173 - PDF - The Rider's Digest

Issue 173 

December 2012 

WWW.THERIDERSDIGEST.CO.UK

Contents... 

4. From the editor… 

A rolling magazine 

gathers no moss – just 

a whole load of top-notch 

contributors! 

7. In the Saddle 

Criticism – and the 

solution, praise, 

an apology, and more 

praise – just your average 

TRD postbag then! 

12. Rider’s Lives 

Apocalypse Anytime! Nik’s 

got the machines 

14. Image of the Month 

Classic close up 

16. Six & the City 

Things that go bump in 

the morning 

Editor 

Dave Gurman 

Assistant editor 

Peter Martin 

Design 

Simon Gardner 

Web site 

Stewart Pettey 

21. Paddy’s Perspective 

Euro MoT isn’t so super 

25. The Boy Biker 

Word-up on keeping warm 

without expensive kit 

27. Nuts & Bolts 

The correct procedure for 

storing a motorcycle 

28. Two Wheels To The End 

Of The World 

Crossing the equator 

in Ecuador 

56. Milwaukee Megalith 

Everybody’s 

got an opinion about 

the Electraglide 

76. Motorcycle Live 2012 

Blez reports on Birmingham 

Contributors 

Tinks, Paddy Tyson, George Smith, Rod Young, 

Paul Browne, Thegirlybiker, Dave Newman, 

Paul Blezard, Andy Overton, Roger Tuson, 

Martin Haskell, Oldlongdog, Jonathan Boorstein 

Photographs 

Paul Browne, Dave Gurman, Thegirlybiker, 

Paul Blezard, Roger Tuson, Martin Haskell, 

Peter Martin 

94. Happiness Is Just Around 

The Bend 

Chasing fun on fast bikes 

108. Thank You Mr Honda 

How does a thoroughbred 

manage when it’s pressed 

into doing donkey work? 

122. Treading The Boards 

Riding the many Mod 

waves with Medway 

Scooters 

132. Fear & Loathing in 

LA LA Land 

What’s the best way to 

tackle raging insecurity? 

Cartoons 

Simon Kewer 

The opinions and comments of contributors 

within this magazine do not necessarily reflect the 

opinions of the editor. 

142. The Magic Roundabout 

A circular tale of history 

and etiquette 

153. Motorcycle Girl Racer 

Girls are busting out 

all over! 

157. Book Review 

Poetry in motion? 

Waxing lyrical about 

bikes 

169. Bitz 

When waterproof means 

just that 

Contacts 

Editorial 

Dave Gurman 

+44 (0) 20 8707 0655 

+44 (0) 7948 897093 

editor@theridersdigest.co.uk 

Advertising 

Peter Martin 

+44 (0) 7973 818579 

advertising@theridersdigest.co.uk 

2 WWW.THERIDERSDIGEST.CO.UK ISSUE 173 December 2012 

3

From the editor... 

This time last year I was 

sitting at this computer 

planning issue 164 of The 

Rider’s Digest – the first 

online edition. A few days 

earlier I’d been in a pub in 

London’s West End with 

a group of TRD regulars, 

most of whom I’d known for 

years, at an event that had 

originally been arranged 

by the magazine’s last 

management as a wake 

to “reminisce, cry into our 

alcohol and contemplate the 

future without the Digest”. 

It had been in September 

when I received word that 

the Digest had finally gone 

bust. The news wasn’t totally 

unexpected; I’d resigned 

as editor in July 2009 after 

I’d been told for the third 

month in succession that we 

weren’t going to have the 

money to put the issue out. 

The previous edition – 140 – 

had been the biggest ever at 

132 pages and was as close 

as I was likely to come to the 

sort of variety and balance 

of content I’d been aspiring 

to ever since I took over as 

editor three-and-a-half years 

earlier; so after a lot of soul 

searching I decided that I’d 

prefer to walk away proud of 

what I’d achieved, rather than 

hanging on by my fingernails 

while the magazine, which 

had been a massive part of 

my life since the turn of the 

century, wasted away month 

by month. 

Six days before the 

scheduled date, I sent an 

email entitled “Make the 

wake a reawakening” that 

said, “Hi Everyone, When I 

received the message below 

(the original “Make the wake” 

invitation), way back at the 

end of September, I checked 

my address book and created 

an email with the contents of 

my ‘TRD Contributors’ file with 

the intention of extending 

the invitation to all of you. I 

was aware at the time that 

it didn’t contain a definitive 

list of every individual who 

had been involved with the 

magazine during my period as 

editor, but I figured that I’d add 

a few words of my own, plus the 

addresses of anyone else who 

came to mind and forward it as 

soon as… 

“However, the same day 

I received the details of the 

‘Wake’ I was copied in (as 

were a number of you) to 

an email from Roger (Tuson 

– the magazine’s founder) 

entitled “Is there a future 

for TRD?” and as any of you 

who were party to the ensuing 

discussions will be aware there 

was a fair bit of discourse about 

the various non-print options 

that were available (and the 

efficacy and future proofness 

of the various formats) but 

the only thing that just about 

everyone agreed on, was that 

in the short to medium term at 

least, it was unlikely to be any 

sort of money-spinner. 

“Never one to be overly 

hung up with the financial 

details, I decided that I would 

relish the opportunity to 

produce an all new version 

of the old school TRD online 

and after exploring how that 

might be possible, I put up a 

post on the discussion board 

on November 8 th stating my 

intention of doing precisely 

that unless there were any 

objections. And as I haven’t 

received any to date that’s 

exactly what I am going 

to be doing. 

“Consequently, whether 

you had originally planned to 

attend the wake or not, if you 

are as happy to drink to the 

reawakening of The Rider’s 

Digest as you were to raise a 

glass to its corpse, please come 

along to The Pontefract Castle 

this Saturday and be a part of 

the synchronicity and synergy 

that made TRD a significant 

part of many of our lives. 

(Obviously if you can’t or just 

plain don’t want to be there, it 

will not exclude you in any way 

from future involvement with 

the magazine). 

“Looking forward to 

hearing from you, or better still 

seeing you Saturday night. 

DG x” 

For the sake of anyone who 

hasn’t seen our entire archive 

(although that begs the 

question, WHY NOT!? It’s free 

to access and contains some 

of the best and most honest 

motorcycle writing available 

anywhere on the Internet!), 

when the first online edition 

came out it in March this year 

it matched the 132 pages 

of my last printed mag and 

presented a healthy mixture 

of original material from old 

Digest favourites, alongside a 

sprinkling of newcomers and 

a few choice repeats. 

After explaining that 

we’d made a far better job of 

assembling the features than 

we had with the advertising, 

my editorial in 164 went on to 

say, “For the moment at least 

The Rider’s Digest is just 

floating in space without any 

apparent means of support, 

existing by the sheer force of 

its own will and held together 

by all the fantastic content 

that we have spent weeks 

getting together.” I rounded 

it off saying, “So even if this 

turns out to be our first and 

last online edition, we owe 

it to all the contributors who 

so generously gave us their 

words and photos, and all the 

old Digest readers who were 

so excited at the prospect 

of being able to read their 

favourite bike mag again, to 

put it out there anyway.” 

And here we are with 

our tenth online issue and 

the magazine has built up so 

much momentum that I’m not 

sure I’d know how to stop it 

even if I wanted to. 

Ever since 164 hit the 

ether, we’ve been picking 

up new contributors from 

around the world. Thomas 

Day wrote to us from the 

American Midwest in full 

Grumpy Geezer mode 

complaining bitterly about 

our non roadtest of the Honda 

NC700 in issue 165 but found 

that he really related to the 

honesty of our response and 

went on to produce a couple 

of great articles for us (and 

will be following them up 

with more of the same in the 

coming months). Tom Stewart 

was equally unimpressed by 

the same anarchic piece, but 

it didn’t prevent him from 

producing a fascinating 

feature about visiting the 

Somme battlefields on 

the new Triumph Tiger in 

issue 167. And so it goes on; 

whether it’s words, pictures, 

or both, I have the good 

fortune to be able to draw on 

an ever-expanding pool of 

international contributors. 

This month’s addition is 

Andy Overton from Doncaster 

(well that’s international for 

the 37.5% of our readers who 

are outside the UK and I know 

quite a few London riders 

who regard anything beyond 

the M25 as a foreign country). 

He wrote in to complain 

about the appalling dearth 

of sportsbikes in TRD and 

I replied promptly, agreeing 

wholeheartedly and asking 

if he’d like to help us to 

fill that void. I was very 

impressed with his efforts 

so that’s yet another pair 

of wheels to keep the TRD 

bandwagon rolling. 

Interestingly the metaphors 

Andy picked to describe the 

blissful sensations he feels 

on the road where so similar 

to the ones the Boy Biker 

had employed last month, 

it was obvious he couldn’t 

have read the youngster’s 

column. When I pointed this 

out to Andy he wanted to 

scrap his article and re-write 

it but I prevailed on him not 

to because, aside from the 

fact that it’s a damn good 

piece of writing, frankly, I 

thought it was fascinating 

that two riders separated by 

a quarter of a century, around 

180 miles and over 50bhp, 

would choose the same 

stimulants to bolster their 

individual attempts to evoke 

the sheer ecstasy to be had on 

a powered two-wheeler. 

Dave Gurman 

WARNING:Everything 

below here is a cynical Xmas 

commercial so caveat emptor 

should be the prevailing 

principle but at six quid 

a time The Carin’ Sharin’ 

Chronicles could be your 

ridiculously cheap one stop 

pressie solution (and if you 

send me instructions, I’ll 

inscribe anything you want 

in it at no extra charge). 

Austin Vince wrote, ”A genius 

friend of mine once said: 

“It’s a shame that nowadays 

bikes are boringly perfect and 

Bike mags are perfectly 

boring”. Naturally, he wasn’t 

referring to the fabulous 

Rider’s Digest! DG’s 

contributions to this landmark 

publication remind one of the 

simple joys of motorcycling. 

His charming turns of phrase 

and effortless bonhomie 

stand in stark contrast to so 

much contemporary 

motorcycle journalism. DG 

makes you glad that you’re 

riding and glad that you’re 

reading.” Sam Manicom said, 

“DG is blindingly honest, 

funny, never PC… When I 

picked this book up, I couldn’t 

put it down.” And Harriet 

Ridley’s Mirror Group review 

began, “I have three words for 

DG’s book – I love it!” 

(See the adverts on pages 

120 and 158 for further details! 

Hurry, hurry, hurry! Buy, 

buy, buy!) 

Catch Dave every Thursday 

between 6 and 8pm (GMT) on 

www.bikerfm.co.uk 


5

In The Saddle... 

Dave, 

Just finished reading TRD 

172. You seem to be keen on 

getting feedback so here goes. 

I feel adventuretoured-out. 

In fact, I feel a bit homesick. 

I’ve never gone touring on a 

bike, nor have I any particular 

desire to do so. But, as with 

many other activities which 

I have never done and 

don’t particularly want to, 

this doesn’t mean I’m not 

interested in reading about the 

exploits of others. But there 

is a limit and I got just about 

there in the latest edition. 

I’d quite like to see a bit 

more of a balance of UK-based 

stuff. I’d also like to see a bit 

more about sportsbikes and 

sportsbike riders. No, no, I’m 

not asking you to turn TRD into 

Performance Bikes, that’s the 

point. PB suffers from all the 

restrictions of having to feed 

its audience the right message 

to satisfy the advertisers. I 

just think that TRD might be 

able to write about the sector 

from a different angle – the 

angle of real sportsbike riders? 

Normal people who enjoy fast 

bikes but who don’t buy into 

all the gotta-have BS. Which 

is pretty close to the spirit of 

the adventure touring stuff 

but from a quite unconnected 

demographic. The getting 

there is still more important 

than the arriving. 

There must be some 

frustrated sportsbike journos 

out there who would love 

the freedom that TRD would 

provide? Let’s hear from them. 

Just thinking aloud, in case 

it’s helpful. 

Regards 

Andy Overton 

Note to readers: I wrote 

straight back to Andy and 

suggested that as he had done 

such a good job of articulating 

both what have been missing 

and the solution, he might be 

just the ‘frustrated sportsbike 

journo’ we need to provide our 

readers with an insight into the 

wonderful head-down arse-up 

world of sportsbiking. And if you 

turn to page 94 you can see for 

yourself just how well he did! – 

Ed 

Hi Dave, 

Just to let you know my 

new Kindle, which my sons 

got me for my birthday, is a 

great way to read your mag 

in full colour, in the canteen, 

er sorry, ‘Staff Restaurant’ at 

lunchtime. But that’s not really 

why I’m writing. I read the first 

few pages and then got to 

the Heartbreak Hotel article 

written by Lois. It was to say 

the least the most compelling 

writing I’ve read for some 

time. My coffee hovered in my 

hand, frozen in time as I read 

this saddest of tales. If written 

as a piece of fiction then she 

has a calling as a writer. If it 

was a true experience then she 

is brave to air her innermost 

feelings in this way and my 

heart goes out to her. It was 

truly touching. 

Please pass on my best 

wishes and congratulations on 

an excellent piece. 

There are a couple of other 


7

In The Saddle... In The Saddle... 

things I’d like to air, firstly 

‘Filtering’, is it really necessary 

ALL the time. In my fifties as 

I am, I don’t feel the need to 

weave in and out of traffic to 

get to where I’m going in a 

hurry. Perhaps it’s because 

retirement is creeping up 

and I don’t have that ‘Rush’ 

desire that seems to prevail 

throughout our working lives. 

Perhaps its because I like to 

be riding my bike for as long 

as possible, even if that means 

just sitting watching the 

world go by and waiting my 

turn to reach the traffic lights, 

roundabout or whatever. To 

me filtering means getting 

there sooner, which means less 

time on the bike. Fine if you 

need to get to that meeting, 

lunch date or supermarket 

before it shuts but then 

doesn’t all that rushing about 

take a bit of the fun out if it? 

The other point is to 

do with, dare I say it, that 

degenerate breed known as 

the Fair Weather Rider… one of 

which I am becoming. Derided 

as we are, by the day-glow 

leather clad youngsters who 

would leap on their bikes in a 

blizzard, for only riding when 

the British summer allows, is 

becoming a way of life now. As 

I mentioned above, I’ll not see 

50 again and the inevitable 

creaking signs of arthritis are 

beginning to make themselves 

known (yes I know I’m still a 

youngster at heart) but riding 

in the pouring rain, freezing 

wind and slippery snow are 

not conducive to good health. 

So I would like to stand up for 

all Fair Weather Riders who 

have reached that point of 

maturity when riding for fun 

is more important then just 

‘blindly’ riding. 

Keep up the good work as 

I’d be lost at lunchtime if I had 

to read a newspaper full of bad 

news. 

Cheers 

Nick Lojik 

Leeds 

I’m glad to hear that the 

Digest plays a crucial part in 

your digestive process Nick. I 

forwarded your email to Lois 

and she was delighted that her 

entirely true story struck such 

a chord. However, while I am 

100% with you when it comes 

to her heart-wrenching tale, I 

feel I must beg to differ when 

you say, “doesn’t all that rushing 

about take a bit of the fun out 

if it?” because – as you might 

have already guessed from my 

editorials – I come from a more 

or less diametrically different 

point of view! But that doesn’t 

mean that I’m right and you’re 

wrong, it simply illustrates that 

we each come at biking from our 

own perspectives. Surely one of 

TRD’s greatest attractions is that 

it is one of the only magazines 

anywhere that actively courts 

the widest possible range of bike 

related ideas and opinions. We 

are proud to provide a forum 

where anyone can express 

their views without fear of 

being censored or belittled so 

of course we understand and 

empathise with your attitude to 

fair weather riding (although, 

personally, I’ve got to say that 

I thought it was us southerners 

who were supposed to be the 

softies!) – Ed 

Hi David, 

Stuck in a hospital room, 

re-reading #172, I finally got 

around to your editorial. “I 

really don’t get the kind of 

tabloid thinking that seems to 

believe that if you replace the 

u and c between f and k with a 

couple of asterisks, it somehow 

protects the reader from the 

absolute awfulness of being 

confronted with the word 

itself!” I swear you are my twin 

brother, separated at birth by a 

small ocean. One of my latest 

geezerly moves, when people 

act offended by my language 

or attitude, has been “When 

do I get to be offended at your 

assumption of superiority over 

my 1st Amendment rights?” 

Thomas Day 

Minnesota 

Dave, 

Firstly, a massive thanks for 

resurrecting TRD… I used to 

enjoy the occasional issue in 

care packages from Wemoto 

back to Ireland. 

Any chance you could 

format the PDF edition as 

single (portrait) pages though? 

This would work very well 

on smart phones and tablets 

(iPads etc) – where the twinpage 

format is messy. 

Most PDF readers will still 

show a two-page spread for 

those reading on wide-screen 

PCs and Laptops. 

Regards 

Proinnsias Breathnach 

Dublin 

Eire 

Our designer informed 

me, “It is exported in single 

page mode from InDesign. 

Even if I export as single page 

continuous it will still create 

DPSs (Double Page Spreads).” 

By way of illustration he sent 

me a 40-page continuous file, 

which I tried on my phone but 

it behaved exactly the same as 

the PDFs usually do, which – on 

an iPhone at least – meant that 

it was straightforward to resize it 

to fit a single page and then flick 

through them. Are we missing 

something P? – Ed 

Hi Dave, 

First off I unreservedly 

apologise to Paul Nicholas 

Blezard for the untruths I 

spread about him last month. 

My bad. 

To be honest I knew the 

facts but hate the celebrity 

thing. It has always been 

with us, Bill Shakespeare 

commented on it in Henry 

IV pt.2. 

Some famous Greek whose 

name I forget complained about 

them too. 10,000 years ago 

when Dave and my common 

ancestor was scratching on a 

cave wall you can bet some 

fart in an Armani skin suit and 

Gucci flint axe strolled past 

and drawled’ silly twit, trying 

to think for himself. It’ll never 

catch on’. 

Secondly I have never 

had any truck with post 

Constantine Western 

Christianity’s idea of original 

sin. Sex is not dirty, it is 

fun, important and in my 

case private. I know from 

experience that I will never 

take part in an orgy. I have 

however had a prostitute (in 

Osnabruck, Germany 1978) as 

a friend. I tried to chat her up in 

the Guinness pub and was told 

in no uncertain terms that she 

had just finished an eight-hour 

shift in the House of Bremen 

(known to us squaddies as the 

house of dogs) and was not 

interested in more work. We 

became friends and I did get 

to ask that question, and be 

told the answer. She hated her 

job, loathed her customers but 

was on an exceptional salary 

and was half way through 

a five-year stint that would 

enable her and her husband 

(in the German Navy learning 

his trade) to set up shop. 

I too have had a job I 

loathed but paid the bills, 

though not as much (either 

money or loathed) as that lass 

I suspect. 

I hope they succeeded. 

For my attitude to the 

wrong kind of professionalism 

listen to Frank Zappa’s ‘Flakes’. 

On a completely different tack 

I made the point a couple of 

months ago that I didn’t think 

motorcycling was dangerous. 

If I did I wouldn’t do it. 

Leaving Lidl’s (other 

German supermarkets are 

available, but not in my area) 

the other Saturday a driver on 

my side of the road stopped 

and waved me out. The other 

side of the road was clear so I 

rode off to stop at the Cowley 

roundabout. There was a lass 

driving an open top Audi on 

my RHS. There are four sets 

of lights on this roundabout 

and they play their own game. 

The lights turned green and 

she floored it. As she couldn’t 

go forward the only space left 

was where I was aiming for 

so I sat back and let her go. I 

then hit the horn and filtered 

forward alongside of her as we 

waited for the next set of lights 

to change. As I drew alongside 

at the front I got a very small 

voiced ‘I’m sorry’. So after a 

few seconds to calm down I 

acknowledged the apology. 

My point is that at no time 

was I in any danger because I 

was watching all around me 

automatically and realised 

what she was going to do 

in time for it not to matter. I 

know as a twenty year old I 

would not have done so (the 

army can be a great education 

in keeping your lids peeled 

and biking should make you 

aware of what is going on 

around you) and she would 


9

In The Saddle... 

have knocked me into the 

path of the cars on my LHS and 

that’s me dead. I think a lot 

more than some built in body 

armour and a helmet would 

have been needed to save 

my life. 

So motorcycling is 

dangerous but the best way to 

make it safer is to learn and the 

best way to learn is to keep riding. 

With today’s roads, drivers and 

conditions being a young rider is 

definitely dangerous. 

Which means, would it 

stop me if I was starting out 

again and forty four years 

younger? Bloody hope not. 

A number of times over the 

last few years I have discussed 

events like this with fellow 

motorcyclists at rallies and my 

fallback attitude of defensive 

riding has been criticised. 

A standard comment in 

this situation is I should have 

taken his/her mirror out. 

Well first I have never 

practised this and second 

what does it gain? Craig 

Ashby’s father (letters TRD 

171) is certainly going to be 

more alert in looking for two 

wheelers now, as will this lass 

in the Audi. I wonder what 

Craig’s father’s reaction would 

have been to a violent attack 

on his car? This lass would have 

probably felt bikers were fair 

game now and she had been 

right all the time. Nowadays 

mirrors cost over £250.00 to 

replace. Lives are irreplaceable 

as an individual but is us 

against them an attitude we 

want to encourage. 

