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Yess! This evening, I had my first ride since I got home from India almost a month ago. Bloody good ride too, but a bit scary. I was a little nervous at first, because my shoulder and ribs are still painful and I didn't want to have to do anything very suddenly that would wrench them. Luckily there were no nutters about on the roads tonight. It's Monday so the club were having their weekly social at a local pub. Tonight, they were meeting at 'The Goat' in Codicote. That's only about seven miles away from where I live - a good distance for a first experimental ride. And its a good biking road. I think I have extolled its virtues before.

The Goat has some quite good extractor fans so doesn't get too smokey That suits me fine. I can't wait until the whole country goes smoke free in three months time. It will revolutionise my social life. Di would have been throughly pissed off, since we had twenty years of me suddenly having wheezing attacks when we went out and having to rush out into the fresh air. Or we just didn't go out at all. Now that is all going to come to an end when she's no longer around to reap the benefits. I can imagine her reaction. But I can dream up a thousand ironies if I want to. It's not hard.

I was going to go out on the Triumph at first (get this guy and his 'stable' of bikes!!!) but the Triumph was still in the kitchen and the SV was blocking the way out. Worse still, the battery in the SV was dead. I'd expected it to be. I hadn't had time to take it out of the bike before I went to India. (Of course I leave everything to the last minute!) But I always keep a spare battery on charge. I needed to swap it over now. Trouble is, when the battery goes dead in the SV you can't turn the alarm off. So, if you try to disconnect the dead battery, the alarm goes wild and there is not a flying f**k you can do about it. In the dark, with a miserably inadequate torch and a semi-useless arm, I had a lot of trouble getting the terminals back on. It took ages before I could turn the alarm off - so I expect I p1ssed off more than one person in the neighbourhood tonight.

After, checking the tyre pressures etc, I eventually got the SV out onto the road - but then had to wheel it back again because there were unpleasant grinding noises coming from the back wheel. (Bearings? Poo!) I'll have to look at that tomorrow.

So, I got to ride out on the Triumph after all but only after I had nearly wrenched my shoulder from my arm trying to get it down the ramp which runs up to the back door and then trying to get it up onto the concrete after its back wheel had overrun and got stuck in a flowerbed.

I didn't get to the pub till after ten pm. And for those of you who don't know, most British pubs still shut at 11 pm. So it was a short but sweet evening out. It didn't matter anyway, since most of the guys I know had already gone home. But I still got to mouth off about India and how amazing it was to some blokes I vaguely knew. They were round a table stuck in a corner and so were a captive audience. I'd just begun to quieten down when one of them mentioned he owned a house in the South of France which he rents out to other bikers. Another said he was off to Spain next week end for the racing. That got me going again. I also learned that while I was away in India another club member, a former competition sprinter and a very experienced rider had binned his bike on the South Mimms roundabout when a biker had ridden straight out in front of him. He'd broken a collarbone.

It was very odd getting back on the bike tonight. Part of me was vaguely nervous about it, and part of me was perfectly confident. I hadn't been put off riding by my accident in India. It wasn't that (at least I have no reason to think so, but the unconscious mind is a funny thing), it was more to do with the fact that I was still feeling a bit wobbly and very unfit after having done very little but feel sorry for myself for the last month. In the event, it was fine. My biggest fear, that I would get confused about which side the gears were on (having ridden the back-to-front, upside-down Enfield for two weeks) didn't materialise.

But there was something else that I noticed. After a month of not riding I realised that I was beginning to feel like someone else entirely; somebody I used to be, oh... ages ago, before I took up bikes again; somebody who viewed the world from the perspective of a pedestrian and cyclist - slower, woollier, softer round the edges. Within minutes of getting back on the bike, I'd started to notice a change. I began to have a solid, much more physical sense of myself. I started to occupy a lot more space. My thoughts and perceptions began to coalesce around movement, not stillness. I had begun to adjust to the power and tempo of the bike. I was actually shocked at the difference it made.

