SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

[sv-wolf]

Friday May 20

It's a good day today. I'm leaving work early and riding up to Peterborough to the BMF (British Motorcycle Federation) show. I'm going up with other members of Stevenage and District Motorcycle Club and am looking forward to three days of lounging around, eating crappy mobile burgher bar food, and (with luck) witnessing one or two memorable incidents. I will probably also buy a load of bike stuff I don't really need and can't afford. I've resolved not to do that, but probably will, anyway. Restraint was never my strong point.

It's a straight ride up the A1 - not very exciting. But then, life is what you make it, it's a nice day and I'm in a good mood.

The show is the biggest in Europe and it's mostly outdoors. Fortunately, it usually has good weather.

And then...
OK. So it's not going too well! I meet up with the other guys at the Corey's Mill Roundabout to find I've got my wife's debit card in my pocket and the sixty quid I promised to get her for the weekend. So I dump my camping stuff in the van that is going up with the bikes and head off back home. Cheers guys. I'll catch up with you later.

My wife is glad to have her card back She also has a suggestion: that since I am now no longer in a rush to catch the van I can help her with the washing up. Her logic is impeccable, her eyes deeply appealing, and her implied threat impressive. How do women do that? I am an hour and a half late setting off. This means I am now going to hit the rush hour traffic.

Half way through the 70 mile journey to the showground the sky darkens and some pretty nasty looking black clouds creep over the sun. The world looks suddenly very dull and miserable. So, where'd my good mood go? And then (of course!) the clouds open and drop some extremely heavy, wet rain onto the earth and, more particularly, onto me. It's one hell of a downpour. And then it hails. (Hey, I thought this was May!).

And on top of all that, there's this bloody annoying rattle on the bike. It's getting louder and annoying me more. I can't figure it out and the service mechanics apparently can't hear it. My guess is, they've been riding too long without earplugs! Sometimes I think it must the be clutch, sometimes the gearbox, but it's new and it ain't going away. The bike has also suddenly developed low-frequency vibes and the engine seems to struggle more when I whip open the throttle. Maybe it is just the engine loosening up (it now has 11.5K miles on the clock). Trouble is, I don't have enough experience to tell. The SV has a reputation for vibeyness, but I've never felt anything like this till recently. Maybe it's just the engine mounting that needs tightening up. I don't trust my usual garage. I only noticed a couple of weeks after the last servce that they charged me for one plug. The bike is a V-twin. Who changes one plug except someone who thinks getting to the other one is too much trouble? Maybe the bike needs tuning.

I get too wet too quickly, so there is no point getting out the waterproofs. Wet leathers, yearrrgh! Good start to the weekend. And all the while there are blue skies sitting on the horizon - very nice to see but totally useless to me under all this black stuff. Still, the rain clears up before I hit the fast, eight lane stretch of Motorway just south of Peterborough, and I open her up. Adrenalin is the drug of choice now. That feeling (you know the one) starts down low and slides all the way up to my head. Rain forgotten. Yep... This is one of the many reasons I love my bike.

The other club members have already set up the club tent when I arrive. I pitch mine and settle down in the main tent for the main purpose of the weekend, which is to slob out, to have a laugh, and to indulge in whatever excesses appeal most.

We sit around the heater and listen to CDs: Sweet, Queen, Deep Purple and a load of other more recent stuff I've never heard of. These events, it must be said, are also educational.

Saturday May 21
After a fair start, it rains. No, that's wrong. It doesn't rain, it is a deluge. The sky is a giant cistern full of cold, heavy water which it now drops on everything. Within seconds the huge grassy site has become a quagmire. If we thought the weather yesterday was bad, this is ten times worse. I listen to the hail rattling off the bikes outside the tent and think of paintwork. A huge electric storm brews up and lights up the sky. Why do we have outdoor sites in this country? Why do we buy bikes with chains which have god knows how many moving parts none of which like water? These are mysteries which have no rational explanation.