I have always believed 

that to step back and prevent 

escalation is the best way of 

not getting anyone more hurt 

than is necessary; the last two 

wars have merely confirmed 

this. To take that analogy 

further would it have been 

so bad to have failed to step 

into WW1? At least WW2 and 

the holocaust would almost 

certainly not have happened 

with a probable lack of the 

Middle East problem we have 

now. Oh and a large number 

of punters would have lived 

longer too. 

Call me a coward if you like 

(Dave will give you my address, 

write “You are a coward” on a 

twenty pound note, include 

a white feather and mail it to 

me) and it does sometimes 

spoil a good story but real life 

ain’t a story and Dave needs all 

the live readers he can get. 

Ride Safe 

An ancient Guzzisti 

Ian Dunmore 

You’re a very naughty man 

Mr D, it’s a good job Blez has a 

robust sense of humour! – Ed 

Hello Jonathan, 

I assume you are the JB who 

does the motorcycle book reviews 

in TRD? If not, discard this email 

immediately and have a nice day. 

I have been enjoying reading 

your thoughtful and forensic 

reviews in the magazine – very 

often it’s the best thing in there. 

You really do seem to know 

what you are writing about 

and many books get more 

analysis than they deserve – 

including ones I suspected as 

being turkeys without going 

near them. 

It’s rare that this genre gets 

such professional attention. 

I think you or TRD should 

consider making some sort of 

online archive or separate blog 

of your book reviews. 

TRD are lucky to have 

you and I look forward to 

reading more. 

Best wishes 

Michael Berg 

Nottingham 

Spot on Michael. Jon 

forwarded your email just in 

case I failed to appreciate what 

a wonderful asset he is to this 

publication; but I have never 

been under any illusions on that 

count. In fact I readily accept 

credit for asking him to become 

our book reviewer in the first 

place and for immediately 

recognising that his detailed 

dissections would quickly build 

into a unique resource. We are 

currently having an all new 

super duper, all singing and 

dancing web site put together, 

and once it’s up and running, 

Jon’s entire archive will just a 

click away – Ed 


11

Rider’s Lives 

Name: Nik Samson 

What was your first 

motorcycling experience? 

Umm, think I was about 12. 

My uncle had a C50 (or 70 or 

90, dunno) and he let me have 

a quick go up the drive of his 

house in Old Buckenham in 

Norfolk. Well, that’s what he 

intended me to do anyway 

– I actually just disappeared 

off down the road, sans lid, 

round the village and came 

back about 10 mins later to a 

right royal bollocking. Shades 

of things to come perhaps? 

What is your current bike? 

Got five (six if you include 

the mini-moto version of one 

of my big bikes that lives in 

me lounge) – insane-looking 

CB750 thing with a 750 Gixer 

motor (the granddaddy of 

all rat/survival bikes, built 

by BSH magazine in 1984), 

equally mad GSX1100 with 2CV 

headlights and knobbly tyres 

(The Changeling, another very 

famous rat), single-sided front 

end Bandit streetfighter that 

came second in last year’s 

Britain’s Got Biking Talent 

comp against bikes costing 

£40k plus, a GPZ900 trike with 

a 300 section front wheel and 

a stainless steel IRS back end, 

and a GSX-R 1100-engined 

Katana that’s still being built 

at the mo’. 

What bike would you most 

like to ride/own? 

Kaneda’s bike from 

Akira and/or Jack Shit’s hubcentre-steered 

Katana from 

Bloodrunners… one day. 

What was your hairiest 

moment on a bike? 

Probably the crash in 2005 

when I was forced onto the 

wrong side of the road on a 

Mille and hit a car head-on. 

The bike exploded in a huge 

fireball and I was thrown at 

least 65 feet and landed on 

me head. Bit gutted really, 

never been in a helicopter 

before and, even though I was 

air-lifted to hospital, I don’t 

remember it. 

What was your most 

memorable ride? 

Probably riding into 

Silverton in New South Wales 

(where they filmed ‘Mad Max 

2’) on the Honda/Gixer thing 

(shipped it over specially) in 

2010 for the 30th anniversary 

of the film and getting 

escorted by a yellow/blue/ 

red Mad Max pursuit car and 

a black Interceptor with all the 

lights and sirens going. Just 

mind-blowing for a Mad Max 

freak like meself… 

What would be the ideal 

soundtrack to the above? 

I think the sirens and 

flashing lights were music 

enough – anything else would 

have been an anti-climax… 

What do you think is the best 

thing about motorcycling? 

The people who do it, 

really. There are a lot of arse’oles 

(a hell of a lot!), but I’ve met 

some really good folk through 

biking that I wouldn’t have 

done otherwise and they’ve 

become life-long friends. Can’t 

really ask more than that. 

What do you think is 

the worst thing about 

motorcycling? 

The indifference of the 

rest of the human race to 

how just a small error of 

judgment on their part can 

end someone on a bike’s life 

or leave them crippled for the 

rest of their natural days. You 

see it almost every day and 

it is depressing; the fact that 

you, as a motorcyclist, are 

really nothing more than an 

inconvenience to them, your 

life is nothing more than a 

slightly increased insurance 

premium… 

Name an improvement 

you’d like to see for the next 

generation? 

Don’t know about an 

improvement, but I’d like to 

see the cost of actually getting 

a motorcycle licence reduced, 

and fewer barriers to getting 

a big bike than there are 

currently (and they’ll only get 

worse come January). If things 

carry on the way they’re going, 

then the powers-that-be will 

manage to price us all off the 

road, rather than just legislate 

us as they’ve been trying to do 

previously. 

How would you like to be 

remembered? 

I’m not really fussed if I am 

or I’m not … I’m just a scruffbag 

who rides odd motorcycles 

and writes (reasonably) 

entertaining gibberish about 

them for a living, why should 

people in the future have any 

interest in me? 


13

14 

WWW.THERIDERSDIGEST.CO.UK 

ISSUE 173 December 2012 

Photograph © Dave Gurman 

15

Six and the City 

16 WWW.THERIDERSDIGEST.CO.UK 

Saturday 

H a v i n g b e e n 

responsible with my R6 and 

got the MOT done on time, 

I was beginning to turn my 

thoughts to the DT. 

Coming in to winter 

and thinking it could 

probably do with a little 

TLC before it gets too cold, 

I rang Russell Motors and 

asked if they could give it a 

service and thorough check 

(as they are really good with 

2-strokes) 

So the little stink-wheel 

got dropped down to them 

on a busy Saturday morning 

and left with them for 

a week. 

Next Saturday, HB drops 

me down to Battersea on 

the back of the Hornet and 

we pick up the 2-stroke. 

“Did you check 

everything?” 

“Well, yes, but there’s 

not really a great deal 

to check on a 2-stroke. 

Changed the spark plug, 

tightened the clutch cable, 

bled the brakes, tightened 

the chain, cleaned the air 

filter, and put a new back 

tyre on” 

Not much then. 

As we got ready to 

leave, the twins reminded 

me that I had a new 

back tyre – “Be careful” 

Yes, I know. I have had 

new back tyres before. 

A steady ride home and 

a quick pit stop for fuel; 


HB was frustrated with 

the traffic and went on 

ahead whereas I wanted 

to be careful and took it 

slower – ‘cos I had a new 

back tyre and quite frankly, 

sometimes I’m a bit of a girl. 

Monday 

As per usual, Monday 

came around all too quickly 

and I was kitted up, ready 

to get on the bike for 

my commute to work. 

It was colder that 

morning and I had my trusty 

old winter gloves on (not 

plugged in cos it wasn’t that 

cold). E n g i n e 

started OK but wasn’t 

really warm when I started 

off but with the plumes of 

blue smoke stinking out the 

neighbours, I don’t really 

like to leave it running for 

too long on the driveway 

with the choke on. 

As I got the end of 

my road, the engine was 

labouring a little and on 

both of my bikes, I have 

stalled it at the cross roads 

more times than I would 

care to admit. 

I have to take a righthander 

at this cross road 

and it’s quite a nasty 

junction; on-coming traffic 

from the left is obscured 

by parked cars, and traffic 

from the right is hidden by 

the top of the hill as it goes 

over the railway line. I’m 

turning on to the small hill 

which is also off-camber, 

and although it’s not a 

‘busy’ road, there is enough 

traffic to make it a pain in 

the arse to get round. I 

don’t like doing it in the 

car, let alone on two wheels. 

So, the road is clear and 

my engine is struggling a 

little in cold under low revs, 

so I give it a bit of welly to 

get round the corner (like I 

normally do) and in that split 

second of taking the corner, 

I forgot I had a new 

back tyre 

It reminded me of that 

fact pretty quickly as I highsided 

and was spat off on 

to the road with what felt 

like considerable force. 

Fuck me that hurt! 

As soon as I connected 

with the ground, I knew I 

had broken my wrist and 

walloped my knee; my bike 

had changed direction and 

we were both lying in the 

middle of the road. 

I lay on the ground for 

what felt like an eternity 

as two passers-by stopped 

to help me. They were a 

little surprised to realise 

I was a girl but they 

were exceptionally kind. 

Posh lady with small 

children going to school 

wanted to ring for an 

ambulance but by then 

I was managing to sit up 

and crawl out of the road. 

“No, no. Please don’t. 

I’m OK”, all said with instant 

plumi-ness (what is it with 

17

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TORTILLAS to TOTEMS 

SIDETRACKED BY THE UNEXPECTED 

me and posh people?? I 

can’t help but go frightfully 

English when I’m around 

them). 

Posh bloke with 

Dalmatian on a lead helped 

me up and then picked my 

bike up out of the road. 

Small child on the way 

to school with posh lady 

picked up various bits of 

bike and lid that had fallen 

off and handed them to me. 

Posh bloke and 

Dalmation then offered to 

walk my bike back to my 

house, which luckily wasn’t 

far. All the way down we 

chatted and he kept asking 

if I was OK. I was walking 

(limping) and felt ok, other 

than being a bit achey so 

when we got to the drive 

way, I refused his assistance 

to take me to hospital (it’s 

only round the corner so I 

can do that bit myself) 

By now, adrenalin 

was wearing off and pain 

was kicking in, and I was 

in a lot of pain. I made 

a tearful call to HB and 

left a message along the 

lines of “Don’t worry, I’m 

OK but I’ve really hurt 

my wrist” and then broke in 

to sobs. 

I then rang my boss to 

tell her I wasn’t coming in. 

(“Hmmm… how long 

do you think you’ll be 

at A&E?” 

“I don’t know – a few 

hours I guess” 

Simon Gardner 

Graphic Design 

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“Do you want me to pick 

you up in the morning?”) 

Whilst waiting to see the 

doctor for the results of my 

X-ray, Hornet Boy turned 

up. I was still feeling very 

sorry for myself and was 

going over it in my head, 

realising that in fact, it could 

have been lot worse. At 

least it didn’t happen on the 

main roundabout in town 

– that would have been 

a different story all together! 

HB gave me a gentle 

hug and listened to my tale 

of woe. 

“You’re right”, he said, 

“It could have been a lot 

worse… You could have 

been on my bike” 


www.sam-manicom.com 


19



Motorcycle Action Group 

The Super MoT update (and 

why we should be proud [sic] 

of our MEPs) 

Back in issue 170, I wrote of 

the EU Commission’s proposal for 

a pan European Super MoT that 

would include regular testing of all 

bikes and scooters, as well as trailers, 

tractors and anything else that uses 

the public highway, excepting of 

course, emergency vehicles which 

are never driven at speed… 

Well things have moved 

on since issue 170, because, 

as a week is rather famously 

a long time in politics, a few 

months is a good deal longer, 

so here’s an update of what’s 

been happening in the world of 

MoT political negotiation. Deep 

breath, pretend you’re excited, 

and I’ll begin. 

The Dept for Transport 

contacted MAG and everyone 

else who may have an interest in 

this kind of thing, outlined how 

the British Government was 

interpreting the EU proposals 

and asked us to chip in. Round 

one went to the concept of 

inclusive government. 

The Swedish, French 

and Dutch Parliaments raced 

ahead and decided that they’d 

rather vote against the whole 

idea because the evidence 

21

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being great solicitors they are also very friendly and understanding. 

Everything has been explained to me and they kept me up to 

date during this period." 

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0208 246 4900 

to support it was so slim and 

because it seemed, yet again, to 

be a disproportionate reaction 

to the size of the perceived 

problem. Perhaps it’s interesting 

to note that Sweden and the 

Netherlands lead the way in 

road safety and don’t have MoTs 

for bikes. 

On October 15 th DEKRA (the 

private company who provided 

the research and would love 

to regularly test every bike in 

Europe), held a big road safety 

event in Brussels, where they 

got the EU Commissioner in 

charge, Siim Kallas, to praise 

their research and explain how 

lives would be saved. He then 

immediately left the building 

without answering any of the 

obvious questions like ‘Why 

don’t the figures add up?’ and 

‘Why does no other research get 

the same results?’ 

There was a massive riders 

demo about the proposal in 

Brussels and at roughly the same 

time, French bikers attacked 

DEKRA’s headquarters with 

eggs and flour and then in an 

early morning assault chained 

the entrance closed with bike 

locks. There’s always something 

to be said for a bit of direct action. 

Round two went to spirited 

reaction. 

Then, in an incredible fit of 

rationality, here in Britain on 17 th 

Oct, the House of Commons 

European Scrutiny Committee 

released its opinion of the Super 

MoT and in short, wasn’t terribly 

complimentary. It seems our 

domestic representatives are 

prepared to point to the elephant 

in the room and state that 

because there’s no real evidence 

the Commission has made some 

massive assumptions about lives 

that could be saved etc. 

The paper reckoned that 

having to include all caravans 

and trailers would cost the UK 

£237m, that 58,000 testers would 

need new qualifications, safety 

benefits would be negligible 

and every road user would face 

higher costs. 

On 29 th October our new 

man at the Ministry, Stephen 

Hammond, went to his first 

meeting of all the EU Transport 

Ministers (known as the 

Transport Council) and explained 

that the UK wouldn’t support the 

ideas of the Super MoT because 

the evidence was weak; contrary 

to what the Commission (and 

DEKRA) said, there was no 

correlation between component 

failure and road safety; and the 

whole thing was going to waste 

over a billion Euros. Way to 

go Steve! 

He was joined by Sweden, 

France, Netherlands, Belgium, 

Finland, Norway and others and 

on 31 st October the Transport 

Council released their own 

version of the Super MoT 

proposal with some pretty 

radical suggestions. 

Wow, Round three went to 

an outbreak of common sense. 

Back in the UK, MAG 

members continued writing 

to the MEP members of the EU 

Parliament Committee (for this 

subject) who are British, and 

the bulk of the responses were 

suitably laughable. 

There was the palpably 

disdainful “I’m not going to 

bother to read your letter, but 

here’s a response I wrote many 

months ago that includes the 

word motorcycle, even though 

it’s about a completely different 

subject,” type response, which 

came from both full committee 

members and substitute 

members. Then there was the 

“well the Commission only ever 

have your best interests at heart 

so don’t complain” response. And 

finally “the Commission have said 

it’s good for the environment and 

for road safety so I’ll do what they 

tell me to do.” 

It is very sad, but it does 

seem to sum up what our elected 

European Representatives think 

of constituents who actually 

want to get involved in the 

democratic process. 

The good news, almost to 

spite them and their complicity, 

is that it looks like this proposed 

regulation will be downgraded 

to a directive, meaning countries 

can pick and choose which bits 

they want. Mopeds look likely to 

be exempted, as do small trailers 

under 750kgs, and most bizarrely, 

vehicles used exclusively on 

small islands. I must find out 

how small… 

Paddy Tyson 

MAG Campaigns Manager 

www.mag-uk.org 

01926 844064 


23

The Boy Biker 

Winter Warmers 

Its not even biking winter 

proper yet, that’s December 

and January in my eyes, but 

the biting wind has reminded 

me of all the little tricks I have 

been shown to stay toasty on 

two wheels. 

Whether you’re riding to 

work all year round, give up for 

six months or only ride half a 

dozen times a year regardless, 

keeping confortable in the 

cold can turn long slogs into 

bracing, exhilarating rides. 

Get warm first. Don’t jump 

into gear if you’re already cold, 

like after spanning outdoors. 

Making time for a cuppa’ gives 

you a core warmth that stays 

with you for a few precious 

miles. Put your gloves and 

neck ware over a radiator while 

the kettle boils… 

Tuck your layers in. I go; 

vest into long johns, tricky b’s 

over long johns, t-shirt into 

trickies etc…. Of course tight 

cuffs and ankles help loads. 

I wear the same short cuff 

gloves all year, just tuck deeper 

in winter. 

Wind proof your feet. 

Obviously proper boots are 

best, but they are clumpy, 

unstylish, uncomfortable, 

and carrying spare shoes 

is a mild inconvenience. 

Two pairs of socks stop the 

air travel inside your shoe, 

seriously lessening that 

harrowing front to back chill. 

Bags between layers of socks 

are also great waterproofing 

in trainers. Classic pizza boy 

plastic bags on the outside 

help stop draughts through 

lace and tongue holes, but 

a layer or two of cling film is 

much more effective, plus is a 

great way to try and limit how 

often you put your feet down. 

Once too many and all the 

warmth disappears in a flutter 

of plastic. 

Hood up. Toggles pulled 

tight, pull a snood (look it up 

if you are a caveman) (I needed 

to – Ed) over a hood around 

your neck and shoulders. Even 

a loose neck jacket can be 

made much warmer teamed 

with scarfs and hoods. It’s 

dangerous as it makes your 

lid loose, but a hood inside the 

helmet is lovely too. 

If you forget your vest or 

long johns (or indeed still get 

cold bones with them), a few 

layers of newspaper between 

your existing layers will do 

wonders keeping heat in and 

wind out. 

A generous wrapping 

of duct tape on your levers 

stops the contact causing 

even colder fingertips, 

much cheaper than rubbers 

(and easier to get off!). This 

particularly useful if you ride in 

a more relaxed hand-off style. 

Thumb and palm gripping bar, 

fingers resting on lever. I adopt 

this in winter as grasping 

tightly around unheated bars 

can lead to painful joints and 

seizing up, with the fingers on 

top, it’s much easier to have a 

warming little wiggle. 

Stopping in a sheltered 

spot and huddling with your 

jacket open over the engine 

can reheat you, and a little rub 

of the cylinder head is lovely 

at a long red light. I have heard 

things about fly zippers and 

exhausts but I cant say I have 

ever got that cold down below. 

My little tips may be old news 

to you, or maybe your gear is 

too high tech for you to ever 

feel a chill, but there always 

comes a time when the cold 

has set in, your riding is getting 

worse and the thought of 

how far you’ve got left is 

horrific. 

When it comes; stop, have 

a think, a drink, look around. 

Apply the barmy ingenuity 

and off the wall intelligence 

that brings you to this mag to 

your situation. How are YOU 

going to deal with the cold? 

How are YOU going to triumph 

over nature this time? 

Insulation, wind proofing 

(think For Sale boards), second 

hand warmth (too close up the 

arse of a bus), or petrol station 

gloves under and over yours. 

Any little cheat that holds a 

few degrees will keep you 

upright for longer. 

And if you really are cold 

and worried; take some more 

chances, push forwards, 

make gaps. For after all, 

there is no warmth like that 

gained from successfully, 

safely, stylishly and 

smoothly negotiating traffic. 

Until next time, keep wiggling. 


25

CLICK TO WEBSITE 

just search for your model 

of bike you will be surprised 

how many parts we have 

www.wemoto.com 

Nuts & Bolts 

I 

spotted something under 

a green sheet in the 

workshop last week, it 

looked vaguely bike shaped, 

but could so easily have been 

some cardboard boxes full of 

useful things. I have lots of 

those. Throwing things away 

is not something I am prone 

to. Hence the new shed in the 

yard, for storing some of the 

larger ‘useful things’. People 

tell me to sell them on eBay, 

but I’d only end up buying 

them back in a few years time, 

for more money. Yes, I have 

done that. Back to the greensheeted 

bike shaped object. 

It turned out to be a first 

generation Suzuki SV650 that 

went undercover over two and 

a half years ago, I’d not really 

forgotten it was there, it had 

just blended in and become 

overlooked. Which brings 

me to the subject myth for 

destruction this month. 

Laying up a motorcycle. 

Quite why any right-minded 

person would want to do this, 

I’ve no idea. Just ride the damn 

thing or sell it on eBay. Don’t 

collect the bloody things like 

flattened cardboard boxes 

and old knackered pistons. 

OK, well if you must, here is 

my laying up procedure. Ride 

the bike into the garage or park 

it up somewhere warm and 

dry (your front room is ideal). 

Throw a cover over it and 

walk away. 

In the past I’ve spent 

a full day messing about 

with draining fuel, carefully 

overfilling with oil, 

disconnecting the battery, 

covering parts in oil, lifting the 

wheels off the ground etc. 

What a waste of time. 

I charged up the SV battery, 

which had been dead for 2.5 

years, flipped the ignition 

on and stabbed the starter. 

She turned over for about 10 

seconds then fired up. I guess 

the delay was down to the old 

fuel that would never work 

and would definitely gum up 

the carbs. Within a few seconds 

she was off choke and ticking 

over like stationary steam 

engine on a summers day at 

a country fair (probably when 

you were about 8 years old, 

wearing bright blue cords, 

a stripey top and carrying a 

toffee apple). Perfect. 