When you ride a bike you get into a special kind of ego bubble . You start to feel special, a bit different from everyone else - drivers particularly. You get to feel like 'King of the Road' as Drumwrecker put it a bit more straightforwardly and honestly.

We had been talking recently about this very thing. There is a physiological aspect to riding. If you ride every day, and especially if you ride a sportsbike, you raise your blood adrenalin levels (I know I bloody well do!), and that must have a very significant effect on your general metabolism. When you have an adrenalin-soaked system everthing begins to happen more quickly, you become more alert and you want action.

Then there is a psychological element. On a sportsbike you are constantly testing yourself out (that was Drumwreckers point) constantly challenging yourself to ride better, faster, smoother. You make judgements all the time about yourself and your skills. You are in competition with yourself. (Sometimes you get into competition with the other traffic as well, but that is another thing and I shall keep quiet about that). You live on a sharper edge.

There is also image. Let's face it riding a litre sportsbike, you can't help feeling a little bit of a hero even if you keep telling yourself you are old enough to know better. OK so now I have fessed up.

But tonight I learned that, for me, there was more to it than all that. I suddenly understood that riding makes a significant difference to the way I think about myself. It changes my sense of identity. I noticed this years ago. But I was younger then. In the meantime I had come to believe it was just a passing phase. I'd assumed that, over time, I had absorbed and integrated bikes into the rest of my everyday life and somehow normalised them. I had hints to the contrary, but that's what I thought. I now realise that I had just forgotten what it had felt like to be without one. How can something dominate your life and your thinking so completely like this? It's not as though I am a total petrol head. I have a lot of other interests. I often think about other things. Getting up into the mountains, for instance, satisfies some deep thing inside me more than riding a bike. But whatever I'm doing, whatever I'm thinking about there will always come a moment when I know I just need to get on a bike. Is it some kind of addiction?

Whatever it is, after just one ride, I suddenly feel a lot more solidly planted again, more real, and a lot more energised. That can't be bad - can it?

Hey sv-wolf... a little belated welcome back just getting around to some catching up. Back to riding again at home and sounds like you are getting back to your ole self (that's good right? ) Take care.

I know it was juvenile, but looked at in another way it was one of life's riotously satisfying moments.

I'd arrived at work, a little late for a meeting, but in a good mood. I parked the Triumph in the courtyard and hurried up to the first floor, ripped off my rucksack and pulled out my work gear. I usually change out of my leathers in the disabled toilet near my office. It is quicker and easier than wandering through quarter of a mile of corridors to the shower room where I'm supposed to do things like that. The disabled toilet is never used. It is in the civic area of the building just outside the Council Chamber - the Mayor's pride and joy. I nipped out into the corridor carrying my work trousers and my shoes and surreptitiously disappeared into the toilet to change.

You know what it is like getting out of sweaty leathers, it took a couple of minutes of heaving and shoving. In that time I quietened down after my ride into work, picked up my bike gear, opened the door and...

It took a moment to register the truth of what I was seeing. There, lying on the carpet of the hallowed hallway, positioned right in front of the council chamber doors was... a pair of male underpants. It took another second for me to realise that they were mine! They were yesterday's dirty knickers. They must have got stuffed down the leg of my work trousers when I took them off the previous night and then fallen out into the corridor on my way to the loo. How long had they been there? It is almost inconceivable that in two minutes no-one had passed by in the busy corridor and seen them.

A brief knee-jerk moment of embarrassment was followed by a welling feeling of teenage glee at the thought of the Mayor and the rest of the political crew arriving for a council session to find a pair of officer's underpants on the thick piled carpet directly before the entrance to the holy of holies. It was a moment to savour - the 'holy of holies' defiled by the 'smelly of smellies'. It was an accident, of course, but no less a symbolic gesture for all that. Sometimes, it is not only a bike that can put a grin on your face.

I had a very good meeting that morning, even though it was chaired by my new manager who has already decided to try out her catlike-claws upon me.