The storm ends as quickly as it begins. Keyoke turns up at the stall to say hello. Apparently most of the East Midlands Totalmotorcycle Mob are down and camping out for the weekend.

I sneak £2.50 under the window of the 'Wall of Death' show. It's here every year, but I've never seen it before. It claims to be the last travelling 'Wall of Death' show in the country. Last year, under different managment, it had changed its name to 'Wall of Fear' claiming it had been forced into the change by some new nanny legislation which presumably wanted to protect the innocent public from appalling ideas such as 'death'. Apparently we are now allowed to be appalled again (rather than just 'frightened').

The show lasts a pretty perfunctory ten minutes, and demonstrates what nutters can do on bikes if they really put their minds to it. It still retains the raw feel of a 1960s sideshow with all the crude razamataz of the period and a beaten-up, rattley old wooden tub of a track which is probably original. I guess I'm quite impressed - by the noise, if nothing else.

Most of the club have a battle on the dodgems. This is a hoot, though the management don't appear best pleased. I think I'll sell my bike and buy a dodgem car.

In the evening we pay our fivers and trek through the gates into the camping area and make our way to the big marquee for the concert. We've missed the first band. But we get Mick Abrahams, a blues/rock guitarist (and sodding good with it) and a band called The Strangers who do a load of covers ending (of course) with 'Bat out of Hell'. And they're not half bad either.

This year the marquee has no central poles. This is probably deliberate management policy to prevent the traditional main entertainment of the evening taking place: semi-naked (or just plain naked) male bikers shinning up the poles to grab the top ring before presenting their backsides. I don't know why this is so unremittingly funny. It just is. It is also bloody dangerous. We do however get a few naked women sitting on their partners' shoulders. Some traditions must be observed

Sunday 22 May
Last day. The whole East Mids bunch turn up at the club tent. We decide to do the first UK Totalmotorcycle Rideout at the end of the year during the 'Tailender' which is another, smaller BMF show on the same site. We also help Keyoke to find a lid that will fit his magnificently proportioned bonce. Not an easy task, despite the number of traders selling off cheap helmets.

I go into a buying frenzy and end up with:
One camping gas burner in a carry case which I'm sure will come inm very useful (?)
One dark blue double bubble screen for my silver SV to replace the one I cracked while fitting it by overtightening the well nuts. (It looks so pretty)
Two helmets (don't laugh - one cost me £25, the other a fiver). I'm hoping one of them will fit my wife's son Danny who at the age of forty has suddenly become a wannabe biker and is angling for a pillion ride.
A Triumph Leather Jacket (Come on! It's a great jacket and only cost me £40) It's in preparation for when I can afford my next bike, which might just be a Sprint.
A Triumph Keyring (Don't ask me why - it was just there)
One tank bag It cost me a tenner, and had nothing worse than a slightly faulty zip. How could I resist?
One bad conscience and a headful of ideas about how I can break the news to my wife.

But I didn't buy that pair of oval Blue Flame bolt on cans I've been longing for. It was a close call - but I didn't. £320 seemed a teeny bit outside my price range. They will have to wait for a weaker moment.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[sv-wolf]

Monday 30 May

I went on a rideout to the New Forest with the club today. Nine bikes and eleven people went down. The New Forest is about 180 miles from here, so it was a long day. It was longer than planned, because we spent most of it getting lost.

The New Forest is a beautiful place, and it makes a great day out on a bike. The Forest is a world all to itself. It's mostly woodland with some open commons and it's dotted with small, very pretty, very English villages which nestle among the trees. Ponies and cattle wander in and out of the woodland, over the village greens and the commons, and across the roads, ignoring everybody. There are no fences here to restrain them. Light filters down through the leaves: tiny streams trickle through the villages and across the streets: away from the traffic there is little sound apart from birdsong; and nothing that happens here happens very fast.

