Route 66 The Trip

Route 66 The Trip: 

Finally the day had come when the chalk board read ‘0’ days to go, all bags were packed and all avenues had been covered. Documents, equipment, times and schedules; all boxes had been ticked and there was nothing left to do but catch the coach from Liskeard to Heathrow airport. We had arranged for our son Elliot to drive us in to Liskeard, having only left the house for five minutes we get a phone call from our daughter Robyn asking if Claire required her bike jacket that she had left on the stair bannister! So after a brief return to collect it we were once again on our way. The weather was not looking to clever for such a long journey, as it was very misty I was a little concerned that it might slow down the traveling time. Elliot dropped us at the bus stop in plenty of time and we all said our goodbyes and now it was just myself and Claire with our bags waiting in the fog for the coach.

 

 

Thankfully, on time, the National Express coach wafted through the high street and pulled up to let us on. The driver dispensed with our bags in the luggage hold as we took our seats. I don’t normally suffer from travel sickness but on this occasion the driver took off like a man possessed. Swinging the coach around corners and slamming on the brakes, to add to that, the route he took went though every little coastal town from Liskeard to Bristol and beyond. We were hoping to get some sleep on this journey, as it travelled through the night, but we had no chance what with the mad route we were taking and the equally mad driving. We changed coach once and the driver three times, it took seven hours of hell before we actually arrived at Heathrow. We’d been cramped up on the back seat next to the chemical toilet for the entire journey, “Never again” said Claire “I am not taking the return journey on that coach, you can guess again!” I couldn’t imagine how we would cope with a return journey on the coach from hell after a long haul, jet lagged, flight from Los Angeles. So we agreed that we would have to find an alternative way home on the return leg, so in the two hours we had before we could check in we decided to get some breakfast and try to figure out an alternative return trip. We had ruled out Elliot coming to pick us up and the possibility of an internal flight to either Exeter, Plymouth or Newquay and settled on the idea of a one way car hire and set about making some enquiries. We had a quote for £160 for a one way trip to Plymouth which we both thought was fairly reasonable and a much better option than the coach even though we had already paid for the return fare, so we took some details and agreed to book this up on our return to England. 

 

 

 

Check in time came around surprisingly quickly and with the new system they have at Heathrow it meant we were able to weigh and check our own bags in and, after a small re-shuffle here and there, our bags met all the requirements so we waved goodbye to them as they trundled off on the rollers. So now with very little in the way of hand luggage and the odd x-ray and ticket checks, we were free to wander around the duty-free for a couple of hours. Our flight to Chicago, having been delayed for twenty-five minutes, was eventually called. Then ensued the mad scramble to get in another queue to have our boarding passes checked before we waited yet again in the departure lounge to be called. Finally we get on the plane and settled in our seats, we had the two outside seats in the middle row of four and Claire drew the short straw and had to sit next to a huge black man who could have taken up two seats in his own right but had managed to shoe-horn himself between the arm rests of the single seat.

We were flying with Virgin Airways and what they lacked in leg room and personal space in the economy section was made up for by the individual seat entertainment system which provided some fifty choices of films, games, maps, quizzes etc, plenty enough to keep you amused for several hours. Between that, the food and the odd kip it was not long before we were coming into land. After battling through the long queue to get through customs and then collecting our bags we finally made it outside.

The heat was unbelievable, I was expecting Chicago and the first half of the trip to be almost like English weather but this was 92 degrees, we had just walked out into a wall of hot air, immediately we took off our bike jackets, jumpers. We were down to T- shirts within seconds of stepping outside of the airport doors. We had been told to give the Hotel a call and they would arrange for a shuttle bus to come and collect us, so I spoke to them and sure enough everything went as planned, thirty minutes later the shuttle turned up and the lady driver looked at our pile of coats and jumpers on top of our bags and said “you guys were expecting it to be cold huh?”

The journey to the hotel was swift and it wasn’t long before we were checking in, it was nice, and if we’re honest a relief, to see the organisation by HC travel kicking in, the flights and then the hotel vouchers, recognizing our booking etc. When its organised by someone else you can never really be sure until it happens.

The hotel was nice, if a little way out of Chicago centre, but as we had not long arrived we were quite tired and chose to eat at the hotel bar and have a few games of pool before going to bed. The food was to set the standard for every other eatery that we would come across from now on, massive portions that would have been enough for four people let alone two. We did our best to chomp through it but there was no way we could manage it all. During our meal two German guys joined us at the bar and I noticed that they were both wearing Route 66 T-shirts. I asked them if they were also doing the trip? The one guy who was extremely talkative said that they had just completed it and had in fact rode from LA to Chicago and this was the second time he had taken on the route, the first time he did it on his own from Chicago to LA. He went on about how scared he was sitting at the bar the night before he had to leave, he said ‘he didn’t ride the bike, but the bike took him for the first three days’. He told us about one or two things that we should watch out for, particularly “the strong cross winds off the mountains in New Mexico and the Eight-wheeler trucks that can also knock you about when they overtake you. You should be careful, but..” he went on to say “I am jealous of you both, if I could turn round and ride back with you guys tomorrow, I would. It is a fantastic trip and you’re gonna love it!”  

That was encouraging, if he has just completed a journey of that distance and wants to turn round, straight away, and do it again it must be good. In the morning at breakfast the same guy offered us his spare fuel canister, he said “it may come in useful for you in some of those out-of-the-way places with no petrol stations”, we thanked him very much and packed the canister with our stuff.  

Today was a free day that we had built into the trip to just recover from jet lag and hopefully get accustomed to the place before we take the Harley’s on the road. We took the hotel shuttle as far as it would take us and then caught the train the rest of the way into downtown Chicago. It was quite an intimidating trip to the ‘newbies’ surrounded by rough and ready people traveling through rough and ready places. But this is why we had the free day to get through that ‘alien feeling’ you often get when you’re a stranger in a strange place, you have to put yourself out there sometimes just to get over it and start to relax a little.

Once off the train we decided to check out where the beginning of the route was, so with the help of the map provided by HC travel we were able to navigate ourselves to ‘East Jackson Drive’ which is officially recognised as the beginning of Route 66, this in turn lead out to the shores of Lake Michigan where we were going to collect a stone each from the shore, bring them along on the trip and drop them off the pier at Santa Monica. 

So we set about putting this task in motion. When we got to the edge of the lake there wasn’t, in fact, any kind of shore. It was just a concrete walkway with an edge straight to the water, but not to be out done there were still some loose bits here and there, albeit concrete, we still managed to collect a decent stone each that would be suitable for the job. 

We wandered through the shops and came across a Harley Davidson store where we bought our first souvenirs; T-shirts and some goggles/shades etc. After that we had quite a walk and eventually found the Hard Rock Cafe where we had a bite to eat and bought yet more souvenirs. Claire also bought ‘Chicago bear’ which she was going to attach to the front of her bike for the whole trip.

 By the end of the day we were quite worn out and decided to make our way back to the hotel.This time we shared a pizza for dinner at the bar and after a few more games of pool retired to bed to be ready for the big day tomorrow. Today had been a useful exercise in more ways than one, we had been able to suss out the beginning of the route and take pictures of the ‘Begin Route 66’ sign and other related things that, had we have been on the bikes, we would not have been able to get because it was quite simply too busy. So tomorrow our plan, once we have picked up the bikes, is to ride back into Chicago and ride from the very beginning of the route on East Jackson Drive, then carry on out through the city following the route from there. I say this because Eagle rider, where we will collect the bikes, is a good distance from the beginning of the route and they recommend that you skip the city part and just join onto Route 66 from there. But, we have come this far and want to do the route from the very start to the very end and only miss out parts if they are really unnecessary or if it’s unavoidable.  

DAY ONE Picking up the bikes: 

Today was a momentous day for both of us, this was the day we actually get to see and ride the bikes! It had been quietly building into a little monster, this momentous moment. I must confess to not sleeping very well last night just thinking about today. I had arranged for the hotel shuttle to drop us off at Eagle Rider at ten just as they opened.

This turned out to be a good move as we were first in the queue to get sorted out and as it happened there were quite a few others waiting to be processed; including a whole group of ill-mannered people from Spain who had not heard of the concept of personal space or waiting in line and proceeded to crowd round myself and Claire as we were working our way through the mounds of paperwork that accompany the hiring of two bikes. I did say to our assistant “I don’t know how you cope with all this everyday” he said “oh…you get used to it”.  Having ticked boxes and initialed and signed our lives away, it turned out we were supposed to pick the bikes up the day before and had been charged an extra days rental, and we have been kitted out with sat navs which we didn’t order, only one of which was pre programmed with Route 66 in it.

Our assistant said that we would have to see HC Travel to get reimbursed for the days hire, as for the sat navs they will take a deposit from our account which will be returned to us once sat navs are handed back in LA. So providing we don’t lose, break or have them stolen it wouldn’t’ cost us any extra to have them so we agreed to accept them. Finally out of the office we were introduced to our bikes for the trip. They had said that they can’t always guarantee that you will get the bike that you requested, in my case they did not have a Road King available but instead they would let us have two new Heritage Softails with only fifteen miles on the clock, on each. I was quite happy with this as I did have concerns about the

        

Road King and being able to have my feet flat on the floor at lights etc. The Heritage seating position was a good deal lower and would therefore make for an easier ride. Before we were allowed to load the bikes up another assistant talked us through the controls, the sat nav and the security measures etc, I asked him to reset the counters on each bike to zero and then we were ready to load up. We put all the wet gear into one of my saddle bags, we had a small tank bag each and a large holdall type bag each which were secured across the rear seats using bungies which Claire had remembered to pack. We both had full riding gear on, jackets, trousers, gloves neck scarf and helmets. We had already agreed that I should follow Claire as we would more likely stay together and, more importantly now, she had the sat nav with route 66 programmed into it. I had moved my bike along the forecourt and waited for Claire to get into position at the front before we pulled away. These were each £17,500 worth of brand spanking new bike and they were about to let us ride them across America, it was scarcely believable. Claire confessed later that as she paused waiting to pull out onto the road for the first time, she was literally shaking; she was a bag of nerves and it took all her will power to make that move and ride off the forecourt and onto the road.

DAY ONE CHICAGO TO SPRINGFIELD

Once on the road we were both fine and happy as Larry (who ever he is) we made one right turn onto Roosevelt Street and followed that road the whole way back into Chicago, other than the huge potholes and several traffic-lights we encountered no problems at all and were soon pulling over on East Jackson Drive for a short break and to get our breath back.

We had worked out, the day before, that this would probably be the only place we could pull over before we truly set off.

We had to lose the jackets, trousers and gloves as it was just too stiflingly hot, even the air as you were riding along was like a hot fan in your face, being comfortable was to be a key factor on this trip. After the short break this was it, we were actually setting off on Route 66; right off East Jackson and left into Adams, which is where the Route 66 Begin sign was. We were now riding in the big city with tower blocks rising high above our heads it was amazing.

Gone were the worries that we had yesterday, this was brilliant cruising through these streets on our Harleys, it was awesome, we both had silly grins on our faces! After some time of riding we came to our first left turn, across four lanes, and Claire happened to be first in the queue and therefore had no cars to follow. She was a little afraid of not knowing what to do and was asking me to take the lead and I’m saying just turn left what’s the matter? It hadn’t occurred to me that this was in fact our first turning left since riding in America and now being on the wrong side of the road it was not as simple and straight forward as I was suggesting. You had to remember which way to look and which lane to aim for, something that was to become second nature after a while but this was the first time and quite nerve-racking. Claire said ‘you do it, you go first’ so once the lights changed off we went and successfully got across without any difficulties. Claire took the lead once more after we crossed, and after that we never really had any problems turning left. We even managed a section of interstate on the I55 without any problems at all, something we had been a little worried about before. Parts of Route 66 have been cut through by interstate, which means that in order to get from one section of 66 to another you will often have to travel along a few junctions of interstate. It’s not ideal, but they never considered the old route when they were putting in the new one and that’s just something you have to put up with if you want to travel the old Route 66 today. We were heading for a town called Wilmington to see ‘The Gemini Giant’. 

Along a particularly long and busy stretch of 66 Claire’s tank bag flew off, and I narrowly avoided hitting it by swerving out-of-the-way, this particular stretch was like a dual carriage way that we would have in England which meant that there was nowhere for us to pull over. Eventually, after some distance, we found a road leading off to the right that we could pull into. It turns out that her tank bag contained her camera and one of the radios, what chance any of those surviving on a busy road like that? I volunteered to take the long walk back to try to find the bag, I must have been gone nearly and hour before I returned. It was sweltering heat walking along the side of the road with no footpath and huge trucks thundering past, it was a little ‘hairy’ to say the least, but I did manage to retrieve the bag which was sitting on the white lines in the middle of the road and on initial inspection everything inside the bag seemed okay. Once back with Claire it became clear that, although they looked okay, neither the camera or the radio were working properly. We salvaged the SDI card from the camera but this now meant the end of bike to bike communication between myself and Claire, this on the first day of the trip, what a blow. But it wasn’t going to stop us we could get a new camera and radio from somewhere and continue with our journey. 

We made it to Wilmington and saw the Gemini Giant this was a great thrill for us as it was one of the first recognised attractions that we had seen in photos and various videos of the route so to be here right beside it was great, it is basically a fifties remnant, a huge statue of a green spaceman used to try to lure travelers on the route to come and eat at the cafe. We also decided to eat at the cafe and had a hot dog each which was lovely, we began laughing at each other because of our sun burn, we had been wearing open-faced helmets with goggles and t-shirts which meant every exposed bit caught the sun quite badly both our faces looked like pandas, with a big red stripe down the middle and large white areas over the eyes where the goggles had been and a farmers tan on the arms this meant the long sleeves would have to come out, but our faces would have to wait until we got to the hotel and the pool!

Time was marching on as we didn’t leave Eagle rider until gone eleven we were catching the sun full in the face and boy was it burning! We cracked on through some lovely areas before another brief stop at Odell which had a beautifully restored 1930 petrol station which did sell souvenirs but unfortunately it was closed by the time we reached it. Still we took a few photos and cracked onto the hotel which was still some way off in Springfield. We eventually rolled in at the Statehouse Inn at 8pm very burned and extremely tired. After a quick shower we popped out and had something to eat before amazingly locating a 24hour chemist. We stocked up on after-sun and factor 50 sun cream, we also picked up one or two snacks for the room, which we headed back to, with our over cooked skin and aching bodies. 

DAY TWO SPRINGFIELD TO ROLLA

We woke up this morning to thunder and lightning, which was a bit scary (to say the least!) the thought of having to ride in that was not too appealing. This meant trying out the wet suits for the first time. Having loaded up the bikes we then slipped on the over suits and rain proof boots. I’ll be honest it was a little bit of a relief after being burned so badly yesterday to not have to face the same again today. The first thing we have decided to do on the morning of each trip is to fuel up before heading anywhere, so loaded up off we set to find the nearest petrol station, the rain was harsh indeed you could not see out of the visor and Claire could hardly make out the sat nav but we persevered and once fueled up we were able to get properly on our way. Once we managed to get the bikes up to speed the rain didn’t seem so bad, in fact after only a couple of hours it had stopped. We kept the wet weather gear on for warmth for a little while longer! We pulled off on a really old section of 66 from the 20’s/30’s and, so quiet was it, that we were able to park the bikes in the middle of the road and take pictures

         

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The next attraction we managed to find, after a couple of wrong turns, was the chain of rocks bridge, famous because it has a bend in the middle. Although it still stands, today it is no longer used by traffic, it was nice to see yet another attraction that we had previously only seen in books or videos, we walked a little way onto the bridge and took some pictures.

         

After that brief stop we decided to get some fuel in the city of St Louis and maybe we could get a look round the shops and perhaps get a new radio and camera for Claire. Well that was the idea, but St Louis turned out to be a little on the scary side, a rough and ready town with rough and ready people making for quite an intimidating atmosphere not one that we wanted to stop and go shopping in anyway. We did have to stop for fuel and although there were some unsavory characters hanging about we had very little choice, as it happens not for the first time we were having trouble getting the fuel pump to work and they were very friendly and helped us sort out the problem. That said, once we had fueled up we chose not to hang about and got out of there fast. For once the sat nav came up trumps and guided us through a very complicated route through the city that I don’t think we could have managed with our maps alone. Once through and heading out the other side we came across ‘Ted Drewes’ famous for his frozen custard, this was also one of the ones on our list of attractions to check out, so fortunate enough to spot it we turned round and headed back for some ‘frozen custard’ which now back in the stifling afternoon sun was most welcome.