Of course, there have been 

a few problems, the front brake 

callipers were a bit sticky; but 

then again, it is a Suzuki, they 

seize for a pastime even when 

you’re using the bike every day. 

One of the throttle spindles 

was tight in the carburettor 

body, I took the carbs off, freed 

it off on the bench and popped 

them back on. One fork seal 

was leaking but I’m pretty 

sure it was when I put it away, 

I’ll probably junk the forks 

anyway and fit something 

that resembles a suspension 

system instead. 

Basically, pump the tyres 

up and she’s good to go. What 

I’m trying to say here is that no 

matter how much time and 

effort you put in to laying up 

your bike, it will either be ok to 

ride when you are ready, or it 

won’t. Either way, you’re going 

to have to check everything 

before you do and the chances 

are that something will have 

gone wrong. There is no way 

on earth that anyone could 

have prevented my throttle 

spindle from seizing in the carb 

body unless they had stripped 

the carbs off and taken them 

apart as part of the laying up 

process. Which would be a 

seriously odd thing to do. 

The most important thing 

you can do is to keep the bike 

somewhere dry. Beg, borrow or 

steal some space in someone’s 

garage or shed. Or polish it 

until it’s physically painful to 

even look at, then pop it in the 

front room by the patio doors 

(keep the curtains shut in case 

anyone sees it, of course). 

Meanwhile in an almost 

perfect example of a 

motorcycle project, my mate 

has just acquired a bike that 

I rescued as a project back in 

2006. Since my ownership, 

during which time it gained 

a full set of nigh on perfect 

fairings, but very little else, it’s 

been sat in a garage, moved to 

Devon to be robbed for spares, 

left in a garden, uncovered 

with the inlets exposed (pure 

cruelty) and now, perhaps not 

finally, rescued by my mate. 

The bike? A rare jewel of a 

bike, Honda’s Babyblade, the 

NC29 CBR400RR. Just charge 

the battery up my friend. 

Happy Spannering! 


27

Two Wheels 

To The End Of 

The World 

28 



29

Majestic 

Mountains 

We got an early start from the 

border town of Ipiales in southern 

Colombia. Although it seemed 

deserted when we checked in the previous 

evening, this morning it’s a hive of activity. 

Indeed, it seems more like a community centre 

than a hotel. During breakfast, we found 

ourselves surrounded by groups of smartly 

dressed people who seemed to be engaging 

in some sort of competition to see who could 

talk the loudest without actually shouting. It all 

makes sense when one of the staff explains that 

the Colombian elections are coming up at the 

end of the month. All these guys are members 

of one of the main parties who have come 

here to strategise. Once we understand what’s 

going on we are even more aware of them as 

after breakfast they stand around the lobby 

drinking coffee, casting the odd suspicious 

glance at anyone they can’t identify as one of 

the party faithful. 

Meanwhile one of the larger function rooms off 

the reception is full of teenage boys playing all 

kinds of musical instruments. They notice the 

big bikes as we pack them and quickly gather 

around seemingly mesmerised by the process 

of tying a luggage roll onto a set of panniers. 

By the time we were leaving we had gathered 

a rather large crowd of admirers, but I do think 

that this may have had more to do with the lady 

motorcyclist than anything else. 

A quick ten-minute spin from the hotel and our 

first stop is with immigration on the Colombian 

side of the Ecuadorian border. 

Maeve leaves me outside to stand guard over 

the bikes while she tackles the administration 

side of things. Getting an exit stamp from the 

immigration office was fairly straightforward, 

there was only a short queue, where Maeve met 

Magdalena, a lady from Oslo, who is working 

for a Norwegian aid organisation which helps 

displaced people. We get a real sense of what 

goes on under the surface in this part of the 

world when we talk to people like Magdalena. 

On the Ecuadorian side Maeve waits her turn 

in a short queue and when called forward did 

her best to answer questions from the officer 

behind the desk. However, there was one 

she just couldn’t figure out. Another officer 

appeared and asked, in English, “Are you single 

or married?” “I’m single,” she replied even 

though she hadn’t seen that question on the 

form. She looked up to see these two wannabe 

cops leering at her. With the passports in hand, 

she asked where the Adunas was and promptly 

left the office. 

Once again, this was a simple process and as 

it was a woman handling the paperwork she 

didn’t get leered at. It’s pretty much the same 

process at every border; you get used to the 

questions and know what information the 

officer is looking for. The only thing that slows 

the process down is the level of sophistication 

of the systems used by each country, and 

whether it is computerised or not. The woman 

at the Adunas took time to warn us not to stay 

over our allotted sixty days in Ecuador, or we 

would receive a hefty fine. She then handed 

over our paperwork and we entered country 

number eleven. The total time for exiting 

Colombia and entering Ecuador was about 

ninety minutes. 


31

32 



33

34 


After crossing the border we rode the twisting 

mountain highway to the town of Ibarra 

for lunch. The streets are cobbled and the 

architecture is colonial. I’ve never felt as far away 

from home as I do today, and I’ve never felt as 

comfortable as I do either. 

In 2000, the authorities in Quito, in an attempt 

to control their economy, adopted the American 

Dollar as their national currency. So while we 

had to pay for lunch with Gringo money, we’re 

amused when we get our change in Ecuadorian 

dollars. I can’t help wondering how much the US 

government reckons they are worth. 

While the roads are good here, some of the 

driving is suspect. One of the features of South 

and Central American driving is what a friend 

of mine in Dublin calls “Banzai” overtaking. One 

particular young man driving a Honda Prelude 

stands out for special comment. 

First he passes Maeve and then he passes me. 

He then comes to a blind right hand bend behind 

a bus. Not wanting to drop his pace he simply 


throws in an overtake. Halfway through the bend 

the oncoming truck is forced to drive onto the 

hard shoulder to avoid a collision. Undeterred, 

our hero simply performs the same manoeuvre 

on the next bend. We’re on a particularly twisty 

section of road so this just keeps happening. 

We adopt a strategy of dropping off our speed 

so we don’t get hit by any of the debris when 

this idiot eventually crashes, as he surely will. 

His driving skills are so bad, however, that we 

simply catch up with him every few kilometres. 

Eventually, much to our relief he turns off the 

main road and we continue on the road to Quito 

without indecent. 

We ride on through the mountains. The roads 

here are much easier to ride than in southern 

Colombia, being devoid of the military 

checkpoints and their long tailbacks and I find 

myself settling into a rhythm on the bike. I’ve 

found myself getting to a place on the bike 

recently where we have planned our route 

modestly and there is little or no stress when 

it comes to making progress. We have never 

been to where we’re going and can’t presume 

35

36 



37

38 


that we know what we’ll find when and if we 

get there. Rather than freaking me out, this is 

a situation that I’ve accepted with ease and 

indeed welcomed. On my good days I get this 

refined down to riding from one corner to the 

next, the music on my MP3 player providing the 

sound track to our adventure. When I check my 

mirrors and Maeve is there all is good, when I 

look in front the road is clear and that’s really 

all that I need in the moment. 

We continue on along an anonymous stretch 

of highway and I almost miss the equator 

monument. I check my mirrors and Maeve is 

signaling for me to pull in. We retrace the last 

one hundred metres or so where we find a dusty 

car park. On the far side there is a concreted area 

with a large orange beacon in the centre. On the 

beacon is painted the words “Equator Latitude”. 

What I haven’t noticed is that the concrete area 

is actually a sundial and I’d rather glibly rode my 

filthy dirty motorcycle into the centre of it. The 

caretaker isn’t too happy with me riding onto a 


national monument, but then he suggests that I 

take a few pictures before I have to move my bike. 

Maeve, of course, noticed where I was going and 

declined to join me. She’s now standing by the 

edge of the monument beside her bike giving 

me ‘the look’. I feel like I’ve just ridden over the 

Queens foot or taken a leak on the tomb of the 

unknown soldier. 

Several minutes later when she’s finished 

explaining how much of a cultural moron I am 

she starts to see the funny side of it and we 

get rid of my embarrassment by spending the 

next ten minutes or so jumping over the 

line from one hemisphere to the other like 

schoolchildren. We get in some photos of the 

momentous event and head on. 

We finish the day’s riding in Quito. While it is 

quite a large city with lots of heavy traffic and 

thick smog, the old town in the centre has been 

bypassed. Here, amid the beautiful colonial 

buildings, we find our lodging for the evening. 

39

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41

42 


The city is built at 2,850 metres above sea level 

and in 1978 was declared a UNESCO World 

Heritage Site. Rather beautifully, the statue of 

an angel, the Virgen Del Panecillo, overlooks the 

whole city and all her citizens. 

The following day we walk around and do a little 

shopping. In one of the stores we find genuine 

Panama hats amongst other local treasures. 

Apparently even though we know them as 

such, Panama hats don’t exist in Panama, they 

are made here in Quito and are known locally 

by a completely different name. 

Because of the altitude we find ourselves in a 

shop fifty kilometres from the Equator buying 

ourselves woolly hats and scarves to fend off 

night chills that are as bad as any January 

evening in Dublin. While we are out shopping 

we meet a local police captain. His dress uniform 

is pressed to a level of sharpness that looks like 

it could cause paper cuts. His epaulets have the 

most ornate gold embroidery. His gun belt and 


the peak of his hat are polished to perfection. 

It has to be said, he looks pretty intimidating. 

He notices that we aren’t locals and engages 

us in conversation. When he learns that we are 

visiting the city he produces his business card, 

writes his personal mobile phone number on 

the back and tells us to call him if we have any 

problems while we’re in his country. 

While we are in the city we find a FedEx office and 

cull all the souvenirs and gifts from our luggage 

and post them home. It feels really good to have 

decluttered our panniers, sometimes it felt like 

our luggage was getting way out of control! 

After two days in Quito we leave and continue 

south. While most of the Pan-American in 

southern Ecuador is dual carriageway, along 

this mountainous stretch a lot of the road has 

been reduced to one because of landslides and 

rock falls. As we ride along we can see that the 

other side of the road is littered with boulders of 

mixed sizes but is still open to traffic. I can’t help 

43

44 



45

46 


wondering what I would do if a landslide came 

down the hill towards us. We have dropped to 

1800 metres by the time we reach the small and 

beautiful town of Baños. 

It lies in the shadow of a volcano called 

Tungurahua. Several years ago the authorities 

declared the volcano to be active and about to 

blow its top at any moment, and duly evacuated 

the town. For months nothing happened and 

the local people started travelling around the 

back of the volcano and over the mountain 

passes back into the town; by doing so 

they bypassed the roadblocks set up by the 

authorities and took back the town and their 

homes. The following morning the police 

and troops who were supposed to keep the 

residents from returning woke up to find that 

the town was pretty much repopulated. Several 

months later the volcano did indeed erupt, but 

it was a much smaller event than anticipated. 

The lava flow missed the town by several miles 

but did pour over the main road into the town, 

which remained closed off for several months. 

The local solution to the problem was to drive 

over the now cooled lava flow until they had 

worn a dirt track into it. 


When we turn off the main road to ride the last 

thirty or so kilometres into the town, we ride 

along the side of the most beautiful valley, 

across a long bridge with a huge drop beneath, 

and finally cross the remains of the now dusty 

lava flow. 

Our accommodation for the night is in Jim 

Redd’s Hostal Posada del Arte. Jim is an American 

from Chicago who loves art and cycling as well 

as hating American politicians and indeed the 

American political system. For extra special 

high blood pressure moments he gets going 

about ‘W’. He hates George Bush as much as he 

likes looking after his guests. We take a walk 

into this sleepy little town in the eastern Andes 

somewhere in rural Ecuador, and along with the 

beautiful church, mineral baths and countless 

outdoor adventure type places, we find an Irish 

pub called the Leprechaun bar. Just in case we 

are associated with it in any way we spend the 

rest of the day pretending to be Australian. 

Or Canadian. 

The following morning we left Baños just before 

ten. With a last look at the waterfall, Baños de 

Agua Santa, we set off back over the remains of 

the lava fields from Tungurahua and left the lush 

mountains and jungle behind us. 

While in Baños we had learned that our 

proposed route to Riobamba was closed due 

47

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49

50 


to the volcano so we retraced our steps back 

for thirty odd kilometres and rejoined the Pan 

Americana. We continued south and the road 

started its ascent again into the Andes. Up 

and up we rode and just when we thought 

it couldn’t be possible to go any higher, 

we would crest a rise and the road would 

disappear over yet another, higher crest. We 

carried on climbing, the temperature dropping 

as we went. Twist, turn and climb, twist, turn 

and climb, a seemingly never-ending sequence 

of roads from some sort of motorcycle heaven. 

I slow my pace off to almost nothing and drop 

to a low gear before taking a look around. There 

is little or no traffic up here and we have the 

mountainside to ourselves with the exception 

of a few sheep and their herder, who is sitting on 

the roadside. There are mountains all around; 

behind us they drop into the valley we have 

just risen from, on the far side of which they 

seem even taller than the range we are now on. 

We are higher than I have ever been on a 

motorcycle, over 3,000 metres above sea level. 

While I’m quietly impressed with the electronic 

fuel injection system on the bikes, neither of 

them have missed a beat at this altitude, I’m even 

more impressed with our surroundings. It is one 

of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. 

We’re sitting on the side of the road looking 

down on the clouds that seem to lap against the 

side of the hills as the ocean would against the 

shore. We sit there in silence for quite some time, 


there is no need to talk, no need to recognise 

where we are. We just sit and let everything be. 

We continue to follow the snaking path around 

the sides and along the top of the Andes. It’s the 

guts of four hundred kilometres from Baños to 

Cuenca, our destination for the evening, and 

we’re both baffled as to why everyone we asked 

said the journey would take six to eight hours. 

However, the reason soon became apparent 

when the road in the sky suddenly ceased to 

be decent tarmac and turned to a gravel and 

stone track. 

From a high viewpoint we can see the 

construction trucks in various locations littered 

along the road as it winds its way for kilometre 

after kilometre in front of us. We ride slowly 

along the hazardous route admiring the 

patchwork of beige and russet brown fields 

that fill the mountain slopes. We stop to take 

pictures. The journey was amazing and before 

either of us knew it, signs were indicating it was 

less than sixty kilometres to Cuenca. 

Sad to be leaving the lofty heights of the 

mountain roads, but glad to be arriving in a 

new city, we made our way to the old centre 

and to the street where we had booked our 

accommodation. This was fairly easy, the 

problems started when we couldn’t get into 

the hostel. The doors were firmly bolted and a 

sign said “fully booked”. Persistent pounding and 

ringing of doorbells failed to bring any response. 

We’ve been using a website called hostalworld. 

com for the last number of weeks and this is the 

first time we’ve booked somewhere and found 

it shut. Frustrated we start to look elsewhere. 

We try a few other hotels and hostels we’d seen 

recommended, but each one was full. I started to 

get a little worried, it was the weekend after all, 

but surely the whole town couldn’t be booked 

out? We rode a little further and saw some flags 

51

52 


and a sign for a hotel on one of the many narrow 

streets in the old part of the city. We pulled up 

and walked in. No problem, a room for the night 

or even two if we wanted it. The room even 

came with secure off street parking for both of 

the bikes. 

With the necessities for the evening unloaded 

from the luggage, we ask the clerk on reception 

for directions to the car-park. He draws a map 

and I suppose we should have noticed some 

of the warning signals immediately. He had 

difficulty naming the streets and could only tell 

us the number of blocks we would have to go. 

Even then he seemed unsure. 

Maeve persisted until he used a street map 

from the tourist information stand and gave us 

more precise instructions. Off we went. We got 

to the location marked on the map and there 

wasn’t any car park. Trying not to get annoyed, 

I stopped the bike and started to look around. 

There was always the possibility that he had 

mistakenly marked the wrong side of the 

street. We were sure that we had followed his 

instructions to the letter. While we a sitting there 

wondering what to do next, we can’t leave the 

bikes on the street overnight and neither of us 

fancies looking for another hotel, a car pulls up 

beside us and two local men ask if they can help 

us find what we are looking for. 

I asked if they knew the location of the parking 

building for the Hotel San Andres. Immediately 

the passenger in the car, pointed at his friend, 

the driver, and explained that he was the owner 

of said establishment. 

Having failed to explain clearly that we were 

looking for their parking lot and not the hotel, 

they men kindly took us back to where we had 

just come from. We’ve been in the town for 

almost three hours and we’ve yet to get out of 

our bike gear. I’m starting to get very tetchy and 


I can see that Maeve is running out of patience. 

I try to explain a little more accurately about 

our parking problem and the owner informs me 

that we should park the bikes in the lobby of his 

hotel and sets off to find the keys to open the 

second leaf of the glass double doors, which 

will allow us to ride our bikes into the reception 

area with ease. 

We parked on the side of the busy street with 

hazard lights flashing while keys were located. 

Unfortunately, there seemed to be some kind 

of problem with the bottom deadbolt on one of 

the doors and while we waited, the men working 

on getting this open, we could hear another GS 

coming up behind us. When we looked around 

a rider on a red GS and another on a Kawasaki 

KLR650 had pulled up behind us. 

Neither of the guys spoke English, but we 

introduced ourselves in our bad Spanish and 

explained about our parking situation and our 

53

54 


adventures so far. As there was nothing much 

anyone could do until the door was opened, 

Pablo, the GS rider suggested that we go for 

some food and a drink and return in an hour. 

So, from having a problem of not being able to 

find a hotel garage, we managed to somehow 

stumble upon the owner of the hotel we were 

staying at, blag our way to parking the bikes in 

the hotel lobby and find fellow motorcyclists 

who were willing to guide us around their 

amazing city. 

Cuenca is the third largest city in Ecuador 

and is filled with cobbled streets and an over 

supply of colonial churches each one trying to 

outdo the other for sheer volume of internal 

decoration. The Rio Tomebamba runs through 

the city and past the ruins of an ancient Inca 

temple. Most of the stonework from the 

dilapidated temple was taken and reused 

by the Spanish to build their new colonial 

stronghold. Moving around the old part of 

the city, there are endless beautiful buildings 

with carved timber doors and ornate wrought 

iron balconies with shuttered windows, 

each one presenting itself to the street as a 

mystery waiting to be solved. 


After some food, we all return to the hotel. 

The door problem has been sorted so the next 

thing was to get the bikes in. Maeve went first. 

She made it look simple, disappearing into the 

building, leaving me sitting on the opposite side 

of the street. Pablo stopped the oncoming traffic 

and I went for it. I was riding my GS over the 

polished tiled lobby floor, past a fancy reception 

desk, heading towards the centre of the hotel! 

At the courtyard we rode down another flight 

of steps and parked up for the night. I once won 

a James Bond themed fancy dress competition 

when I rode a Ducati monster into a restaurant 

while dressed in a tux, but riding a fully loaded 

GS through a rather nice hotel is still a first for 

me. Once we get the bikes parked we retire 

upstairs and get changed out of our bike gear at 

last. Tomorrow we’ll hopefully ride to the border 

crossing at Huaquillas and on into Peru! 

Paul Browne 

55

MILWAUKEE MEGALITH 

“When HD offered to loan me the most over the top bike they produce, 

I took one look at it and decided it was too much motorcycle for little ol’ me.” 

56 



57

Not that it was too much for me to 

manage y’understand; it’s just that I 

figured that any machine that comes 

with an armchair on the back, demands to 

be shared. I put the word out that the pillion 

was up for grabs, and a friend of a friend, 

affectionately known as TGB (Thegirlybiker) 

was first to claim it. 

Having stated that the ‘Glide wouldn’t be 

too much for me, I have to admit to feeling 

genuine trepidation when I first saw it close up 

in all its immense glory; and manoeuvring it in 

the car park behind Warr’s glossy Kings Road 

showroom did nothing to ease my disquiet. 

However, by the time I’d negotiated my way 

onto the trendy main thoroughfare and across 

London via Knightsbridge, Piccadilly Circus 

and Trafalgar Square, with everything they 

had to offer by way of dense, bad tempered 

and aggressive traffic, I was confident I could 

manage the big beastie anywhere that had a 

reasonable strip of tarmac on offer. 

58 

Wales is my usual first choice when it comes 

to a well maintained twisty stretch of asphalt 

slicing through beautiful scenery; but as I said 

in issue 121, reporting on a glorious August 

ride to Machynlleth on my first ever Harley, 

“the Softail Custom isn’t really a B road blaster, 

there’s just much too much of it for the point, 

squirt, brake, scrape, accelerate, style they 

tend to encourage”. And if that was true of the 

comparatively lithe and narrow Softail, then 

the gargantuan Glide was likely to be every 

bit as unsuitable for the conditions as the 

caravans that clog those same roads in the 

summer months. 

It was Rod Young’s comments about the “Ultra 

Huge Caravanesque Touring Behemoth Glide” 

after he attended the 2008 model launch that 

persuaded me to accept Harley’s generous 

offer. He wrote, “These bikes are just superb at 

what they do and I challenge anybody to ride 

one and not enjoy the experience. Wind up the 

stereo, set the cruise control, stand up on the 


“I slept well and got up in time to stand on the deck and watch the rising 

sun splash orange paint across the strip of land between the indigo sea 

and the slate grey clouds.” 

seat and wave with both hands as you head 

down to Morocco for a cup of coffee.” 

