SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

[Nibblet99]

(Mini Hijack)
Damn I didn't realise you lived so close to Luton, I'll be moving over there for the new job in about 3 weeks... Soooo what kind of bribery do I need to give you to show me all the sweet roads round that way?

[sv-wolf]

Hey Nibblers!

Welcome to the Home Counties.

Luton eh! I'm nine miles away in Hitchin - just a quick run down the A505 dual carriageway.

Sure! Give me a shout when you are settled in and want to do some riding. There are some brilliant roads round here (and a lot of crappy ones as well). The Home Counties trick is learning how to negotiate with London (mostly by finding a decent way round it.)

This area has a huge population, but it is also very rural which means that there is an enormous network of country roads.

What do you like? If you like swooping round the twisties, then this is heaven. But there are some brilliant A roads as well.

See you soon!

[Nibblet99]

I'm a sceneic twisty type person, although I'll be on a new (to me) bike, so probably won't be up to a decent pace yet on any open visibility twisties

[sv-wolf]

Sometimes I think I have a large sign attached to the back of my leathers. It is visible only to other motorists and in particular, only to motorists who happen to be driving along the six mile route between my home in Hitchin and my place of work. This sign says, 'HIT ME' in bright dayglow letters. I suspect there is a similar sign attached to the front of my bike.

When someone does attempt to oblige I sometimes have an unfortunate habit of reacting badly. I try not to, but once now and then my feelings get the better of me. When I betray some small hint of annoyance like bibbing my horn or giving them a finger, or gesticulating, they become upset and sometimes even aggressive. As I believe most people are fundamentally good natured, I can only conclude that they are hurt at my obvious shows of ingratitude. After all, they were only attempting to oblige me by carrying out my request. So who can blame them.

I sometimes wonder if my signs are perhaps more detailed than I usually imagine. Perhaps the one on the front says, 'Please pull out in front of me without warning just as I am about to overtake.' A sign like this would only be visible over a short distance. So a driver, reading it in his side mirror, would need split-second timing and instantaneous reactions to do as it asked. But there is no doubt that guys like this are highly sophisticated and quick-thinking. It takes a very special attention to detail to manage some of the manoeuvers they use.

Take for instance the van driver who obligingly pulled straight out in front of me as I was overtaking on the Wymondley by-pass yesterday morning on my way into work. The speed with which he nipped out in front of the bike was breathtaking. And I mean that literally: I was so impressed it completely knocked the breath out of my body. No doubt he understood that my life had been getting very routine of late and that I needed a bit of excitement. Or maybe he knew that I hadn't tested my brakes for a couple of weeks and wanted to wag an admonitory finger at me.

So perhaps it was churlish of me to wag my (middle) finger at him. At least, I suspect he thought so, because he responded by jamming on his horn and trying to overtake me before we got to the end of the by-pass. Maybe he wanted to warn me that I should get off the bike and take time to compose myself. After all, I was a bit shaken up after all the fun. (I also suspect that maybe there was something he didn't understand about power-to-weight ratios of vans and motorcycles. If that was the case, he does now.)

Or take the bus driver who pulled out onto the first Stevenage roundabout just as I was coming off it five minutes later. She couldn't have seen my sign before she pulled out because I was in the inside lane and her view of my bike (or any other traffic that might have been coming up) was blocked by another bus to my left. This bus actually slowed down and waved her out. (What's the usual right-of-way on a roundabout? Perhaps I should write to the bus company and remind them). Nevertheless out she came. The bus next to me was probably carrying a sign in front which said, 'There's a bike coming up on the inside but don't worry that you can't see him because he wants you to hit him.' So that's OK then. I guess. Perhaps I shouldn't complain. The bus driver next to me was only attempting to be polite, after all.

Or take the woman in the 4X4 with massive bull bars. No. I won't bore you with the details. I'll just say that the sign on my back on that occasion must have read, 'Please drive up the white line and attempt to sideswipe me.' She must have seen how depressed I had become because no-one had attended to that particular need all morning. She made a damn good attempt at it, I'll have to give her that. It was quite a subtle bit of manoeuvering, too, because she managed to do it while having a conversation on her mobile phone at the same time. I admire that kind of dexterity. We men are just no good at multi-tasking.

Well, I guess I'll just have to put up with this kind of stuff until I find out where the signs are coming from. I wonder if it is my cousin, Patrick. He always did have a blistering sense of humour. One thing does occur to me, though. The signs can't be very big or else I would notice them. Since the lettering isn't that high, I have to conclude that people in this area MUST HAVE VERY GOOD EYESIGHT.