After that we headed off back on the route, the heat once more started to take its toll and we were tired and getting burned again. After a while we happened upon ‘The Worlds Largest Rocking Chair’ so we stopped to take some pics and, this time, the gift shop was open although disappointingly the t-shirts and goodies were not quite what we were looking for. We arrived at our hotel ‘The Best Western’ at around 7pm and, once showered, we decided to go for a steak dinner at the restaurant next door. The organisation was a little confusing but eventually we got our food which turned out to be very nice. Since this hotel had a launderette we took this opportunity to get some washing done, we bagged up all our smalls and headed for the machines around the corner only to have the washing machine pack-up on us the minute we pressed start. We seem to have a way with technical equipment! 

I did drag the receptionist round to try to sort it out but she had to concede that the machines were knackered and we would be out of luck tonight and suggested that we tried doing our washing in the sink, so given the lack of choice that is what we did ….oh and it didn’t escape our attention that we are now officially ’24 hrs from Tulsa’

Tomorrow we have decided to try to get a head of the game by showering tonight and having the bags packed and ready to go, setting the alarm for 5.30 and getting on the road for 6.00. We will have breakfast after about an hour or so of riding and hopefully, this way, we will still get to see all that we want to see and get to the hotel at the other end in time to lay round the pool and feel like we’re having a holiday.  

DAY THREE ROLLA TO TULSA

Having set the alarm early we were up, bikes packed and ready to roll for 6am. The early morning riding was lovely compared to the previous two days, although the sun was up it was still cool and the riding was comfortable. We had checked the map to see if there was anything interesting worth stopping for along the way, but on this particular section there were no real attractions of interest to us, just nice scenic views to enjoy. This was, so far, some of the longest un-interrupted stretches of route 66 that we had come across and if you’re in to riding then this would be the section for you.

          

It went through hills and forests, some lovely housing areas and although the sat nav did take us down a dead-end or two it was nothing compared to the number of dead ends and pointless loops it had taken us on the previous two days, so that was a relief.

We decided to have breakfast in the first town that we came to, this was a nice busy little cafe and was a little odd in that it allowed smoking inside, albeit only on one-half of the restaurant, odd because we thought the US had really come down hard on smoking in public places but in here they seemed to more than tolerate it. After a very satisfying feed we set off once again, the next goal would be Springfield (obviously not the same town as the night before) and this one had a Harley Davidson Shop where we might be able to buy some gel vests and anything else that might keep us cool in the extreme heat. We thought we might also check out Radio Shack and see if we could replace our radio set-up and Claire’s camera while we were at it. The ride to Springfield was equally as good as the earlier section, no real attractions but good riding none the less. Once in Springfield we found the Harley Shop to be quite a distance out-of-the-way but we kept going as we needed to get the gel vests for the desert sections that would be coming up shortly. 

         

Eventually we arrived at the shop and as it was now around midday the heat was becoming quite intense once again, thankfully once inside the air-conditioned showroom the lady was happy to sell us two gel vests and two gel neck scarves, we also bought a couple of cool bandanas to go with the cool shades that we bought in Chicago. On the way back to route 66 we spotted a Radio Shack and proceeded to spend a good hour trying to figure out which radio set-up would work best for us, we eventually left the shop with a digital camera, two of the most expensive radios and an ear piece all of which we were not able to get to work with each other properly but somehow convinced ourselves that we would be able to figure it out later when we got to our hotel. Time was marching on now and we needed to crack on, as we still had over half the distance to travel and the heat was already getting to us. Yet more long uninterrupted stretches of 66 lay ahead before going through the small town of Galena which had the original rusty beaten up tow truck which became the inspiration for ‘Tow Tater’ in the film ‘Cars’, we stopped briefly for a few pics before looking for a fuel stop, the only problem with that was that Claire had already spotted a nice little gift shop which turned out to be a museum of mining in Galena. When I made it over from the fuel stop to the museum I found Claire signing the guest book and an eager old lady dressed in 1800’s period costume waiting to show us around the museum, I’m thinking ‘no please no, we need to crack on, we just don’t have time for this’ but after biting my lip I began to settle in and really warm to the tour. By the time she had finished I must admit I really enjoyed it although still relieved to drag Claire out of there so we could hit the road again. By now the heat was getting to us once again, over the last three days we seemed to have little or no time for anything, we don’t seem to be stopping very long at any of the attractions but some how the days are still incredibly long, we are arriving quite late at the hotels and it seems to be one big chase from start to finish with very little time in between to do anything, I wonder how these organised tours are managing to do it with so many riders to have to fuel up and stop and start at each place what time must they be rolling in at their hotels? if they are intending to see everything it must be very late if we are anything to go by, also we have to dispute some of the mileage quotes as we seem to be doing far more than they have suggested it should be, today for instance was down as 280 miles but we have done 340, quite a bit more and the same applies to the previous sections. 

We finally got to the Comfort in at Tulsa around 9.00 with once again no time to do anything, hopefully sooner or later we will get ahead of the game and perhaps have time to look around some of the places that we are staying, the distance is not as bad tomorrow so we will set the alarm for 5.30 and aim to be on the road for 6.00.

 DAY FOUR TULSA TO CLINTON

These early starts are great, it a good time of the morning to be riding, its cool and comfortable, don’t get me wrong it’s still warm enough to only wear T-shirts but at least the sun was behind us until midday, we set off and managed to get lost a couple of times thanks to the infuriating Garmin sat nav which was often very unclear about which road we should be taking, you have to try on get used to ‘its ways’.

It wasn’t long before we were back on track I have to confess at this point the heat had got the better of me and I decided to go all ‘local’ and ditch the stifling helmet, I know that this goes against every thing I’ve been taught and the incredible risk factors involved but in this heat with a helmet there is a danger of feeling drowsy with heat stroke and having a lack of concentration which could be equally as dangerous to ride under those conditions so I opted to go for the bandana and shades. Wow, what a feeling to ride like that, you know it feels wrong but the freedom is fantastic and to have the wind blowing around your head and face in this heat was so much more cooling, Claire was not yet convinced by this and chose to stick with the helmet which I can totally understand, apart from all the other risks all our insurance becomes invalid should we have an accident without wearing our helmets, but given the heat and the fact that the road was pretty straight and there was very little traffic at all, comfort in my case overrode the safety factor plus in this state it is perfectly legal to ride without a helmet if you want to. We were soon back on track with 66 and traveled through Oklahoma City which consisted of flat prairie lands with the odd farm scattered about and was quite bleak in parts, one could imagine the people back in the day leaving their homes in the ‘dust bowl’ of the great depression of the late twenties and early thirties for the land of ‘milk and honey’.

We passed through the wreckage of a very recent tornado which had ripped up telegraph poles, trees, bushes, bits of metal and general rubbish strewn about the place it was quite the eye opener. We stopped in a town called Stroud at the Rock Cafe for our breakfast, this cafe was also one of the land marks we had seen on previous pictures and videos of 66, the place was great and the food was too it’s a pity the young female waitresses let the place down with their grumpy demeanor. Opposite we found a tiny gift shop which thankfully was open, this did a lot to lift Claire’s spirits as I think the heat and the sat nav had been getting the better of her in the early part of the morning, finally the purse came out and gifts were being purchased something we would liked to have done before if any of them had either been open or sold anything that appealed to us. This little shop seemed to meet all the criteria we were looking for Route 66 mugs, T-shirts, fridge magnets, and lots of other cheap tacky stuff you’d expect to find. we lapped it up and left with an arm full of kitch mostly smaller items that were possible to fit in the bags, it dawned on us that today must be Saturday as there were suddenly a lot of “day bikers’ around, you know the types, solicitors during the week and dig their Harley’s out for a weekend pose…some great looking bikes…can’t blame them. 

Later we passed by a large red barn called ‘The Round Barn’ at which we stopped to have a look around, it had been restored to its former glory a few years ago and was certainly unusual, another opportunity for post cards and fridge magnets, shortly after that we were due a fuel stop.

         

Fueling up has quietly been giving us a lot of hassle from the very first fill, can’t figure out what we are doing wrong but we can’t seem to get any thing to work properly, some take credit cards and some don’t, the pump keeps clicking off, and when you do get it to flow you cant ease off to slow it down its either on or off, consequently if you’re not on the ball it will spurt all over your tank etc, so far we have pretty much busked our way through it but it’s getting very annoying now why can’t we just fuel up like we do at home? We pulled up to a pump as we had been doing, took off the fuel caps, place the card in as requested, ‘not accepted ….try again ….not accepted try again …see cashier’ ….I would then go in and see the cashier tell her what was happening…. ” Oh its ok now just go and try it again” she would say ….I would then go out and try it again ….place the card in as requested, ‘not accepted ….try again ….not accepted try again …see cashier’  Now somewhat miffed I would go back and see the cashier  “Oh its ok now the pump is definitely on” …return to the fuel pump once more….placed the card in as requested, ‘not accepted ….try again ….not accepted try again …see cashier’ ….We rode away from the petrol station extremely annoyed, It seems the way its done is to firstly pull up to the pump, forget the credit card business, go and see the cashier, pay her an amount in cash that you think you’re going to use, the pump then gets switched on, you go back out and fuel up, once fueled, go and see the cashier for any change, you will only get fuel to the value of what you pay, the pump will automatically stop either when your tank is full or when the amount you paid is reached, this system has come about because too many people do runners without paying. Even knowing this system the fuel pumps would still continue to give us hassle throughout the remainder of the trip and this would not be the last petrol station that we would leave in frustration without getting any fuel…bloody annoying!! 

After taking the interstate for a short while we caught back up with 66 in time to catch the Route 66 Museum,

          

once again the staff were as miserable as sin but the place itself was superb and well worth a visit, lots of history, photos and collectables about the route particularly about the ‘Okies’ which is the nick name given to the dust bowl migrants. It was a welcome break in the trip as once again it was getting extremely hot. 

Now this is more like it, we arrived at The Days Inn in Clinton at 3:30 in the afternoon, We checked in then immediately got all our washing together and located the laundry room, once those machines were rolling we took the opportunity to lounge by the pool ….ah yes this is definately more like it. Later on we showered and took a short ride to check out the ‘historic downtown’ unfortunately it was closed which was a little disappointing. We decided to go back to the hotel and go to the ‘Turf Club’ which oddly formed part of the hotel but was a Country / Rock club that not only provided some entertaining dancing from the locals but also permitted smoking in the bar, we had a couple of beers and retired to our room for yet another early start in the morning.

 DAY FIVE CLINTON TO AMARILLO 

Set off slightly later than we had been doing this morning at 7:00 because for some reason the alarm didn’t go off, but never the less we were still reasonably early so packed and ready off we set. It was nice riding again today, much the same as yesterday still in the flat dust bowl area although there was a noticeable change in the grass from bushy green to now turning yellow / orange and looking like it could all do with a bit of watering. 

As much as we can we have been trying to eat at the Mom and Pop run cafes etc but it hasn’t always been possible and especially today being Sunday not much of anything was open, thankfully we found a drive in Sonic which was open and serving up some delicious bacon and egg toasted sandwiches which we devoured. Oh yes …these were lovely. ‘Crazy lady alert!’ while getting ready to leave we were approached by a lady who called her self Luella Davenport, a bit of a local character in her long red jacket purple trousers and red suede shoes, she wanted to have her photo taken standing next to our bikes and insisted on changing into some purple suede shoes so that she would look the part, she even pulled a few Elvis poses to round it all off, she asked if Claire would email her the photos and promptly gave her name and e-mail address, this lady could have kept talking to us all morning if we had allowed her to but we managed to prize ourselves away without being too rude and were soon on the road once more. We traveled through a few small towns that were not much to write home about until we eventually arrived in the town of Mclean, this town houses two of the attractions we had ear-marked to check-out before we set off, we pulled up outside the first one which was “A Tribute to Barbed Wire” but unfortunately it was closed, its a pity because staring through the window they looked to have some pretty cool looking Route 66 T-shirts never mind, after a short stop we moved round the corner to find the recently restored Philips fuel station complete with old truck in company livery parked outside, once again a chance for some photos before moving onto the next attraction which was going to be ‘The Bug Ranch’ at Conway having traveled through what was left of the towns of Groom and Lark to discoverer even less at Conway and certainly no indication or signs of ‘The Bug Ranch’, this being a line of VW Beetles buried in the ground nose first something similar to the more famous Cadillac Ranch which is in Amarillo. Just as we crawled through the three houses and two dog town looking for it I felt my rear wheel start to wobble, at first I thought it was the ruts in the road as there had been quite a few of those but I soon realised it was some thing more serious than that when I began to lose control of the bike, I narrowly avoided crashing into Claire and managed to lower the bike gentley to the floor without any damage to me or it, Claire parked her bike at the side of the road and came running back to help me lift my bike back up and put it on its stand, I had sustained a puncture and thankfully at a very slow speed, had that been on the interstate then I could very well have been in serious trouble if not worse, thankful to be alive we managed to compose ourselves and try to work out what to do.

what we did know was that if you got a flat tyre it was your own responsibility to get it sorted out and was not covered by Eagle rider or our own insurance. Eagle rider did give us some advice in Chicago and that was in the event of a flat tyre we must call the nearest Harley Davidson dealer (in this case at Amarillo) and arrange for them to come and tow us in, all costs will have to be met by ourselves. We had a little bit put by to cover contingencies but we really were not sure how much this might run into. Claire called Amarillo Harley but unfortunately it was Sunday and we got no answer, just then a police car happened to pass by, amazing considering we were in the middle of nowhere and this was probably only the second police car we’d seen since we started the trip, Claire flagged them down and explained our predicament, a little officious and slightly confused by our accents they eventually figured out what it was we were having trouble with and just happened to know a guy who might come out and tow us into Amarillo which at this point was still some 20/30 miles away, I cheekily asked if that would be for free, and the ‘law inforcement officer’ replied “No sir…nobody does nothing for free around here”. After a few minutes on his radio the officer confirmed that a guy was definitely coming out to help us and he should be with us in about half an hour and he would take us to our hotel in Amarillo. Wow, what a result and a stroke of luck all round if you had to have a flat tyre in the middle of nowhere on a Sunday then this was the place to do it. Now with nothing to do but wait we sort shelter from the baking sun on a table and chair under a tree from what used to be an old cafe type building, it wasn’t long before one of the locals came wandering over wearing only jeans and trainers drinking a can of beer asking what all the fuss was about, although he was a little disconcerting to begin with he turned out to be very neighbourly and said we were more than welcome to use his toilets etc or if we needed any water we would only have to ask, he then went on to inquire about what we were doing and why we were there etc he seem well-meaning and was concerned for our plight.

Thankfully a friendly old Mexican man turned up with a four by four and a low trailer about an hour later, between him, myself and the neighbourly redneck we managed to get the bike loaded onto the back and strapped securely for the journey. Claire chose to ride in the car while I rode her bike and followed closely behind we’d arranged to drop my bike at Harley Davidson so that they could hopefully get to work on it first thing in the morning, this wasn’t the way I had envisaged riding into the city singing “is this the way to Amarillo”

buy hey it could have been worse. We pulled into Harley and he drove the trailer round the back to the service area and to our surprise there were some of the staff locking up, apparently they had just popped in to take a couple of bikes out for a spin as we pulled in. I asked if it would be possible to put my bike inside for the night where it would be safer and they agreed, another stroke of luck!. We thanked them for that and then continued on to our hotel which happened to be only round the corner from Harley Davidson which would be useful tomorrow.