Now old Mr Young’s a man who loves his 

motosycles; but as regular readers will be 

aware he thinks nothing of riding from London 

to Penzance for a pastie, so his idea of a fun 

ride shouldn’t necessarily be taken too literally 

by normal sane folk. Besides I don’t like coffee 

but I understood where he was coming from 

so I was looking forward to accepting his 

challenge, albeit at a shorter range and more 

soberly seated. 

While I had no intentions of riding to Africa, I 

decided that given the kind of mile munching 

the bike was designed for, a short continental 

jaunt was the least I could do. I’d been 

promising to take reader John Philip Evans up 

on his generous offer of a bed in Bretagne, ever 

since the spring of 2006; and I’d been reliably 

informed that there were some impressive 

standing stones near Carnac, which sounded 


perfect for the “we’re all megaliths together” 

cover I had in mind. 

We only had a few days, so I checked out 

Brittany Ferries’ routes and timetables and 

opted for a couple of night crossings. We’d sail 

out on the 22.00hr Plymouth to Roscoff ferry 

on the Sunday and return on the 23.30hr from 

Caen to Portsmouth the following Wednesday; 

and with cabins booked both ways it meant we 

could sleep through the crossings and arrive at 

our destinations refreshed. 

Google maps wanted to send me straight 

down the M4 before hanging a left onto the 

M5 and although I usually avoid motorways 

like the plague on a bike, the Electra Glide was 

so unlike anything I’d ever ridden before, I was 

planning to follow the rather humdrum advice 

of the big map in the sky. However, en route 

to picking TBG up in Kingston, I realised that 

I’d have to ride right past the M3 on my way 

to the M4, which seemed even more ridiculous 

59

than travelling all that way west before turning 

south. Besides we were planning to have 

dinner with my friend John in Plymouth, which 

left plenty of leeway so I decided to ditch 

plan A and follow the more natural south 

westerly route. 

We refueled at Amesbury and as I rolled west 

with Stonehenge on my right and Tom Petty’s 

Refugee creating a beautiful wall of sound in 

front of me, I congratulated myself on going 

with my usual instinct and taking the A road. 

OK the Harley might have felt like it was the size 

and weight of a car in London traffic, but on the 

delightfully rolling A303 it was unmistakably a 

motorbike, and a bike that followed the gentle 

curves and undulations of the tarmac with a 

reassuring rock steadiness. 

It made short work of the miles and we soon 

found ourselves joining the last stretch of the 

M5, where roadworks complete with cameras 

60 

threatened to slow us to a lower speed than 

we’d been maintaining on the two lane road 

we’d just left. Fortunately the cameras where 

of the forward facing average speed variety so 

as I was on a roll I decided to opt for a higher 

average speed and was delighted to discover 

that the Glide’s enormous presence meant that 

any of the light traffic that was sitting in the 

outside lane doing the prescribed 50, quickly 

moved over allowing us to sweep rapidly past. 

After dinner it was a short hop to the ferry. As 

usual on bikes we were waved to the front, but 

as I rolled forward and found myself looking 

down 30 or 40ft of steep metal ramp liberally 

coated with drizzling rain, I have to admit that 

my bottle went and I asked TGB to dismount. 

It wasn’t that I thought her petite presence 

would affect the likelihood of my dropping 

the beast, I just didn’t want to have to worry 

about her when – as seemed inevitable at that 

moment – I did. Of course once I took a deep 

breath and fed the clutch in, the Electra glided 

down the ramp and across the wide expanse 

of shiny metal floor with ne’er a drama; and 

we’d dropped our gear in the cabin and settled 

in the bar before the ferry had even finished 

loading with cars and trucks. 

A couple of drinks later we were ready to turn 

in. I’m sure that if TGB had her fella with her, 

they’d have been happy to squeeze onto a 

single bunk and they wouldn’t have needed to 

change in the shower/toilet either but the bunk 

beds were perfect for our arrangement and 

surprisingly comfortable; and the bathroom 

facilities, including the changing space, were 

perfectly adequate for the purpose. 

I slept well and got up in time to stand on the 

deck and watch the rising sun splash orange 

paint across the strip of land between the 

indigo sea and the slate grey clouds. After 

coffee (for TGB), juice and croissants in Roscoff, 



61

we headed west on beautiful empty roads with 

TGB taking care of the navigation, which left 

me free to exist in the moment, soaking up the 

sights, and taking time out to reflect on the 

whole experience. 

And what an experience it was. There I was 

on a fine day in mid November, I was rolling 

effortlessly along scenic well-paved roads that 

were lightly populated by bike friendly French 

peeps, breathing air that had blown in across 

a couple of thousand miles of ocean, I had an 

attractive young woman sitting inches behind 

me taking care of all the details, and I was riding 

over seventeen grand’s worth of kilometre 

crunching cruise machine! OK neither the bike 

nor the attractive young woman were mine, 

but the experience certainly was and I was 

revelling in it. 

We rode to the lighthouse at Saint-Mathieu, 

which appeared on our map to be the most 

westerly point in Brittany, then turned east and 

had lunch in Brest before heading out on a fast 

dual carriageway (N165) towards Carnac. We 

managed to find a good enough twin room 

and then wandered around until we stumbled 

on a cafe that promised to furnish us with 

moules marinieres et frites and fine beers – and 

gratifyingly they delivered on both counts. 

In the morning we rode the short distance to 

the standing stones and got the cover shot 

before swinging north to meet up with John 

in Le Haut Corlay. Following his red beetle as 

he drove it rapidly along the back roads on the 

way to lunch, there was no mistaking that he 

was an ex-police motorcyclist and advanced 

motorist and I had to hustle the Harley to keep 

up. Coincidentally we’d arrived on the day that 

John’s BCFR (Bike Club France) group had their 

monthly meeting in a pub about 45 minutes or 

so away. As John predicted there weren’t many 

bikes there (i.e. just the one – we’d travelled 

by car too), but it was interesting to spend an 

evening with a bunch of ex-pat bikers who, 

refreshingly, normally insist on only speaking 

French (they made an exception on this 

occasion as a concession to my ignorance!) 

and were enormously enthusiastic about the 

motorcycle friendly Gallic culture. 

The next day John treated TGB to a ride on 

something a little more lithe when she joined 

him on the back of his Deauville for our guided 

ride to the spectacular pink granite Côte Rosé. 

She rejoined me on the hog after a coffee break 

by the quayside in Paimpol and we parted 

company with John at Saint-Brieuc, when he 

headed home and we struck out to the east 

and our late night ferry. 

TGB was a bit worried about missing the boat 

because she absolutely had to be at work the 

following morning, so with the sun sinking 

lower in my mirrors we chugged along the 

N road at a steady 125km/h. I managed to 

reassure her that we did have time for a short 

detour to visit Le-Mont-Saint-Michel and grab 

some spectacular shots before the sun turned 

in for the night. 

Back on course we powered on and ended 

up in the ferry port all checked in and ready 

to go with hours to spare. That was another 

new experience for me, because in the past 

whenever I’ve been heading back to a channel 

port, I’ve always found myself, whether alone 

or riding with a group, having to ride faster and 

faster, as it began to look increasingly unlikely 

that I’d make it, only to race across the dockyard 

moments before they wound the ramp up. 

The four-berth cabin we shared on the 

luxurious Mont St Michel was very posh; and 

we enjoyed another good kip until the tannoy 

system gently stirred us as the big boat made its 

way up the long channel into Pompey harbour. 

TGB’s boyfriend Andy had missed her so much 

that he was there to meet her as we rolled off 

the ferry at 7am! Now that’s what I call true love! 

They headed off towards London on his TDM, 

while I went and found myself some breakfast 

and reflected on Rod’s challenge – and damn 

him if he wasn’t right! 

Dave Gurman 


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64 

This article is dedicated to the memory 

of the man whose offer of hospitality 

prompted the trip. He was a retired police 

motorcyclist, an ex marine and a biker 

for life. I learned last month that he had 

reached the end of the road in February 

this year. As I said in an email to his widow 

Jac “I’m saddened to hear that John has 

gone, he was a big man in so many ways 

and there are comments, conversations 

and thoughts that we shared, that will 

always stay with me.” 

R.I.P. John Philip Evans 



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66 


The Pillion Position 

Have you ever had one of those dreams 

where you’re walking around and you 

have this really uneasy feeling that 

everyone’s looking at you; then all of a sudden 

you realise you’re naked? As a biker being on 

the back of an Electra Glide for 4 days around 

Northern France, you sort of develop the same 

feeling that everyone is paying just a little too 

much attention to you for comfort. 

There’s certainly very little chance of a SMIDSY 

(Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You) on the Glide - 

there’s more chance that people will just lose 

concentration as they gawp at the sheer size 

of the American leviathan and run into you. 

It’s a vehicular monolith; a statement vehicle 

which says look at me; it’s the Elvis of the bike 

world, (and we’re talking the burger-wolfing 

gold-draped Elvis of his later days here); it is 

everything that is excessive about America 

and to be around it makes you realise why the 

world is fascinated by the US. You cannot help 

but stare in a mixture of wonder and disbelief 

at the brashness of it all. 


As the Electra Glide pulled up outside my 

apartment on a cold and wet late-autumn 

morning, I let out an involuntary laugh at the 

improbable sight of Dave nestled somewhere 

in the middle of something that is 2.5m long, 

and causing traffic to back up because it’s 

taking up so much of the road when parked 

up. And that’s seems to be a lot of people’s 

reactions. As a biker in London, you get used 

to the disdain of your fellow motorist but the 

‘Glide isn’t a motorbike... it’s much, much more 

than that. It seems to be an emotional prompt 

that makes children point and stare, dogs bark, 

bikers slow down to take a look as they pass, 

and cars to actually let you out in traffic, just so 

they can sit behind and take a gander. 

Despite its length, in practice the ‘Glide is 

surprisingly snug for a pillion. You don’t sit ON 

this bike, you sit IN it, and because of that, and 

the fact that the pillion seat has a backrest and 

speakers aimed at your kidneys, there’s not a 

lot of room to move about - you’re sort of sat 

in a chair, and there you sit. That’s all there is 

to it. You don’t move with the bike at all. It’s 

a strangely disconnected experience for an 

67

experienced pillion and bears more in common 

with being a passenger in a car than on a bike. 

Also despite a wheelbase that would make 

your average family car jealous, it came as big 

surprise just how close together the rider and 

pillion are obliged to sit. It’s a little as if the 

pillion is almost secondary to the cavernous 

top box and panniers, you seem to be shoehorned 

somewhat so that the rider is rather 

intimately located between the pillion’s legs 

and the pillion’s legs are forced outward a la 

stirrups! I would imagine that a male pillion 

of any larger physical size would have some 

serious proximity issues with the ‘Glide. 

Of course, what this also means is that as a 

pillion, pretty much all you can see forwards is 

the back of the rider’s head. 

After a restful overnight ferry ride from Plymouth 

to Roscoff, we struck off on a tour of Brest and 

started to rack up the miles on Milwaukee’s 

Monsterbike. The roads were fabulous and the 

traffic was light, and what is an immovable 

object at low-speed was actually surprisingly 

smooth and capable, both at good pace on the 

A-roads as well as in the twisties. This is not a 

bike built for throwing about however; an idea 

reinforced as your hear the footplates scrape 

when you attempt to take a roundabout at 

anything above pedestrian pace. To wring the 

neck of this thing would be to miss the point 

though. It’s a sightseeing bike. Perhaps the point 

that the pillion can’t see forward is a good one 

- it forces you to take in the surroundings and 

slow down a bit. On a couple of occasions, I’ll 

admit though, it slowed and got just a little too 

comfy so that I felt the head lolling and l was 

soon asleep. I’m reticent to say that this was a 

compliment to the Harley’s comfort and smooth 

ride, but I have a bit of a feeling that at times it 

was just a bit too much of a coach-trip on the 

back of the ‘Glide to keep me awake. 

We stopped frequently on the trip for Les Cafés, 

Le Gasole et Les PeePees. Despite stopping 

in a range of places from towns to villages 

to beachfronts, the Harley always managed 

to make an exhibition of herself and we’d 

come back to a gaggle of locals or visitors 

surrounding her and scratching their heads 

or taking photos. I lost count of the number 

of times my pidgin French and lack of ability 

to ‘talk bike’ let me down in the early stages 

of some enthusiastic questioning. I took it 

upon myself to become trip photographer 

and map-reader as a way of looking busy and 

keeping interested. Indeed it’s probably worth 

saying that many of the shots I took were taken 

from the back of the bike and most involved 

me standing up/leaning out and generally 

clambering over the back of the bike, which 

seemed to do little to disrupt the ride and 

indeed from where I was sitting/perching it felt 

stable at all times. 

Experiencing the ‘Glide as a tourer is somewhat 

of a 5-star experience. Harley have added some 

superb touches to the bike to make life more 

comfortable. My personal favourite were the 

inner bags for the panniers; perfectly shaped 

so that they fitted snugly, they meant that there 

was no offloading of contents from bags into 

the topbox, or forcing of undies into crevices 

at the bottom of the panniers. It was simply a 

matter of opening the case, taking out the bag 

and walking into the hotel. Brilliant. 

The stereo was neat too. It gets louder as you 

accelerate, and is impressively loud enough to 

turn heads in towns when the standard cans 

don’t do their job of alerting the locals. On a 

bike that was built to be seen, the choice of 

our esteemed editor to play a collection of 80s 

camp anthems was the ideal soundtrack to the 

arrival of an equally camp looking machine. 

And there I think I’ve hit on the point of the 

Electra Glide. It’s a bike to be seen on, and a 

bike to see things on. You’re forced from townmode 

into touring mode in an instant and my 

paranoia about everyone staring was probably 

because it was such a fast transition for me. 

68 WWW.THERIDERSDIGEST.CO.UK ISSUE 172 November 2012 

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From invisibility on my Bandit to sticking 

out like a sore-thumb and being the centre 

of attention was an odd feeling, but not a 

bad experience. Perhaps if I’d grown into 

the Harley and not had such a short-sharp 

shock we would have developed a happier 

relationship. 

The best thing about the ‘Glide and all those 

people staring though... there’s absolutely no 

way your bum can look big on it! 

Thegirlybiker x 

A casual leg-over in the cold 

(Yet another opinion) 

I 

first came across this flagship when the 

editor was showing it off to a group of 

ladies of a certain age. He was letting them 

take turns sitting on it (ooh-err missus). 

Then several days later he gave me a call, “Do 

you want a go on the bike and oh, take it back 

to Warrs the Harley dealer… coz it’s cold?” 

Indeed Mr Frost had visited and it had turned 

a tad nippy. It occurred to me that the editor 

had become the perfect candidate to be a 

Harley owner. 

Anyway, never wanting to turn a good lig down, 

I readily jumped at the offer. 

Setting out across sarf Lunon through the 

evening rush hour was frustrating work. 

I made the mistake of taking my usual 

route that involves small roads, lots of ‘em, 

and five thousand speed bumps, which was 

not the ideal environment for this 

particular vehicle. 

Having reached home I sat down with a glass 

of something reviving and thought about the 

Harley. In my world, probably unfairly, most HDs 


and certainly the cruiser variety are regarded 

as a source of fun and at times derision. I say 

that with a small degree of shame (only a small 

degree mind you). This machine however is 96 

cubic inches. That’s 1600cc in new money and 

it costs a smidge over £1000 per 100cc. This is a 

bike that’s built and priced to be taken seriously. 

So if I was going to do it any justice I would have 

to take on roads that were more appropriate 

than inner city speed-hump raceways. 

The next morning was as crisp and frosty as the 

one before. It was time to put the liners back 

in the jacket and trousers, don thicker socks 

and gloves and head towards the countryside 

before the bike needed to be back at the 

dealers. I had a couple of hours. First port of call 

was down the A2 to Dartford. I was giving the 

Boy Biker a ride to college, it was a little treat 

for him to be able to sit back in an armchair 

and listen to the stereo. From there I headed 

down some diddlee roads ending up the other 

side of Sevenoaks. I still had plenty of time 

to find some bigger roads to go a bit quicker 

before getting the bike back to Warrs in 

Mottingham, in deepest southern suburbia. 

Only thing was the bike was supposed to go 

back to their other shop in Kings Road, Chelsea. 

Doh! So a mad(ish) dash ensued to get the 

bike across town. 

So what do I think now? Is it just an expensive 

joke? 

It is extremely comfortable. It is pretty damn 

smooth. It can get a shift on. It does have a 

good stereo. 

Despite being keen and able to accelerate up 

to and beyond 100 the bike felt a little unsteady 

at a constant high speed. Front end a little light? 

If anything could be light on this Harley! Also my 

head was buffeted around, which caused me to 

hide behind the screen. 

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It seemed to be in its element around 

70mph, which equates to 3000rpm in top. 

Reminded me of the power of a diesel, a bloody 

good diesel mind. I was surprised how quickly 

it could be hustled through town till the traffic 

became too tight to find a path through. 

All in all it’s a lot of bike that costs an awful 

lot of money but if you are not in a hurry and 

have a big garage, oh and loads of spare cash 

sloshing around in an off-shore account, this 

could be the bike and image for you. 

Dave Newman 

www.harley-davidson.com 

0871 641 2508 

www.brittany-ferries.com 

0871 244 0744 

75

Motorcycle Live 

2012 Bike Show 

at the NEC 

Blez returns to the NEC for the umpteenth time... 


77

I’ve been going to motorcycle shows at the 

NEC since the very first one, back in the spring 

of 1981. (Spring seems a much more sensible 

time of year to me, but the manufacturers all 

prefer to have them in the autumn; that means 

the UK one is always in winter, because Cologne 

or Milan always come first, both chronologically 

and metaphorically!) 

In the good old days, the press and trade day 

was always on a Thursday, followed by a highpriced 

Friday to keep the riff-raff out but that 

tradition was dropped a couple of years ago 

in order to shorten the show while keeping 

both weekends, so now we journos have to rub 

shoulders with any paying punters who fancy 

attending ‘Media Monday’. 

I was mighty glad to have my heated jacket 

for the 110 mile thrash up the motorway and 

the bike park was still only half full at midday. 

I have to say that the indoor bike park at the 

NEC is one of the great show innovations of the 

last decade. You can’t beat having a warm, dry, 

secure place to park up and disrobe, especially 

if you’ve just ridden a hundred or more miles 

in the freezing cold or the pissing rain. And 

it’s free. If you’re not sensible enough to ride a 

machine that can swallow all your gear, there’s 

the Riders for Health helmet and clobber stand 

to look after it for you, for a quid or two in a 

good cause. The only downside is that the bike 

park shares the same roof space as the Ramp’d 

Up freestyle arena, which you can’t see, because 

it’s all curtained off, but boy can you hear it! 

The deafening commentary is as loud as the 

leaping bikes, and I put my earplugs in while I 

packed my gear into the Tmax (although I hadn’t 

needed them on the motorway!). 

I am always astounded when fellow bikers say 

‘there’s nothing at the show’ and that they 

whizzed around it in a couple of hours. I’m one 

of those people who can spend an entire day 

at an NEC show, and still miss half the things I 

wanted to see, which is why I often come back 

the next day. And this year was no exception! 

And even after the best part of two days, I could 

easily have spent another day there! 

Every enthusiast has their own ‘take’ on a bike 

show and will be interested in, or attracted to, 

different things. I’m the first to admit that I am 

not your average biker, and I’m not your average 

bike journo either. These are just a few of the 

things which caught my eye, starting with the 

manufacturers’ stands. 

PIAGGIO GROUP. (Aprilia, Derbi, Moto Guzzi, 

Piaggio, Vespa) The new Aprilia Caponord 

1200 looks a lot slimmer than its porky, 

1000cc predecessor. The re-badged, re-styled 

75bhp SRV 850 definitely looks better than its 

forerunner, the Gilera GP800, but that exposed 

rear chain really spoils its claim to be any kind of 

scooter in my book. On the other hand, keeping 

the price under £8,000 makes it look like a lot 

of scoot for the money compared to the pricey 

new BMW maxiscoots which have 15bhp less, 

with ‘only’ 60bhp. 

It’s extraordinary to see the venerable Vespa 

PX125 back from the ‘dead’, so to speak, 

complete with 2-stroke engine! But the honest 

Piaggio representative I spoke to admitted 

that the exhaust strangulation required to get 

it through modern emission controls means 

that it won’t do much more than 45mph. And 

who needs to mess about with a clutch and 

twistgrip gearchange these days when the 

modern twist’n’go machines, with their four 

stroke engines, are zippier anyway? 

The Piaggio X10 which was shown as a 

prototype in Milan last year, seems to have 

transferred to production with both looks and 

practicality and by all accounts, performance 

which belies its 330cc capacity. I’m looking 

forward to riding one, especially if the 500cc 

version comes to the UK. It was also interesting 

to see that Piaggio UK have decided to import 

an LT version of their MP3 500 leaning three 

wheeler (previously the Gilera Fuoco) which 

means of course that you can drive the 90+mph 

machine on a car licence, without even having 

to bother with CBT, never mind all the hoops 

of a motorcycle test. (Look for the compulsory 

footbrake to tell the LTs from the motorcyclecategory 

machines). 