Getting to the New Forest is a problem though - if you happen live here in Hertfordshire. Whenever you ride South, there is the problem of getting around London. It isn't easy unless you take the M25 motorway. For non-Brits, the M25 is the world's longest, least-loved, most congested and most boring ring road. It completely circles the outer fringes of London and it was already too small to cope with the quantity of traffic it carries by the time it was completed.

Someone once told me that there is a travel company in London which specialises in bringing coach parties of Germans out to the M25 to see it perform. I have no idea if this is true, but it wouldn't surprise me.

On Bank (Public) Holidays, like today, it is a nightmare - stuffed to the gunnels with near stationary traffic, all crawling along nose to tail. If we'd taken the M25 today, we would have had to filter all the way. My clutch hand feels painful just thinking about it.

So we planned an elaborate route along A and B roads out through Berkshire and Buckinghamshire and then on down to Hampshire. The trouble is, only one person knew the route, and as it turned out even he didn't know it that well, as he got us lost several times. Then we lost him - don't ask me how - and we had to find our own way down through Winchester and Romsey before finding him eating scones in a genteel tearoom on the edge of the forest.

On the way back things didn't get any better. We got accidentally separated into various groups. I had to hang back as the rattle on my bike had become so much worse I was afraid to ride over 80mph. Victor stayed with me all the way though in case anything happened. Good man, Victor. I got home very tired. We had set out at 8.00 am and we arrived home just after 8,00 pm. I like to be positive about most things. It was a good day.

Memo to me. I must get the bike sorted out this week. I might have to ride Sonny for a couple of days. Sonny is my Hyosung Comet GT125. A whole different world from the SV1000.

[Kawasaki]

Hey man, sounded like you had a great weekend, and today didn't seem all that bad either, congrats on the safe and fun journeys.

P.S. What kind of bike do you have (in your ava) I like it alot

[sv-wolf]

Tuesday 31st May

Confessions of a 53 year old teenage speed freak.

I work with a great bunch of people. We get along well together, have a laugh, and usually enjoy our daily 7 ½ hours cooped up in the office, but today is different: today, going into work fills me with a oily sense of horror. Partly this is because I’ve just had three great biking days and work is a poor follow-up.

Ever since I got back onto two wheels eighteen months ago, the world has slowly grown bike-shaped. By the age of 53, I thought, the time of consuming obsessions would be past. But apparently it doesn’t work like that, and on my bike I’m a bigger sensation junkie now than ever. Anything that separates me from my SV1000S for more than a couple of hours is an unwelcome intrusion in my life (my proper, bike-shaped life, that is). At work, I find myself suddenly having reasons to go and talk to someone in the office next door where I can gaze out of the window and see my silver SV parked in the courtyard below. Beautiful! Does anyone else have this gazing thing? It’s bloody worrying if you think about it.

But it’s not just that: there is another reason I’m feeling glum. Yesterday, the vibes and rattle on the SV got so much worse that now I’m afraid to ride her. So there she is sitting in my back garden, pretty as a picture, but maimed at heart and no instant remedies.

I'm out of bed, but even before I’m fully dressed I’m on the phone, ringing dealers to see if there is someone out there who can fix her for me. With the TT coming up, it’s a busy time of year for dealers – round about now it seems that every biker in this land is preparing to ride up to the Isle of Man and wants his bike tuned and in tip-top condition for the trip. No-one can look at the SV till next week. Eventually, I book her in with a dealer in Cambridge for Monday. That means seven days (at least) without her. The pain is too awful to contemplate!

As I ruminate on this sad situation and knock back three vitamin B tablets to deal with the depression that is already setting in, I gaze sightlessly out of my kitchen window into the garden and think about getting to work without the SV.

There are two ways I can do this. The first is to go by train. ‘…By train’ - as soon as this thought goes through my head (a depressingly dull thought, blurred at the edges) my little grey cells react and replace it with images of fried eggs and bacon, but not before the muscles in my neck and shoulders tighten noticeably. It's not just the idea of hurrying off to the station on foot (which is, after all, only two-minutes away) that is so depressing; it’s not the idea of standing on the platform shoulder-to-shoulder with dozens of grey-suited commuters either (the trains are frequent enough), or of perching on a greasy seat in a crowded and smelly carriage listening to the crass ring-tones of innumerable mobile phones (it’s only one stop down the line, fer chris’sake). It’s none of these things. No, this is an image thing. Giving up the freedom of my bike for the moronic conformity of an early morning train journey does not grab me by the short and curlies.