At last at the hotel it was time to settle up with the guy for towing us in, Claire and I had estimated it might be somewhere around $300 -$500 as he’d brought us from the middle of nowhere giving up his own time on a Sunday, so with a little trepidation I asked him how much it was going to cost, after briefly checking back with his boss he said “$150” …amazed and much relived at that price we decided to give him $200, after all without his help we would really have been in the mire, now it was just a case of finding out how much Harley Davidson would want to lighten our wallets by tomorrow. Relived to be alive and relived to be at the hotel we checked in, showered and went for a Mexican meal at a lovely restaurant just around the corner called ‘Joe’s Taco’ and we were royally entertained by a surprisingly good vocalist / guitarist playing while we ate, we very much enjoyed the night.  

 DAY SIX AMARILLO TO TUCUMCARI 

Mileage check: 1209 miles

We got up surprisingly early this morning and decided to have breakfast at the hotel for a change we also wanted to be early for when Harley opened so we could get them on the case with the tyre. After we had breakfast Claire jumped on the back of her bike and I rode us both to Harley, once again we were a little bit keen and arrived half and hour before they opened so we took the opportunity to give Claire’s bike a little clean while we waited. Before too long we were standing at the desk in the service department booking my bike in to be sorted out, the lady said it may take a couple of hours which was ok because today’s ride was looking like it was going to be around 120 miles, a short trip in the scheme of things, We took the chance to pop over to the local shopping mall to see if we could find a new camera for me, something else I trashed the other day, I accidentally dropped it and now it refused to work, so a suitable replacement along similar lines would be excellent. It was a canon power shot, an ideal camera to be able to twist the viewing screen on the back to see what you’re doing when you wanted to take self timer shots and have yourself and the wife in the same shot. At ‘Best Buy’ we managed to find the newer version of the same camera a ‘Canon Power Shot G12’, which had all the bells and whistles and still had the twisty screen thing which was so useful and it was still dinky enough to put in my pocket, so along with a ‘grippy’ stick anywhere camera stand we made a purchase of some $3/400 Dollars and returned to see how they were getting along at Harley. After raiding their t-shirts and gifts and a new pull a long bag to go on the back seat they had at last completed the job on my bike, it needed a new tyre as the old one had quite a chunk missing out of it as the guy showed me … yikes!!

           

I really was lucky, that whole deal came to $325 including fitting… ouch! ….over the last two days I have eaten into $1000 dollars of our expenses ……but given that I’m still alive….its only money! 

At last we were able to ride back to the hotel load the bags back onto our bike and set off on today’s section, we would be heading for the ‘Blue Swallow Hotel’ which would be the first of two booking that we have made ourselves, the other one being the ‘Wig Wam Motel’ These were well-known attractions along Route 66 that we thought would be nice to actually stay the night in and the tour company HC Travel were fine with that as long as we made our own arrangements.

Shortly out of Amarillo there were some extremely strong gusts of winds of up to 40mph we were informed across the Plains which meant we had to lean into the wind just to keep a proper balance, nestled right at the beginning of all this we came across the famous Cadillac Ranch with ten Cadillac’s all in a line, buried nose first into the ground at apparently the same angle as the pyramids, not really sure why, anyway it made for some interesting photos before we hit the road again. As we crossed the border from Texas to New Mexico the scenery started to change and brought with it a kind of desert look. We reached Adrian and the Mid Point Cafe which is said to be the mathematical centre of Route 66 between Chicago and Los Angeles and if you made it here using an eagle rider sat nav then your mileage will be much higher than it says on the Mid Point sign.

We popped in and had something to eat and very nice it was too, inside it was decked out fifties style with lots of old photos around the walls, they had also added a very comprehensive gift shop at the far end which lured us in for yet another round of spending, quite how Claire is managing to stash all the gifts and T-shirts we’ve bought so far amidst our already crammed bags is beyond me, they must be those new Doctor Who Tardis bags!  

Having had a lovely break and taken plenty of photos we move on without much of anything interesting to report until we arrive at out Hotel for the night The Blue Swallow, as we pull under the famous neon sign then stroll into check-in, the manager of the place ‘Terry’, greeted us warmly, strode over to a very large fridge in his reception area and pulled out a cool can of Bud Light, cracked open the tube and handed it to us. Now that’s the kind of greeting we like especially after yet another very hot and windy day. he showed us to our ‘cottage’ complete with garage for the bikes, overall it was quite a nice friendly place rough and ready in places but still a welcome change from the same bland motel / hotels that we’d had up until now. After a welcome shower we headed out to the local Chinese restaurant called ‘The Dragon’ for dinner, the food was fantastic, just what I needed, I’d been having curry withdrawal symptoms since we’ve been in America and this was just lovely. Afterwards we got ourselves a few cans and sat outside our cottage in the swing chair amidst the warm breeze talking the night away, beautiful, it was then we noticed the backs of our hand were breaking out in small blisters from being in the sun all day. 

DAY SEVEN TUCUMCARI TO SANTA FE 

Mileage check 1334 miles

Due to the blisters on our hands we thought it best to set off nice and early again today to get as far as we can before the blistering midday sun, as per all the previous days my early morning wear consisted of a loose long sleeve shirt, baggy trousers, bandana and shades. Our wheels were rolling at 6:00 and we were set to have breakfast at Santa Rosa, The early part of the ride consisted of desert type areas again and it wasn’t long before we were parking up outside another 66 land mark called ‘Joseph’s Cafe’ where we decided to have breakfast, what was a real surprise was just how cold we were, it was freezing, although the sun was now up it was still freezing, it was an odd thing in that it was only the air when riding on the bikes that was cold, if you just walked around as normal it was still baking in the sun. We sat down at a table and set to order our food only to be told by the waitress that they had no electricity but they were expecting it to come back on very shortly if we wanted to wait, as we were still ‘chuntering’ from the cold and quite hungry now we thought it best to wait, some twenty minutes later our food was being served to the table which at least dragged Claire out of the gift shop! 

Before we set off on the bikes again, out came the biker jackets and helmets and even the gloves for only the second time on the trip. This section provided us with some lovely stretches of desert / forests /and mountains along its route and the buildings and the designs began to take on a Mexican style theme with rounded off edges and log beams sticking out of the fronts, there was also a subtle Indigenous Indian influence creeping in with the signs and symbols etc, We stopped briefly at the post office in Rowe before traveling through yet more mountains and forests on route to Santa Fe.

We were booked in at ‘The Inn of Governors’ which was a very well-appointed hotel, that gave off an affluent vibe with its modern take on old colonial styling it looked superb but unfortunately we couldn’t check in until 3pm, although they were kind enough to let us leave our bags in a storage area so that we could at least take a walk around the ‘Historic Downtown’ area. Santa Fe, it has to be said is lovely, the style and feel of the old town, the sounds of the buskers around the well laid out square and the wonderful mixes of strange food that wafted about the place made for a very festive atmosphere

   

The only down side to all this was that the shops / boutiques were all way too expensive for their own good, way above the appeal of the average tourist although they were all fantastic to browse around. The town also boasted a fine cathedral which looked like it might be a fair age from the outside, so we wandered up to the doors and had a look inside as it was open to the public, there was something very odd about this cathedral on the inside because it looked far to modern compared to the outside, white walls, new wood floors, pews and carpets not at all what I was expecting, I asked one of the staff about this and they said “oh we had it done up a few years ago, it was too dark and dingy so we gave it a lick of paint to cheer things up” …quite bizarre, they are so proud of its history and yet they chose to paint over it because it looked a bit drab, it seems to be defeating the object really, you’ll never have the history if you just paint over it. 

Back at the hotel we lounged about by the pool with our free teas which were most welcome before finally being able to get into our rooms, Having dragged all the bags in we showered and smartened up ready to go out for something to eat, on our way back to the hotel we had earlier spotted an East Indian restaurant which caught our eye so we though it would make a change from the burger dinners we’d been eating for a while, the inside although nice lacked the finishing touches here and there but they were very friendly which more than made up for it and the food was excellent, not quite up to Izzy’s standard in Looe, Cornwall but still top-notch food all the same. We walked around the town again in the evening before having a few beers and retiring to bed.  

DAY EIGHT SANTA FE TO GALLUP

 Mileage check 1526 miles

We set off nice and early again today only this time we had the full bike gear on ready for the chilly morning, we where prepared for that this time!. Our intention was to try to have breakfast in Albuquerque, we rode through some nice desert style 66 before arriving in the town, we really couldn’t find anywhere that we could stop to eat, although we did manage to ride through a famous intersection were route 66 manages to cross itself having been realigned and moved about over the years, and this crossroads along the entire route is the only point that it crosses itself which therefore makes it a unique cross-road, having passed through the city and yet more dead ends we eventually end up back on the route at a McDonald’s once more that happened to be open bright and early, as we pulled into the car park we noticed something unusual, strange mere cat type creatures in an area just next to the car park, lots of them too, happily digging away in the sandy soil.

We were informed by a local that these were in fact ‘prairie dogs’ and basically they are allowed to roam free, we had been noticing odd little animals scurrying across the road from time to time and now we know what they are, how unusual.

After breakfast we followed the route down to Valencia where in turned towards the north-west and ran for quite along section well away from the I 40 through some of the best scenery that we have seen so far on this trip, forests, mountains and desert, exactly what we had imagined route 66 would be like before we left England, Claire went as far as to say “I would be quite happy just to travel back and forth along this section” it was so nice,

Eventually all good things come to an end as did this little stretch when it joined up again with the I 40 and we were back to the usual palaver of getting on and off it where possible to re join old 66 until at last we reached Gallup. One of the attractions we had on our list to see today was ‘El Rancho’ a famous old hotel which used to play host to some movie stars during its illustrious past.

The sun was high in the sky now and we were back to baggy cloths and wet vests so it was nice to get the bikes parked up in the shade while we went in to check out the hotel, unfortunately this wasn’t where we were booked to stay but none the less we had to have a nose around. It had a nice open foyer with a huge fire-place at the far end flanked by a curving wooden stair case which lead up to a baloney that ran around the entire room, along walls of the upstairs balcony where photos, most of them signed of many the actors and actresses who had either stayed or dropped by over the years, there was quite a collection.

 

It wasn’t long before we were checking in at our hotel ‘The Comfort Inn’ which disappointingly was just slightly out of the town. We did manage to get our washing done while spending some time around the pool which was nice before we showered and headed on our bikes back to the El Rancho for our dinner. They were going for a themed restaurant resulting in my having a spicy ‘W C Fields burger’ and Claire having a ‘John Wayne burger’ although she didn’t have to get on her horse and drink her milk!. It was a very nice meal. Afterwards we wandered around once more with a visit to their gift shop before venturing into the town to look a round a few more shops, once the sun had gone down there was quite a drop in the temperature which caught me out a little as I was only wearing a t-shirt and it was getting quite chilly now. we decided to head back to hotel and call it a night.

 

 DAY NINE GALLUP TO HOLBROOK 

Mileage 1789

Today was only a short journey today to Holbrook, we had checked the map for anything interesting attractions but there was nothing of interest for us, so we decided we should just take it easy an enjoy the ride and take a few pictures along the way, as we were in no mad rush we got up a bit later and had breakfast at the hotel. Once on the bikes we settled in for a nice ride the scenery was once again desert and made for some good pics,

we did stop at a few curios gift shops along the way before coming across the Petrified Forrest National Park. We were not intending to go in but we did decide to have a quite look around the gift shop purchasing yet more t-shirts and bits and pieces, we did note that on their map part of the early route 66 runs through the park and we thought it was a little odd why this wasn’t pointed out on our map. Anyway back on the bikes we pulled out of the car park and took a wrong turn and ended up at the pay booth for the entrance to the national park, we had previously studied where this route would take us and it basically was a forty-five minute detour through the park but at the far end we could take the I80 to Holbrook and rejoin the 66 into the town, so as it was only $5 each to ride through we thought we may as well do it as this section of route 66 offered very little in terms of attractions to see anyway, so we wouldn’t be missing out on much. 

As it happens I think we made an excellent choice as some of the views in this park were simply breath-taking. ‘The Painted Desert’ which were mounds of red and pink rock sand as far as the eye could see, a little further on round we came across the old 66 route that

was mentioned on the gift shop map, this was a section where the paved road no longer existed but you could still tell where it used to run by the long abandoned telegraph poles which still stood like a scene from the ‘Life of Brian’ as the wooden crosses stretched across from one hill-top to another. 

Following the road round we rode through a section which was out of this world, to me it seemed like we must be riding on the moon as we traveled through hills and mountains of light blue and grey ash, the sky was a brilliant blue with only a white moon for company, superb, it really was something else and it didn’t stop there,just a short distance away lay the Crystal Wood in the petrified forest where whole trees had been turned to solid crystallized forms through the pressure of water and natural forces over millions of years.

 

It really was fantastic to see, I’m so glad we decided to take this route through the National Park it was well worth the visit.

At the end of the park we turned right onto the I80 and rode about twenty miles to Holbrook and rejoined the 66 through the town, our hotel tonight was the second one of our own bookings and that was The ‘Wig Wam Motel’, We were staying in wig wam No 2 and we couldn’t wait to get a look inside. The outside consisted of a concrete structure which was shaped to look like an old Indian wig wam, only with windows and a front door and all modern convinces it didn’t look like it was going to be very big at all on the inside, but once through the door we were pleasantly surprised by the amount of space, in our wig wam we had two double beds and an en-suite what more could you ask for?, as it happens we did have an excellent nights sleep in it as well.

On the night we went for a steak dinner at a local restaurant and then on to a rough and ready bar for a few drinks, they were all very friendly and we had a nice night before getting back to the hotel to recover before another early start in the morning.  

DAY TEN HOLBROOK TO FAGSTAFF 

Mileage 1909

Bright and early once again today we set off, Claire wanted to find a trading post called ‘The Jack Rabbit’ which as it happens was not far along the route but unfortunately we were just a little too early for them and they hadn’t opened yet.

We stopped briefly for a few photos before moving on. We planned to have breakfast in ‘Winslow’, made famous in the Eagles song ‘Take It Easy’ and as you would expect this town was making the most of that little connection and dedicated, what is reputed to be, the actual corner from the line in the lyrics “I was standing on the corner of Winslow Arizona” 

They had a bronze statue of a man holding a guitar and the even had the “bright red ford” which is also mentioned in the song, on the side of the building was painted a mural which served as a kind of reflection of what was going on. The whole area was done out very nicely even to the point where you could buy a brick and have any message you want put on it and then have it placed with others that formed the paving on the corner. 

Opposite stood the ‘cash in’ gift shop which drew us in as usual. This was even after the lady that was running it came out and told us off for parking our bikes on the newly paved area to take pictures with the statue!

Yet more stuff would have to find space in our burgeoning bags but they did have some great things it has to be said. Unable to find a Mom and Pop cafe open we ended up once again eating at Sonic, and we tip our hats to their bacon and egg sandwiches, just the right size portions with superb soft French toast – ideal! Back on route 66 we spot signs for a ‘meteor crater’ and as it was only six miles off the route we decided to go and check it out, the ride out to it was real desert area, flat plains for miles with only shadowy mountains in the distance, it was on theses kind of stretches that you really felt the heat without any real escape.

 

This was apparently the world largest untouched meteor crater that is still used today for collecting scientific data and was even used by Nasa to practice for the moon landings. It did look spectacular and made for some great photographs.

I’d had a minor headache when we set off this morning which was slowly getting worse and the sheer heat on my head was not helping matters, so by the time we rolled into Flagstaff I was feeling quite unwell.

 

Flagstaff turned out to be quite a big town and we had to battle from one end to the other in very busy traffic in blazing heat and stopping at traffic lights every block, our bikes are air-cooled which is fine while you’re riding along but when you’re stuck in the heat in a traffic jam the haze from the engine gets so intense that it will burn the inside of your thighs, this meant that we had to raise ourselves clear off the seat when ever possible in the traffic. Not only did the sun fry you but the heat from engines on the bikes when we were not moving was just as troubling. I couldn’t wait to get to the hotel now, not feeling too good at all and not being able to escape the heat was just making it worse. Finally the hotel was reached once again it was some way out of the town but we were thankful to get to it, none the less. Fortunate to find the shade of a tree to park the bikes under we went to check in only to find that we would not be allowed into the room until four. I know Claire would have liked to go shopping in the town while we waited but I really wasn’t feeling too good at all and I needed to lie down, I certainly could not face the battle back through that heat and traffic just yet, thankfully they had a swimming pool and we were able to get hold of the bits and pieces we needed to spend a couple of hours lazing around that while we waited for our room to be ready. At last we checked in at yet another hotel that was trying to be too posh for itself. We managed to get a little rest in before taking a shower and getting back on the bike to go into town in the slightly cooler evening air. The first stop was a chemist and some pain killers for me, I popped a couple of pills which almost immediately did the trick, thank God. After that we had a mooch around the Malls and bought one or two bits and pieces that we needed before heading back to the hotel. 

