the Luton North exit.

I wouldn't normally do that, becuase, to get home, I then have to plough through the heavy Luton traffic and run the gauntlet of Bury Park Main Road. Bury Park is a mainly Asian, mainly Muslim area of Luton – a great place to get a really good curry – but its commercial centre is always very lively at night with loads of traffic, most of which appears to be socialising among itself rather than driving purposefully in any obvious direction. but after such a good day, the congestion didn’t somehow seems so much of a grind as it usually does. I enjoyed the lively street scene and bobbed along as best as I could. After Luton it is only a short nine miles home. I got in at about nine o'clock, went to bed and got myself to sleep by counting yellow Datonas.

[roscowgo]

Heh. well spoken sv

[CNF2002]

Great thoughts. Its so wonderful that you are enjoying your hobby. There's nothing wrong with a little obsession! I bet you are having alot more fun than most 50 other year olds . With people living longer and longer, 50 is just the beginning!

[sv-wolf]

Tuesday 31st October 2006

I just can't stand the excitement. First the Daytona and now my motorcycle 'holiday'.

In two days time I start my ‘Four Corners’ ride, a sponsored motorcycle ride around the island of Great Britain to raise some more money for the EnduroIndia charities. People have pledged about £300 to sponsor me for it. I could have got more people on board I think, but I have been just so tired recently with all the other fundraising I have been doing.

The plan is to visit the cardinal points of the island, north, east, south and west. That means I’ll be visiting Ardnamurchan Point, in Scotland, GB’s most westerly point; Dunnet Head, its most northerly, also in Scotland (not far from John O’Groats); Lowestoft Ness, East Anglia, England, to the east and The Lizard, Cornwall, England to the south.

I had thought of including the geographical centre of the island as well, but when I looked it up it appears to be in the middle of a swamp. Might give that a miss.

Like most people, I always thought that Lands End in Cornwall was the most westerly point of Great Britain. If you look at an Ordnance Survey map and check it out on the National Grid, it appears to lie on a more westerly grid line than Ardnamurchan Point. That confused me for a minute or two until I remembered that the National Grid does not quite align with lines of longitude but is tilted slightly for convenience to align with the general axis of GB.

I’ve never been to Scotland before. That is an amazing admission for a Sassenach who loves mountains and wild scenery. I’m really looking forward to it. The west coast is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places on the planet. And it is very remote, unlike the human sardine can down here in Hertfordshire. It looks really wild. Once up into the Highlands of Scotland the roads thin out. Friends who go regularly tell me that even the main A roads often have no more than a single carriageway.

I’d originally planned to do this trip last August, but then another fundraising opportunity came up and I put it off. In total I’ve put it off five times now to make way for other fundraising ideas. According to conventional wisdom, it’s a bit late in the year for going up to Scotland, now. The chances are it will be a lot wetter and colder, but what the hell! At least there will be fewer mosquitoes and fewer tourists.

A couple of days ago Mike published a piece of news on the site. The DVLA (the British motor vehicle licensing authority) have just completed a survey among bikers to find the ten best biking roads in Britain. As it happens all but one of them would be very easy to incorporate into my route. I will get down and look carefully at this tomorrow and see if I can manage all ten. I'm a bit nervous about the Wrynose and Hardnott pass though, which I know. It would be a hell of a challenge on a motorcycle. It is an unclassified road, little more than a track. But it IS very beautiful.

I’m planning on camping mostly, though I have the opportunity to stay with friends for a couple of nights. In Scotland you can camp anywhere so I won’t need to find out-of-the-way places where farmers can’t find me if I want to sleep in the next morning. (Mind you, most places are 'out-of-the-way' in this part of the world.)

If I need a few additional comforts I will book in at a Youth Hostel or a B&B. I was surprised to find how many Youth Hostels are still open in Scotland at this time of year. The open ones are mostly in the larger cities in the southern half of the country, though. There are none at all up in the very North where I will be going, but I’ll only be there a couple of days, unless the weather is good and I feel like lingering. However, I do have to be back here in Hertfordshire for the 11th (To pick up the Daytona and keep an arrangement to go to the theatre with a friend.} I’ll then go south, down to the Lizard.

I’m also hoping to stop off with a friend in Hull whom I haven’t seen for 30 years and who, more than anyone, provoked me into buying my first bike.

I’ll leave Thursday afternoon or maybe early Friday morning, depending on how my packing goes. I’ll take a Dictaphone, a camera and a large notebook with me and put it all on the blog when I get back. If I can find cyber cafés on the way I might take some time off and blog it as I go along.