I drift off into my own world, and think about thrashing the bike down the Wymondley by-pass, screaming past the long rows of cars. The gloomy mood evaporates instantly and I'm overcome by a technicolour happiness.

Image is so powerful. I used to get contemptuous of Sunday bikers on their sportsbikes, togged up in baggy, colour-co-ordinated leathers with speed bumps on their backs. I smirked at their practiced, wide-legged stances in the car-park. It was all image. But image, is subtle and pervasive. Whatever thoughts you have about yourself (and like most people, I have plenty) they’re all image. If you’re human, you’re into image. There’s no escaping it.

So, the real rock bottom reason I don’t want to go to work by train is because I don’t want to see myself in the same frame as all those dull, company drones on the platform. Bikers are cool. They ride sexy, dangerous machines: commuters are empty, unfulfilled souls who get into petty squabbles about seating arrangements and complain about the times of trains (don’t they?). Wow! So now I know. I'm 53. going on 15.

OK, so no train ride. My eyes focus on the object that's standing on my lawn under a waterproof cover. It’s time to take the wraps off Sonny again.

Sonny is a bright sunshine-yellow Hyosung Comet GT125, and it has been sitting there, sadly neglected, for most of the winter, going quietly rusty under its plastic sheet and dirt-cheap finish. Sonny has a massive(-looking) V-twin engine and a huge tank, and manages to shoulder its 150kg dry weight through the traffic with impressive ease. Sonny, in fact, is a triumph of image over reality. At first sight, most people think it packs at least 650ccs. It's fun to watch their eyes widen as I fire it up, and they hear the purr of its neat little sewing-machine heart.

There still aren’t many Hyosung Comets about yet, so Sonny attracts a lot of attention. A year ago I rode Sonny out to a club bike-meet. Another guy from the club had arrived on his brand new Aprilia Tuono, and a third rode in on his gleaming new custom Speed Triple – the one with the matt-black frame. But there was no contest: Sonny cornered everyone’s attention. The other guys who were expecting to be the centre of everyone’s glowing attention looked thoroughly dejected. And who can blame them?

I hadn’t ridden Sonny for several months. Back in March this year, just before we set off for a week’s holiday, my wife suddenly had a fit of anxiety about leaving Sonny’s battery on the trickle charger. I tried to explain to her that the charger was like the cable television converter box (well, sort of – I was struggling for an analogy), it would only draw current as needed. She was not convinced. Now, my wife is not ignorant of technology: she doesn’t believe, like my mother, for instance, that if you leave the plugs out of their sockets overnight the electricity will leak out over the floor, but I could see right there and then that I wasn’t going to win this one. I unplugged the battery and, for some reason, put it back into the bike. And there it has stayed. I killed the last battery by neglect. I’m a lazy bugger really, and hadn't got round to putting it back on the charger. (In my defence, I did move the bike round a bit every week. I have this theory - I have no idea if it is true - that you should move bikes around if you’re not using them so that they don’t sit on the same bearings all winter.)

Sonny is a hoot. His big wallowy front end and remarkably sharp steering make him ideal for bimbling round the B roads at 40mph, or skimming round town. I used to ride it a lot, but with the SV pawing the earth next to it, there ain't much competition. The throaty roar of the SV vs the friendly chatter of the Comet? - you tell me?

Well, anyway, Sonny’s engine meows into life on the eleventh try. I leave it running for about ten minutes and go in to get breakfast. The Hyosung has one irritating characteristic. Unless you warm it up well and good, the engine often goes to sleep about five minutes after setting off. Power drops almost to nothing, usually after a short stop, and that usually means in the middle of a junction, which is embarrassing, if not downright dangerous. In winter time the carbs ice up as well and it can be a pig to get going.