DAY ELEVEN FLAGSTAFF TO WILLIAMS 

Mileage 2035 

Flagstaff to Williams was the shortest trip of the journey being only 90 miles, it seemed at little odd to us to have such a short journey thrown in the middle but it soon became obvious why HC Travel had planed it so. We set off early again today as we had planned to go and see the Grand Canyon, knowing it was reasonably close by and this would be too good an opportunity to miss. Hopefully going there early we might miss the throngs of tourists and get in and out before it gets too busy. Once we got to the turn off junction at Williams the sign read 50 miles to the Grand Canyon, Now we understood why this section was so short, HC Travel must have assumed that we would want to go and see the Grand Canyon and allowed for the 100 mile round trip by making this a very short section of 66 today. That was indeed a long 50 miles and it was nice to see the toll booths for the Grand Canyon finally loom out of the trees, we paid our entrance fees and followed the road round to the first available car park still unable to visibly see anything of the Canyon at this stage. by now the sun was high and the heat was immense, we slapped the sun cream on the burnt bits then set off on foot following a trail on the map to an available vantage point, by this time not only was it unbearably hot it was also filling up rapidly with uncle Tom Cobly and all.

 

It was a bit of a bustle, just to get to the front on any of the rails to get a decent picture, but wow it is worth the battle to see the enormity of it all, the sheer scale that can barely be captured on your average camera, we jostled amid the heat and the cameras to get some ‘keeper’ photos before hunger started to get the better of us as we hadn’t any breakfast yet. After some time we managed to locate a cafe where we were able to get some food and a cup of coffee surrounded by people chatting away on their lap tops?…I mean come on …this is The Grand Canyon ….leave the lap top at home and live a little. 

That said after our food and back in the furnace that was the car park we felt we were all ‘Canyoned’ out we’d seen all the wow fantastic views from many different angles, bought the t-shirts and we were satisfied with that, we didn’t feel bad because we didn’t want to take the bus tour, hire a bicycle or hike down the sides and go Kayaking on the river at the bottom or get discounts on our entrance fee each day if we stay a week in one of their chalets…nope…we’d seen enough….it was too crowded and too damned hot to extract anymore of the hard-earned cash from our wallets …. it was time to go. We waved good-bye to the helicopter trips, the RVs, the push-chairs, the wheel chairs, the screaming kids and the bawling parents and headed back along the 50 miles to Williams. It was shame it became so torturous, The Grand Canyon is something that you want to see if only to say you’ve seen it, don’t get me wrong it is one of nature wonders. It’s all the gawking knob heads (myself included) standing round peering into it that is the off-putting part, if it’s possible to see it on a quiet day I’d highly recommend it.

I had noticed that Claire’s front side light had not been working for a while so we figured that we should get it sorted out in case we get pulled over by the police. As it happens the nearest Harley Davidson dealer was back towards Flagstaff so as we still had plenty of time we decided we should pop back there get them to have a look at the problem and then we could go on to Seligman and checkout the two attractions that we had earmarked to see there today instead of doing them tomorrow and adding to an already long journey to Las Vegas. So that is exactly what we did, Harley changed the bulb on Claire’s bike while we raided the t-shirts and they had some great ones to.

Now fully legal again we headed for Seligman which from this point was about 40 miles. I was looking forward to seeing Angel Deligadillos Barber shop on 66 and his brothers Snow Cap parlor, two doors further down the street.

         

On the videos we had watched about Route 66 Angel was quite the campaigner for everything Route 66 and I was really hoping that we might meet him, unfortunately although we were able to take pictures sitting in his famous barbers chair on this particular day sadly he was not at his shop, yet more gifts and t-shirts were purchased and a very welcome iced red and blue snow cap before taking the old 66 back to Williams.

We travelled through the town of Williams hoping to spot our hotel, it turns out that Williams is having its annual bike festival this weekend and the place was packed with bikes lined up and down the streets and bands were playing at various bars and it made for quite a festive atmosphere, now looking forward to getting to the hotel so we could get out there and experience some of it for ourselves. Claire pulled over to put the hotels address in the sat nav since it wasn’t leaping out at us, we proceed to navigate our way through the busy streets before eventually being dumped back on the I 40 heading back towards Flagstaff!, I caught up with Claire and asked if she was sure about the directions as we were most definitely leaving Williams, but she was adamant that everything was correct and so we kept following it. I couldn’t believe it when we pulled up at the hotel, it was only a mile or so from Harley Davidson where we rode back to earlier in the day, for God sake we were almost back in Flagstaff! a mere 27 miles from where we left this morning! for such a short journey today we certainly put in an awful lot of miles. The hotel did look quite nice even if it was miles from anywhere; it was set amongst the trees and had all the facilities such as pools and gyms etc and a nice little restaurant on the second floor. After we had checked in, showered, changed and calmed down a little we decided not to ride back into Williams where it was all happening and but to stay here and have something to eat, the food looked excellent and they also had a duo playing in the bar for a little entertainment, it was a wise move in the end the food was well worth the plaudits and we were able to relax at the bar afterwards with a couple of beers before calling it a night. 

 DAY TWELVE WILLIAMS TO LAS VEGAS 

Mileage 2324

This was the day that we had put in the trip as an extra, as obviously Las Vegas is not on Route 66 but to make sure that we don’t miss any of the route out we will be riding the 66 to Kingman then taking the 93 to Las Vegas and then tomorrow we will ride back to Kingman to complete the loop of 66 that we could have missed before heading to stay the night in Laughlin. The trip from Williams to Las Vegas should be somewhere around 250 / 300 miles so we knew we were in for a tough one as this was pretty much all desert until we get there. 

Alarm set for an early start and off we rode, along this section of 66 we came across an old diner / come gift shop called Hackberry Cafe, it looked like your typical beaten up pitstop complete with old petrol pumps and rusting old wrecks lying around the place, this cafe has featured on many a Route 66 calendar and did make for some excellent photo opportunities for ourselves

With yet more trinkets finding a tight space in Claire’s tardis bag we set off to Vegas, the ride was nice and easy passing through some lovely mountainous parts, almost like the highlands of Scotland only with heat. Once into Vegas itself the traffic started to get very busy and they took no prisoners either, you had to make your decisions quickly and stick to them otherwise you would get cut up by cars or lorries weaving in and out of the lanes, thankfully the sat nav didn’t mess us about on this occasion and took us directly to the Excalibur Hotel.

 

HC Travel did us proud on this one it was like staying in the castle at Disneyland, with its multi colored turrets springing up at every turn. Once we found a place to park our bikes I was volunteered to go and check us in while Claire had a cigarette, I went armed with all the paper work and bits and pieces that I needed and headed for the nearest door, I walked up the slope and into an immense complex filled as far as the eye could see in every direction with gambling machines and playing tables of all descriptions I wandered aimlessly through all this mayhem trying to find the check-in desk, there were bikes and cars on display that were just lost like toys amidst the vastness of it all, with the help of an assistant I was able locate the check-in desk and joined the back of a very long queue to wait my turn to get booked in. After a while I walked away with a card-key and details of our room being No 42 on the eighteenth floor of tower two. Finding my way back to Claire was no easy task, luckily from where we had parked the lifts for tower two were only a short distance to struggle with the very heavy bags so it wasn’t long before we were standing at the window in our room admiring the view which also took in the outside pool area itself quite a complex. 

We showered and changed and went for a look round, all the footpaths were joined by bridges over the roads, most of them having escalators up and along and down similar to those they have at airports. This was great to begin with but after a while it did make getting around twice as long as it should have. The sights were incredible, they had built a replica New York Street complete with the Statue of liberty, they even had their own Eiffel Tower in the distance, the lights and the colours were stunning and this was in the day! 

People dressed up in crazy outfits that you could have your picture taken with (for a tip of course). We happened upon the Hard Rock Cafe and decided to go in for a drink as it was so hot, somehow this drink turned into two ‘hurricanes’ complete with souvenir glasses, we both strolled out of there with quite a buzz, I can tell you! We were trying to stay incontrolled to make it back for six, as we had booked ourselves in to see ‘The Tournament of Kings’ which was a show complete with dinner that was to take place at an arena on the bottom floor of the hotel. The huge sand arena in the middle was surrounded by seats and tables divided into ‘Countries’ and each section was supposed to cheer for their particular King in the tournament, the entertainment was very good it has to be said and they certainly knew how to get the audience to participate with proceedings, the food was also unique as it came without and knives an forks, in true medieval style everyone was expected to eat the food with their hands. It made for quite a challenge with soup for starters and a whole chicken with vegetables for the main course, you had to enter into the spirit of it all and it was good fun, the jousting tournament definitely got the crowd shouting. It was something unusual for us and I have to say we thoroughly enjoyed it. We made sure to book the earlier show to allow us to go out on the streets afterwards to see all the famous lights, we must have wandered for a few miles at least it felt like it, the sights were something else and bought with them a sense of unrealism it was like being in some kind of Disney dream, we did find the Harley Davidson cafe before for moving onto to find Caesars Palace, at every turn there was something new and interesting to look at, but by 10:30 tiredness was getting the better of us so we decided to head back to the hotel for the night in readiness to set off early tomorrow to miss the mad traffic, We set the alarm for 5:30

 DAY THIRTEEN LAS VEGAS TO LAUGHLIN 

Mileage 2570

On paper this was only a short journey of 90 miles to Laughlin but we had decided to go back to Kingman and have Harley Davidson take another look at Claire’s light, as the bulb they put in at the Harley Grand Canyon was causing her fuel gauge and rear lights not to work. The guy there agreed to have a look at it although he didn’t seem to be all that technical.

 

He disappeared into the shop and came back with another bulb, the odd thing was when he took the other one out, the fuel gauge and lights all worked properly again, he then put the new one in and it caused the same fault as the old one. Anyway he said we should report the fault at LA and let them sort it out, as there wasn’t much else he could do. We thanked him for his trouble of which he didn’t charge and we were once again on our way, we hadn’t solved the problem but at least we knew what was causing it. 

We rejoined the loop of Route 66 that we had missed out yesterday. I’m so glad we decided to go back and do the section as the riding was awesome, in fact I would say so far it is probably my favorite bit. The road to Oatman went up through the hills, it was windy U-bends and S-bends with sheer drops on one side making its way up through, over and down the other side of what I believe was called Sigman Pass, for me, this was fantastic riding with some breathtaking views,

we eventually emerged at the former gold mining town of Oatman which was like walking into a film set for an old style cowboy movie. You could almost picture the scene back in the day, wandering freely up and down the high street were several ‘Burro’s’ otherwise known as Donkeys, these were direct descendants of the Burros that used to work the mines when the town was first established and then set free once all the gold had been mined.

Oatman owes its survival today to the burros, apparently it’s because of them that the tourist come here and the tourists in turn enable the gifts shops to stay in business so the Burros are still free to roam around anywhere they please today, and believe me they do! We wandered around the shops picking up more goodies to squash in the bags before we moved on. Yet more desert awaited us and the heat was almost unbearable, even with cooling vest and neck ties it was still extremely hot, any areas of skin that were exposed to it were getting fried! We made it through to Needles and then onto Bull City by now very tired and tortured by the heat. Positive that we should have been turning right to Laughlin the sat nav is insisting that we go left for the hotel, so putting our trust in the sat nav we turn left and keep riding …..20 miles later on the road back toward Las Vegas! we pulled in at a petrol station. Now extremely grumpy and pissed off as it becomes clear that the sat nav has taken us on a completely pointless detour and we have to go back on the twenty-miles that we have just come to get to Laughlin, I was not happy I can tell you especially as I did question it, but there was no point losing it now that wasn’t going to help, we just have to bite our lips and get on with it. 

Sometime later in the searing heat we finally pull into another gambling Mecca the ‘Aquarius Hotel’ and park miles from the entrance as it was the only space available. I go to check us in and pick up a trolley to load our bags onto as it was such a long way from the door. I was met by a spotty bell boy who refuses to let me have a trolley, he say’s that if something were to happen to a customer while pushing the trolley the hotel would be at fault, consequently only the bell boys are allowed to have the trolley’s and for a small tip he would be quite happy to come and get our bags and take them up to our rooms, I told him where he could stick his company policy, we have travelled hundreds of miles through blistering heat and I would like a trolley to put my own bags on and push it to the room myself what is the problem with that? “No sir…can’t do that sir” If it was possible to be any grumpier than I already was then this jumped up little s@%t was pushing me to it, and out of principle now I will not pay him one dime and chose to drag our bags across the car park through the lobby to the lifts and up to the fourteenth floor. What sort of hotel treats its paying guest like that? If I remember when I get home I’m going to write a letter of complaint for what its worth. Laughlin seemed to be a poor mans Las Vegas, people save up all year to come here, blow all their money gambling and then go home to save up and do it all again the following year, I just don’t get it?. What kind of holiday is that?

Laughlin did have a nice river running through it but after that there wasn’t much else to report unless you wanted to be stuck to a one arm bandit all night, we did have a brief go just to say we had but we couldn’t really work out what you were supposed to do, it seems everyone here already knows all the rules even through they’re not written down anywhere …nope…I just don’t get it!. We had a Chinese meal in the hotel had a few beers and then went back to out room for an early night as tomorrows little jaunt is going to be roughly 250 miles of pure desert. 

DAY FOURTEEN LAUGHLIN TO VICTORVILLE 

Mileage 3073

We knew today was going to be riding almost entirely through desert, the Mojave Desert to be precise and even though we set off at six in the morning it was still hot, we had remembered to soak the cooling vests and neck coolers before we set off but something that we have also been doing each morning was to prove a savior today.

 

Once our bikes are loaded up, and we are rolling, we make sure to fuel up at the nearest petrol station before we set off as a matter of course, we also buy a bottle of ice cool pop each and a small bag of ice. I have kept one of my saddle bags free for the sole purpose of housing the cooling vests and neck coolers and a bag of ice, it does tend to melt as we go along but at a reasonable rate, this not only keeps the vest cool until we need them but also provides some ice-cold water to dunk them in after a while and keeps the pop cool. 

We were not long into this trip before the vest came out; the trick is to keep a long sleeve shirt on over the top as this prevents the cooling vest from drying out. Before we began Route 66 we kind of imagined long stretches of road disappearing into the distance as far as the eye could see with nothing else in sight but distant mountains as the typical vision of how the route might be, well this was certainly that! A straight road to the horizon in each direction and nothing but desert in-between. Once actually riding these roads it takes on a slightly different phase, for the first hour of this you are in awe of it, you are actually here riding the dream, but let me tell you after that when the heat is scorching every part of you even with the cooling aids on, with no shade whatsoever it starts to get a little tedious and you know you have to keep going in it with little or no respite, if you stop you’ll just fry! It makes you wonder once again how people coped with this section back in the day. We ended up dunking our vests three or four times in the ice water to keep them cool. There was only one stop in the middle of all this and that was ‘Roy’s Cafe’ which served as a cafe and a petrol station, we had a brief stop here to take some pictures and let the bikes cool off a little under the forecourt canopy, the first bit of shade we had seen for miles. After a short break we cracked on through much of the same except it got hotter! Now we were willing signs for Victorville to appear, once the I 40 met back up with 66 civilization began to reappear Ludlow and Newberry Springs, these were one horse towns where someone had shot the horse, nothing to write home about other than some ramshackle buildings and it has to be said the worst paving conditions of 66 we have experienced on the trip so far with huge divots and potholes along miles of the road, meaning at best we could only do 20 mph and still risked coming off the bikes at that. 