I had needed a bit of a boost because it has been a strange couple of weeks. Mostly bikeless.

It goes like this.

Who was it who very carefully washed down both his bikes before going away to India but then forgot to oil the chain on the SV? And who was it who came home to find his chain all rusted up under the bike's raincover? Yes, you guessed it!

The SV had to stand outside while I was away 'cos I don't have a garage and there is only room for one bike in the house. (I must rearrange the furniture in the kitchen and make more space.) The chain wasn't just rusted, it was practically solid. How can a chain rust that quickly? When I tried to move the bike, huge crunching noises came from inside the gearbox.

With my bruised shoulder and dodgy ribs there wasn't much I could do about it when I first got back home. And anyway, in the meantime I still had the Triumph. Didn't I? Trouble was, the Triumph soon started behaving badly as well.(It's a new bike f'r godsake!) On the way home from work the engine started cutting out. In the six mile journey it must have cut out at least twelve times, once - the first time - at 70mph.

And not only that. The throttle wasn't responding properly and the gearbox was clunking. It had started to hint at something like that in the weeks before I flew out to India, but it had seemed to have settled down. Now it was doing it again, big time. ECU?

So back to the dealers it had to go. It was under warranty so it had to go back to a Triumph dealership. The nearest is 40 miles away. The place I bought it from is in Norfolk about a 70 mile journey, so I had to use my insurance rescue cover to get it there. Both dealers were very busy, but the Norfolk dealer could do it in a couple of weeks. That was the shorter option. Great! So it went to Norfolk, and I curled up in a little ball of misery.

No Triumph for two weeks. But at least there was the SV - if I could free the chain.

Out came the degreaser, a toothbrush, a large can of WD40 and a couple of pairs of pliers. Almost every link had rusted tight. It took two days out of my life freeing up that chain. It didn't need to be perfect. All I needed was to get it good enough to get me into another dealer six miles away. But it had tightened up so much that, apart from the links, I also needed to loosen it off before the bike would be safe to ride.

So, who was it who couldn't find his tool kit even after spending half a day turning the house upside down trying to find it? Yep, you guessed right again. And it was another couple of days before I could find someone to sell me a socket big enough to fit the back axle nut. And then I remembered that the toolkit had probably gone missing when I lost my tank bag at the Bulldog Bash (big biker party) last year. Who spent several days feeling foolish and frustrated?

So, where are we now? The SV got fixed up and is sounding better though not good. The engine has lost its tautness and I don't like the sound or feel of it. The dealer is trying to pursuade me to get it Power Commandered, which is a great idea but will set me back £400.00. The Daytona came back in four days, not two weeks - which was good. Except that all the dealer could find was that the clutch needed adjusting. Drumwrecker drove me up to Norfolk on the Saturday, I took it for a ride and all seemed fine, so I brought it home.

Very briefly both bikes seemed OK-ish, and I was happy-ish. Ho Hum!
Then the Triumph started losing oil. Every time I go to fire her up the oil light comes on and I stick another 1/3 of a litre of oil into her. Where is it going? This sounds' crazy - but I have no idea!!! There are no telltale clouds of smoke to show that it is being burned up. There are no leaks. Nothing! I suspect Triumph has engineered a wormhole and connected my sump directly to the Andromeda galaxy. There is probably a rapidly atomising pool of semi-synthetic engine oil spreading across the vasty regions of interstellar space right now as I type. I want it back!

Any suggestions gratefully recieved. I don't like it when the universe starts apparently disobeying physical laws. I guess the bike is going to have to go back to Norfolk.

So, all I have now to comfort me is the SV and the big clove of garlic that sits on my workdesk above my PC. The clove of garlic is to symbolically ward off my new manager in case she tries another sneaky manoeuvre on me. . Nobody knows why I have a clove of garlic on my desk. Especially not my new manager. It may not be 'professional' (Yah! Sucks!) - but it puts a smile on my face.