But this morning, Sonny is up for anything, and apart from the gearbox which has gone a bit sticky over the winter, it behaves very well. On the way out of town I get stuck behind two sports cars. Sportscar owners are so careful about their vehicles. These two, one of them a red Toyota, negotiate the speed bumps across the road at about fifteen miles an hour. In her Peugeot, my wife takes the same speed bumps at about thirty, with total disregard for my spinal integrity and the suspension of the car. She has never been very patient with the finer details of life.

On the hill approaching the by-pass, Sonny winds up to a respectable sixty miles per hour. I play the gears and hold her open. On the by-pass itself I overtake the red Toyota at 72. Hey! Go for it Sonny. What a beast! That’s made my day. I can now contemplate work with slightly more ease.

Back in town we settle down to a comfortable 40m and I realise something for the first time. Riding Sonny at this speed, I'm having loads of fun and feel perfectly at ease. At the same speed, the SV would have been gnashing its teeth and spitting, begging me to let her go. There will always be something slightly frustrating about the SV, because I know that whatever it has got it will always make me want more. But I don’t want to think about that right now.

[Kawasaki]

WEll, that was quite long, but. you never told me what kind of bike you ride, like what company.. that red one..

[sv-wolf]

Hi Kwakman

Sorry to disappoint you, but the red avatar is just a stock image from Totalmotorcycle. Being technically incompetent myself, I'vde never found out how to crop a photo of my own bike to a size the site will accept.

BUT the Avatar is the Suzuki SV1000S (semi-faired version) It is different from my bike only in that mine is silver (now silver and dark blue with all the mods) and fully faired. Mine is the 2003 model. The 2005 model has a black frame and about 10 more bhp. It has a modified Suzuki TL engine in it. Brilliant!

[sv-wolf]

Thursday 2 June

I spoke to Simon today. Simon is the ex-Ducati engineer. He has agreed to take a look at my bike. Or rather, he want's to listen to it. Apparently, having listened to it he will tell me what the problem is and whether he can fix it - or whether the problem is 'terminal'.

He's heard that Suzuki have identified a problem with the camshaft tensioner on the rear cylinder, and that a lot of bikes develop this problem. That might be possible, the rattle part of it does sound like chain noise.

Drumwrecker says Simon always diagnoses by ear. I'm already impressed. I'm riding it over Saturday morning.

'Terminal' sounds worrying though. I was trying not to think about that possibility. But it's sounding pretty rough.

In the meantime, Sonny (yeah, I know!) my Hyosung 125 is picking up form after its winter retirement. Having a lot of fun on it.

[sv-wolf]

Friday 4th June

Well, Simon gave the SV the once over. He listened in with a screwdriver, one end pressed against various parts of the machine the other end at his ear just below his hearing aid. He also volunteered to change the brake fluid in the reservoirs. He walked around the bike, listened some more, leant it over on its stand as though it were a cardboard cutout and yanked at the wheels. His pronouncement: as far as he was concerned there was nothing wrong with the bike: wheels fine, suspension fine etc, etc.

So he took it out for a short ride (just up to fifty mph on the narrow country roads round here) and still couldn't find anything wrong. He didn't even hear the rattle which bothered me on the way over to see him. (Mind you, being a Ducati engineer, you wonder if he would hear a rattle if it were screaming in his ear!). By a process of elimination, he concluded that it had to be an engine problem. At least he didn't imply, like the dealer, that I was imagining things.

It's just bloody typical - like going to the doctor's. The moment you get there you start to feel suddenly better and all your symptoms disappear. He couldn't hear or feel a thing.

Simon was a really nice guy. Very funny. I also trust him in a way I don't trust my local Suzuki dealer. He didn't charge me for the check or for the brake fluid. 'Nah, this is just a Saturday afternoon social', he said, when I offered him cash for his time.

