Another day off work...don't tell

Somewhere in a corporate office, an accountant decides that the 750 million US dollars budgeted for a new oil production platform in the North Sea won't give a good-enough return to the company shareholders for the next couple of years, so he cancels the job. Result, fifty guys in the design office where I'm working got instant dismissal last Friday. I got two weeks notice 'cos I have to write a close-out report.

I woke up Monday morning and thought "fuck it, the sun's shining, I'm not going in to work today - what're they going to do, sack me?". So I had a stroll around my neighbourhood, took a couple of photos, visited a couple of cafes and just chilled out. I wandered 'round the back entrance of the church, hadn't noticed these old weatherbeaten carvings before.

Back Entrance Local Church

 Walked over to the park and noticed the leaves were changing colour, autumn must be on it's way.

                                               The deer were getting frisky, too.

Took a photo of this weird-looking fungus in front of an ancient shattered oak tree (oh yeah, blogger now won't let me import photos rotated so you'll have to crick your neck to see this one properly. It's also banished my list of followers, and lost my profile. Could be worse...)

Down by the river in the afternoon, a small boat cruising up towards Richmond town;


I walked back up over the hill towards home and took this photo of the London skyline; thats St Pauls Cathedral to the left; London Eye in the centre and that 'wonderful' new office building in Canary wharf "the Gherkin" to the right of centre - St Pauls is 10 miles away as the crow flies.



Went back to the half-empty office today; glad I took that day off!

A weekend riding a Triumph...in France

A bit disappointed with last weekends aborted trip, I decided that what I really wanted to do was ride my Triumph down long straight traffic-free roads, drifting around long sweeping bends in the sunshine. A quick look at the weather forecast made me realise that wasn't going to happen anytime soon in England; a quick phone call to the helpful folks at Classic Bike Provence and I'd booked two bikes for the weekend, plus a hotel. I then booked a couple of flights to Marseille, told El D Jr. that he was going on a bike trip, polished my helmet and packed a bag.

We had an atrocious flight down with Air France (never again) and finally arrived in St Remy de Provence Friday tea-time (unfortunately our bags wouldn't arrive until Saturday). However, the sun was shining, the temperature was hovering around 34 degC and the welcoming Sarah had our bikes waiting ready to go.



Bike and Sidecar outside Classic Bike - for sale but I'm not sure what it is...Royal Enfield?

                   

Red Ural combination inside Classic Bike

                           
Luckily, we'd carried our helmets on the plane, so Sarah lent us a couple of lightweight jackets and we were off, cruising down the aformentioned long straight roads. We turned off the D99 and took the uphill winding road to Le Baux de Provence, an unbelievably romantic village perched on a mountaintop - the roads were definitely testing, particularly a tight left-handed hairpin that went on and on seemingly forever.

Le Baux de Provence

                                
After an hour or so we rode back to St Remy, found our hotel, booked in and showered before going out to find somewhere to eat. St Remy was a picturesque little town, all honey-coloured stone buildings with painted shutters, blue or green or red, all faded by the sun, with romantic little cobbled streets and charming bistros. Unfortunately I'd come with 'the Kid' so we just wanted a meal and a few drinks and perhaps a little light conversation with beautiful, sophisticated French women. Well, two out of three ain't bad as Meatloaf used to say, so we wandered back to the hotel replete.

"The Kid"

                       
Saturday morning saw us back at the bike shop - I'd originally chosen their BMW R850 as being more suitable for my lanky frame, but decided to swop it for their T100 Bonneville, nice and light for all that bend-swinging we were going to do. The ever-helpful Sarah gave us a map and outlined some routes, lent us some wet-weather gear "just in case" ( a definite case of local knowledge triumphing over tourist optimism) and we set off for....anywhere. We rode fairly aimlessly around Provence, taking any little side road that took our fancy, then when we got tired of really tight bends it was back onto the 'A' roads for some faster sweeping bends. Heaven.

The Old Man

What we did discover was that one picturesque medieval town looks much like another; Arles, Nimes, Avignon, all had that run-down, scruffy look, ancient ruins, rats running over the feet of diners at the outside cafes. Still, we fulfilled our aim of riding, pausing for coffee, riding some more,, etc, with the highlight being a cafe/betting shop in Carpentras where the Kid first encountered a typical French crapper "that's disgusting, it's just a hole in the floor..and there's no paper..and nowhere to hang on to!" I explained that's why the French invented perfume, to cover up the smell of shit on their hands and clothes and he seemed quite happy with that.




Bull Ring at Arles

  
Saturday night we had another great meal and some drinks in a little bar in St Remy where the Kid took a (drunken) shine to the dark-skinned waitress, I was just happy to get back to the hotel and bed as I was knackered from the amount of riding we'd done.

Cottage at the hotel

                
Sunday, however, was a bit of a disaster. It started with a thunderous downpour complete with lightning that woke us up, then it rained...ALL DAY. Man, I could have stayed in England for this! To make matters worse, our hotel, booked for us by Classic Bikes, was a wonderful, romantic hideway, small cottages set in grounds overshadowed by huge fig trees and other perfumed plants - with no T.V to "spoil the ambience" which would have been fine if we'd been on a dirty weekend but for The Old Man and the Kid......we ended-up compensating by over-eating and drinking with a couple of naps thrown in. It finally stopped raining around tea-time so we got the bikes out and bombed around until dark then ate even more, more drinks in the bar of the tatooed waitress...you get the picture.

Hotel Cat

Monday of course was beautiful, hot and sunny and perfect for riding, the clear blue sky etc etc as we remarked as we dropped the bikes off and headed back to Marseille and another awful flight to London. All in all though, it WAS great riding, a bit of fun if pretty expensive.