We decided that for our own safety we should get on the I 40, it runs along beside old 66, right up until Barstow. We didn’t want to miss traveling on the actual road but this section was not suitable for motorbikes at all. At Barstow the old fueling up problem reared its head again and we ended up leaving two petrol stations because we couldn’t get the pumps to work before eventually finding one that would play the game. After that it was just a case of getting to Victorville, it proved to be quite a sizable place and unfortunately our route took us through a lot of industrial areas which didn’t give us a good first impression. After what seemed like an eternity we finally arrived at ‘The Comfort Inn’ around two in the afternoon, early enough to do our laundry and lounge by the pool until it was done, ah yes that is the way to wind down from an extremely hot day in the desert.

Later we showered and went out for something to eat before wandering around the local shopping malls; one side we could walk to on foot, the other side required taking the bikes. By late evening we’d had just about had enough and to be honest there was very little else to do so we went back to the hotel. 

DAY FIFTEEN VICTORVILLE TO SANTA MONICA PEIR 

Mileage 3192

Ok, so this was going to be it, the day we complete Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles. With our usual early start, bikes packed fueled up and off we went, We had been hearing a lot about LA traffic and how mad the drivers are and how they just cut you up and the don’t have time for the motorcyclist, but I hadn’t really given it much thought because we had successfully negotiated our way through Chicago and Las Vegas and I can’t believe it could be any crazier than that.

But what I hadn’t reckoned on was that Claire had allowed the worries to build up and let them turn into a little monster, it was only once we’d turned off the I15 and rejoined old 66 that I was even aware of just how nervous she was, she was literally shaking, we had travelled already 1000’s of miles to get to this point and I didn’t think the I15 was particularly bad but Claire had worked herself up over it and it probably seemed ten times worse than it actually was. Thankfully after a short break she recovered herself enough to carry on, we would not have to go on any more interstate now until after Santa Monica Pier she was relived about that.

 

We cracked on over the hills through California and into the Los Angeles suburbs. what seemed like a short distance on the map seemed to double in time when riding it,

the sat nav did its usual trick of taking us off on need-less loops here and there before a brief stop at ‘Hollywood Forever Cemetery’.

Claire wanted to try to find where Marilyn Monroe was buried, Although they have a lot of very famous people buried here we later found out Marilyn Monroe was not one of them, it was very interesting to have a look a round if you like that sort of thing, from the entrance to Hollywood Forever we caught our first glimpse of the famous Hollywood sign on the distant hills. 

We had faithfully followed the frustrating sat nav’s pre programmed Route 66 from the beginning but as we now approached the end of the route it directed us off Santa Monica Boulevard before we reached the pier and took us to what appears to be the entrance to the freeway on Lincoln Boulevard and shows us the checkered flag as having completed Route 66, apparently Lincoln Boulevard is Officially considered the end of the trail by the purists, although it was not the razzmatazz fanfare ending we would have hoped for it was still a fantastic feeling to have officially completed the route.

After taking some pictures we decided that we would complete the Route that is recognised from a tourist Route 66 point of view and travel down Santa Monica Boulevard and ride right onto the pier and that it’s precisely what we did.

We pulled onto the pier car park at around two in the afternoon, we hugged, kissed and congratulated each other, 3192 miles to get to this point, we had at last made it onto the pier. We had one little ceremony to perform and that was to drop the stones that we had taken from the shore of Lake Michigan into the sea off the pier at Santa Monica, it was quite sad and emotional, I wasn’t expecting that,

we took plenty of photos before checking out some of the souvenir stands especially the one at the start of the pier which has a sign saying ‘Route 66 end of trail, and T-shirts to mark the occasion. We also managed to track down the Will Rogers Highway brass plaque which is yet another marker for the end of the trail and take yet more pics.      

WE HAVE DONE IT, THREE YEARS IN THE MAKING, all the work and effort that we have both put in to making this happen and here it is at last, WE HAVE COMPLETED ROUTE 66 and what a fantastic adventure it has been, it really was a trip of a life time. It was a peak into America’s back yard and we loved it. We saw the good, the bad and the ugly. it would have been the easiest thing in the world to divert people around the parts that were rough and ready but you get it all here, an unashamed look at how it is warts and all, it was a real honour and a pleasure to ride it.  We would like to thank First Class Motorcycle Training in Plymouth for getting us through our tests and HC Travel for their help in organising this fantastic trip for us and helping us realise a dream

Having achieved what we wanted to do we decided that now we are in LA we must do the tourist thing and check out some of the obvious stuff like the hand prints at the Chinese theatre and the walk of stars, it wouldn’t do just to go to the hotel now and hand the bikes over tomorrow and that would be that, we have only got this evening to do any sightseeing so we have to make the most of the time we have left with the bikes.

We set of to try to get to Hollywood Boulevard and the Chinese theatre, the time now was 4:30 and LA traffic was just kicking in, every which way we turned it was at a standstill, there were traffic lights on every block and even when they were on green you couldn’t go across because the cars in front had not moved it was grid lock, we tried to get on the interstate only to find that was even worse, how does anyone ever get around in this place?, I have been to LA a few times before but I don’t remember the traffic being as bad as this, in the end we decided to pull into a shopping mall and give it a couple of hours to get where its going and then try again, We emerged sometime later to discover it hadn’t changed and everywhere was still ‘chocka block’, undaunted we said ‘we’ve come this far we have to stick it out’ four hours later we finally get to the turning for the Chinese theatre only to find they have blocked off the road and were sending all the traffic on a wild detour and we eventually ended up at the far end of the walk of stars with the first star in sight, I was determined to get at least one picture and beckoned Claire to pull over. We reversed our bikes into a free space and were about to go and take some pictures when we noticed quite a few unsavory characters not only admiring our bikes but also the bags strapped to them with all our worldly goods in. 

It didn’t take much for us to finally give in and head for the hotel, the sun was going down now and it was getting late and we still had to make our way out to the airport. Claire put the address of the hotel in the sat nav and away we went, very grumpy and very tired. (Queue the sat nav) it seems to recognise when we are in such a state and proceeds to wind us up by taking us on wild goose chases. 

The hotel was apparently only seven miles away when we set off, and here we are for the third time on the interstate in the dark and Claire with no lights, I am now freezing and literally chuntering on the bike, I swear if I could have taken the sat nav off Claire’s bike and stamped on it right then, I would have. We really didn’t need this now, the interstate was now living up to the reputation we had heard about, crazy manic drivers cutting in between us in the dark it was no fun I can tell you, it was dangerous! It is a pity to have such a frustrating end to what was a momentous day for us, but what could we do. 

We arrived at the Crown Plaza Hotel at 9:00, freezing cold, extremely pissed off and very tired. Thankfully Claire checked us in while I stayed with the bikes, it turns out it’s another bell boy operation and we are not allowed to have a trolley to load our bags unless we pay a tip for someone to do it for us, I was not in the mood to deal with that. 

Not for the first time on this trip we dragged our very cumbersome bags through the lobby of the hotel, to the lift and onto our room; I was not a happy bunny!  We cheered up later as they did have a takeaway pizza place in the hotel and we sat in our room and stuffed our faces.

The following day having cleared all our bits and pieces off the bikes we took them on the short ride via the petrol station to Eagle Rider which could only have been two miles away.

    

After we had parked up a couple of guys came out to give the bikes the once over and make sure we hadn’t damaged anything, we did tell them about the fault on Claire’s bike with the dodgy bulb, other than that they were happy that everything was in order. I did offer them $10 each for the bikes as now they were second-hand and we’d be happy to take them off their hands but unsurprisingly they weren’t going for it.

They had been excellent bikes for us, ideal for a trip like that, they had given us very little trouble and we both thoroughly enjoyed riding them and it really was sad to wave goodbye. At the front desk we completed all the paperwork, bought yet more T-shirts before getting a taxi back to the hotel for checkout at 12 and then onto LAX for our flight to Heathrow at 5pm.

If you have enjoyed this Blog you might like to also read our blog called ‘route 66 the dream’, which is a blog about how we went from the original idea, learning how to ride motorcycles and passing our tests to buying big bikes to get ready for doing the actual trip on this blog:

 

https://route66thetrip.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/route-66-the-dream/

 

It is a good deal longer as it has been put together over the last three/four years and does include plenty of photos, once again please leave a comment it would be much appreciated, Kind regards Alan & Claire

route 66 the dream

From Chicago to Los Angeles via Route 66 on two Harley Davidson Motorbikes.

Myself and my wife Claire were sitting watching the TV one evening a program called ‘Long Way Round’ with Ewan McGregar and Charlie Boreman in which they travel around the world on two motorbikes. So inspired by this were we that we though we might like to attempt to do something similar, only perhaps not on such a grand scale and we came up with the idea of riding Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles on two Harley Davidons.

The slight flaw in this master-plan is that neither of us can actually ride a motorbike, I had a little go on one when I was seventeen and that lasted for all of five minutes and Claire’s experience of motorbikes is pretty much the same.
So we have to go about the whole business of learning to ride and taking our tests before we can really get too serious about it all, the other factor is of course that we live in Cornwall England and not America (where Route 66 is!).
So I have decided to keep a little blog journal of our experiences of the whole thing from not having a clue to hopefully completing the journey and I will keep this updated as and when there is any information to add.

This Sunday both Claire and I will have one hours free introduction to bikes, we will be shown how to get started and hopefully not fall off.
They will be able to assess from this session if we need a three-day or four-day course in order to pass our official test, that is assuming that we both pass the CBT (Compulsory Bike Test) which apparently is a test you have to take before you can set wheels on the road and then their is the theory test to pass!
Anyway this Sunday is the freebie introduction to see if we can actually hack it or not, and we are really looking forward to it, I will keep you posted as to how we get on.
Monday 14th July 08
So yesterday we had our first taster of Motorbikes, we were both very nervous but it was more nervous excitement than just ‘filling the old pants’ we were both very much looking forward to it but unsure of what was to come. We arrived slightly early and booked in and then wandered around aimlessly waiting for other people who had also booked on to arrive. Eventually everyone turned up and booked themselves in all paying the £10 insurance in case of an accident, and totaling the bike resulting in having to fork out £700 excess, you could waiver the £10 pound but I think everyone thought as it’s the first time and everything the chances of damaging their bikes might be pretty high so what’s £10 in the scheme of things.
Soon the unlikely bunch of bikers were kited out with helmets, gloves and day glow green safety jackets,

our particular group consisted of four ladies and two guys ourselves included, One lady and one man were going to learn on scooters while everyone else would start on geared bikes. We were all asked to come over to the bikes while the instructors talked us through the various controls, To begin with no one would be going through the gears it would just be a ‘getting the feel of it’ exercise, just getting used to the bike and the balance and being able to steer around corners, making use of both the front and rear brakes and bringing the bike to a gentle start and stop without stalling, all basic stuff but everyone has to start somewhere. I was the first to go out of the geared bikes, I listened tentatively to the instructions, started the engine, clutch in, click down one for 1st gear, gently eased out the clutch until I felt the bite and with a little throttle off I went, I rode only a few feet and brought the bike to a gentle stop in front of the instructor, he seemed very please with that little exercise and asked me then to continue around the circuit bring the bike to a halt half way round then wait for everyone else to join me.

Claire was next up, when you have never really been on a bike before it’s quite a lot to take in, in one instant, especially when your used to driving a car and suddenly now you’re using the clutch and accelerator with your hands and changing the gears with your feet, you so want to look down to see if you got everything correct but you must keep your head up looking at where you’re going, looking and turning into the bends while keeping your balance and not accidentally giving it too much throttle and careering off into the wall.
Everyone was a little shaky to begin with, it’s expected, but it wasn’t long before Claire pulled up alongside of me and we were asking each other ‘how was it for you?’ and contemplating just how hard this might actually be.