I haven’t tried any of the modern Moto Guzzis 

yet, but would like to because they look as if 

they’ve captured the quirky charm of the ‘70s 

originals and updated them for the 21st century. 

BMW. The most striking machine on the BMW 

stand was the all-electric C-Evo maxiscooter, 


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Simon Pavey’s 450 Dakar bike on the right 

80 WWW.THERIDERSDIGEST.CO.UK ISSUE 173 December 2012 81

which I’ve already had the great pleasure of 

riding (of which more anon) but sadly, it’s not 

due for production until 2014. BMW’s petrol 

maxis are on sale of course, but it’s a shame 

they’re so expensive, because I know they 

could change a lot of people’s preconceptions 

about scooters. No doubt they’ll sell tons more 

of the new watercooled R1200GS, even though 

it’s bound to be even more expensive! The new 

F800GT actually looks like a more practical and 

affordable all-rounder for those who don’t share 

my penchant for getting onto the dirt and it 

should be a lot less thirsty than the 1200 twins 

too. The new F700GS was on display, which is 

of course a ‘refreshed’ version of the old F650GS, 

and like its predecessor is really an 800! 

BMW’s off road training maestro Si Pavey was 

there, although his new 450 Dakar rally bike was 

naturally on the adjacent Husqvarna stand, 

since that’s what it’s based on. (The Swedishnamed, 

Italian-based company is of course now 

owned by the German manufacturer). Si said he 

was really looking forward to riding it in South 

America next month, since it’s so much easier 

to handle than the heffalumps he’s ridden in 

the past. However he was frustrated that, for 

reasons best known to themselves, the Dakar 

organisers had refused an entry to his son 

Llewelyn who has just proved the foolishness 

of their decision by dicing with the leaders in the 

recent Taklimakan rally in China. I rather fancy 

a go on one of the new Husky Nuda 900 too, 

which certainly looks a lot different from the 

BMW F800 that it’s based on. 

Talking of rally bikes, it was good to see the 

immaculate KTM 690 rally machine on the 

TrailBlazers stand, since all the rally equipment 

is made by my friend John Mitchenson who 

started Rally Raid products as a sideline to his 

main plastic moulding business about three 

years ago. For some reason KTM have never even 

made an adventure version of the 690, let alone 

a pukka rally competition version (as they used 

to with the 640 Adventure and 660 Rally) leaving 

a nice big hole in the market for John (who is an 

experienced rally rider himself). 

KTM. The Austrian firm’s new 1190 Adventure 

V-twin was attracting a lot of punter interest 

and looks as if it could provide a serious 

rival to BMW’s new R1200GS. However, I was 

disappointed that there was no sign of the new 

electric Freeride, since KTM released a fantastic 

video of the bike ‘rocking Barcelona’ over a year 

ago. Can’t wait to get my hands on one when 

they finally go into production. http://www. 

youtube.com/watch?v=t5SqoyR8Ht0 

HONDA. The most exciting Honda thing at the 

show, for me, was the video about the making 

of the bike stunts across the rooftops of 

Istanbul in the new Bond film, Skyfall. It made 

me want to see the film, for that sequence 

alone! I was delighted to discover that one 

of the stunt riders was none other than the 

fearless Aussie Robbie Madison whom I’ve had 

the pleasure of watching turning somersaults 

at Goodwood, and millions more have seen 

on YouTube jumping up to, and down from, 

the Las Vegas replica of the Arc de Triomphe 

in Las Vegas. Both the Skyfall bikes were on 

display too. 

Personally, the most interesting new Honda 

was the Forza 300 scooter, because previous 

versions were never imported into the UK and 

it’s a very good looking scoot and much more 

my cup of tea than the big-wheeled but ugly 

SH300. The Forza formed part of several very 

astute ‘What I can ride’ displays explaining the 

new motorcycle licence categories which come 

into effect in January. Some, such as the 28mph 

moped and 11kw 125cc categories stay the 

same – it’s the new A2 licence which has really 

rung the changes. 

SUZUKI. Suzuki have given their venerable 

Burgman 650 a revamp but it’s more of a makeover 

than a facelift. In fact it doesn’t look like 


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much more than a re-spray with funky matt 

paint. The weight, power and torque were all 

helpfully described as ‘TBC’ and there was no 

sign of a price either. As a big Burger 650 fan 

for many years (I’ve got two) I can only hope 

that Suzuki’s engineers have managed to get the 

power up and the weight down, to rival the spec 

of the new BMW C650GT, but without getting 

too near its price! And talking of prices, it was a 

shock to see that an ABS-equipped Burger 400 

now costs £6,399! 

TRIUMPH. Triumph’s 1200 Adventure, which was 

another bike I saw launched in Milan last year, 

seems to be doing great business following rave 

reviews in the press. I’m dying to try one, along 

with the new Tiger 800, which is also rivalling its 

BMW equivalent and it was good to see the ‘Help 

for Heroes’ Tiger equipped with British-made 

Metal Mule panniers. The new ‘bagger’ version 

of the Rocket III looks a lot more practical than 

the naked version and is yet another ‘must try’ 

Triumph on my list. Then again, I know two very 

experienced riders who’ve both dropped Rocket 

IIIs when they’ve locked up the front wheel, so 

it’s probably just as well that they now come 

with ABS as standard. 

YAMAHA. The most intriguing machine on 

the Yamaha stand was the new Project 3 three 

cylinder beast – the company’s first triple 

since the shaft drive XS750 and 850s of yore 

(remember them?). But as a superscoot fan, I was 

equally excited to see the new ‘Blackmax’ version 

of the Tmax530, complete with gold wheels 

and, glory be, ABS! Marketing man Simon 

Belton confirmed that Yamaha UK will finally be 

bringing in some ABS-equipped Tmaxes in the 

new year. And not a moment too soon, bearing 

in mind that the Mk2 version, was available 

with ABS sur le continent back in 2004. Over 

on the Black Horse stage, there was another, 


87

virtually unrecognisable ‘dirt track’ version of 

the Tmax which had been ‘hyper modified’ by 

American custom guru Roland Sands. I certainly 

wouldn’t want to ride it down the M40 on a 

dark and wintry night, but I’m sure it would be 

top fun on a twisty back road in the summer. 

Check out the videos of it in action for yourself 

on Yamaha Motor Europe’s website. https:// 

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_ 

embedded&v=DCyAYeoLv-w#! 

ZERO. As a long time fan of all things electric 

on two wheels, it was great to see the Zero 

stand at the NEC. The American machines are 

now equipped with their own more powerful 

in-house motors, and have had their styling 

refreshed for the second time in two years. The 

only downside is that they’ve gone from having 

six models which were all learner legal in 2012, 

to six models of which none is learner legal for 

2013. Doh! 2012 models are still available, but 

I’m looking forward very much to riding the new 

ones, the sportiest of which are now capable of 

nearly 100mph with a claimed range of 70 miles 

at 70mph. Believe you me, electric bikes and 

scoots are the future, especially for commuting. 

KüBERG. Czech-made Küberg electric bikes are 

for kids, and like their British rivals OSET, use old 

fashioned lead acid batteries to keep the price 

down below £1,000. They have plenty of power 

and range for a young beginner, and you’d be 

amazed at what they can do in the right hands. 

Electric is also an ideal way for anyone to have 

their first experience of a powered two wheeler, 

whether they’re a 16 year old on a Yamaha EC02 

or a 6 year old on a Küberg or OSET. 

GET ON. The Get On new rider training area 

duly had an EC02 electric moped, along with a 

good selection of both geared and automatic 

machinery for PTW virgins to have their first 

lesson on. Main man Nick Stephenson told 

me that the area was deliberately screened off 

from the public because experience showed 

that spectators could get rowdy and make new 

riders very uncomfortable. 

TEST RIDES. Experienced riders could also try a 

host of new machines out on the road, including 

a Zero, which would have been my own top 

choice if I’d had the time. There were also indoor 

tracks for both young kids, courtesy of KTM and 

Kiddimoto, and for adults, courtesy of Yamaha. 

Nick Sanders Sam Manicom 

NICK SANDERS. It was good to see my old 

friend Nick Sanders, with his customary stand 

and cinema appropriately opposite his Yamaha 

sponsors. Fans will know that he’s recently 

changed allegiance from his customary R1s 

to the new Super Ténéré 1200 for his latest 

adventures in North and South America, but not 

many people know that he first went around 

the world by pushbike, and broke the Guinness 

record while doing so. His free 11 minute 

highlights video is well worth seeing, and the 

man himself is always entertaining. Right now, 

he has an adventure centre under construction 

at his home in mid Wales, which I’m looking 

forward to seeing. 

TRAVEL DRI STAND. In addition to all the useful 

kit, there were no fewer than three adventure 

motorcycling authors on the Travel Dri stand; 

Sam Manicom, Nathan ‘Postie Bike’ Millward and 

Graham Field. I’ve read all four of Sam’s books 

and can recommend all of them (particularly the 

last two, because I edited those myself). I’ve yet 

to read Nathan’s Long Ride Home or Graham’s 


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Looking for Greener Grass, but I’ve heard good 

things about both. Mr ‘Metal Mule’ Paul Goulding 

was also squeezed onto a corner of the Travel Dri 

stand, and he explained why his new budget 

panniers are only half the price of the original 

ones, while remaining equally robust. 

Of course lots of people go to the bike show 

mainly to pick up a bargain. If that’s your plan, 

it makes perfect sense to go with four wheels. 

No question, especially if you’re buying things 

like tyres or bike stands. Last year I bought a 

full face, flip front lid for £50, which is no more 

than you can pay for some visors. (It’s not perfect 

because it’s bloody noisy and the inner sun visor 

doesn’t retract properly, but it looks better in 

photos than my nice quiet old Schubert.) This 

year I splashed out £10 for a half price bike cover 

and £17 for a pricey plug-in power socket. 

Talking of tyres, I was entertained for several 

minutes at the Black Horse stage by Steve Parrish 

commentating while rufty tufty bikers held a 

knobbly tyre at each end of an out-stetched arm 

for as long as they could manage. One minute 

was tough, two minutes heroic. 

I bumped into MAG man, Overland editor and 

TRD columnist Paddy Tyson on the way out of 

the show on Monday and he was amused to 

discover that he had covered the same amount 

of miles since July 2012 – 24,000 – on his brand 

new Honda NC 700, as my 2008 Tmax has since 

it started life as a Yamaha press bike four years 


Paddy Tyson and his NC700 

ago. I was also impressed that there’s as much 

space in the dummy NC700 tank as there is in 

the underseat ‘boot’ of my Tmax. 

Amongst many other things, I would have 

liked to see some of the brain-out motocross 

skills on display in the Ramp’d Up event which 

deafened me on the way in, but I never even 

made it into that hall. Bearing in mind that I 

didn’t see or do even half the things available in 

two days at Motorcycle Live, I can’t help thinking 

there’d be some takers for a reduced price (or 

even free) ‘come back next day’ punter ticket, 

but it would obviously have to be valid for only 

one individual, to stop people flogging them! 

Well, the press passes are now individualised, 

complete with passport photo, so in theory, 

there’s no reason why the punter ones couldn’t 

be too… 

For the record, the trusty Tmax got me back to 

Richmond at an average speed of about 70mph, 

door to door. In the whole damp and dark 113 

miles I only saw one bike, a Honda CBR600, 

cruising about 30mph slower than me. I was very 

glad of my heated jacket and screen extension 

and only wish I’d been able to plug in my heated 

gloves! It’s hard to beat a superscooter in 

the winter! 

Paul Blezard 

Many thanks to Andy Cadney for his 

Midlands hospitality 

93

Happiness Is Just 

Round The Bend 

94 



Mark Renton would have got 

sportsbikes, had Irvine Welsh chosen 

to introduce him to this particular 

obsession in his acclaimed novel Trainspotting. 

Already with tight jeans, skinny-fit t-shirt and 

trainers he would have only needed a Simpson 

Bandit lid and a Durex Suzuki paddock jacket 

to be at home on a Gixxer. And, like his smack 

habit, sportsbikes would have got under his skin. 

Some people just don’t geddit – and that’s fair 

enough. Look at the practicalities and just about 

nothing stacks up in their favour. Like drugs. 

But by that measure no-one would do much of 

anything, except work. 

As they say in showbusiness, ‘always leave them 

wanting more’. The local drug-dealer probably 

has the same philosophy. And, as someone who 

has loved sportsbikes for all of my 25 years of 

riding, I admit that to be the nature of the beast. 

If my passion were to be sated I would be a very 

unhappy man. 

I think I can probably total in a single figure the 

number of times per year I come back from a ride 

feeling elated with how it went. I’m not talking 

about formal roadcraft here – that should be a 

given and if I were regularly walking back into 

the house thinking I’d made a total bollocks of my 

interactions with other road users I’d be looking 

for some advanced training. No, I’m talking 

about the fun bit. I’m always chasing, chasing 

something that keeps just ahead of me most 

of the time. I often get to touch it, sometimes I 

get to hold it for a few seconds but it’s always a 

tenuous grasp and it slips away again. There are 

days when it remains that far out of reach that I 

give it up as a bad job and come home and do a 

bit of gardening instead. Thankfully, those days 

of abject incompetence are rare. 

I’m talking about the hit, the rush that you get 

when you step outside of your comfort zone, 

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when your senses are shouting ‘oh no!’ and 

your ringpiece is bracing itself, when you really 

should be backing off (but you know that for 

reasons of machine stability, actually that would 

be the worst thing to do), but you go ahead and 

trust yourself and get round the corner pretty 

sharpish and out the other side feeling like a 

TT racer. It’s the point at which your arsehole 

relaxes, still mid-corner but you know it’s going 

to pan out, and for that moment you’re in a club 

on the dancefloor and the DJ has just dropped a 

hooj slab of piano-house on the decks and the 

place has erupted. That. That moment is what 

it’s all about and it’s so addictive that you want 

it again and again. But it’s elusive. 

There are three ways you can search for 

this spiritual nirvana. First up is the ‘smack 

approach’: this is spicy and most times you nail 

it but sometimes you overcook it. Throw in a 

few blind corner/brow of hill overtakes (these 

little pills can both be dropped for extra zing). 

Filtration is compulsory, you should not wait 

to establish whether it is strictly necessary. 

The highs can be out of this world but have 

the potential to wreck the lives of everyone 

around you, as well as your own. Misjudgement 

of dosage is frequently lethal. Personally, I’d 

choose something else. 

Those with a more delicate constitution may 

prefer the ‘toke’. This is a far more relaxing 

experience and whilst there are highs to be had 

they wash over rather than hit you. Sometimes 

I’ve involuntarily found myself in this fug where 

everything is a bit woolly. Brakes are warmed 

gently, corners come and go without event 

and you slingshot out of them through sticky, 

tacky tar, the result of lazy gear selection. Or 

rather, non-selection, riding on the throttle. 

Nice if you’re dozing on a litre bike, no-go 

on something buzzy. Everything is nice, OK, 

peaceful – makes you want to scream, “get me 

out of here!”. 

98 



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101



I prefer to be ‘on one’, rattling with motorcycle 

MDMA. Theoretically it could do me some 

harm but I’d be unlucky. Living one of those 

rare, perfect days when every sense seems to 

be in hyperdrive. Every line gets picked out and 

chopped up with seemingly hours to spare. 

As I approach the corner my vision is locked 

on like a Tomahawk missile, distance-to-go 

counter scrolling down the yards, judgement 

sucking in every available topographical clue 

to the severity of the corner that I can’t quite 

see through. Braking is late and hard but with 

something in reserve and I bang it down the 

box to keep the motor in that sweet spot. All 

done before the tip-in, forks unloaded, cheek 

off seat and in we go! Then I get the flutter as 

the corner opens out and the field of play is 

exposed. I know, I just know deep down that I’m 

going to be alright because what I see is more or 

less what I expected to see but I also know that 

this is not normal behaviour, that things could 

get messy. And which way the next second or so 

goes is down to me. Gas just cracked on gently, 

get that shoulder low, low, low and keeping my 

eyes level, everything poised to roll the throttle 

at the perfect spot. And there it is! On comes the 

tap and we’re outta there, bang! E-zee. 

My dealer lives in the countryside and he 

generally meets me on twisty A, B and C-roads 

to do some business. We avoid the unwanted 

attention that motorways or fast A-roads might 

bring. Straightlining on speed is not my poison, 

any damn fool can go fast in a straight line 

and plenty do: a generation of speed camera 

technology is forever in their debt. We have a 

lot to thank sat-nav for, as so many people turn 

it on and disengage their navigational senses, 

obediently following the prescribed routes like 

lines of shackled inmates trapped in a dystopian 

penitentiary. Few dig out a map and work out 

their own route along unexplored roads, the 

terror of dropping off the edge of the earth being 

too much to risk. And with 90% of the traffic 

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following the same routes plod has a captive 

audience – often literally. Another advantage 

of getting your kicks off Route 66 and on the 

more challenging roads to be found far from the 

madding crowd is that should you be unlucky 

enough to encounter an upholder of law and 

order, you’re going bloody fast when still below 

the point at which your license vaporises. 

So that’s me, that’s why I ride, where I ride and 

how I ride. Every year I’m hunting this thing 

down and I’ve been hooning after it for more 

than half my life. Every spring when the biking 

season starts I think that this is the year when 

I’ll grab it by the scruff of the neck and hang on, 

keep hanging on all year. But I never do. Every 

year I get a bit of a fumble, a one-night-stand 

at best, and it’s off again, enticingly close to my 

finger tips. 

But next year is going to be different… 

Andy Overton 

Andy’s 1994 ZXR400, which he has owned 

from new 


107

108 

Thank you 

Mr Honda 



109

This is a story about love, hate and getting 

old. It’s also an homage to a great piece 

of motorcycle engineering. 

Back in 2007 I found myself needing to earn a 

little extra money and decided that the best 

thing I could do was join a local courier company 

as a bike messenger. I was riding a Yamaha 

SZR660 at the time, a single cylinder sports 

bike, which was totally not the right machine 

to be blatting up and down the motorway all 

day long. I needed something that would take 

the daily pounding a well-used courier bike had 

to endure. 

Having been a courier in London for four years 

or so at the tail end of the twentieth century, 

I already knew that one could use almost any 

bike as a work tool but certain makes and 

models tended to be at the top of the list due 

to particular characteristics. Back in the early 

110 

to mid 90s it was all Kawasaki GT550s, Honda 

CX500s, VT500s, Reveres and, of course, the BMW 

K and R series – all shaft drive and pretty much 

bulletproof. Any serious courier would almost 

certainly have one of these bikes. However, 

by the end of the decade we were starting to 

see more and more sports bikes being used on 

the circuit as late 80s/early 90s CBR600s and 

VFR750s fell enough in price to be snapped up 

by forever parsimonious couriers. Before long 

it became clear that couriers didn’t have to ride 

slow, heavy, cumbersome bikes around town, 

reliable though they may be. 

Living just off the A1(M) north of London, most of 

my work would be heading down to the smoke 

and back again so I wanted a bike that would 

happily cruise up and down the motorway at 

a fair lick but also handle the country roads 

that make up so much of Hertfordshire and the 

surrounds. I had less than a grand to spend and 


ended up plumping for a 1993 CBR600, bought 

for £900 with 34,000 mile on the clock. It was 

liveried in a rather bright red, white and green 

that the guy I bought it off swore was a replica 

of the 1993 TT Marshalls bikes. It wasn’t the best 

of paint jobs but I didn’t care as I knew that after 

one winter’s riding, coupled with my somewhat 

lackadaisical approach to cleaning, it wouldn’t 

make any difference what colour the bike was. 

Even though I was only working a few days a 

week, I began racking up the miles and before 

long I had hit 50k, which was when the cdi 

unit failed and the battery boiled. I bodged in 

a replacement cdi from a CB250 Super Dream 

and carried on, the bike performing faultlessly. 

It was around this time that I had the first of my 

bodywork mishaps when the right hand side 

lower fairing ripped off while I was on my way 

home on the A1. I felt something hit my boot 

and looked down just in time to see this large 


piece of plastic spin off behind me. I pulled over 

to the hard shoulder only to be followed by 

another car. The driver told me that the fairing 

had only just missed his bonnet. A Highways 

Agency vehicle pulled up a few minutes later 

and offered to go back and pick up the fairing 

for me but looking at the damage to the nose 

section I could see that all the mountings had 

torn away so I told them they could just dump it. 

Now the bike was really starting to look like a 

despatch bike. I was using a chain oiler called 

a Loobman. Designed by a London courier 

about fifteen years ago, it is a hand operated 

oil delivery device that no matter what I did I 

could never get set up properly. It either didn’t 

work or dumped a huge amount of oil all over 

the chain. Consequently, the back of the bike 

was a black oily mess. The red rims couldn’t be 

seen under all the road grime and thin coating 

of oil. Mind you, I have to say I never had any 

111

112 



113

issues with oil getting on to the tyre. Not long 

after losing the fairing lower, I noticed that the 

tail plastics were all cracked where I’d strapped 

the top box onto the pillion seat. Oh well, 

the top box wasn’t going anywhere so I just 

left it. 

A minor spill saw the nose fairing cracked in a 

number of places and the paint was starting 

to peel really badly now but still the engine 

plodded on without missing a beat. No matter 

what the weather, temperature, road conditions 

or length of journey the bike just kept on going. 