More photos from Sammy's

                                                           Ignore the dope in the mirror

It started out well......

With it being the summer holiday weekend I decided to take a 3-day ride taking in some bike and car-related events. Itinarary prepared and bike packed (2 pairs of underpants and a toothbrush as per Affers instructions) I set off early Saturday morning for the New Forest* and Sammy Miller's Motorcycle museum.

Out of London, riding south on the A3 it was chillier than I anticipated, and pretty heavy traffic. As I got to Guildford it started raining so I pulled into a petrol station, topped-up the tank and changed gloves from the thin summer ones I started off with to the winter ones I put in the pannier just in case. Just past Guildford I turned off onto the A31, much less traffic now and nicer scenery, I enjoyed riding up and over the Hogs Back with tremendous views in all directions. In no time I reached Winchester, where I stopped to take a couple of photos.

Riding on, I stopped somwhere around Romsey for a cup of coffee and a cake in a "Wild Bean Cafe"; sat on the kerb outside the petrol station watching the traffic whizz by I thought "this is the life". Enjoying now the quiet country roads and country smells I rode down through the forest to New Milton and the museum; 100 miles thats the longest trip for me and the Triumph so far.

                                                    Outside and inside the museum

Sammy Millers museum was excellent, great bikes well prepared and presented; friendly, knowledgable staff AND a restaurant that served an all-day breakfast with mugs of tea and young waitresses in mini skirts - biker heaven!




                               All aluminium frame and engine - look at the quality of the welding


                                                                Love the back-end

After a good couple of hours taking it all in I was ready to set off for Bristol and on into Wales.

Unfortunately, that's when it all went wrong - when I got back to the bike it was sitting with a flat front tyre. I borrowed a pump and pumped it up - it went flat immediately. I've got AA breakdown so phoned them; after an hour a guy turned up and said " OK sir, I'll just pull the wheel off and we'll get this fixed in no time"; well that's what I thought would happen, what actually happened was he put some air in the tyre, it went down, he pursed his lips and said "I can't fix it, we'll recover the bike back to your house". I was incredulous to say the least, come-on, its just a flat tyre, but Mr. Negative was adamant " it's holiday weekend, everywhere is shut until next Tuesday, nothing I can do".
                                                        We ain't going nowhere

By now the museum was shut, the AA man cleared off saying he'd called for a recovery van that would be there in an hour, then it started raining. Then the rain developed into a tropical downpour. To say I was pissed-off would be putting it lightly. Two-and-a-half hours later the recovery van turned up, only the staff of the museum had, unknown to me, padlocked the gate at the car park entrance. Panic! I finally rode the bike gingerly down a little dirt track that went behind the buildings, past a private house and down their drive. The lady of the house was bit suprised to see me, but let me out their gate; I then rode very slowly back up the road with the front tyre now completely destroyed and got the bike onto the recovery truck. Oh yeah, by law these trucks are restricted to 56 mph, so it was 11.45 pm when the driver dropped me and the Triumph off at home.

So this morning I went round to the coffee shop for breakfast (did I mention that LF packed her bags and left a week ago?) to reflect what to do for the rest of this weekend; hearing that bloody song by Adele "I'm gonna slash my wrists" or whatever its called didn't lift my mood much, nor did a walk down by the river where all of a sudden the weather has transitioned from summer to winter in a couple of days; then it started raining.

Have a great weekend!

* The New Forest created in 1079 by William the conqueror from the existing Roman Forest of Spinaii, created in turn from an existing Bronze age forest - so not very "new" then.

That's better

What a bummer! There I was, looking forward to constantly admiring my new (expensive) Hagon shock, complete with red spring and shiny body, when I realised it's hidden away in the bowels of the bike and will never be seen again. The attached poor-excuse-of a photo shows a final glimpse of it. On the positive side, the bike now goes over bumps with a gentle rising motion rather than the shuddering crash of before.

Thanks must go to young Nick of Revolution Bike Tech in Kingston, who not only fitted it in double-quick time, but bled the front brake, cleaned up the pads and brought the braking up to an almost adequate standard. We'll be back there for more improvements quite soon.

Shifty

For me, one of the best bits of riding a bike is that feeling that you're part of a small select group of 'different' people; for example, I recently started a new job, most of my new work collegues are fairly unfriendly except for the small group of guys who ride bikes, we've all become 'instant friends'. Of these, I like Dennis the most. Partly because he calls me 'young man', which gives you an idea of his age, but mostly because he's always got time to talk about motorbikes. He doesn't ride any more, but always has a wistful look in his eye when he talks about his old bikes, both racing and road. He recently brought in some photos of one of his more unusual bikes - 'Shifty'. He bought it after being impressed by an article in Motorcycle Sport April 1980, the idea of a Laverda frame and parts mated to a Fiat 127 engine and gearbox proving irresistable. One of only 3 imported from Italy, he reports it went well in a straight line and was OK around town but a bit of a pig on faster twisty-bits, but due to its rarity always attracted a crowd of interested onlookers.

I tried to upload the photos he gave me but without any luck - here are some of the same bike I downloaded from the web. I can't imagine riding the thing, but am glad I know someone who did.

And they say size doesn't matter.....

If you look very closely you can see a pannier – a very small pannier



I’m suffering from a case of penis-envy. In preparation for my upcoming European tour I decided to buy some panniers for the bike. The e-bay vendors’ photos were skilfully taken with no other objects in view; this meant that I had no way of judging their size. Of course dimensions were provided, but I convinced myself they were wrong as the bags would be unfeasibly small. As you can see, they are unfeasibly small. In fact, they’re about the size of a 5 year-olds’ lunch box. Oh well, guess I’ll be packing light, then.