After several more goes around the very small car park we really began to enjoy ourselves, I was watching Claire after her initial nervous beginning, going round nice and steady, easing round the corners as instructed she seemed to be getting the hang of it.
The instructors were very patient and gave individuals fair time according to their ability although the hour seemed to be passing very quickly and with such a little space to give everyone the kind of time that was required to really get to grips with it, only two of us got to have a go at actually changing gear and luckily enough I was one of those, I found it quite easy to move from first in to second and then back to first before coming to a smooth stop, again experience in driving a car helps here, it’s the same principle just reverse the actions with your hands and feet. I could have only done about four laps of gear changing when the session had reached the end.
Hemet hair a sweaty backside and clammy hands inside old leather gloves we certain looked and smelled the part, we thoroughly enjoyed this little taster so much so that we have decided to have another go and have booked in for another session next week, this is mainly because we don’t have a bike of our own to practice on and we don’t know any friends who have bikes who’d be wiling to let us have ago, so this is our only means at the moment of gaining any experience before going for the CBT, and as Claire didn’t get to try changing gears yet it made sense to go for another trail lesson first.
Monday 21st July 08
So yesterday we went back for our second free trial, which was a lot better all round, we were both more relaxed about the whole thing and at least had half a clue about what we were supposed to be doing, There were not so many people this week and that also helped provide more one to one training. In fact Claire and I had several goes around the course before we were joined by anyone else.
More time was spent on learning close control, riding the clutch and using the rear brake on cornering especially doing the figure eight through the cones.
Riding the clutch was weird for me as I’ve always been told this is something that you shouldn’t do when driving a car, but on a motor bike it allows for smooth movement if say you’re in a traffic queue situation. By the end of the session we were both up to speed with close control and gear changing and we were told by our instructors that we are now ready to take our CBT (Compulsory Bike Test)
So this will be our next little goal to aim for, this test will cost us £90 each but will mean we can legally ride on the road up to a 125cc providing it has ‘L’ plates, so hopefully we will get ourselves booked in for this test within the next three weeks.
Thursday 24th July 08
Managed to book Claire and myself in for our CBT’s which we will be taking on the 9th of August, we are both praying that it doesn’t rain as it has done nothing but rain here for the last two weeks, it starts in Plymouth at 8:30 and goes right through until 4:30 so were both nervously looking forward to that as we will actually get to go out onto the road on a bike for the first time, and we have treated ourselves to two sets of leather gloves to mark the start of our bike gear collection.
Saturday 9th August 08
Finally the CBT day had arrived all we had to do was get through this day and hopefully we would have the certificates we needed to say we could legally ride a 125cc on the road. Having had weeks of non stop rain we were praying that by the time Saturday came around that it would relent a bit so that we wouldn’t be doing the CBT in a down poor. Friday came and the weather was lovely the sun decided to make an appearance and gave us great hope for having a decent day on Saturday the test day. I woke up at 7.00 on Saturday morning to the sound of rain lashing down on the roof and the wind howling a gale thrown in for good measure, Oh my God what an appalling day to be doing anything let alone a bike test, neither of us had any wet weather gear in fact all we had was a new set of leather gloves each, so this was going to be an ominous start. We packed some sandwiches and a flask of tea and set off to Plymouth trying to convince ourselves that the weather might ease up before we got started.
We arrived at Surepass right on time and booked ourselves in, paid up the difference plus an extra £20 each to cover the insurance for taking their bikes out onto the road. we were joined by a further two CBT’ers, a young lad who was taking his CBT on a scooter and a middle-aged guy who already had his CBT but it was running out and he needed to renew it, The CBT only lasts for two years in which time you are supposed to take your theory test and then the full bike test otherwise you must basically start again from the CBT, both already had bikes and seemed to know exactly what they were doing.
The first part of the whole procedure was to sit down and go through some of the things we will be expected to do and try to make us aware of the safety factors with choosing the right gear, footwear, helmets, gloves and body armor, then a quick flick through some of the highway code to make sure we’re all familiar with the basics before moving onto the theory of basic riding, road positioning, leaving and entering junctions until at last getting onto the bikes themselves.
Once kited out with helmets and day glow safety vests we went out into the Surepass yard for two hours of bike control and maneuvers, but just before all of that an introduction to the bike and simple checks before moving off, such as mirrors, checking all the lights work, where the fuel stop is and how to switch it on or over to reserve fuel, how to check the oil, pointing out the indicators, horn and how to get the bike on and off its stand etc.
Finally we were all asked to get on the bikes and one by one allowed to move off around the course.
it was great for Claire and myself to just get the feel of things again and it didn’t take to long before we were whizzing around with the best of them, close control, gear changes, figure of eights around cones and thanks to the free introduction at least we now had a clue about what to do although no less nervous about taking the bikes out into traffic. Once the instructors were happy that everyone was in good control of their bikes it was time to take us out onto the public roads. Unfortunately the instructors are only allowed to take two people at a time for health and safety reasons, so they decided that myself and Claire should take a two-hour lunch while the other two went out first.
I have to say we were quite miffed about that because not having any bikes of our own to practice on this was the only practice we had and as we had just been riding around the yard for two hours we both felt it would be better for us to go out on to the road now rather than not ride for two hours and start again from cold only this time on the proper roads, but the instructors deemed it that way so a two-hour lunch it was.
We sat in our car and watched the other two disappear down the road accompanied by the instructor. I was quite keen to go out, I really couldn’t wait to give it a go, whereas Claire was starting to get a little nervous, we ate our food and thought that it might be better to distract our minds a little and decided to drive off in the car and see if we could find a local bike shop so that we could check out some of the gear, because once again thanks to the instructors we realised that buying gloves and helmets off the internet because they’re cheap is perhaps not the wisest idea given that we don’t really know what to look for in terms of kite marks and CE standard regulations etc, and everyone is different shapes and size so buying from a reputable shop at least you will have the ‘touchy feely factor’ as well as some guarantee of safety standards.
This was our first experience in a bike shop and this particular shop specialized mostly in biker clothes, helmets and boots, I must admit it was a bit weird at first it was like being in a shop with lots of strange bondage equipment, there was so much leather and rubber stuff, where do you start when basically you need it all, how do you know what works for you?, is it too restrictive, will it be too hot, to cold not protective enough or way over the top? you could end up looking like Coco the clown in full battle armor if you’re not careful, mind you there was one major factor that slowed proceedings to a halt and that was the price of all this stuff, I mean none of it was cheap or should I say ‘affordable’, gloves started at £75, boots started at £150 and went steeply up from there, jackets, full leathers again £150 plus, helmets much the same going well up into the £500 / £600 bracket, for both of us to get kitted out in any of this gear was going to cost a small fortune, so we chose to make a note of one or two items that we liked and see if we could track them down somewhere else at an ‘affordable’ price, lets not forget we still have to buy two bikes on top of all that!
It had indeed been a nice distraction and filled the time in nicely so we headed back to Surepass to await our turn to go out on the road with the instructor, Claire confessed later that at this point she could have easily backed out of the whole thing as she had worked herself up so much about going out onto the road for the first time, but she kept it quiet and seemed really keen and relaxed to me.
Once we got back to the yard it was only a short time before were ready to go, this time we both had radio headsets inside our helmets so the instructor could communicate with us, these only worked one way, which I’m sure was a deliberate move so as not to hear any students swearing and mumbling about how they have just cocked things up etc. Nick, our instructor decided that Claire should lead the way he would then follow and I’d be at the back, I must admit I felt quite comfortable with that as I wanted to ease back into it without the feeling of any pressure from the instructor watching every little move.
We headed out of the yard onto the side road and then down to a ‘T’ junction at which we were to turn left, as we turned left, Claire seemed to flounder a little and stalled the bike bringing us all to a stop in the middle of the road, needless to say, I had a bit of a flap wondering what was going on, she managed to sort herself out and get going smoothly again, I watch her pull away followed by the instructor and then … oops! ….I stalled, By this time they were pulling quite a distance away from me and I started to flap even more, I wasn’t really sure about what I was doing and I was desperate to catch up, eventually I got it going and was back on the road by which time they had reached a roundabout up ahead and were turning left, so still flapping and trying to catch up I notice that my left mirror was facing the floor, I was really annoyed with myself for not checking it before we left as they had told us to do, I had made adjustments on the bike when they said but now after lunch I had found myself on a different bike and I had not adjusted anything to suit myself so keen was I just to get going, I didn’t feel safe enough to try taking one hand of to adjust the mirror while going along, this was only my third time on a bike and my first time properly on the road so flapping even more now I tried to catch them up, I made it to the Island where they had turned left and up a hill which went over the A38 and a very exposed bridge as it spanned over four lanes, adding to the mayhem my helmet was so steamed up I could hardly see out of it and the rain was lashing down doing its utmost to completely obscure my vision, there was nothing for it but to risk taking my hand off and try to lift the visor a little to at least clear the steam, just as voice from the instructor came over the radio saying “please be careful over the bridge as it can get a little blustery” …. ‘a little blustery’!! …. I am not kidding you I felt as if I was hanging on, I was gripping onto those handle bars for all I was worth, it was howling!! ..I had jeans on and walking boots having only left the yard five minutes ago I was completely soaked through from the waistband down, I might as well have been siting a bath full of water …. at this point I could have said …enough ….I don’t think I can do this, I wanted to really enjoy this but I’m not, I’m flapping and panicking and I don’t feel safe at all …. this is not what I thought it would be.
What kept me going was seeing Claire who seemingly had lost all her worries and fears and was taking to this like a duck to water, (or a bike to water in this case!) bombing away up front and it was a hell of a job just to stay with them.

Once I got over the initial panic and settled myself down I began to really enjoy riding in-spite of the atrocious weather conditions, here we were out on bikes on the road at last it was fab, the instructor took us through some lovely little villages and eventually out to the coast, the only real problem I uncounted from a technical point of view was ‘hill starts,’ a few times I found myself flapping and not being able to ease off the back brake enough to find the bite of the clutch and ending up stalling, this is something I will aim to put right once we get our own bikes and I can go and work on areas that I’m not sure about as I’m sure Claire will, although she did seem to be coping with hill starts slightly better than I did.
We also tried out U turns in the road and emergency stops again areas that could do with a little more practice. We swapped round after that and I was in front and Claire was at the back, at this point I was very relaxed and apart from one or two dodgy moments I can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of it, After re-fueling at a petrol station we eventually made our way back to Surepass, they congratulated both of us and issued us with our CBT certificates, standing there, each in a pool of water-soaked to the skin, shivering with grins on our faces, we’d done it, we got our CBT’s, now we could get bikes and legally go out on the road and truly start to learn how to ride. What a baptism we had, with welcome to riding bikes type weather, it certainly tested us and we thoroughly enjoyed it, it was brilliant.

Here we are having just got back, soaked through holding the CBT certificates.

September 6th 2008, Harley-Davison, Toronto, Canada.
On our recent vacation to Canada we managed to find the Harley-Davidson shop in Toronto, and I must admit once inside we were like kids in a sweet shop, not only was the shop full of every kind of Harley merchandise that you could wish for but it also carried a large stock of brand new motor cycles all of which they were quite happy for us to sit on and get the feel of, in fact when I asked if it was ok to look around the guy said “yeah, feel free to drool!” They even had a Harley rental section and I took the opportunity to ask the guy for some advise, I told him about our route 66 trip and our lack of experience and instead of taking the mickey which lets face it would have been very easy for him to do, he took time out to go through some of the documents and paper work that we might need and we discussed what would be the ideal bikes for us to use on such a trip, he recommend the ‘soft tail heritage’ as this comes with saddle bags as standard and should more than meet our comfort needs on a long trip like route 66, he strongly advised they we get some experience in which we fully intend to do, he also said “don’t be afraid of the bike, they all have an engine and two wheels and it’s all down to steering and balance at the end of the day, once you start worrying about how big the engine is or how heavy the bike is going to be then that can easily put you off the whole thing” He was very encouraging and positive about the trip and coming from someone who lives and breathes Harley’s it was just what we needed to hear, we spent almost three hours in that shop sitting on the bikes and dreaming.

27th September 08
Having been keeping an eye out for decent 125cc Motorbike on e-bay we finally spotted one which we thought was worth perusing, It is a Suzuki Marauder GZ 2002. It is advertised as being in mint condition and only having 5600 miles on the clock and in all the pictures it does look superb. So as the guy had put a phone number on the add we decided to give him a call and ask what price he wanted for the bike and see if he would be interested in ending the sale early for the right price, We had a rough budget of £1000 and we were looking to try to get two bikes up to £500 so it was really a long shot hoping that this guy would let the bike go for £500, he sounded like a decent chap on the phone but said the minimum he was prepared to let it go for would be £700 as it was in mint condition, it had got several bids on it already, and still had five days to before the auction ended so he was quite happy to wait and see what happens and wished us luck with our bidding.
So this left us in a bit of a quandary, it really was an excellent bike which was exactly what we were looking for but it would bugger up the budget, in the end we decided that we should offer him £700 and just go for it, and maybe we could pick up another cheap bike for £300 on e-bay some other time. it would be a shame to miss out on this one as they don’t come up too often especially as good as this one appears to be.
So later on Saturday I called him back and offered his asking price of £700 which he accepted, providing we e-mail him a £50 deposit via PayPal which we agreed to do.
So we now have the small problem of collecting the bike, because it is in Kent, right on the East coast and we are in Cornwall, pretty much on the West coast, a rough estimate of Six / Seven hours traveling each way, we are going to see if we can borrow a small van to pick up the bike but if that is not possible it means we will have to ride the bike back from Kent to Cornwall ….. yikes …we have not done any riding since we got our CBT’S so this journey for us will be England’s equivalent of route 66 especially as we will not be allowed to take the bike on any of the motor-ways so it really will be a very long scenic route home.
In readiness for the possible road trip we have been out and bought two new Caberg helmets and two padded IXS jackets, If we do end up having to ride the bike back we have decided to take it in turns and do an hour each on the bike while the other one drives the car, we intend to set off as early as possible next Sunday in order to allow as much time as we can to complete the journey.
Saturday 4th October 08.
Thank fully Claire had managed to borrow a Transit van from work and we armed ourselves with everything possible that would aid us in our quest to pick up the bike from Kent, I made a make shift ramp from bits of decking in order to be able to wheel it on and off, we had plenty of rope and a couple of heavy-duty ratchets in to secure the bike in the back of the van.
Myself and claire both sing and play guitar and gig most weekends somewhere or other and this Saturday was no exception, we were booked to play a club in Liskeard, but I managed to persuade the bar man to allow us to finish a little bit earlier than usual to enable us to get straight off on our journey to Kent which thankfully he was willing to let us do.
So after the gig we came home and loaded up the Transit with supplies plus our mattress and bedding. Claire drove for the first two hours then I drove until we reached Clacketts service station, the first service station on the M25 before the M26, We had made excellent time on our journey and driving through the night meant that there were hardly any other vehicles about at all, quite the way to travel, we pulled in at about six in the morning and managed to get a couple of hours sleep in the back of the van before cracking on with the rest of the journey. We arrived at our destination in Margate at five past ten almost spot on schedule.
Sunday 5th October 08
We knocked on the door and announced that we had come to pick up the bike, The man stepped out of his house and opened up his garage door, Wow, what a bike, it stood there gleaming, I just looked at it open-mouthed, I didn’t really know what to say, it looked fantastic, I dare not sit on it for fear I might damage it somehow. By this time the man’s son had arrived whom I had been dealing with on the phone, he showed us various things on the bike that we may need to know but neither Claire nor I were brave enough to take it for a test run, although we did bring helmets, jackets and L’ plates with us, we wanted to try the bike out later, when we got home in our own time in case we made complete arses of ourselves and stalled it or worse still drop it. So the Dad and the Son helped us to get the bike into the van, they both were impressed with the makeshift ramp and the heavy-duty ratchets which turned out to be all we needed to make sure the bike was not going to move around the van, I was also impressed with they way they just seemed to know exactly what to do, how to secure it all and just basically got on and did it for us, something I was more than happy for them to do, because I was quite concerned about how we were going to achieve that, I had visions of the bike sliding all over the van on the way home because we couldn’t tie it down properly, but these guys had it down, and once in the van the bike was not going to move anywhere, they made sure of that.
So paid up and documents exchanged we said our thanks and fair-wells and set off on the seven hour journey back, once again Claire and I took it in turns to drive the van while the other one had a sleep in the back, this worked very well and even made the journey seem a little shorter.
The weather for the entire trip had been atrocious, wind and gales the whole time and never really relented at any point, that is until we finally started to reach Plymouth, indeed the sun came out and we even had blue skies, as it looked like we would make it back at about five in the evening and we would still have a couple of hours day light, we decided to take the van straight down to a local car park where we live called the ‘Millpool’, It’s a huge car park which must accommodate several thousand cars particularly in the height of summer with all the tourists, but during off-peak it’s almost empty and would provide a good place for us to test the new bike out as we had not been on a bike since we passed or CBT’s.
We made sure to park the van as far away from the nearest parked cars as we could again to avoid embarrassment should we stall, or fall off or drop the bike attempting to get it out of the van. Having picked an ideal spot we pulled up and flung open the back doors, with the ramp in place we carefully wheeled the bike down onto the tarmac with some assistance from Elliot, our son who we managed to talk into helping us unload the bike. Claire and I were ever so exited because this was it, we had our very own first bike bought and paid for, that had just taken us some fifteen hours to collect and here it is ready to test out at last,

Claire said I could have the first go so I hopped on, put the key in and fired it up, what a lovely sound, I couldn’t wait to have a ride it felt great, so I put it in first gear and off I went, I did two small circuits of the empty car park before coming back to let Claire have a go, She was busy trying to sort out her helmet so I decided to have another go round until she was ready, before I made it back, a Police highway patrol car roared up and two police officers got out, They asked me why I wasn’t wearing a helmet, I explained to them that we had just bought the bike and we had literally just rolled it off the van, he then said “have you got your license?” …. I didn’t have it …. “have you got insurance for the bike?” …. “yes, but it was only done on Friday night and as yet we don’t have any documents” …”have you got your CBT certificate?” .. “no it’s at home” ….”why aren’t there any learner plates on this bike?” ….”like i said officer we have literally just rolled it off the van and we do have L’ plates and a tax disc to put on it, they are still in the van”, he made us get the stuff out of the van, plus all relevant documents in connection with us buying the bike.
We had to wait while they ran police checks on me and the bike. I just stood in disbelief at what was happening, this is a quiet little fishing village, we don’t get traffic Police here and why where they in this car park which was well tucked away?, I did ask if maybe someone had reported us or had they just stumbled upon us, unfortunately for me it was the later, you couldn’t make it up I swear, we were trying to do the right thing by going to a quiet secluded place to test out our new bike and Claire hadn’t even sat on it yet and these guys turn up and are threatening to do us for all sorts and we hadn’t got the bike off the van ten minutes, I was totally dumb struck with the situation even now I still can’t quite believe it, Anyway he said “I am going to let you off with six points on your license for not displaying any learner plates, but, I am going to fine you £30 for not wearing your helmet, this fine must be paid within seven working days, I also need you to produce your license, insurance certificate and your CBT certificate at the police station within twenty-eight days, your lucky that you have the bike insured otherwise we have the power to have it impounded immediately”. They then said we could not move the bike until we fix the L’ plates onto it. The police said they were now going to drive around the rest of the town and added that they may pop back to check that we are not riding this bike without L’ plates, with that they handed me the fine and then drove off.
Ok, I wasn’t wearing my helmet in a public place its true, but I still think that they were extremely harsh given that we had just bought our first bike and hadn’t even tested it out properly yet, we came to a secluded place to try it out after driving a round trip of fifteen hours to collect it, it’s not like we were out on the public roads or anything, they were just applying the letter of the law without any compassion or understanding of our situation, surely there are bigger fish to fry, way more serious vehicle crimes going on than what we were doing, it seemed completely unfair somehow, but there you go, that’s life, some you win some you lose, it could have been worse, they could have put six points on my license, I could have fallen off the bike and seriously damaged my head, so lesson learned, even though I still think it was harsh.
My son Elliot had gone by this time as he had got other things to do, that left Myself and Claire to either get the bike back into the van or find someway of fixing the L’ plates onto the bike, Wheeling the bike back into the van was not a good idea with just the two of us so that left fixing the L’plates on somehow, we could not find anything to tie these damn things to the bike, this meant one of us had to walk home while the other one stayed with the bike, I would have gone back in the van but we have double yellow lines outside our house and with those two highway Police men on the prowl you just know I would get another ticket. It was only about a quarter of a mile from where we were so I jogged as quickly as I could because now thanks to the coppers we were running out of light and Claire had not had a go on the bike yet. As luck would have it, I located some metal ties and I cut up two small pieces of wood to attach the L’ plates too, to keep them from flapping about while riding along. I jogged back to Claire as quickly as I could and we both set about fixing the plates to the bike. At last, L’ plates on, Helmets on and fully legal, Claire could finally get to have a go on our new bike…yay.