All I did was change the oil and filter on a regular 

basis and keep an eye on the consumables. 

On through 80k we rode together, the head 

bearings were definitely starting to show signs 

of wear by now and maybe there was the hint 

of a clutch slip starting to make itself apparent. 

But still the bike started, stopped, went round 

corners, accelerated and drank fuel as it did on 

the day I bought it. I have to say that over the 

last 20 years I have owned probably 15 bikes 

of various sizes and styles and in terms of 

reliability, the CBR stands head and shoulders 

above the rest. I just knew that when I went out 

each morning, there would be no doubt that it 

would start. 

However, around this time, I began to realise that 

I was starting to actively dislike the bike. I found 

myself hoping for some kind of mechanical 

failure so I wouldn’t have to go to work that 

day but the damn bike just kept on going. 

The seat had sagged so much I was sitting on 

the rails, not very comfortable when you’re on 

your way back from a drop and still have three 

hours of riding to go. I hated the way it looked, 

with its missing fairing lowers, cracked and 

peeling paint, the torn seat cover that gave you 

a damp arse days after it had last rained. 


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It’s funny how when you ride the same bike 

daily for the kind of miles a courier does, you 

get to be able to compensate for little faults and 

riding characteristics. The worn head bearings 

meant having to ignore the little ‘knock’ noise 

when going over bumps in the road, any signs 

of damp on the road had to be watched for 

due to worn tyres, having no speedo for a few 

months due to a broken cable and lack of giving 

a toss meaning it not getting replaced – I never 

once got into trouble for not knowing how fast 

I was going either. You get to know what speeds 

different revs in different gears represent. These 

little things, OK some may argue that worn head 

bearings and tyres aren’t exactly ‘little’ things 

when it comes to rider safety, but they’re the 

things you just deal with until you can afford to 

get them fixed. 

People would look at my bike and shake their 

heads sadly, amazed that it was still running. I 


remember at one BMF show a couple of years 

ago I was helping out at The Rider’s Digest 

magazine stand where they had a display of 

Rat bikes. I’d parked my CBR with its handlebar 

muffs and backseat top box behind the row of 

display bikes and after a while we noticed people 

were looking at the rat bikes and then walking 

through to have a look at the CBR with the same 

‘I’m looking at a display bike’ expression on their 

faces. I kinda felt quite proud of that! Mind you, 

that wasn’t how I felt a day later when I ran out 

of fuel only to find I’d drained the tank because 

someone at the show had turned my fuel tap 

to reserve. 

Anyway, in spite of all that, underneath the crap, 

the bike just kept on running. Even with tyres 

worn down to and beyond the limits, I always 

had confidence throwing the bike into corners 

and as I’ve said, the engine continued to perform 

admirably. I think it’s a tribute to Honda’s build 

117

118 

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books&DVDsbooks&DVDsbooks&DVDsbooks&DVDsbooks 

Ken Sprayson the frame man 

quality and design that the bike kept going after 

all I threw at it over those four years. 

I Ken ended Sprayson up doing – hero a of total cares of 80k to remember! and in He all made that the 

time the IoM I never TT with checked the TT first Norton featherbed 

the valve train or balanced 

Welding service! 

production frame, helped design 

the carbs, I only changed and the produce air filter the Dragonfly twice, oil 

Every year for 50 years, from 

frame, developed the Earles fork 

every 4-5,000 miles and filter every second 

1958 to 2008, Ken, welding torch 

into the legendary Reynolds 

change. in hand, repaired The the rear damage 

Racing fork, made innovative 

shock was the same one on 

wrought by these infamous roads 

and successful racing frames for 

the on racing bike frames. when I bought it Geoff and Duke, the Jeff suspension 

Smith, Mike 

He ran a completely free 

Hailwood, and John Surtees and 

linkage had never been lubed or adjusted in 

welding service for novices and 

many others. 

my world ownership. 

champions alike, giving 

his time and expertise for no 

reward and always a perfect job 

done with a smile! To racers with 

But I guess one can only take so much and I 

broken bikes Ken was little short 

even made the frame for Thrust 2 

came of a saint. 

the British World Land Speed 

to realise that to get the bike in to some 

Ken has been a legend among 

record breaking car propelled by 

semblance motorcycle racers of and normality enthusiasts 

a would jet engine. cost far more 

than for more its years value than after he probably 

This is a fantastic book which 

I had fixed all the little things 

that needed doing. The engine however, that 

It’s a steal 

50 The ROAD 

Twitter 

@IanMutch 


At Reynolds he became the 

master of making light but strong 

welded frames from Reynolds 

531 tubing. He was so good he 

 

 

 

Harley to Mali 

£7.99 

plus £1.50 P&P 

beating heart of the bike, still seemed as strong 

as ever. I could do nothing to make it falter. 

As you may have guessed I’m not the most autofriendly 

kinda guy – I want my machinery to 

keep going with the least amount of mechanical 

input from me. The CBR was the first bike I’ve ever 

owned where I could say without any hesitation 

– it was totally reliable, never missed a beat and 

I’d have another one in a shot if circumstances 

demanded it. So thank you Mr Honda. I will 

forever sing the praises of the CBR and while 

ISBN 978-0-9564975-6-7 

I will remember her with Panther mixed Publishing emotions, Ltd. she 

will always remain the most rollo@panther-publishing.com 

reliable bike I have 

ever owned. 

takes you back to when British 

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Ken’s book will be launched at 

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the many racing specials for 

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Publication: April 2012. 

Recommended price £14.95 

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229 pages, 234 x 176mm, 

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119

120 

IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT BIKES... 

The Carin’ Sharin’ Chronicles 

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Treading 

The Boards 

Whenever you put an engine and 

gearbox into a frame with some 

handlebars and a pair of wheels 

something happens that causes the collection 

of components to become greater than the sum 

of its parts. 

Bikes take on an identity that defines them 

and often causes them to become part of a 

genre, whether they are cruisers, race replicas, 

tourers, adventure bikes or whatever, and 

taken to extremes some of those labels and 

marques frequently attract a cult following, for 

example Gold Wings, Harleys and Ducatis, often 

commanding respect but occasionally resulting 

in mockery and derision from other riders. 

One such cult that has enjoyed a massive 

following for more than half a century is the 

much maligned and misunderstood scooter. 


I’m not talking of the modern twist and go 

variety, but the vintage Vespas and Lambrettas 

that are enduring iconic mainstays of the 

Mod movement. 

Alan Gomme has seen the trends come and 

go, and the popularity of these Italian legends 

wax and wane, from the first fashionable craze 

in the early 1960s through a dip in the 70s, a 

Quadrophenia/Jam inspired resurgence in the 

early 80s, to the current increase in demand 

for factory originals. Alan has been living with 

scooters since he was 13. 

Now in his early sixties, Alan was interested 

in lathe machining as a lad, but rather than 

turning wood in the nearby Morgan’s timber 

yard, he started by helping out at the fledgling 

Medway Scooters; they had a lathe and his dad 

had a scooter. It all seemed to fit, so he started 

121

122 



helping out in the evenings after school, making 

the most of the opportunity to get his hands on 

the lathe to further his interest. 

After an apprenticeship as a coppersmith and 

engineer at the nearby Chatham Dockyard Alan 

wanted to break away from the ‘school like’ 

environment and brown coats, so he opted for 

a career working with the Italian two strokes. 

Medway Scooters had been formed a couple of 

years earlier in November 1962 by Ernie Randall 

and Norman Pettingale, Ernie (known as Charlie 

to all and sundry) was a lathe machinist at 

Hobourn Engineering as well as being a talented 

paint sprayer, while Norman worked for the local 

Lambretta agent. 

With a common interest in scooters they’d heard 

that the local Lambretta agent was moving out 

of Strood, so they decided to start their own 

business in the town, supplying, servicing, 

painting and repairing Lambretta and Vespa 

scooters. 

Initially Charlie continued to work for Hobourn 

Engineering while the business found its feet, 

but demand was such that he was soon able 

to join Norman full time, and with Charlie’s son 

Doug on board, later joined full time by Alan, 

the young company offered a range of services 

to scooter riders throughout the area. 

As well as the sales, repairs and servicing 

Medway Scooters also supplied a large number 

of accessories including chrome work and fly 

screens, and the chance for owners to customise 

their bikes – often when they were brand new – 

a service not offered by the main dealers. 

“We were painting hour old scooters,” 

remembers Alan, “the mod scene was huge, 

it was a style thing, and everybody wanted 

something independent. A lot of the time they’d 

123


125

uy a stunning new T-shirt, and they wanted 

the scooter to match. It was common as muck 

to paint the same scooter three or four times 

in two years.” 

“When I first started in 1964 it was absolutely 

mental, there were so many scooters you 

couldn’t believe it, hundreds and hundreds of 

them, we seemed to be turning out accident 

repairs, we were always out collecting them, 

they were always breaking down. Lambrettas 

were a fantastic machine, but they were so 

unreliable.” 

After a few years Norman left the business to sell 

scooter spares from a van, leaving Charlie, Doug 

and Alan to focus on the core business, which 

had by then expanded to include the servicing 

and customising of Minis – also beloved of the 

Mod movement. 

But by the early seventies the initial scooter 

boom was over, Innocenti (manufacturers of 

the Lambretta) had fallen on hard times and by 

coincidence started to make a superior version 

of the Issigonis Mini under licence to British 

Leyland, while production of Lambretta scooters 

was sold off and shifted east to Lucknow in India. 

Vespa meanwhile had expanded its operations 

to include a range of three wheeled utility 

vehicles, but continued the manufacture of its 

126 



iconic bulbous two wheelers well into the new 

millennium, despite poor sales in the UK for 

many years. 

Medway Scooters retained a loyal customer 

base, many keeping the same machines they 

had bought new in the 60s. “We never had a 

franchise, we had a tie-in with Bannisters, the 

local Lambretta dealers in Chatham. They gave 

us a 15% discount, but the Vespa dealer – Grays 

– only gave us 10%, very tight! We were selling 

as many as they were.” 

With the help of the popularity of bands like The 

Jam, Secret Affair, Nine Below Zero and the Mod 

movement, and with it the passion and demand 

for scooters maintained an equilibrium through 

the late 70s and into the 80s. 

With new variations such as choppers and rats, 

scooters became adopted by skinheads and 

scooterboys, the ‘cutdown’ was all the rage. 

According to Alan, “With all those lads that ran 

those scooters in the 80s, and stripped them 

all down, and cut them all back, it kept them 

alive. Full credit to them, they were protecting 

their culture, but they did seem to like the angle 

grinder in those days” 

Then in the mid 90s Blur’s Damon Albarn and 

Noel Gallagher from Oasis stepped up to begin 

the tabloid friendly ‘Battle of Britpop’ and 

127

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suddenly the demand for scooters changed up 

a gear, “It went ballistic. I would say it’s bigger 

today than it was in the sixties.” 

Looking around the premises, which started 

life as Bourne & Hilliers dairy, complete with a 

horse-washing bay, it’s interesting to see the 

contrast between the modern technology and 

the patina that comes with working in the same 

rooms for 50 years. Vintage signs and posters 

adorn the walls, the spray booth boasts many 

layers of paint on the walls, and the bench in 

the workshop still bears the same tools that Alan 

used when he first started in 1964. 

Despite the damp and chilly November weather 

both Alan and engine technician Rob are 

wearing shorts “it’s company policy” and much 

of the work is still done outside. 

In the MOT bay an ageing Yamaha Virago 535 

is going through its annual test. “We’ve been 

an MOT testing station since day one, we do a 

huge amount of MOTs.” 

This is where I came in, ten or twelve years ago. 

Over the years of bringing various bikes for 

Alan and Doug to test, I was always impressed 

by their knowledgeable and thorough but fair 

scrutiny. They would readily offer tools and 

spares for the rider to carry out small repairs to 

help get a marginal bike through. 


“We’re always very open to getting the spanners 

out, let the chap fix his bike if possible, that’s our 

rule of thumb.” 

The main building is like an Aladdin’s Cave of 

scooter folklore, with bikes of all shapes, ages 

and sizes sitting there in various states of repair 

from bare frames to pristine collectors items, 

and the racking in the stores bursting with parts 

and spares, old and new. 

A pair of Lambrettas stand a few feet from me, 

looking similar to my untrained eye in all but 

colour. The first difference I notice is the tyres. 

The white scooter on the left has a tread pattern 

that I recognise as a traditional Michelin, the 

orange one is wearing something like you’d 

expect to see on a Ducati Panigale. 

As I look closer the Orange bike, a Spanish built 

Serveta Lambretta, has been modified with 

a hydraulic four pot Nissin front calliper and 

drilled disc, while the more valuable Innocenti 

model still boasts the standard drum. 

Asked about the reliability of the scooters, Alan 

tells me that the long standing customers, 

average age between 50 and 75 have had their 

bikes repaired, rebuilt and resprayed several 

times over. “The biggest bonus Lambretta 

could have ever received was electronic ignition. 

Fantastic. 12 volt system fitted onto the bike, 

129

no points, no condenser, reliability factor 

gone through the roof, get on the bike, ride 

to Cornwall!” 

I ask him about the brakes. “The same. Shit. The 

brakes have not changed, there are upgrades 

available, but if you want a classic SX200 you 

don’t want it to look like a twist and go.” 

At the back of Alan’s van is a barn find, picked up 

from Windsor the previous day. The bike is well 

rusted, the seat showing its skeleton of tiny coil 

springs. The other side of the van stands a near 

complete Lambretta – don’t ask me what model 

it is – but the attention to detail is stunning. It 

looks brand new. 

The barn find was the result of a phone call. 

People tend to know Alan, and how to find him; 

“When people call me up, ask me if I want to buy 

a bike, I always say yes. I think every Lambretta 

in this country should be back on the road, even 

if we only make a pound profit on it.” 

Near the outdoor workbench stands a yellow 

Vespa, almost complete but for a few panels; 

on the other side of the main doors a gaggle 

of Lambrettas, all looking as fresh as a daisy, sit 

waiting to be ridden away. 

One thing that’s remarkable is that several of 

these bikes have near concurrent Kent registered 

1965 ‘C’ suffix plates, just a few numbers apart. 

The only other example I’ve seen of this is when 

Routemaster buses were a common sight on the 

streets of London. 

A few years ago the trend was for custom 

airbrushed paintwork, featuring bands and even 

favourite beers, but most of the restoration work 

is now to try to get the scooters as near original 

as possible. 

Anything seems to be possible with these 

vintage machines, engines are totally rebuilt, 

bent or damaged lugs and brackets are cut off, 

straightened and repaired and welded back on. 

“I love the way now that motorcycles and 

scooters are accepted as part of English history. 

I’ve been in the same job for 48 years, still 

holding the same screwdriver, I live in the past, 

I am what I am.” 

“We had quite a few scooters in The Olympics, 

a lot of our customers were there, it was an 

amazing thing to see, makes you feel proud.” 

Alan and I chatted for ages, I could fill this 

whole copy of TRD with anecdotes and tales 

of the past fifty years in this hidden corner of 

the Medway Towns. Sadly Charlie and Doug 

are no longer with us, but it’s reassuring to see 

that 50 years on their legacy lives on in Alan’s 

capable hands. 

It’s been a strange experience for me. I’ve been 

involved with bikes for more than 40 years, and 

after all that time you tend to get an ingrained 

level of knowledge of what most of them are, 

how big, their idiosyncrasies, who made them, 

are they still made. But with scooters I’ve always 

felt like I’m on the outside looking in, so I’m 

grateful for the insight I’ve been given. 

I’ve been coming to Medway Scooters for 

years, mostly on bikes four or five times the 

displacement of a Vespa, which makes me feel a 

little bit like a Rabbi in a mosque, I know roughly 

what’s going on and why, but then again I know 

nothing. 

What’s very clear to me is that the same passion 

and enthusiasm exists among scooter riders as 

you get with bikers, we’ve co-existed for years 

in parallel universes. Sure, there was war in the 

early days, but there is now a growing mutual 

respect, and even admiration for each other. 

Next time I see Alan I’ll ask him if I can have a 

ride on one. That would make a good story for 

the spring… 

Martin Haskell 

www.medwayscooters.co.uk 

01634 719320 


131

132 


Fear & Loathing in LA LA Land 

Everyone knows that we live in dangerous, 

lawless times; so anybody who rides an 

expensive or highly desirable motorcycle 

has to deal with the reality that there are hordes 

of thieving low-lives out there just waiting for 

the opportunity to steal their pride and joy. 

Love him or hate him, Michael Moore’s film 

“Bowling for Columbine” is intensely thought 

provoking as it attempts to discover what it 

is about the American psyche that produces 

tragedies like the 1999 Colorado massacre. 

Among the many fascinating insights (including 

the fact that Canadians own more guns per 

capita than their neighbours below the 49 th 

parallel, but they are far more likely to use 

them to shoot animals rather than each other) 

is a conversation between MM and a local 

politician in South Central LA who explains 

that while violent crime was actually falling in 

his constituency, the general impression was 

that it was increasing and consequently the 

population felt more anxious and fearful. 

So how does that happen? How can it be that 

things are actually getting better, but the 

public perception is that they are deteriorating 

rapidly and their world is disappearing down 

the slippery slope to hell on roller skates? The 

answer is surprisingly simple really; it’s all down 

to the fourth estate – the Media! 

Every time the Daily Mail or MCN run a 

headline like the one opposite (accompanied 

by a host of extra pages carrying adverts for 

‘security’ products) the lives of their readers 

become just a little bit scarier. And with 

government departments nowadays leaking 

bad news and worrying information the way 

Norton Commandoes used to drip oil, it’s 


hardly surprising that people are becoming 

increasingly nervous and neurotic. Within the 

last week we’ve had the Chancellor warning 

that the nation faces the worst economic 

crisis in 60 years (this article first appeared in 

issue 132 of TRD in October 2008 so Alistair 

Darling proved to spot one about that at least 

–– Ed), followed two days later by a ‘leaked’ draft 

Home Office letter to Downing Street saying 

that property crime and violent crime were 

likely to rise as a consequence of the economic 

downturn (which in turn allows brigands like 

Westminster Council to introduce a £1.50 levy 

to park motorcycles within their thiefdom and 

claim that it’s a legitimate a charge due to the 

expense of providing anchorage points – surely 

as disingenuous a justification for yet another 

‘stealth tax’ as any of Dame Shirley Porter’s 

mendacious manipulations). 

Media hype aside, there’s no question that 

motorcycle theft is a cause for concern; as regular 

readers will be aware two of our contributors 

have had their motorcycles stolen this year. 

Wildcat – with a tenacity that does justice to her 

pen name – managed to locate and reclaim her 

XT600 from the joy-rider who stole it (see issue 

125); while R6 Girl’s eponymous motorcycle was 

lifted (literally) from outside her work, never to 

be seen again (aside from a gut-wrenching CCTV 

action replay). 

It was R6 Girl’s traumatic experience that 

prompted this article. Keen to hang onto her 

replacement, she decided to fit it with a superduper 

tracking device, which gave us a great 

idea for a Digest feature; we’d ‘steal’ her new bike 

and the tracking people would demonstrate 

just how hot they are by locating it. Proper 

journalism, great stuff – I even commissioned 

133


the cover on the strength of it. We lifted her black 

Yamaha into the back of a van, which triggered 

the tamper device informing the tracking control 

that the chase was on (I should point out here 

that CYC drivers don’t usually steal motorcycles, 

but given our serious journalistic intentions his 

company were good enough to make Raf and 

his van available for the experiment). Arriving 

at a secret location in Charlton (SE London) at 

noon, we loaded our booty into a container (as 

we’d agreed we would with the trackers) and as 

we’d been informed that the trackers wouldn’t 

set off until the bike was stationary, we went 

down the road for a fry up. 

Returning 45 minutes later with our arteries 

suitably hardened, we got comfortable and 

waited for the cavalry to arrive. And we waited… 

and waited… and then we waited some more. 

Fortunately we’d chosen one of the few truly 

glorious days this ‘summer’, so Rod and I were 

able to catch a few rays as the sun arced 

languidly across the sky. At about 3pm I got a call 


to say that the trackers had picked up a strong 

signal and they’d started closing in on it, but it 

had faded again. “Yeah,” I said “that’ll be when 

I opened the doors of the container to take a 

picture.” I reminded them that we had a 4pm cut 

off point due to parental responsibilities, then 

popped another Coke and went back to basking. 

They called again at 15.55 begging us to hang 

on because they had a strong signal and they 

were so warm that they were burning up (hide 

& seek wise). I pointed out that that was because 

we’d just rolled the Yammy out of its steel cage 

to return it to its rightful owner. 

By the time I arrived home I’d realised the story 

I’d been planning for issue 131 about a device 

that would provide motorcyclists with real 

peace of mind was dead in the water. Of course 

there were all sorts of perfectly logical reasons to 

mitigate the trackers’ failure to ‘save’ R6 Girl’s bike 

and I don’t doubt for a moment that if we’d have 

given them another chance they would have 

redeemed themselves; however, that doesn’t 

135

136 



detract from the fact that if it hadn’t been myself, 

Rod and the delightful Raf having it off with the 

lass’s new favourite legover, she’d probably have 

been too devastated and emotionally scarred to 

ever write for the Digest again. 