[sv-wolf]

I get a letter from the Dog's Trust yesterday telling me that 'Kenco', the rescue dog I sponsor had died. He got into a fight with his kennel mate and ended up with a punctured lung. I'd never seen the little mutt but I've seen pictures of him and (excuse me while I vomit!) I get a valentine's card from him every Valentine's day full of 'wags and licks' and a Christmas card at Christmas with a round robin telling me all his doings.

Yerrrgh! I wish the Trust would save their money rather than spend it on stupid stunts like that. But they probably know their business and realise that it's the best way to get money out of the dog-sloppy British public. It's a good charity, though. They look after rescue dogs that are too traumatised to be rehomed, and they never have them put down. I like that.

I got really upset about Kenco's death. It wasn't because I felt his death in a personal way - nothing like that (well, maybe a little). No, it's because it's news of one more death. There's been quite a lot of it in my life recently. Three weeks ago my aunt from Stourbridge rang me to tell me my uncle (her brother) and her daughter had died. I hadn't seen either of them in nearly thirty years, so it wasn't a huge trauma for me but I felt very upset for my aunt. It must be terrible to experience the death of your own child. Poor woman! I guess I'm getting to that stage in my life where this thing is going to happen more and more.

I'm also getting very touchy about the subject of death - period. I watched a web-video of a really horrendous bike pile up the other day where one guy was killed very obviously. I wasn't expecting it, and I felt my stomach turn over. Why do we watch this kind of stuff? I don't mind seeing crashes on the track. It's reassuring to see racers deck their bikes and then hobble off the track. It helps you come to terms with your own fears. But seeing someone getting very visibly mashed is a different matter.

I've always thought that facing up to the reality of death is a good thing. That's part of our education for living, and in the West (and especially in Britain) we don't do it very well. But it has to be approached in the right frame of mind. Facing up to reality is very different from the salacious fascination with death that gets us hooked on really sick films and videos - the kind of stuff we laugh at or get all emotionally dishonest about. I don't even think that videos like these are really about death at all. They are often about brutalisation or power. You can call them sick, or you can call them real but whatever you call them, they're not honest. There is always an element of voyeurism in watching a nasty bike crash because you know someone has chosen to video it and then put it on the web. What's that about?

So now I'm thinking about why governments and media gurus won't allow us to see the reality of death in the Middle East. I don't believe all the 'it will distress the public too much' bullsh1t they give us. If governments thought they could 'win the war in Iraq' by showing us images of kids being blown apart by cluster bombs, we'd have blood and gore splashed all across our screens day and night. The truth is that giving the public a unsanitised view of what is acutally going on out there would not be in the interests of our smart-talking, two-timing political masters. They prefer to have the situation described in a nice intellectualised, lets-cosy-up-with-some-dehumanised-jargon-so-that-nobody-really-thinks-about-this-too-much approach. That's not very real either.

Ha! OK. I sense it's time to go and do something nice and straightforward like washing the Triumph. That's well overdue. I've just bought a powered hose which I can use with the water barrel in the back garden. Since I had the kitchen and bathroom rebuilt for Di's wheelchair I haven't been able to fix a hose onto the new taps. They're the wrong sort. Much too cleverly designed for a simple job like that.

[sv-wolf]

This is the time of the year when Hitchin goes nuts - Hitchin, that's the town where I live.

There's always been an amazing amount of music here for a small town. Whatever kind of music you like, there's usually somewhere to go at the weekends.

About ten years ago a few local people interested in world music and wanting to support musicians and international charities started putting on a free World Music festival in Market Place. They called it 'Rhythms of the World (ROTW). At first it was a small, local, and very amateur set-up but it rapidly became very popular. Today, and to everyone's surprise, it's by far the biggest World Music Festival in the country.

The music varies in quality. There are some amazing bands and some that are considerably less amazing. But the atmosphere over the whole week end is great. It's even worth giving up a Sunday rideout to hang around town.

This year there were eight main stages and a similar number of fringe venues, mostly in pubs. (Many of the pubs in Hitchin became coaching inns during the eighteenth century so they have decent-sized public rooms, big enough to host bands.)

If you like to listen to rock 'n roll, spanish guitar, jazz, creole, indian music(classical or modern), European folk, African, big band, mongolian rock (yep!), cajun, Egyptian, or what the hell you like, it's all here. For one weekend a year little ol' Hitchin blasts off.

Well for two weekends. Because at the same time as ROTW was developing at one end of town, The Triangle Festival (mostly local rock and blues bands) was growing at the other. They're both free festivals and word has it that the Conservative local council hates them because they're not commercial enough - local businesses don't get a rake off.