On Easter Bank holiday Monday last the club joined the Ace café’s Southend Shakedown, a mass rideout down to the East Coast seaside town. I was going to post some photographs but didn't get round to it at the time. It’s an annual event. I’ve blogged about it before in previous years. The Stevenage club does its own thing though. It makes its own way down to Southend a little earlier in the day than the majority of bikes to make sure of getting decent parking spaces. There are usually about 16,000 bikes there by mid-day, and despite police efforts to turn every tiny bit of level ground along the seafront into a bike parking area (car parking is banned for the day) there is never enough room.


The seafront at Southend on the day of the shakedown. A well-known yellow Daytona is in view!

The run down to Southend is fast but not very exciting. The roads are good, but once you have ridden them half a dozen times you realize how easy it would be to fall asleep on a bike. I think next year I may go with the main bunch from the Ace. Riding with thousands of bikers can turn even a boring run into a lot of fun.

Southend is the Londoner’s seaside town. It’s a lively place but I have some mixed feelings about it myself. Back in 1964 I was on holiday there with my folks and my cousin Jerry. I was thirteen. And one night I chased my first girl. Gerry and I followed two girls around the Kursaal (the Southend amusement park) for about half an hour and ended up chatting them up (or trying to) in a bus shelter. What a disaster! Gerry was much better at it than I was, I remember. Still, I was much more successful the following year in Clacton!

I also remember walking to the end of Southend pier one evening without any money in my pocket. The Pier was three miles long back then (before it burnt down) and when I got to the end of it I had to beg a penny off a Church of England vicar so that I could go to the loo. He was benign and had lots of teeth I remember. Having been brought up as a typical sectarian-minded Catholic, that was a hard thing for me to do. After the devil himself, there was the Church of England in my mother’s opinion. Within a year, though, of borrowing that penny I had stormed out of the confessional of the local Catholic church in high dudgeon and never went back. Maybe that vicar and his penny had something to do with my conversion to atheism at such a tender age.

So yes, mixed feelings about Southend.

But here's another pic of the seafront at Southend on that Easter Monday.


Bike mayhem on Shakedown afternoon.

Three weeks ago, just before I discovered the oil problem with the Triumph, Keith, Drumwrecker and I went for a great ride round the local twisties. Attached is a map of our route as recorded on Drumwrecker's GPS system and coloured in by me. You will note that at the northern end of our route we got err… just a little bit lost. Not that that matters much since we tend to follow our noses a lot anyway, or at least Drumwrecker and Keith do. My nose has been taking a break recently and I’ve been happy to follow on behind the others quietly and uncomplainingly. There are some great roads out towards Huntingdon and up Grafham Water way.


Rideout route. Got just a bit lost for a while!

On the way back we stopped off at ‘The World Famous Comfort Café’ at Fourwentways. I hadn’t been there for a while. It used to be a favourite spot of WWII American servicemen on their time off. A lot of them were based out this way and on over into East Anglia. Apart from that moment of history I haven’t got the faintest idea why it should be ‘world famous.’ The food is decent but the cafe a bit boring to look at since it was pulled down and rebuilt. There are usually other bikers around in the summer though, so there is usually someone to talk to if you feel like it. Here’s a revenge photo.


The vile Drumwrecker taunting a poor unfortunate who is allergic to this stuff, and can't eat it without without turning into a werewolf.

A month ago, on 11 April, I was riding into work when I suddenly remembered that this was the day a year ago when Di finally stopped eating. When I got into the office I was so shakey I had to ask to take the day off. I’ve been feeling very low since then. All the old feelings of loss which hadn’t been so strong in recent months have started to come back again. Sunday 6th May was the day she died. I knew I wanted to mark the first anniversary somehow and the only way I could think how to do it was to ride down to the Chalice Well at Glastonbury. The Chalice Well was one of her favourite places. She’d go there whenever she could and especially when she was stressed or needed to find some quiet time.