Funnily enough, on the way home the rattle WAS a lot quieter. I wonder if the change of fluid in the clutch reservoir made a difference. Damn! now I'm totally confused.

Still, Simon did give the thumbs up, and said I would do no damage riding the bike, and that it wasn't about to blow up. It feels great to be riding her again.

Monday 6th June

I've taken a day off work today to ride the SV over to Cambridge for a service. On the way over I get lost in the Cambridge one-way system. I hate that. I just HATE that!

The service is over 1000 miles overdue. Stupid. Last month, I looked in the service manual without my reading glasses to check when the next service was due and saw the number, 12,000. I thought that was miles. It turned out to be kilometers. Anyway, I'm not taking the bike to my usual dealer this time. even though they are just a couple of miles down the road from where I live. I'm not too happy with them.

I ask the Cambridge dealer's engineer to take the bike out for a ride to see if he can identify what's causing the rattle and the vibes. I''ve got to get this sorted. It is driving me nuts.



Tuesday 7th June

24 hours without the SV and I'm getting real bad withdrawal symptoms again. I feel like I'm turning uncomfortably into someone else. This is not good. The SV has got right inside and being without it hurts.

Having been used to hauling the thousand round corners, I'm zipping the 125 through the traffic like a breeze. I'm having a real load of fun here, but the 125 just isn't the SV.

Wednesday 8th June

I meant to get up at 6.30 this morning to go up to Cambridge to pick up the SV. I need it bad. But I was exhuasted and I overslept. I had to put off going up to Cambridge for a whole morning and afternoon - till I could get away from work at 4.00pm. Thank god for flexi-hours.

At lunchtime I nip over to the station to buy a train ticket to Cambridge. I put my debit card into the station's new card reader. It won't accept my PIN number. I do it again, it still won't accept it. I try a third time. No good - and it cancels my card! Now I can't use it to pay for the service. What the fu*k am I going to do now.

I storm off across the station booking area in a right two-and-six. At this point I realise I have left my shopping at the ticket office window. I walk back - and its gone!!!!! The guy at the counter says.' you mean a plastic Tesco's bag'. I say, 'yes.' He says, 'Oh, a woman came straight over after you left, picked it up and walked down onto the up platform.' I run down the steps after her, only to see her stepping onto a train and the doors closing after her. I am outraged. She has walked off with my lunch!!!!!!!! No money, no lunch - and I'm due back in the office in five minutes.

I get permission from my manager to go out again and get some money across the counter from the building society where I bank. Hnnnngrrrrrrrrrrh.

Four o'clock and off to Cambridge, arriving at five to five. I'm cutting it fine (the dealer closes at 5.30pm) so I get a taxi from the station. The taxi driver sees my helmet and wants to talk about gudgeon pins and sprockets and things.

The Cambridge dealer seems to have done a thorough service. He's changed the brake fluid again, among other things, but what the hell.

The mechanic has taken the bike out three times. He still can't feel the vibes and only heard the rattle briefly, so there is nothing he can do. I have to tell myself that I'm really not imagining this - Victor heard it too. I'm reluctant to pay for the engineer to crack open the engine at this stage, as Simon suggested. I'm looking at my bank balance. Not good!

On the way home I get the bike up to 95 mph. The vibes are just as bad as ever, but the rattle has subsided to a faint whisper - it's still there though, but perhaps I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't know what I was listening for. Maybe it really is something to do with the brake fluid.

I have to filter down the outside of a long, long line of rush hour traffic outside Baldock. There's roadworks here - they're building a new by-pass. It's a narrow road and I have to nip in and out carefully. One guy pulls out in front of me, and makes me swerve hard. Ar*ehole. He could only have done it deliberately.

Still, it's good to be riding the SV again.