I had no time to rethink the happy ending I’d 

expected, so we binned the story and ran a 

replacement. To be honest it would probably 

have stayed that way if it hadn’t been for the 

fantastic cartoons Simon Kewer came up with 

when I thought I was going to be writing about 

the new scourge of the bad guys; but they were 

much to good to waste so I spent weeks trying 

to work out what to write. Then it suddenly 

dawned on me that the result of our test wasn’t 

really any surprise at all, I’d known all along that 

the awful truth is, if a valuable machine is left 

out in the open and a serious professional bike 

thief spots it, he will find a way of stealing it, 

irrespective of any security measures you’ve 

taken (if that sounds a bit depressing and 

defeatist, it’s worth considering something my 

old friend Vern said: considering that a single 

collision in distant space could send a meteor 

hurtling this way that’s big enough to obliterate 

any trace of life on Earth, we’re living in a fire trap 

with absolutely nothing by way of household 

insurance). 

So am I suggesting that there’s no point in doing 

anything to deter potential thieves? No, not at all; 

a large percentage of bike thefts are opportunist 

crimes committed by young ill equipped joyriders, 

who’d be deterred by a cheap disc lock 

and many of the more acquisitive thefts are 

being committed by third rate duckers and 

divers with a Transit and a decent set of boltcutters, 

rather than the experienced professional 

gangs you hear about that steal exotic bikes to 

order. All I’m saying is that in this thoroughly 

mixed up modern world, it’s perfectly normal to 

feel insecure – if you weren’t the media wouldn’t 

be doing its job properly; and that job is to scare 

137

138 


you into believing that you need the expensive 

products they’re advertising, products that are 

ultimately designed to allow you to sleep at 

night once they’ve done scaring you. 

So what would happen if advertising and the 

media were completely obliterated from the 

equation? Presumably a lot more people would 

adopt simple low cost options like Lock 2 Lock 

parking www.lock2lock.co.uk – and if it did 

become the norm, you’d soon find out if you 

were using a sub-standard pushover of a chain 

because your bike would find itself shunned, left 

to stand alone in parking bays by other more 

security conscious owners who understand that 

any chain is only as strong as the weakest link 

and therefore choose to attach their machine 

to something a bit more solid (until that time 

comes the addition from Digest This in TRD issue 

113 might offer some pointers). 

Another cheap but priceless option is to join 

your local Neighbourhood Watch (or speak to 

your local police station about starting one 

if one doesn’t already exist where you live – 

providing of course that there still is a police 

station in your area!). The best thing about 

the scheme, as any crime prevention officer 

will tell you, is that to make it really work it 

needs to be attached to a healthy functioning 

local association. It doesn’t matter if you call 

yourselves a community, residents’ or tenants’ 

association, the important thing is that you 

are part of an identifiable community and that 

you get to know your neighbours. Because let’s 

face it, you can have the loudest alarm in the 

known universe and the thickest chain, but if 

your neighbours neither know you nor care 

about you, they’re likely to regard the noise 

generated by the thief’s angle grinder and your 

bike’s distress signal, as a source of annoyance, 

rather than cause for concern, empathy and 

action – even if that only involves calling 

the police. 


It’s reassuring to feel that you are part of a 

community and although others within these 

very pages have cocked a snook at the use of 

the word with reference to motorcyclingkind, 

as I’ve said elsewhere in this issue, I believe we 

share more than enough common ground to 

engender a degree of empathy. So the next 

time you see someone behaving suspiciously 

around a motorcycle – you know attacking it 

with bolt croppers or loading it into the back 

of a van with the alarm screaming – if you feel 

safe to do so, why not ask them what they’re 

doing? If it’s their bike, they’ll be glad to know 

somebody cares and if it isn’t they’re just as 

likely to give up and make a quick getaway. 

And even if you – understandably – don’t feel 

comfortable about confronting a potentially 

dangerous criminal, you can always make a 

note of the van’s number plate and dial 999 

(you never know, if you’re in the right sort of 

postcode a policeman might even turn up 

in time). 

Aside from the obvious benefit to the rightful 

owner of not having his or her bike nicked (or 

at least having a better chance of seeing it 

recovered), you’re also likely to discover that the 

realisation that your simple actions have made 

the world a slightly better place, will do wonders 

to alleviate your own apprehensions about the 

dangers that the tabloids keep reminding you 

are lurking all around. 

Dave Gurman 

Digest This – February ‘07 

Last month’s article by Lois highlighted 

the fact that unscrupulous manufacturers 

are selling bike gear containing armour, 

which is supposedly CE approved, but is actually 

completely useless. In fact, as she pointed out, 

it’s worse than useless, because the hapless 

rider with the duff armour, will be imbued 

139

with a false sense of security, just waiting to be 

rudely shattered. 

Personally, given the physical dangers involved, 

I consider that kind of dishonesty to be a serious 

crime against the person, and believe that 

anyone found guilty of such an offence should be 

given a serious prison sentence. Unfortunately 

that’s unlikely to happen, because traditionally 

our society saves its greatest collective wrath for 

crimes of property. 

It’s sobering to think that you could chose 

7 random bikes, and “secure” them with just 

over £700 worth of chains, and a couple of 

enterprising thieves with a large van and a 

decent pair of bolt croppers, could have the 

whole lot away in a shade over 3 minutes – total! 

Take the seven bikes we’ve tested in the Digest 

since issue 106 for example (and you could 

very quickly if they were secured with any of 

the seven chains we saw tested to destruction in 

Thamesmead), their total value is over £45,000! 

That’s around £15k per minute! It’s a shame 

we’re not a tabloid weekly, we could’ve splashed 

“Shock! Horror! Bike thieves on nearly a million 

pounds an hour!” across the front page. 

There was a certain irony about choosing the 

Archway Project to conduct the tests, because 

its SE2 postcode would set alarm bells ringing at 

insurance call centres from Norwich to Mumbai, 

and result in endorsements demanding extra 

security measures, plus a substantial excess. 

We were there to watch Almax Security Chains 

demonstrate the competitions’ susceptibility 

to attack by bolt croppers (the favoured tool of 

those evil men in Transits). 

Some of you may remember Almax from our 

NEC ‘05 report in issue 99 when we said: “… 

(Almax) had been planning to name and 

shame all of the leading brands as pushovers, 

by… snipping through (them) in as little as 

10 seconds. Unfortunately the men in suits… 

descended… with officials from the NEC, who 

informed Almax that they had to cover the 

names on the other chains or they were out”. 

We were planning to do a follow up in 101, but 

for one reason or another it didn’t happen and 

we’ve been waiting for an opportunity ever 

since. Almax did extend their invitation to the 

rest of motorcycling media, but surprisingly, 

particularly given the seriousness of motorcycle 

theft, we were the only press who bothered to 

turn up. 

Fortunately Almax videoed the event, with the 

Digest’s original Boy Biker, Martin Newman cast 

in the role of independent witness. It was was 

put on YouTube HERE in mid November ‘06, and 

has been viewed over 20,000 times to date.* 

And what did all those viewers see? Exactly what 

we saw in Birmingham: Alex and his mate Zanx 

(“CaptainCropper”) chopping through chains 

priced between £75 and £159.95 in as little as 

14 seconds! 

So how should one go about buying a security 

chain? Is price any guide? Not on the evidence 

we witnessed. The Datatool Python, at a gnats 

under a hundred and sixty quid, lasted a mere 

33sec, while the Squire MC4 which was among 

the cheapest at £79.95 lasted longest at 63sec. 

Perhaps the sensible thing would be to buy the 

biggest selling chain in the country – the Oxford 

Monster – at £98.95. But alas, it would appear that 

popularity has more to do advertising budgets 

than effectiveness, because the peoples’ choice 

actually popped in the shortest time. 

No problem, potential bike donors just have to 

look out for chains that carry the right seals of 

approval. Wrong again. The best selling chain 

(the 14sec job) carries both Thatcham and Sold 

Secure Gold approval, and all the rest have one 

or other. 


The Digest sent copies of the DVD to both 

organisations in plenty of time for Xmas; and 

in the New Year phoned to ask what they 

thought about it. Not a great deal, seemed to be 

the answer. 

Mike Briggs, Thatcham’s Head of Vehicle 

Security replied with: “All chain locks (sic) 

are tested to a minimum standard set by the 

Thatcham’s Vehicle Security department. If 

we were to set a maximum standard then no 

chains would meet this criteria that could be 

reasonably carried by a motorcyclist. We are 

aware that certain chains could be broken with 

the right perseverance, tools and techniques, 

however in setting a minimum standard we 

believe that our tests do provide motorcyclists 

with a guide to the best performing chains.” 

Steve Launchbury, who’s a Security Engineer at 

Thatcham, replied to an email from a Visordown. 

com member with the following: “Thatcham 

evaluate security products to a given criteria in 

order to set minimum standards for the British 

Insurance requirements. Should Thatcham 

introduce a maximum standard there would 

be very little affordable product available to 

the motorcycle fraternity.” 

So, if they only certified chains that can actually 

stand up to an attack with bolt croppers, 

motorcyclists wouldn’t be able to afford them, 

even if they could lift them. 

Stephan George was a nice chap. He’s new at 

Sold Secure but he assured me that in order to 

be awarded a Sold Secure Gold classification, a 

chain would need to meet their exacting test 

spec. I asked what the specification was for 

resistance to bolt cropping, but he was unable 

to provide me with that information (but that 

could be a marketing ploy, because their 11 

page “SS101 – Specification for Mechanical 

Motorcycle Security Systems” costs £20). After 


I’d read the spec, I called Stephan back and 

informed him that 3.10 Bolt Croppers stated: 

“The product shall resist attack (for 5 minutes) 

using manually operated bolt croppers with an 

arm length of up to 1.070m.” which was precisely 

the tool Almax used to destroy a Gold certified 

chain in less than a quarter of a minute. Was 

he really suggesting that Alex was 20 times 

stronger than the person who tries to chop 

chains for them? 

Why haven’t Thatcham and Sold Secure invested 

in calibrated rigs and machinery, which would 

accurately, consistently and precisely, grade the 

resistance of various security products against 

the most common forms of physical attacks? 

That would at least allow the buying public to 

make meaningful comparisons when they are 

considering what they require and how much 

is a reasonable amount to pay for it. 

Then again, perhaps there isn’t quite as much 

money in the security certification business 

as the charges would suggest and they can’t 

afford fancy kit. In that case they should take a 

hint from the parking authorities, and pay their 

employees a meagre basic wage, to make them 

deliver results to earn enough to live on. Then 

they might reproduce some approximation of 

the kind of incentives the men in Transits have, 

and guarantee that they’d go about their work 

with something resembling vigour. 

Both Thatcham and SS made a big point of the 

fact that Almax chains are very heavy, which 

they undoubtedly are; but then again, so is that 

sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach when 

you come out the house in the morning and 

discover fragments of cropped chain where your 

pride and joy should be. Besides weight is one of 

the few factors potential shoppers can actually 

assess for themselves. 

*Over 356,000 as of November 2012 

141

142 


The Magic Roundabout 

I 

have never really given much thought to 

roundabouts, they are such a common 

feature of our motoring experience in the 

UK that I hardly even notice them. However, a 

couple of near-misses in the last few months 

have made me to look at them with new interest. 

The first occurred whilst I was riding round a 

roundabout on a wet, grey day when a classic 

‘white van’ driver approaching from my left 

drove straight in front of me causing me to take 

fairly drastic avoiding action. It wasn’t that he 

couldn’t see me because he and his passenger 

laughed and gesticulated at my struggle to 

keep the bike upright; it was a deliberate act. 

The next incident was nearly identical except 

that this time I was driving my Land Rover when 

a biker did the same thing. I realised he wasn’t 


intending stop and in any case wouldn’t have 

been able to without crashing into me, so I stood 

on my brakes to save him and he shot through. 

Passengers, dogs and various items tumbled 

through the car like we were in a washing 

machine. I beeped my horn in irritation and he 

gave me two fingers, and disappeared. Both of 

these individuals had broken the Golden Rule 

of roundabouts but in order to understand 

what this is one has to look at the history and 

evolution of these curious features in our roads. 

Excluding architectural structures such as the 

Circus in Bath (which acts like a roundabout 

but was never intended to manage traffic), 

the earliest ‘gyratory intersection’ appears to 

have been created in 1903 by the French at 

Place de l’Etoile, Paris (now called Place Charles 

143

de Gaulle). With the Arc de Triomphe in the 

middle there are no less than twelve big city 

roads pouring traffic into the same small space. 

It probably seemed a good idea at the time as 

most of the traffic was horse-drawn but these 

days it’s one of the easiest places in the world to 

commit suicide on a bike – just turn up. 

144 

Two years later Columbus Circle in New York was 

opened, designed by local businessman and 

road safety pioneer William Phelps Eno (1858- 

1945). Again, it was mostly horse-drawn chaos 

that had inspired him in 1900 to write Reform 

in Our Street Traffic Urgently Needed, followed in 

1903 by the New York City traffic code and later 

on the traffic plans for London and Paris. Eno is 

also credited with the invention of the stop sign, 

the one-way street, the pedestrian crossing, taxi 

stands and the pedestrian safety island. Crucially 

though, he never learned to drive and this may 

have contributed to the fundamental flaw in the 

early development of the roundabout. 

Many more ‘circles’ (also known as ‘rotaries’ or 

‘gyratories’) were built in the US and Canada in 

the early 20 th century but they were a disaster. 

Their large size tended to encourage motorists 

to merge and weave about at high speeds, 

but much worse was that priority was given 

to vehicles entering the circle. Havoc ensued 

with incoming vehicles T-boning cars already 

circulating and those wishing to avoid this fate 


often caused massive rear-end shunts as they 

slammed their brakes on. As cars got faster and 

heavier the crashes got worse, and injuries and 

deaths mounted to the point 

where the idea was abandoned 

in the US. Elsewhere in the 

world it was discovered that 

‘gyratories’ simply gridlocked 

in heavy traffic until police had 

to be permanently on hand 

to direct and control the flow 

of cars. 

It seems scarcely credible today that such a 

fundamental error could have been made or 

that it took so long, and such carnage to come 

up with the solution. Nevertheless, in the 1960s 

a team of engineers led by Frank Blackmore 

OBE, DFC (1916-2008) at Britain’s Transport 

Research Laboratory worked out that by giving 

priority to vehicles already on the roundabout 

(the term had been adopted in 1926 to replace 

‘gyratory’) would unlock their magic potential. 

It probably helped that Frank could drive and, 

as his DFC shows, he was also a wartime pilot 

of considerable skill and bravery. Frank and 

the team would later go on to invent the miniroundabout, 

as well. 

The trick was that cars already on the 

roundabout could now leave it unhindered by 

those trying to enter it. This had the effect of 

freeing things up, the traffic flowed like water 

in a centrifugal pump and the exiting vehicles 

quickly created gaps for those entering. The 

system was refined by shaping Mr Eno’s little 

traffic islands into ‘splitters’ to direct vehicles 

into the flow at an angle so that any collisions 

tended to be of the glancing kind rather than 

harsher side or head-on impacts. It was also 

realised that drivers should not be able to see 

across the roundabout otherwise there might 

be an outbreak of politeness whilst they all 

waited for each other to enter when arriving 

simultaneously at different entrances. That’s 

why the centres of so many roundabouts are 

mounded up or have trees, flowers or ‘works of 

art’ on them. By 1966 the new rules were made 

mandatory in the UK and the rest, as they say, 

‘is history’. 

The critical thing is that the traffic keeps moving 

and waiting times for entering a roundabout 

should therefore be short. They work on a 

principle known as Gap Acceptance Theory, 

which is science-speak for what we all do 

instinctively when trying to merge with a stream 

ISSUE 173 December 2012 145

of traffic. Essentially we have to judge whether 

the gap we are seeing is safe to move into or 

not. Clearly this varies not only from driver to 

driver but also within ourselves depending on 

the traffic and how much of a hurry we are in. 

Size also matters as the smaller the roundabout 

the more the traffic has to slow down to use it. 

The benefit of this seems counterintuitive but 

fast moving traffic on a roundabout creates 

fewer ‘acceptable gaps’. With cars approaching at 

20mph a 20m gap will seem acceptable to most 

people but at 50mph the same gap suddenly 

seems a bit dicey to attempt. This makes us wait 

longer to enter and queues begin to form, which 

is why ‘modern’ roundabouts are generally less 

than 75m across. 

All the same, finding an average ‘acceptable 

gap’ allows the boffins to estimate the traffic 

handling capacity of a roundabout before it is 

built. ‘Theoretically’ a single-lane roundabout 

can handle 20,000 to 26,000 vehicle movements 

a day whilst a two-lane version can handle (wait 

for it…) about twice that amount! Recent studies 

from the US (where roundabouts are making a 

comeback albeit in the face of understandable 

popular reluctance) show an average 89% 

reduction in vehicle delays and a 56% reduction 

in vehicle stops. On top of that, injury collisions 

are down by 80% and all types of collision down 

by 40%, compared with other forms of traffic 

regulation such as lights and signed junctions. 

This is partly because people tend to race for 

a green light or brake suddenly for a red one. 

And because modern roundabouts improve 

traffic flow, they also reduce emissions and 

fuel consumption by up to 30%. A study of ten 

converted intersections in Virginia purportedly 

showed savings of more than 200,000 (US) 

gallons of fuel in a year. Clearly roundabouts 

are a wonderful thing! 

However… astute Digest readers will realise that 

all this scholarly teleological interpretation of 

stochastic phenomena is apt to be complete 

bollocks in real life. To prove the point, here’s 

a quote about the Hanger Lane gyratory in 

London from - don’t laugh - the Society for 

All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts (SABRE): 

“There are few other roundabout systems in the 

UK that have a similar number of lanes combined 

with high traffic volumes, and none that combine 

both those factors with the uniquely aggressive 

and selfish driving style of the typical West London 

motorist.” Well that told you lot, then! Seriously 

though, if a roundabout becomes too big and 

complicated the idea fails miserably. Equally, in 

huge conurbations like London, Paris and New 

York there is often so much traffic that even a 

well-designed roundabout will choke up. 

At this point the traffic dynamic changes as 

the gaps not only become ‘unacceptable’ but 

disappear completely. Motorists then start to 

indulge in what experts call ‘nosing’, ‘gap forcing’ 


147

and ‘priority reversal’. In layman’s terms drivers 

abandon any notion of priority and start to 

create their own gaps (by pushing in), but as 

this all happens at a crawl nobody gets hurt, 

even if the language and gestures can get a little 

‘fruity’. And this is where our two miscreants 

mentioned above come back into the picture. 

They both indulged in ‘priority reversal’ and ‘gap 

forcing’ but the difference was that the traffic 

was flowing freely, as it should. Abandoning the 

Golden Rule in a snarl-up is forgivable but not in 

‘open play’ where priority counts for more than 

just fairness; it’s a matter of safety, too – and in 

the case of the biker it was his safety, not mine. 

Yet our current UK Highway Code is infuriatingly 

opaque about the Golden Rule. In rule 185 it 

states that, when reaching a roundabout, you 

should “give priority to traffic approaching from 

your right, unless directed otherwise by signs, road 

markings or traffic lights” and then to “watch out 

for all other road users already on the roundabout 

…” I seem to remember previous editions were 

clearer on this and stated that ‘priority’ should be 

given to road users already on the roundabout. 

Rule 184 is just as woolly, stating that you should 

“adjust your speed and position to fit in with traffic 

conditions” and then “be aware of the speed and 

position of all the road users around you…” 

It’s all there if you can unpick the circumlocutions 

but this lack of clarity has created a new problem; 

most people are now convinced they only have 

to look right when entering a roundabout and 

that anyone to their left is automatically ‘in the 

wrong’. Despite motorists being constrained at 

all times to drive with ‘due care and attention’, 

an increasing number are now accelerating 

dangerously from a position off the roundabout 

in order to ‘enforce’ what they see as ‘their 

priority’ over a vehicle approaching from the 

left (‘roundabout charging’), and they get all 

chopsy and cross if they find their way blocked. 

However, if the wheels of the vehicle coming 

from the left have crossed the broken white line 

onto the roundabout first then they are deemed 

‘already on the roundabout’ and therefore 

have priority. 

But… (there’s always a but), it is quite legitimate 

to pull on to a roundabout in front of a vehicle 

that is already on it if it is far enough away not 

to impede its progress (this is commonplace on 

big motorway and trunk road roundabouts). 

The grey area is what is defined by ‘far enough 

away’ and this is where Gap Acceptance applies 

to the approaching driver as well as to the one 

about to enter. I’m a big fan of ‘getting on with 

it’ at roundabouts or ‘making progress’, as it’s 

often called, however, the problem for bikers 

is especially acute because roundabouts tend 

to highlight their dynamic superiority as well 

as the vulnerability of their riders. Being able 

to accelerate rapidly into very small spaces 

redefines the concept of ‘an acceptable gap’ for 

most other road users and I fully understand 

that what’s ‘acceptable’ to some is ‘violating my 

priority’ to others. For me, though, the acid test 

is whether or not you cause the approaching 

motorist to take avoiding action. If you do 

then you have broken the Golden Rule of 

roundabouts. 