It was a pity, but we could only managed another three times round before it really started getting too dark, so we decided it would be best to get the bike parked up in its new home, and we could figure out the bike chain lock and disc lock that we had bought for it before putting the all-weather cover on, Unfortunately we are having to keep the bike outside as we do not have a garage in which to house it dry and free from the elements, not an ideal situation for a mint condition bike but that is something we will just have to deal with, it’s as secure as we can make it and at least we can keep an eye on it from our house.
Monday 6th October 08
We have had the Suzuki Marauder for a week now, I have been fortunate enough to be able to go riding around on it, just local areas trying to get some experience, making all the classic mistakes which I’m sure most bikers will have done at some point, such as, I left the lights the first day and the battery went flat!, The following morning I had to push it to the nearest bit of a hill in an attempt to bump start it, but in pushing it the short distance it must have gained sufficient charge enough for me to start the bike normally thank God.
The next day I went to go out on it I couldn’t start it again, I checked that the lights had definitely been switched off the night before, it wasn’t that, So once again I pushed the bike to the nearest bit of a hill, put it in second gear and jumped on, nothing!…. tried again….nothing … I pulled it into the side of the road and shouted BOLLOCKS! very loudly only to look up and see a line of people beside me waiting at the bus stop! …. I had the embarrassment of having to pushed the bike from there with all my gear on back to the car park and try to figure out why it wouldn’t start, Thankfully a fellow biker had just pulled in so I thought who better to ask, maybe he would be able to assist. The guy was riding a huge Kawasaki cruiser and he looked at my bike and said” I used to have one just like this… same color and everything” I said, I can’t get it to start, might you have any ideas what’s going on as I’m completely new to this?, He looked over the bike briefly then said “there’s the problem mate .. you’ve left the cut off switch on”
Did I feel like a prize pratt! … he said “it’s a common thing, everyone does it from time to time” ….and walked off sporting a wry smile.
Feeling a little bit sheepish I set off on another few hours of riding.
The following day I was determined that I was going to get on the bike today and it was going to start first time, I knew exactly what I was looking for and I had already made sure that the lights had been switched off and I hadn’t used the cut off switch from the previous day.
So once again, fully geared up and ready to roll I sat on the bike and pressed the electric start button …. nothing …. again ….nothing, what the hell could it be this time? I was beginning to think the bike had got it in for me and was deliberately having me at it!
So I got off and decide to go through methodically the whole routine of checks to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, and there it was ! I had forgotten to switch the fuel tap on! … but I was pleased at least I had spotted what it was and was able to deal with it, So fuel tap in the ‘on’ position off I went again.
By the end of the week I was feeling very confident on the bike, putting myself in as many awkward positions as possible in order to feel comfortable in my ability to deal with them, Hill starts in traffic, Turning at T junctions, moving over to the right hand lane on a busy duel carriageway in order to turn right and just general handling. I even filled the tank up with petrol which came to a whopping £12.52p weh hey!
Claire was due to start taking the bike to work on Monday 13th because that is when her train pass runs out and the bike was now going to be her new transport into work.
During my week I had been riding in to see her everyday for lunch so she could have a little go on the bike while I was there in order to get used to it. Somehow in this process she began to build up a little uncertainly about the whole thing, feeling nervous on the bike and believing that somehow she would not be able to go through with it, I kept trying to encourage her to have a go but she just became seemingly uninterested, by the time the weekend came around I wasn’t sure if she was even going to try riding to bike at all let alone go to work on it on Monday.
Eventually after some gentle persuasion I managed to talk her in to taking it out for a ride a round the local roads just to get the feel of things again. She put on all her gear and set off on a short trip around the block, It wasn’t much but it was enough to restore some confidence in herself and her ability to be able to do it.
When she arrived back she seemed very please with herself and said that tomorrow she would like to try a trail run to work and ride the distance of ten-mile each way so she can get an idea of how it will be.
The time came for Claire to have a go at the trail run to work on her own.
The bike was parked in a car park opposite our house, on the week-end it is frequented by lots of bikers all standing around eating chips and showing off their machines. On this occasion there must have been thirty or forty bikes, ours being the only one with L’ plates on it parked right in the middle. I must admit it took some balls for her to walk into all that lot fully geared up and get on the bike and set off without, making any mistakes, although she did admit later to accidentally blasting the horn as she was leaving!.
I watched nervously from the house as she pulled off the car park and disappeared up the hill, I really hoped she would enjoy the trip and would take to the bike and look forward to riding it in the same way I had, this little journey was either going to make her realise that she can do it or it will turn her off the idea completely and not want to go through with any of it which would be a complete disaster.
Time passed ever so slowly, I kept looking out of the window every five minutes in case she had returned, I must have been more nervous than Claire I’m sure, anyway I needn’t have worried, after a mere forty-five minuets she pulled up outside the house, casual as you like, “Loved it” she said …”Fantastic … I take it you will be going to work on it tomorrow then?” “No problem” she said.
I’ll be honest, I breathed a sigh of relief all round not only because she arrived back safely but that she really enjoyed herself which meant that the dream was still on, during the week I was beginning to doubt if Claire was going to step up to the plate, but here she was, thank God, mission complete and enjoying it .
Monday 13th October 08
Claire has gone to work this morning on the bike we bought in Kent.
hopefully today will be the start of her becoming an accomplished rider to the point where she can step up and pass her full bike test with confidence, so far we are both really enjoying it, I can’t wait to get another bike so that we can both go out riding together, fingers crossed that won’t be too far away
Wednesday 12th November 08
Things have been going very well so far, there is hardly a day that at least one of us has not been on the bike, Claire to her credit has been going to and from work on it almost every day in all sorts of weather and as it is now well into November it has been pretty nasty on certain days but as yet this has not put us off riding. I have been taking the bike out most weekends and practicing some maneuvers such as turning in the road and emergency stops, both of which are really coming on and I feel quite confident about these. we have both been trying out various mock theory exam questions and even had a go at some mock hazard perception videos on the internet and I’m looking forward to putting in for the theory exam and getting the next stage underway.
Claire spotted another decent looking Suzuki Marauder 125cc on ebay and we put an offer in of £700 which has been accepted, the bike is a 2000 registration but looks to have been well looked after. The good thing about this bike is that it is for sale in Plymouth which is only up the road from us and to top that the guy has offered to bring it round for us on Friday. We obtained the registration and had it Police checked to make sure that it wasn’t stolen, been in an accident or had outstanding finance on it, and it came up clear and everything is as it should be, so we’re happy to go ahead with the sale.
We have bought some L plates just incase it arrives without them and we have the bike insured in our names just incase ‘PC Plod’ happens to pop by just as I’m testing it out!!
Having two bikes will enable us both to learn together, go out on little adventures, and try out various maneuvers and it will help both of us to gain confidence while enjoying our riding. Hopefully one of our first planned trips will be from Plymouth to France via the Ferry so Claire can stock up and cheap cigarettes and the odd bottle of wine, we’re quite looking forward to that one, but to begin with we will just stay local and check out some of Cornwall’s scenic towns and villages ….can’t wait.
Anyway the new bike is arriving this Friday at around midday all being well.
Friday 14th November 08
Yay…. my bike arrived today!! …The guy phoned and said he would be at my house at around twelve midday which was perfect as that would give me enough time to do the deal exchange money and paper work and a still get over to Claire’s work in time for lunch to show off the new bike.
True to his word he rolled up at twelve in a car with the bike on a trailer on tow at the back, he pulled up outside my house and I rushed out to meet him and I give him a hand to unload the bike, once the blue cover had been removed the bike was revealed and disappointingly didn’t look quite as nice as it did in the photos on Ebay, he had removed the mirrors and the number plate in order to get the bike onto the very small trailer which didn’t help its appearance, according to the advert this bike was supposed to have been regularly cleaned and polished, but there were no signs of that both the paint work and the chrome were decidedly dull and would need quite a bit of serious attention to bring them up to anything like our other bike, I knew it had dents in the tank but once I actually saw them up close I was beginning to doubt if I should really go a head with this, but when the bike had been safely removed from the trailer and parked in the road the young lad fired up the engine and it sounded pretty good, a lot more meaty than our other bike and everything else seemed to be ok and in working order, so, I decided that the paint work and the chrome where only superficial and once I got hold of it and cleaned it all up I could make it look good again and bring some sparkle back to it

so I was happy to go ahead and complete the deal. We went back into my house to exchange the paper work etc as I didn’t want to be counting money in the street. we shook hands and then went back out to the bike, he handed me two sets of keys and wished me happy riding and off he went back to Plymouth. I watched him disappear up the road as once again I wanted to be able to try out the new bike without people standing about watching just in case I did something stupid.
So I got all my gear on for the big test run, stuck the key in and fired up the engine, lovely, what a sound, I put it first gear and indicated to set off ….then splut splut …nothing! ….dead! .. the engine had conked out!! I hadn’t gone three feet and the engine had died on me in the middle of the road outside my house, how embarrassing! Luckily no-one was around so I quickly rolled the bike back into the curb and tried to figure out what I was doing wrong, I checked all the usual suspects, the engine cut off switch ….that was in the ‘off” position…. the fuel was switched to ‘on’ and there was plenty of fuel…but still nothing, I tried to turn the key but no green lights were coming on at all …. it was just dead, luckily I did get the young lads mobile number before he left just incase something like this happened and he would be able to suss out what it was straight away as he had been riding the bike for at least twelve months before so I rushed back into the house and called him up and tried to catch him before he got to far, I explained the situation I was in and he kindly agreed to turn round and come back and help me sort out the problem. Fifteen minutes later he arrives back at my house, he said “I had a thought, it might be the stand” … “This happened to me once when I first had the bike and all it is is just that the stand needs tightening up, it’s designed to cut off the engine if the engine thinks that the stand it’s still down, and if the stand is loose it might just drop down enough to cause the engine to shut off”, I happen to know that it is designed to do just that as it is the same on our bike so I thought ok that sounds plausible I really hoped that is all it was, he said “I have some spaners in my car I will try to tighten it up for you its the least I can do” So he set about tightening up the dodgy stand and then fired up the engine once again and yay …. on she came woo hoo! happy that at least I now knew what the problem was I thanked him for coming back to help and decided I should set off to go and see Claire as it was now getting on.
The Bike worked fine for about ten minuets but once I got onto the country lanes it really started to play up, it kept cutting out and then kicking back in and I mean sharply, in quite jerky movements, thank God there wasn’t much traffic about, I realised it was the stand that was causing the problem again because if I kicked it as I was going along then the bike worked fine until it dropped down again, it didn’t drop very far at all but it was still enough to shut the engine off briefly, so there I was kangarooing all the way to Liskeard looking anything but cool, I was grateful to finally make into Claire’s work because I had no means of contacting anyone to tell them where I was if I had of broken down so at least I had made it to civilisation. Claire came out to see the bike and was quite impressed with it although quite concerned about it not functioning properly, I borrowed some spaners and set about trying to tighten up the stand again but found that the stand had in-fact been tightened as much as it would go already which meant that it must be the spring that holds the stand up was just not strong enough for the job and needed replacing, that’s all very well but I was now faced with riding the bike and kangarooing all the way back to Looe and I really did not fancy doing that, so I was desperately trying to think of ways to hold the stand up when I suddenly thought ..oil! ….why don’t I just oil the top of the stand…that way it will move more freely and the spring maybe able to hold it up better, I know it might seem glaringly obvious now but oiling the stand just hadn’t occurred to me, so sure enough once a bit of grease (even better) was added to the top of the stand it worked like a dream, the spring was able to hold the stand tightly in place and the engine could run without interference …yay!!!
Finally I was able to test the bike out properly on the journey back to Looe and we were both very relieved that we hadn’t just bought ourselves a duffer and wasted a lot of money.
Saturday 15th November 08
Our first ride out together and we were so looking forward to this moment as not since passing our CBT’s had we been out on the roads with each other, we got fully geared up and made up a flask of tea and some sandwiches for a little stop off along the way, we had no real plan although we had decided to set out to the village of St Neot as we had seen a house out there that we quite liked in the local paper so we wanted to go and check it out and head out that way and see what happens. Setting off riding together was awesome, exhilarating, and gave a wonderful sense of freedom almost like being on holiday, you seem to take so much more in of the scenery that surrounds you. Claire led the way and I followed behind as at the moment Claire tends to go a little steadier than I do and if I lead the way I’m inclined to race on ahead and end up waiting for Claire to catch up which is not really what this is about so its better if I follow along and we both ride at the same pace. Riding through country lanes, forests with babbling rivers running along side, through picturesque hamlets it really is quite the way to travel we eventually arrived at St Neot and checked out the house, beautiful though it was we decided that it wasn’t for us there were one or two things that we were not too sure about. We had a cup of tea and a little wandered around the village before moving on, heading up a hill going out of the town we decided that we should just take a right turn and gradually make our way back towards Liskeard, it was fantastic, even though we only live a few miles a way this is part of Cornwall that we had not seen at all since we moved here eight years ago, we found ourselves riding along beautiful country lanes with lakes on one side and heather and forests on the other and a low a mist hanging the sky, sheep and weird cattle with long horns and even buzzards flying around, the scenery was truly breathtaking and we seemed to be the only people around to witness it, it reminded me of the glens of Scotland or Ireland, I knew that Cornwall had some nice parts but I never knew it had anything like this, nature at its best.