[sv-wolf]

Sunday 12 June

Yay! Sunday! Rideout day. I stagger out of bed at 7.30 after a very late night and head off for Bikestop in Old Stevenage High Street, where we generally meet. There is a BSA show at Bildesborough Aquadrome on the way to Northampton. One of the guys wants to go and see it. The rest of us are too idle to think of anything else, so that is where we are going to go. The roads out to Northampton are brilliant though: fast, twisty A roads, a real joy to ride. There are quite a few military bases out that way. You always get good roads where there are military bases.

Fifteen bikes turn up, two of them belong to new members who I haven't seen before. We ride out through Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and into Northamptonshire. This is wide open countryside. The route takes us out across the low Bedfordshire plain and then into the gently undulating hills of Bucks and Northants. It is very green and leafy. Some of the villages like Turvey and Lavenham are picture-book pretty. Their houses are timbered and thatched or built of a heavy golden-coloured stone. The roads are relatively empty. They follow the gentle contours of the land, in large sweeping arcs, left, right, left. They dip in and out of woodland and snake through fields. This is a gret ride.

The Aquadrome is charging a fiver entrance fee. As few of us are really interested in spending the afternoon ogling BSAs there is a reluctance to pay out the money. The problem is, that the only cafe in the area is inside the gates. So someone finds a back way in.

Inside, it's steaming hot cups of tea and breakfast all round. Bacon, eggs, sausages, baked beans, black pudding (yeeergh!) and hash browns get consumed on the cafe verandah which overlooks the jet skiers strutting their stuff on one of the smaller lakes. The jet skis look a load of fun. They have really sharp handling. Another time, maybe...

I have to leave the others and return home early. Di has no-one to look after her this afternoon, so I need to get back. I enjoy riding with the club, but I enjoy riding by myself even more. I can go my own pace, cracking the bike open when I hit a nice open road, or slowing down to enjoy the countryside. The vibes on the bike are still there, but they don't seem to be so bad today. I could do without them, but the ride is not uncomfortable. At times the SV reverts to its more usual purr. Confusing.

I arrive home exhilirated. It's been a good day.

Tuesday 14th June

Di's foster daughter, Ann, who now lives in Belfast is staying with us for a couple of days with her daughter, Hermione ('Hatty'). I haven't seen Hatty for about five years. Hatty is now twelve and deeply into Star Wars and makeup - she's no longer a little pink princess who likes to wander about the house in fairy costumes magicking everything with her wand. And these days she doesn't listen (interminably) to the Spice Girls (thank god). At the moment she is deeply into a couple of Ulster-based punk bands.

Over lunch she asks shyly if she can have a ride on the bike. Her mum has pre-warned me that this request may be coming. We try her in a couple of bike helmets (amazing the stuff you can accumulate in a relatively short time) and find a Shoei which is a perfect fit. With the help of a couple of pairs of thick socks Di's walking boots go on very nicely. and we make up the rest of her gear from several layers of denim and an old leather jacket I had when I was in my teens. But she has to make do with outsize gloves.

We go through the rules, no jiggling arounjd on the back, no taking her feet off the pegs, no random leaning. She takes it in, giggling all the while. I'm more nervous than she is. I'll be carrying a precious cargo on the back of the bike, and her mother is looking on. We set off among a flurry of photographs (Ann confides in me that this will increase Hatty's status enormously when she gets back to school). We set off and take it easy for a couple of miles. I take her out on to the Codicote Road, a great twisty road well-known to local bikers.

There are some sharp bends on this road, but I don't intend to go too fast, because Hatty's never been on a bike before and I expect her to be nervous. Hah! It turns out that the little princess lives her young life on a slow burn and her nerves are as solid as a rock. We put on a bit of speed. I wait to feel her tense up behind me, but she stays perfectly relaxed. OK, if she likes it...

There are some really great bends coming up with good sightlines. There's no traffic so we go in fast and lean the bike over hard. Hatty doesn't even tighten her grip. We have a great ride. I whack open the throttle as we hit the motorway on the way home. Then it's some leafy B roads back to town. Hatty gets off the bike perfectly composed, but she is really pleased.

[Sev]

I just wanted to say I've really enjoyed reading your blog.