It is a good ride, or at least the second half of it is. Once you get down the A1(M), round the M25 and along the first stretch of the M3, you turn off onto the wonderful A303 just beyond Basingstoke. After passing through some heath land, all grown with furze and heather, the countryside opens out and fills you full of fresh air and fresh thoughts. The A303 rolls on over the wide green spaces of Hampshire, passes Stonehenge, then on over the huge expanse of Salisbury Plain. On Sunday, I followed it over the county border into Somerset then turned off onto minor roads a few miles beyond Wincanton. After that it was deep country lanes all the way through Somerton and Street and on into Glastonbury. These small lanes are usually busy with traffic even at the weekend, but not this Sunday for some reason. Di and I travelled around here on many occasions. It all reminds me of her.

I remembered to take my new camera with me this time so I got some photos on the way down. I pulled the bike into the entrance of a bridleway that left the road just opposite Stonehenge and took some pics. I haven’t stopped to take a good look at the stones since I was living down here as a schoolboy in the 1960s, but I’ve passed by on bike many times since – always in a hurry and going somewhere else. Sometimes Stonehenge looks huge and mysterious. Other times it looks very tired and ordinary and not so big after all. Today it looked tired. As time goes by I am impressed less and less by things. Maybe it is just a failure of my imagination as I get older, or maybe it is just a matter of familiarity breeding contempt.

I like the new camera. I smashed the old one when I decked the Enfield in India back in early March. It was so cheap living out there for a couple of weeks that I had some cash to spare in my bank account when I got back. I bought a new camera with a good X10 zoom lens. That turned out to be useful on this occasion as Stonehenge is a fair way from the road across the fields.


Stonehenge

The weather was warm and very comforting on the way down, and the new crops were pushing up all over the chalklands, so there was nothing of the drama and spookiness that often hangs over Salisbury Plain. It was just very expansive and very pleasant.

I had no idea what to expect when I got to Glastonbury. I had made a trip down to the Chalice Well a couple of days after Di died last year and it was quite a profound experience for me being there on that occasion. I had such a strong sense of her presence. So in a vague sort of way – I hardly thought about it much; it was just a gut feeling – I suppose I was hoping to feel some of that again. But of course that’s impossible. Time moves on. You can never go back. And the second visit is always very different from the first.


First sight of Glastonbury Tor

The Chalice Well gardens were beautiful as they always are. They are beautiful but not so big. And on this occasion they were crowded with a lot of people. I had no sense of Di’s presence this time. I was there, very much on my own, but quite calm – on the surface at least. I’m slightly embarrassed to be blogging like this because I’ve never believed in an afterlife or anything like that. The idea has never made the slightest sense to me. But Di believed in it. And she believed it with such conviction! It seemed utterly obvious to her that she would go on existing beyond death in some form or another. I think she was even looking forward to it.

And so, because she believed it so passionately, and because she was so much a part of me, a part of me thinks she still exists (even though I know she doesn't.) In some corner of my old materialist’s mind, on that odd emotional boundary somewhere between reality and fantasy she goes on with some considerable energy - just as she did in life. It's not a belief, or a thought or a construct of reality. Life after death seems such a complete absurdity to me. But the gentle, sensory quality of that boundary region allows her to exist and go on existing in some profoundly real way quite independently of my thinking about it.

I can't make sense of it either. And I'm not sure I want to.

And because that is the way it is with me, I was disappointed at first to find that there was no sense of her being there in the garden this time. It took me serval minutes to come to terms with that. But I was prepared to accept whatever happened. In one sense at least, this wasn't really about me at all. Nevertheless, something odd – symbolic perhaps – did happen while I was there. It made me sad. But the message it sent me was real. And I've always felt that reality is the kindest and best place to be.

Di had died at exactly three o'clock, and I wanted to make sure I was there by that time. It just seemed important somehow. I had arrived in Glastonbury at about twenty to. I wandered through the garden up to the well head. The Chalice Well itself is old. It was sunk about 700 years ago probably, and has been in use in one way or another ever since. The river that feeds it emerges from the ground just a few yards further down the hill. The water pours out of the rock quite confidently and its flow hardly varies at all, winter or summer. It remains at a constant 11 degrees C all year round.