Nowadays The Triangle goes first and ROTW follows a week later. And all this happens while the town's more sober citizens are enjoying the fortnight-long arts festival. That means a load more music in between.

Here are some pics of the ROTW festival and the town.


Market Place stage. Aussie guitarist in action



Apart from the organised acts there are usually loads of buskers playing in doorways or out on the street



Chilling out among the gravestones of St Mary's Church. The church also opens its doors for Tibetan overtone singing and that sort of thing.



Local kids big band sound in Bancroft



Loads of music and dance groups doing their thing everywhere



Everywhere gets jam packed. This is usually a sedate little town during the day.



Portmill Lane stage



'Willow' stage

[sv-wolf]

Sunday

Has there ever been anything more bad tempered than a frustrated middle-aged man with bike problems? And could there be anything more likely to provoke him to acts of sustained idiocy than having a buggered-up bike on the first really sunny Sunday of an otherwise wet and woeful year. Ye gods!

I’m warning you! Whatever your reason for visiting this thread today, let me tell you in advance, you’ll find no sunshine here, only the bad-tempered ranting and raving of a menopausal male.

Sunday morning dawned bright and beautiful, but it might have been p1ssing down with rain for all the good it did me. I saw precious little of anything that morning. I’d been up till three o’clock the previous night, reading, blogging, listening to music, unwilling or unable to go to bed. (I hate going to bed.) So, nine o’clock on Sunday morning came and went without any sign of me stirring into consciousness. Nine o’ clock! By that time I'd planned to be up and out of the house, and on my way to Stevenage to meet Drumwrecker, Keith and George. We were going to ride out to Southwold and Warblerswick on the east coast. It's a great ride and it's a long time since I'd been out that way.

Somewhere up in my attic there is a box, and in the box is a yellowing black-and-white photograph of me playing soldiers on the sand dunes in Warblerswick. I was seven years old at the time (That’s a fair number of years ago now.) I remember Dad taking the photo on his big box Brownie camera. It shows me as a gangly little kid. I have a tin seaside bucket on my head for a helmet and a seaside spade in my hand for a machine gun. The photograph was taken just minutes before I finally managed to get the handle of the bucket under my chin, and about an hour before I found myself sitting in the local fire station, yelling, while a hamfisted fireman tried to get if off me again with a hacksaw.

I’ve often wondered if this traumatic childhood incident had any bearing on the anti-militaristic views I developed later as an adult.

Twelve o’clock, noon, came and went. I got out of bed and wondered what the hell I was going to do with the rest of the afternoon. But that was easy. It was summer. The light wouldn't fade till nearly ten o'clock. I still had time to ride over to Warblerswick by myself, hang about a bit, get somethng to eat, and get back to Hitchn well before nightfall.

Full of anticipation at the thought of a good ride, I pushed the Daytona out onto the road, checked the tyres, the indicators and the reservoirs. All that was left was to check the oil. Those of you who have been following this blog will know that my new Daytona has started turning into an oil-guzzler. I’d put three hundred miles on the clock since I last checked the level and as expected, the dipstick was almost completely dry. Well prepared, I opened a new bottle of oil and poured about a quarter of a litre into the engine. I put the dipstick back in the hole, waited a second, held the bike upright and then took the dipstick back out again to...

There are some moments in our lives that have a critical impact on our wellbeing or our future. This was destined to be one of them. Just as I was taking the dipstick out of the engine, some wally w*nk*r in a blue hatchback flew past me at about 40mph (this is a narrow residential street). Eminem was blaring out of his open windows so loud it would have registered noticeably on the Richter Scale. I felt the draught. He – was – close!!!!!. I gave a start, turned slightly, and er… errr… errrrrrrr… Oh, no! Oh, Sh*t! Over she tumbled. My poor Daytona. I couldn’t hold her. The best I could do was get out of the way and lay her down as gently as I could and watch as oil flooded out of the open hole in the clutch cover and poured out all over the road. Ngaaaaarrrrrrrrgh!

But the god of Sunday bikers was at least kind enough to send me a sympathetic helper. The guy instantly appeared out of nowhere, or, more accurately, from behind the acacia tree which grows on the verge opposite my house. Between us, we got the bike up (she's quite a lump - I'm not.) We checked it over: there were two scratches on the fairing, that was all. Bloody lucky!

I spent the next half-hour moodily cleaning up as much of the oil as I could and covering the rest with the soft sand I had in my garden shed. There was an awful lot of oil. Not only did it pour out of the Daytona's sump, but when the bike fell the rearsets speared through my spare bottle and sent its contents all over the road as well.