As for the two ne’er-do-wells whose actions 

prompted me to write this article, what they 

did went way beyond a simple misjudgment 

or failure to understand basic priorities. They 

violated not just the Golden Rule but a much 

higher principle that the vast majority of people 

would uphold through a sense of common 

decency alone. This principle was introduced to 

me many years ago by a road safety professional 

at a conference on driver training. He said he 

thought driving and riding were not just a 

practical skill but a social skill as well, and that 

if this was emphasized more in training there 

would be fewer problems on the roads. 

The road system pulls us into contact with 

all kinds of people at an accelerated rate. 

Wherever roads meet, a potential area of 

human conflict is created which then needs to 

be carefully managed. One solution is traffic 

lights, which are rigid, rules-based dictators. 

They issue imperative commands and grant or 

deny progress absolutely; they are simple to 

understand and their instructions are designed 

to allow no form of interpretation other than to 

stop or go. Traffic lights are safe for use by people 

with very low levels of intelligence, imagination 

and empathy, and very few will disobey one 


149

once they have stopped. However, they are 

also frustratingly slow and often hold up the 

flow traffic unnecessarily. And anyway, ordinary 

mature people don’t like to be told what to do, 

mostly because they do not need to be. Traffic 

lights are blind, officious and authoritarian; they 

remind us of a time when our elders’ wishes had 

to be obeyed without question. 

Roundabouts are different, they liberate us from 

mere obedience and allow us to make rational, 

grown-up decisions for ourselves. They are a 

free-flowing, living thing that draws people 

into a whirlpool of armour-clad humanity, all 

equal and rushing about our daily lives. Safely 

negotiating a roundabout requires awareness, 

courtesy and an ability to cope with the 

unknown. They require finely developed social 

skills in a way that traffic lights and stop signs 

don’t. In return for a few simple observances 

they provide us with the most efficient and painfree 

method of getting about on wheels without 

unduly imposing ourselves on one another. 

The vast majority of us are fine with this, we get 

along happily making allowances for the vagaries 

of life and other people’s occasional mistakes. 

When we mess it up we tend to apologise and 

wave each other on in a spontaneous upwelling 

of embarrassed Britishness. Roundabouts reflect 

a more enlightened way of living; that is until 

you-know-who turns up thinking they’re more 

important than everyone else and that the 

social norms (let alone the rules) don’t apply to 

them. These people are the ‘untouchables’, the 

sociopaths who ruin everything, who will risk 

your life as well as theirs to achieve their own 

selfish ends. Like me, I suspect you know them 

when you see them. 

Be careful out there 

my friends! 

Oldlongdog 


151


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153


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BOOK REVIEW 

of sorts... 

Of Bikers and Baiku 

by Jonathan Boorstein 

Boy on a motorcycle 

Riding where the road leads 

Comes to a fork 

That banal bit of verse is known as baiku, 

or motorcycle haiku. Baiku is but one 

example of the growing sub-genre of 

motorcycle poetry. For better or for worse, baiku 

has even generated a web site dedicated to such 

examples: http://motorcycleviews.com/haiku/ 

motorcyclehaiku.htm 

What, you ask, is motorcycle poetry? Does it 

really exist? Is it any good? 

It came to the attention of The Rider’s Digest 

thanks to an over-active press agent. The agent 

touted Ryan J-W Smith, who, in addition to 

being both a motorcyclist and a writer/director, 

has produced 500 Shakespearean Sonnets: 

the diary of a poetic quest for truth. (Shakespeare 

himself wrote a mere 154. Or as another poet, 

Robert Browning, said in Andrea del Sarto: “Ah, 

but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or 

what’s a heaven for?”) Smith has continued the 

project by blogging sonnets in his Sonnet Blog. 

At least two involve motorcycling. One, Sonnet 

626, is an ode to his Honda: 


The bliss of my contentment I shall write, 

For she is joy and wonder, through and through; 

Not only is she moving to my sight, 

Her energy, my speed-head doth subdue. 

Acceleration like a bullet shot: 

I slip a little backwards as she pulls; 

As I hold on, I know that I could not 

Be ever from her side – we’re raging bulls! 

Together, my machine and I, are one; 

She teaches, and I listen as she sings; 

Her notes are honey-coated loving fun: 

I cannot here express the thrill she brings, 

I seek excuses to go near and far: 

I love my ninety-nine – my VFR. 

In terms of rhyme, meter, and volta (the last 

two lines or couplet) it is as advertised, a 

Shakespearean sonnet. However, it is hardly 

Shakespearean in the popular sense of the 

word. It’s light verse. The volta is more a punch 

line than a summation; leaving more a sense 

of a smile than of the sublime. It even lacks 

the shallow existentialism of the opening 

haiku. But the sonnet works on its own terms. 

157

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The typical motorcyclist will relate to what 

Ryan Smith writes. 

Of course, great poets also produce their 

fair share of light verse. Some even produce 

motorcycle poetry. American Poet Laureate 

James Dickey, best known for his novel, 

Deliverance, writes in Cherrylog Road: 

And I to my motorcycle 

Parked like the soul of the junkyard 

Restored, a bicycle fleshed 

With power, and tore off 

Up Highway 106, continually 

Drunk on the wind in my mouth, 

Wringing the handlebar for speed, 

Wild to be wreckage forever. 

I’m not an expert in Dickey’s poetry, but 

motorcycles and motorcycling seem to recur 

as both theme and motif. May Day sermon to 

the women of Filmer County by a lady preacher 

leaving the Baptist Church includes such 

passages as: 

Gnats in the air they boil recombine go mad with striving 

To form the face of her lover, as when he lay at Nickajack Creek 

With her by his motorcycle looming face trembling with exhaust 

Fumes humming insanely 

and 

she hears him creaking 

His saddle dead-engined she conjures one foot whole from the groundfog 

to climb him behind he stands up stomps catches roars 

Blasts the leaves from a blinding twig wheels they blaze up 

Together she breathing to match him her hands on his warm belly 

His hard blood renewing like a snake O now now as he twists 

His wrist, and takes off with their bodies: 


159

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Diane Wakoski also plays with such themes 

and motifs. In Uneasy Rider she says: 

You are more beautiful than any Harley-Davidson 

She is the rain, 

Waits in it for you, 

Finds blood spotting her legs 

From the long ride. 

And Wakoski continues elsewhere in 

The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems: 

Just being so joyfully alive 

Just letting the blood takes it own course 

In intact vessels 

In veins… 

-the motorcyclist riding along the highway 

Independent 

Alone 

She dedicates the poem cycle to “all those 

men who betrayed me at one time or another, 

in hopes they will fall off their motorcycles 

and break their necks”, which suggests her 

relationships to motorcycles and motorcyclists 

is – how to put this politely? – complicated. 

A Real Motorcycle by Erin Moure includes: 

Like running the motorcycle full-tilt into the hay bales. 

What is the motorcycle doing in the poem 

A. said. 

It’s an image, E. said back. 

It’s a crash in the head, she said. 

It’s a real motorcycle. 


And later Moure writes: 

Or the flat bottom of the former sea 

I grew up on, 

Running the motorcycle into the round 

bay bales. 

Hay grass poking the skin. 

The back wet. 

Tom Andrews, a winner of the Iowa Poetry 

Prize, serves up a different point of view in the 

creepily titled Hemophiliac’s Motorcycle: 

May the Lord Jesus Christ bless the hemophiliac’s 

motorcycle, the smell of knobby tires, 

Bel-Ray oil mixed with gasoline, new brake and 

clutch cables and handlebar grips, 

the whole bike smothered in WD40 (to prevent 

rust, and to make the bike shine), 

He goes on by saying: 

the bike flying sideways off a jump like a ramp, 

the rider leaning his whole body into a 

left-hand corner 

And continues some lines later with: 

a first moto holeshot and wire-to-wire win, 

a miraculously benign sideswipe early on in 

the second moto bending the handlebars and 

front brake lever before the possessed 

rocketing up through the pack. 

161


Of course, most motorcycle poetry is not at that 

level. It’s more in line with Smith, our sonneteer. 

It focuses on motorcycles, motorcycling, 

motorcycle clubs – outlaw and otherwise, 

road trips and road kill, urban bikers and urban 

legends. The tone is “folksy” and the point of 

view, working class, some examples taking the 

ugly resentful form of inverse snobbery. 

Bruce “Bulldog” Dowling’s Roadhouse Blues 

takes a typical biker moment – too long in the 

saddle – in a traditional rhyme and meter. 

It looms in the distance, it calls you so clear, 

It speaks to you softly so no one can hear, 

On the side it stands, jealous, of the roads strong allure, 

It offers you solace, redemption, a cure 

For all that is ailing, each chronic attack, 

The cramp in your foot, the pain in your back. 

That old hardtail’s making it easy to choose, 

The song of the sirens, those old Roadhouse Blues. 

Larger and brighter, its lights draw you hard, 

Your fatigue it is winning, you play your trump card. 

The brakes are your tonic, the balm that you crave, 

As they aid your escape: your reprieve from the grave. 

In minutes the barstool your confession will hear, 

Your act of contrition, an annointment of beer, 

That pours from the tap of your own private brew, 

That lullabye liquid, those old Roadhouse Blues. 

While not a true Blues, we all know what the 

narrator is talking about and relate to that 

“predicament”. How the narrator got home 


(or didn’t) after the glass or two may well be 

inspiration for a more traditional Blues. 

In Unlike Rider, Barthibbard takes a look at 

the choice between riding and mousing with 

similar good humor. 

Mousing through the cheerful haze, 

or pistons hot- revving phase. 

Wistful quests within the cloud, 

I suggest exhaust pipes loud…. 

Unknown minds control your fate, 

Of Facebook I do hesitate! 

Liking you without those clicks- 

When gasoline with air doth mix. 

And Blaze makes light of a Night Run: 

there’s something in the air...that scent... 

you know the one - it drives you crazy - 

makes you crank that throttle hard 

too far too long...you pray no deer 

from there to here - - - and then 

you taste that thin eyed lost soul grin 

lean on in 

and laid out 

let her fly 

Rather like cowboy poetry, motorcycle 

poetry reflects a romanticized view of what is 

presented as an American lifestyle. There are: 

the loneliness of the solo rider; the camaraderie 

of riding with friends or in a group; motorcycle 

163

maintenance; the freedom of the road; 

outlaw clubs; highway traffic and accidents; 

biker values and practices; and the obvious 

observations common to most bikers. Some 

are about moments and memories; others are 

tall tales and folk tales. 

While cowboy poetry has its fill of tales, it is 

longer, living tradition and its forms go back 

to when literacy was less common and the 

Western lifestyle was actually made up of ranch 

work and those who did it. Rhymes and meters 

were used to aid memory. The landscape of 

the North American west is as important as 

cowboy values and ironic observations about 

ways and means of modernity. 

Motorcycle poetry is more recent and grew 

out of the lifestyle of the post-World-War-II 

American biker clubs. Hunter S. Thompson 

both practiced and popularized the motorcycle 

poetry. As Shirley Dent observes in The 

Guardian (16 November 2007) in a blog titled 

Motorcycles and the art of poetic utterance: “the 

motorbike and the poem are creatures akin. 

They straddle physical and intellectual sense – 

even though you feel physics working through 

you when you are on a bike, being on a bike 

is not about succumbing to the physical or 

losing all sense. There is precise science in the 

recklessness of both riding a bike and writing a 

poem”. And both she points out “take you out 

of yourself”. 

Smith’s sonnet fulfills much of that basic 

criteria, as do the pieces by the motorcycle 

poets themselves. Interestingly the criteria 

could be applied to motorcycle song lyrics as 

well. Leiber and Stoller’s mid-1950s hit Black 

Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots is certainly 

one example: 

Then he took off like the Devil and there was 

fire in his eyes! 

He said “I’ll go a thousand miles before the sun 

can rise.” 

But he hit a screamin’ diesel that was 

California-bound 

And when they cleared the wreckage, 

all they found 

Was his black denim trousers and motorcycle 

boots 

And a black leather jacket with an eagle on 

the back 

But they couldn’t find the ‘cicle that took off 

like a gun 

And they never found the terror of Highway 

One Oh One 

Bill “uglicoyote” Davis, one of the better 

motorcycle poets, and clearly influenced by 

such lyrics, wrote in Riding Through The Fire: 

So he went ridin’ through fire 

He rode through the smoke of Hell 

He just crossed the Jocko River 

He had to make it to Kalispell. 

She heard about it the next morning 

He’d run a road block, the announcer said 

On a closed highway he’d lost control 

In the flames they found him dead. 

She wondered why he made that run 

What caused him to take that ride? 

Her husband didn’t see the tear that fell 

With the name of the man who had died. 

He’s still ridin’ through that fire 

He’s still ridin’ through the smoke of Hell 

Around him all is burning 

And a woman weeps in Kalispell 

Davis’s poems appear both online and in 

print. In a post on The Hard Rider blog (http:// 

hardrider.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/doyou-like-motorcycle-poetry/), 

he writes: “Do 

you even know it exists. There are several Road 

Poets out and about. You can check in to my 

poetry blog, Songs of the Open Road to read 

some of my work. I’ve posted my most recent 

words below. You might also want to check 

out Road Scribes of America: A fellowship of 

the Road, the Wind, the Pen of which I am a 

member.” 

Motorcycle poetry sites go from the general 

– http://vtwinbiker.com/index.html --to the 

specific–http://www.viragoownersclub. 

org/fun/biker-poems. Some even provide 

guidelines to help the aspiring rider writer. The 

motorcycle haiku site not only gives advice: 

“Haiku is a three line unrhymed verse with 

the first line containing 5 syllables, the second 

line containing 7 syllables and the last line 

containing 5 syllables. Sometimes the verse has 

a seasonal theme”; but also provides examples: 

Summer calls to me 

Come ride your motorcycle 

Live without your cage 

Parenthetically, haiku usually (not “sometimes”) 

has a seasonal theme or reference (to be 

precise) as well as a pivot upon which the first 

half of the haiku turns to the second. While 

haiku written in English does have to have three 

lines, it is not restricted to 17 syllables arranged 

5-7-5. It would be perfectly acceptable to write: 

Baja 

Dia de los Muertos 

Jolly Roger on the gas tank 

in which Dia de los Muertos is both the pivot 

and the seasonal reference. 


165

Printed anthologies while still uncommon are 

available. “Little did I know that well over thirty 

five years ago when I scribed my first motorcycle 

poem, I would be here today a part of the 

Bikerpoetry movement and asked to write the 

afterword for Verse And Steel. I can remember 

back in the day when Bikerpoets were lucky if 

they received one or two hard copy publishings 

a year and now with the support of monthly 

motorcycle magazines and newspapers, as 

well as the many internet resources available, 

opportunities abound for the arts and artists 

of the biker lifestyle,” writes Sorez the scribe in 

Verse And Steel. “Way back when, I had no idea 

that there were other like minded individuals 

out the riding and writing their way down the 

road and into literary history.” 

Nor is that the only volume. Yoga and the Art 

of Motorcycle Poetry was sold in City Lights 

Bookstore, owned and operated by the great 

beat poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. While not an 

actual endorsement, the shop is known to be 

fussy about the titles it stocks. 

The biker poetry community also includes Martin 

Jack Rosenblum, a former official historian for 

The Harley-Davidson Motor Company, and 

QBall, a frequent contributor to the Vtwinbiker 

site. And to be fair probably most riders who 

want to writers have tried their hands at one 

form of verse or another. Self-disclosure: I snuck 

two of my haiku into this piece. 

Perhaps inevitably the term “motorcycle poet” is 

reserved for those who write lyrics or light verse 

almost exclusively about the riding life. If the 

work is serious, then it is by a poet who happens 

to write about motorcycle, among many other 

things (or the motorcycle is a metaphor for many 

other things). One can’t quite imagine Dickey 

calling himself a motorcycle poet despite his 

careful cultivation of a macho, bad-boy image. 

Others are more open to the fun of having it both 

ways, of blurring the identities of motorcycle 

poet and poet who writes about motorcycles. 

Frederick Seidel is quite blunt that he writes 

prose and poetry about motorcycles, along his 

suggestively named book of verse, Going Fast, 

certainly covers more than just motorcycles 

(Poem does, for example). Dent seems fond 

of his line “I am the Ducati of desire/144.1 

horsepower at the rear wheel”. Ducatisto Seidel 

may be, he nevertheless ended an op-ed piece, 

Is the Era of the Motorcycle Over?, he wrote for 

The New York Times with the crypto volta: 

Better to be out in the air astride 

Just about any motorcycle alive! 

But perhaps the last word should be left to 

Davis, as a sort of coda if not volta. As a “real” 

motorcycle poet, he not only revels in that 

identity, but also wrote: 

Can you tell truth about the joy 

that sometimes rises deep inside 

or about the hard and tough times 

that you’ve had along your ride. 

Road Poet, tell the whole truth, 

don’t hold back, spill your gut. 

As you ride your roads and write your odes, 

tell the truth and nothing but. 


167

Bitz Bitz 

Samsung B2710 

review - The Survivor 

Having spent a lot of time 

underwater I am largely cynical 

about claims for everyday 

items being waterproof. None 

of the ‘dry-suits’ I’ve ever 

owned would have borne 

much scrutiny under the 

Trades Description Act 1968 

and just about every diver’s 

torch I’ve had has filled up with 

water at some stage. 

So when I was offered a 

‘waterproof’ and ‘shockproof’ 

phone by my service provider 

I wasn’t expecting much but 

thought it would be a good 

idea given the amount of time 

I spend out in the weather on 

bikes and boats and generally 

messing about outdoors. I’m 

also mindful of that renowned 

killer of mobile phones - the 

toilet (you know the scene, 

phone in top pocket, bend 

over to put the seat down and 

ploosh - in it drops)! 

So the little red Samsung 

B2100 duly arrived and what 

an unassuming little thing 

it was. It had a camera and 

various other functions of no 

interest to me but it had good 

reception and battery life. Even 

though I’m sure it was regularly 

exposed to water I don’t 

remember any one incident 

testing it beyond being 

shower-proof. After two years 

the generous people at the 

place where the future’s bright 

offered me a free upgrade to 

the latest Samsung B2710, 

which was similarly discreet 

looking although a little bigger 

and blacker. The blurb claims 

IP6.7 and US Military Standard 

for being filth and muck proof 

and that it can stay submerged 

for 30 minutes. 

The first thing I noticed 

was that they’d changed 

the texting menu such that 

‘select’ and ‘send’ seemed to 

have a mind of their own, so 

I was constantly sending half 

finished texts by mistake. This 

led to me throwing the damn 

thing in anger at our front 

hedge, fully expecting it to 

bounce off the dense leylandii. 

Instead it shot through and 

hit the stone wall behind. 

Fortunately none of three parts 

I found it in was actually broken 

and it snapped back together 

again with no harm apparently 

done. 

Sometime later I was 

descaling part of my boiler 

with some ‘weapons grade’ 

acid and splashed some of it on 

my trousers. As I was standing 

near the hose I instantly 

drenched my trousers with 

water for about five minutes 

and then left them immersed 

in a bucket for an hour. Next 

they went into the washing 

machine for a full cycle and it 

was only half an hour into their 

time in the tumble drier that 

I heard an ominous clonking. 

Yup, I’d forgotten my phone 

was in my pocket… Once 

again it came through with 

flying colours and now it 

was squeaky clean and 

smelled lovely! 

Last week, though, I 

managed to lose the Samsung 

into a raging torrent of 

floodwater. It was whipped 

away on the current into a 

field about a foot deep in fastflowing 

muddy water. I tried 

in vain to drag it up with a 

fishing net and a friend rang it 

to see if it would light up but 

it had switched to answerphone. 

Finally the B2710 had 

succumbed to terminal abuse 

at my hands. I rang Orange to 

arranged for a new one to be 

sent, which rather obligingly 

they have albeit Samsung’s 

latest version the C3350 

Xcover 2. 

The following day the 

floodwaters had subsided 

enough for me to search the 

field for the phone in the hope of 

being able to retrieve my contact 

list from the SIM. I wasn’t hopeful 

but 30m away from where I lost 

it I caught sight of a little corner 

of black plastic sticking out of the 

mud. I should have had more 

faith because despite spending 

a day submerged in fast flowing 

water the B2710 was still on 

and worked perfectly. It must 

have been the depth that had 

stopped it ringing rather than 

it drowning. What a survivor, 

I’m astonished. 

As I’ve signed a new 

contract for the upgrade I 

have decided to keep it and will 

report back on that when I’ve 

had a chance to abuse its bigger, 

shinier screen and even more 

‘enhanced’ facilities. I will keep 

the B2710 for a back-up. Unless 

you ‘absolutely must have’ a 

smartphone then I thoroughly 

recommend one of these for 

biking as you can stick them 

in your pocket and not worry 

if it rains, you fall off into a river 

whilst green-laning or are just a 

clumsy great lummocks like me. 

They have excellent battery life 

and a huge range of features 

including internet and all 

manner of stuff only teenagers 

will understand or want, and you 

can find out about these from 

here: http://www.samsung. 

com/uk/consumer/mobiledevices/mobile-phones/bar/ 

GT-B2710IKAXEU 

An iPhone is a lovely thing 

but I’ve seen too many with 

smashed screens. Equally there 

are other rufty-tufty phones 

on the market but they all look 

like kiddies’ toys. The thing I like 

best about the Samsung is that 

looks like an ordinary phone 

even though it is extraordinarily 

tough. 


169

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