The Chalice Well

Someone had lit a candle and left it burning quietly on the edge of the well. I stared at it for some time thinking over some thoughts about the two of us. I suppose I had imagined that I would be alone with my thoughts, but there were several people wandering about nearby. So that was another adjustment I had to make. And after a while two women came and sat on the wall quite close to me.

After I had sat there for about quarter of an hour a little gust of wind came up out of nowhere and blew out the candle. I never wear a watch so I had to ask one of the women next to me for the time. It was exactly three o’clock. I've rarely felt so alone.

After I left the gardens I walked up to the top of the nearby Tor, the steep-sided hill which rises suddenly out of the flat floodplain of the Somerset Levels. There were the usual amazing views from the top. But that was all. Someone was playing a flute very skillfully somewhere down the side of the hill. I sat and listened for a while until a dog came and pissed on my tankbag. Ah well!

I was in a pleasant, slightly melancholy mood for much of the way home, but that was good. I like melancholy, so long as it stays within bounds. As evening fell, the last fifty miles home passed like a dream. The SV sang and the ride went like it was always meant to be that way.

Oh! one last thing. I managed to scoop this unique moment in the annals of motorcycling on Monday - a photograph of my neighbour, Toby, washing his Bandit. First time ever in two years.

Thank you for sharing.

Absolutely, thank you for sharing.

There's something strangely...for lack of a better word... normalizing about photos, isn't there? Your photo of Toby cleaning his bike could be around the corner from me, rather than in far-off, someday-destination England.

I have just been reading your Enduro India blog, and I have to say that those Enfields look like the perfect vehicle for the daily traffic jousting that is the regular London Commute.

Are you back to your old self now?(sorry, less of the old)

I have unfortunately been relieved of my bike, and will probably miss most of the summer before the insurers decide not to pay up.

thelighterthief wrote:I have just been reading your Enduro India blog, and I have to say that those Enfields look like the perfect vehicle for the daily traffic jousting that is the regular London Commute.

Are you back to your old self now?(sorry, less of the old)

I have unfortunately been relieved of my bike, and will probably miss most of the summer before the insurers decide not to pay up.

If you are a decent mechanic, the 350 Bullet is a great bike. It takes a good deal of looking after but is perfect for weaving in and out of traffic. In the UK you can get a variety of models based on the original 350 and 500cc Madras-built bikes with modern gearing and electric start. There is a brilliant-looking cafe racer which I quite fancy.

You can also get the original Indian model with very few modifications, upside-down gears on the right and a kick start. It sells in the UK for an amazing £2,000 brand new, but will disappear at the end of this year because it will fail to meet new legislation on emissions.

Sorry to hear about losing your bike. I guess you mean that it has unexpectedly passed into new 'ownership'. One more penalty of living in London , I guess.

I don't know that I will ever be back to my old self. I'm trying to find out who I am now I'm back on my own. It's a funny process. But if you mean my shoulder and ribs, yep, that's almost all sorted. My shoulder hurts if it gets stressed, but most of the time it's fine. Thanks for asking.

Yeah, an' not so much of the 'old'. I totally refuse to admit any such condition. I've got a lot of riding to do in the next ten years.

Cheers

Richard

But if you mean my shoulder and ribs, yep, that's almost all sorted. My shoulder hurts if it gets stressed, but most of the time it's fine. Thanks for asking.

Well thank god (or the FSM) you are not doing anything to stress that shoulder then... I don't know, like riding a litre sportsbike, or anything then.

Yes I do mean stolen. Right from outside my house. I am currently enjoying the vagaries of insurance companies and police policy on the matter.

Take care of yourself. I'm not sure we ever find out exactly who we are, I guess that is why humans like to test and challenge the limits of their capabilities