After the clean up, I then had to trek down to the local garage for some more oil. Five minutes later, I had to trek down to the garage again to see if I had left my ignition key on the counter when I went in the first time. I hadn't, so I spent another hour searching for it all over the house. It was only when I decided, sod it! I’m going to get something to eat, that I found it where I’d thrown it - beside a saucepan on the draining board.

By the time I had eaten and refilled the bike and had a long (and welcome) phone conversation with my step-daughter it was three o’clock. But dodo, there was still time to get to the east coast and have a pleasant day. I leathered up. I went out to the Daytona. I inserted the ignition key. I pressed the electric start and…

Paaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrp!

You know that sound…

Paaaaarrrrrrp!

…the sound of a dead battery trying to turn over an engine…

Paarp!

...enough to make every hair bristle on the back of your head

Somewhere, deep down in every cell of my body, DNA was giving out instructions to make enough p1ssed-off-proteins to keep me going for the rest of the week.

Friday


It is now Friday. My body has been restored to a state of calm. My mind is peaceable and I have achieved a philosophical perspective on these recent events. It could have been worse, I repeatedly tell myself. After the battery had been on the charger for a couple of hours, I did get to have a ride later on that day - not to Warblerswick but a quick bimble around some of the local villages. The weather was still good, and the world was aglow with that glorious summer evening light.

One interesting thing to come out of all this is the discovery that the oil that came out of my sump was soot-black. No doubt then what was happening to it. Seeing it finally motivated me to get back to the dealers and try to get them to do something about it. They had been unable to identify any obvious reason for the Daytona's gluttonous consumption of oil and were very reluctant to agree to do any warranty work on it until there were some obvious signs of malfunction. (Hells bells! The bike is under a year old).

I rang them again and arranged to take the bike back up to Norfolk. This time they sang a different tune. Rob, the guy who sold me the bike assured me that their engineer would crack open the engine and see what was going on. But as we spoke, I noticed that there was a growing hesitancy in his voice. The closer we got to finalising practical details, the more inarticulate he became. I waited. Eventually we got round to the issue. The guy who would look at the Daytona for me is going away for two weeks starting tomorrow. So that was it! [Edit: As it turned out there was another reason why Rob had hesitated but I wouldn't discover that for a few more weeks.] Oh no! I thought. Buuuut… he said, quickly, if I wanted to take the Daytona in to them in the next few days, they would give me a courtesy bike to tide me over the fortnight.

OK, I said, I’ll go with that.

I forgot to ask what they would offer me or whether I had a choice. If they intend to lend me a second-hand Speed Triple or a Tiger for a couple of weeks, I won’t say no.

[pigsbladder]

Best name for a pub ever

[sv-wolf]

Best name for a pub ever

Oh yawn, PB I live in a country where practically every city, town, village, hamlet and hole-in-the-hedge has a pub called by this name. Just to dampen any excitable imaginations out there, in the eighteenth century pubs, like the one in my photo above, used to host cockfighting matches. And so... But after your comment I am almost frightened to mention this fact...

However, to put this in perspective, I can tell you that we have no pubs called the Bald Headed Bandit, or the Burglar, the Champion, the Friar, the Hermit (well maybe a few), the Intruder, the Sailor, the Boner, the Dangler, the Chopper or the Dipstick. As far as I know we don't have pubs called the Tadger, Todger, Fox and Badger, Gob Stopper, Good Ship Venus, Graeme Hick, Hackney Wick, Joy Stick, Kiss me Quick or Pogo Stick. Nope, nor pubs called The Padlock, Pat and Mick, Picallilli, Grandfather Clock or Stick of Rock; no Pipes, Pissers, Pistols, Plonkers, Pokers, Horns, Popcorns, Pumps, Bananas, Richards, Dummys, Puppies, Burgers, Quarter Pounders, Peckers, Black and Deckers or Almond, Bristol or Blackpool Rocks. No Corys, no Power and Glorys, no Old Chaps, Shooting Sticks, Rods, or Roots and definitely no One Eyed Trouser Snakes - just to mention a few of the possible pub names our inventive small island is not blessed with.

Am I going to get chucked off the site for this?

[pigsbladder]

I'm not quite as uneducated on the pub life in england as you might think having been born in the NE of England and living there some 22 years. I assure you I have never had a swift pint in 'the stick' pub.

I even worked in Bishop Stortford for a year which I believe is in your neck of the woods. I never encountered 'the stick' there either.

I just found it funny, that's all.
(apparently "carrot" is the TMW translation of chicken)