Sunday 16th November 08
After yesterdays experience we just couldn’t wait to get back out on the bikes again today although we only had a limited amount of time today before packing for a weeks holiday in Wales (unfortunately not with the bikes) we decided that we would head out towards Polperro and follow the lanes on out to Polruan and have a cup of tea out there before heading back via Boddinick, Lanreath and Pelynt . Once we set off, that same feeling of exhilaration returned we skipped through Polperro as lovely as it is, it is not somewhere you can really take the bikes so we just had a quick stop off so Claire could have a cigarette and then carried on our journey.
Going a long the lanes again was wonderful and riding past Atlantic Bay just a beautiful setting and on through some small hamlets and eventually down the step hill through Polruan and right down onto the harbour front by the ferry, we stopped here and had a nice hot cup of tea, the weather was brisk to say the least but somehow that just didn’t matter we only really noticed that because we had stopped. We sat in a little shelter on the harbour front with our tea taking in the spectacular view across to Fowey on the other side, we had forgotten to bring the camera today so we couldn’t take any pictures but believe me it was fabulous. Soon it was time to head home so back on the bikes we cruised gentley through the harbour round the corner and began to take on the huge step hill that is Polruan high street, all of a sudden Claire floundered right in front of me and stalled, I narrowly miss slamming into the back of her and ended up stalling myself, then we were both of stuck at the bottom of this bloody great hill and neither could get going without stalling or rolling backwards, try as we might, eventually after several attempts I managed to get my bike going without stalling and roared off up the hill leaving Claire behind, I thought I’ve got the damn thing going now I’m not stopping until I’ve got to the top of this hill and I’ll wait for Claire up there, thankfully it wasn’t long before Claire also made it to the top of the hill, Just when you think you’re getting the hang of all this biking milarki something like that pops up to remind you that your still only learning.
Monday 23rd November 08
In order that we both gain experience together we have decided that I should accompany Claire into work in the morning and then meet her again for the ride back home when she finishes work at five, that way we will both take the rough with the smooth in all weathers, we have also decided that it would be an advantage if we could get and intercom system going so we are looking into ways of being able to do that and hopefully it won’t be to long before we have such a system up and running, the one we need for our Caburg Helmets retails at about £150 and works via bluetooth
December 14th 2008
The last couple of weeks seemed to have been all about maintenance, It turns out my friend at the local computer shop is a bit of a whizz at bike mechanics and can strip and rebuild them and all that kind of capper, so I thought I would asked him about the ongoing problem I’m having with my side stand shutting off the engine because it thinks the stand is down when in fact it has only vibrated loose a couple of millimeters but enough to cause the engine to shut off briefly, it seems to be a problem that has begun creeping back in after I initially thought I had solved it by greasing the top of the stand which no doubt did relive the problem briefly but it seems has not cured the problem. Anyway he agreed to take a look at it and see if he could shine any light on the cause. Apparently underneath the frame when the stand is in the up position there is a sensor that gets pushed in allowing the engine to start but unfortunately my stand is not making full contact with the sensor and this means that any slight bump could cause the stand to come away, so his remedy to this problem is either to bend the top of the stand so it makes a better contact, stick something on the end of the stand, or dill a hole in the top of the stand and put a screw in to force the sensor in further. So I thought I’d try a temporary measure and stick something on the end of the stand to force the sensor in further just to see if it works and lo and behold it did!, so now I am going to try drilling a hole and putting in a screw to solve this issue once and for all.
Within a few days of asking about that problem I came back to him with yet another problem, I had begun to get a clunking sound when I changed down through the gears and also, the bike has stared to judder when slowing down at bends and junctions, I had noticed also that my chain was hanging a little bit slack and thought it needed looking at, hopefully by someone who knew what they were doing so I thought Tim’s the man, I just hope it won’t be anything expensive.
Once again he agreed to have a look at the bike for me, he took one look at the chain and said “that certainly needs tightening its far too loose, and to be honest if you tighten that up I think you’ll find that it will cure-all of your other bike problems as well” he then set about showing me how I could tighten up the chain by loosening off a couple of bolts here and tightening a couple of bolts there and as long as I kept an equal distance on both sides between the end frame and the axle then I shouldn’t have a problem, he said the chain should have no more than about an inch give in it once it has been tightened.
So I took the bike back home and set about trying to tighten the chain as described, I have to be honest I wasn’t looking forward to this just in case I made a complete hash of it and the wheel ends up falling off or something. Anyway I took my time and went through everything methodically and it all seemed to go according to plan and lo and behold the chain was indeed tightened and I made sure to try to get the gap on either side as even as possible. Once I had completed the job I took it back to Tim so he could check it over just to make sure I had done everything correctly. He looked it over and confirmed that everything seemed to be in order…..yay …my first bit of maintenance…I had succeeded in tightening the chain on my bike….for someone who is not in the least bit mechanically minded I felt quite pleased with myself. I took the bike for a short spin up the road to make sure everything was still functioning correctly and it seems that Tim had called it correctly and tightening the chain had indeed cured the bike of those other niggling little problems which had recently developed.
On one of our trips home from Claire’s work her speedometer decided to stop working, so I said I would take the bike over and asked our man if he had any clues as to why it had suddenly decided to stop working. But luckily, the next morning in daylight we were able to see that somehow the speedo cable had managed to come undone, and it was just a simple matter of finger tightening the cable back into place and the speedometer was once again up and running ….. yay ..we solved that problem without anyones help!.Riding to and from Claire’s work in all weathers in day light and at night-time was quite the challenge and to be honest bordered on dangerous sometimes, the extreme cold was particularly bad on the tips of our fingers, it didn’t seem to matter what kind of gloves you wore the tips of your finger suffer come what may, I tried to come up with a solution to this by making some padded weather proof mittens that attached to the gloves and could just be slipped over your fingers as and when you felt the need, this was a great idea in principle but in practice the mittens became a pain in the backside as they got in the way when reaching for the clutch or the brake so this idea was soon dropped. I then thought …hand guards ….surely there must be some kind of had guards for the Marauder that we could fit ourselves to keep the wind off our hands.
I searched the internet and found out that they do not do hand guards for Marauders and worse still they don’t even do specific hand guards for on road bikes at all, the only bike that you can get hand guards for are off-road trials bikes and pit bikes and these are mostly metal bars designed to protect your hands from trees and bushes when off roading rather than just keeping the wind off your hands. But I did spot a cheap pair of plastic off-road hand guards and wondered if I could adapt them to fit my Marauder. I located a pair on e-bay for £7.99 which claimed to be universal fitting for off-road pit bikes, so I thought these will do, I may have to drill a hole and trim a bit of plastic here or there but if I can get them to fit it will be worth it, A couple of days later they arrived in the post and I set about trying to make them fit on the bike, luckily enough the holes seem to match up with existing screw holes on the brake lever and clutch lever, and it was almost a simple matter of undoing the screws putting on the hand guards and re-tigtening ….. almost!…, The clutch side went on a dream no problems at all everything matched up but the brake side wasn’t quite playing the game, it needed some bits cutting out to allow the lever to move freely then I had another problem in that the screw and bolt were not quite long enough to accommodate the extra thickness of the plastic, I managed to secured it in the end by turning the nut upside down, this allowed the nut to fit inside the plastic hole and not cause any obstruction, only trouble was it did require a certain amount of force to keep it in place and I ended up splitting the plastic.

though I split the plastic I managed to get the hand guards to fit, and sure enough when I took the bike for a test run it kept the wind from biting at my finger tips …ideal….so impressed with this…Claire has decided that she would like some hand guards fitted to her bike as well and at this moment we are still waiting for another pair to arrive.
he other main problem which we both have encountered is the rain at night, riding home on these winter nights from Liskeard in the dark through the lanes when it’s howling a gale and raining so hard you really cannot see out of your helmet it’s a complete blur, I wonder how this can be legally allowed, I mean it’s really dangerous, even at very slow speeds you can barely see where you are going and if a car comes round the bend in the opposite direction headlights blazing, for a few seconds there you’re just guessing where the road is, that just doesn’t seem right to me, All these years people have been riding motorbikes you would have thought someone would have come up with some way of clearing the visors from rain, I mean we have fairly expensive Caberg helmets and it makes no difference if the rain is belting down at you, you just can’t see, it really doesn’t feel safe at all, it’s all very well saying …”well just don’t ride at night when it’s pissing down”, but if you have already set out on your journey and then it starts you’re committed come what may, I just can’t believe just how precarious it all is, I’m amazed there aren’t many more accidents in these conditions.
We are still managing to go out on odd trips most weekends albeit we don’t travel too far, although last weekend we travelled out to Holsworthy, to do a leaflet drop in the area for one of our forthcoming gigs, it took the best part of the day for us but at least the weather was kind and the sun came out for most of the day, by the time we made it back home it was just beginning to get dark, we covered at total of 114 miles which is certainly our longest trip to date.This weekend the sun came out once again so we decided to take a shorter trip out to Rame Head via the coastal route, some spectacular views on show again especially when the road runs high along the edge of the sea and up ahead you can see a clear beach for miles, even though the sun was out it was still biting cold in the wind but that didn’t seem to stop the surfers who were out in force along this particular stretch of coast, they must have skin made from asbestos, you wouldn’t catch me going in the sea when it’s as bitter as it is today. We followed the road from Rame Head on round past Cawsand and then up the hill and out round to Cremyll where we intended to have our cup of tea and sandwiches, but once we stopped and got off the bikes boy the wind was cold,

We decided to try to find a little bit of shelter somewhere else away from the biting wind, we rode back along the road and went up to Mount Edgcumbe Church which had a small gravel car park at the front that was bathed in sunshine and the Church itself sheltered us from the biting cold wind and here we had our picnic. By the time we were ready to leave it was around three, so we headed straight back home before it started getting dark, Claire had a couple of close calls on this particular journey, narrowing missing a van coming round a sharp bend and then later on, the back-end of the bike slipping out on some mud on the road, thankfully these were only minor incidents which didn’t really faze her too much and she kept good control of each situation, we both arrived home safely although somewhat chilly from the bitter cold.

January 2nd 09
Having finally arrived at the Christmas period Claire had two weeks off from work and we were looking forward to having a few trips out on the bikes, one of the these trips we decided to go out to Polkerris and try to find the pub we discovered while on a coastal walk in 2007, we remembered it because after we had set off from Fowey on foot and had gone beyond the point of turning back the heavens opened and completely drenched the two of us and we were just getting worked up into quite a desperate state when the village of Polkerris loomed out of nowhere and a fabulous pub ‘The Rashleigh Arms’, that was open and had a roaring fire and better still was still serving food, it was a little oasis.
Finding the pub on the bikes would hopefully prove a little less stressful, It would also be the first time we had gone across a ferry with the bikes which was quite the experience in itself, thankfully it was a reasonably calm day and the journey across was quite smooth, we trundled off the other side and followed the road around the outskirts of Fowey taking the direction out towards Menabilly, within ten minutes of leaving the ferry we were cruising gently down the steep hill to the very pub in Polkerris that was salvation in 2007.
We Parked up around the back and made our way into the pub to be greeted by the lovely warm roaring fire once again. Having ordered our usual ‘one Ham’ and ‘one cheese’ ploughman’s and two halves of shandy we settled down at a large table right in front of the open fire….lovely job.
Once we had eaten and were full up and feeling quite content we decided to set off and see if we could find Menabilly which was the inspirational house behind Daphne Du Maurier’s book Rebecca. We hadn’t gone a hundred yards off the car park when my stand decided to play up and kept cutting out the engine once again and to add to that a new problem, my back brake had seized up and the bike would hardly move without stalling, having had several attempts to try to get back up the very step hill in the end I had to give up, pull over and see if I could come up with a temporary solution to the problems as at this rate I was not going to make it home, luckily claire had a hair band on her and I was able to use that to keep the stand up.I also gave the bracket on the disc drum a good whack to free it up in order to allow the wheel to move, it wasn’t the ideal solution but at least it meant we could get home, we cut short the sight-seeing and decided it would be best to try to get back as soon as possible and seek some help. Safely back at home I phoned round any local numbers that could possible help but unfortunately didn’t any any answers probably because everyone was on Holiday, it was just bad timing, this meant that we wouldn’t be able to go riding anywhere until I could get someone to look at the bike.
A few days later I get a call from Andy of A&A motorcycles in Looe, he was and illusive man, with an equally difficult business to find, I had tried to track his place down once before but the advertised ‘unit 3’ on the barbican ended being the local funeral parlor, I thought, this cannot be right so I gave it up as a bad job, and thought if I ever get hold of a phone number I can give him a shout and find out exactly where he is, anyway he thankfully replied to my call and I arranged to take my bike up for him to have a look at this time getting exact instructions of how to get to his workshop.
He turned out to be a very decent chap with and ideal facility for working on bikes just at the back of the old petrol station on the Barbican in East Looe with not a coffin in sight. I rolled up at the agreed time and he set straight to work, pushing the bike up onto the hydraulic ramp and raising it to a suitable hight to attack the rear brakes,

it was fairly obvious that they had seize up and he said “it’s hopefully just a case of taking it all apart giving everything a birthday and then piecing it all back together” which is precisely what he did, I don’t think most of these parts had seen the light of day since the bike was first built, in no time at all off came the back wheel and then the drum cover revealing the seized brakes,

with assistance from a wire brush, brake fluid and compressed air, every thing had a ‘scrape and polish’ before being covered liberally in grease and ‘copper slip’ where appropriate, I looked on hoping that some of this might sink in and be useful to me sometime in the future if I ever came across this problem again. With all parts freed up and functioning again he showed my how to adjust the chain, this was something I had already had a go at but he pointed out that there are some lines on either side of the frame that each side is supposed to be set to at even distance. although I did make every effort to keep the distance even on both side I was not aware of the marker points on either side of the frame. He adjusted each side until the rear wheel was correctly aligned and ran smoothly via hand adding ‘engine oil’ to lubricate the chain as it went round.

Thankfully the new side stand Claire had ordered for off Ebay had arrived only the day before and I’d asked him if he would be kind enough to swap it over for me. He added a custom washer to the new stand to take up some of the ‘wobble’ and bent the small end back a little to give it better contact with the isolation ‘plunger’ and once in place the new stand worked a treat. What a star, he even checked out my front brakes which were squeaking a little pointing out that it wouldn’t be long before those pads would need replacing and I asked him if it would be possible for him to do that job as well as my bike is due for an MOT in February and I want to make sure everything is ok, He said he would be happy to do that for me providing I get hold of the pads as he has officially closed his business down and can no longer order through his books, so he provided me with all the information I needed to get hold of the right pads and hopefully I will be able to buy some off Ebay and arrange for him to fit them for me when they arrive. So with that I paid up and set off happy in the knowledge that this was a job well done and for the bike it had been long overdue.
Claire has taken the brave step of booking us both in for our Theory tests, they will take place on Wednesday 7th in Plymouth, Claire’s is at 1:00 and I will be at 2:00, no time like the present, lets just get on and do it. We will endeavor to get as much practice in before them by answering mock questions off the internet and even mock hazard perception tests, fingers crossed this will be another small step to passing the big one.
Wednesday 7th Jan 09
Theory Test Day:
This day seemed to arrive so quickly that we had little time to think, which was probably a good thing, we only had a couple of days to really cram all the information in but I think that helped, if we’d had to wait a few weeks then it could well have gotten quite tedious. Only yesterday I down loaded a program to help with questions and mock hazard perception videos which was approved by the DSA UK and drew some of its question from the very same bank as the test itself, this proved to be an absolute winner, the format of the page was very similar to the test layout and at least you could see the videos on a full size screen as opposed to the tiny little video clips that we’d had found on some other sites. We each had several goes on the questions the night before and on the morning before leaving for the test.
We arrived at the test center in good time as Claire was first in at 1:00. The down side to this was that I wasn’t booked in until 2:00 which meant the possibility of finding out if Claire had passed or not before I went in, knowing that she had passed before I went in to do my test might put unnecessary pressure on me during my own test so we had agreed that Claire should not tell me her result until I had finished my test and we would reveal the results together. As it happened things worked out quite well as they managed to get me in at around 1:20 which meant Claire was still taking her test as I started mine so thankfully that situation had been avoided because Lord knows it would have been hard to sit there nice and quiet if you knew you had just passed!
I sat down at my assigned station, took a deep breath, and gave myself some encouragement, I looked on at the monitor as it gave me instructions on how to find my way around the touch screen before commencing the actual test. Finally the moment of truth had arrived this was it, once I pressed the start button I would have to work my way through fifty questions knowing that I could only afford seven mistakes, it suddenly dawned on me that neither of us had even looked once at the highway code, not a good thing to pop in to your head as you’re about to start your theory questions.
Anyway I pressed ‘start’ and off I went, some of the question were hard, some were easy, some were glaringly obvious, and others seemed designed to catch you out. Claire and I had been testing ourselves on the journey in on some of the “catch you out” type questions and I have to be honest I had a little smile to myself every time one of those questions came up and I just knew that answer, plus that program I downloaded yesterday had some of the very same questions and pictures, I couldn’t believe my luck, that said there were still enough ‘wild card’ questions that you could easily choose the wrong answer to and gave you the feeling that your answer was just a guess. So once I had completed all fifty questions I decided to go back through them all once more to make sure that I was happy with the answers that I had chosen before moving onto the videos.
Again after a brief introduction as to how the hazard perception part works, I pressed start and I off I went. I quite enjoyed doing these and found it rather similar to arcade games or computer games and maybe because of being a car driver all ready you kind of know what to look out for, the only thing that you have to keep in mind is that you don’t have to click for every possible hazard otherwise you will get disqualified for cheating but just click for the gaping obvious one’s as you see them happening, such as cars pulling out of side roads, pedestrians/ animals running onto the road, anything that might cause you to brake, swerve or stop suddenly, these are the things they are looking out for and they mark you on a scale of one to five depending on how quickly you reacted to the situation with a score of nought if you completely missed it. I worked my way through these at a steady pace until I had completed all fourteen clips.
Once that was over the test was finished which meant going back out to reception to get the dreaded results, I felt quite confident but there is always that element of doubt, As I came out in to the reception I saw Claire waiting, I walked up to the desk and the guy on reception handed me the print out results, I looked on blankly, I couldn’t seem to focus on the words, so I couldn’t work out if I’d passed or not, Claire came up to me and said “how did you get on” I said “I don’t know yet where does it say?” then she pointed out to me that at the top of the letter its said ‘Congratulations you have passed’.
You’re not supposed to make any noise because it might upset the other students taking their tests, but I’m afraid I couldn’t hold back and shouted…… “YES…GET IN THERE”….. it suddenly occurred to me that I should find out how Claire got on, as she’d been sat holding it in all this time ….. I asked tentatively ….”how did you get on” … she said …….. “I PASSED” ….Oh joy …what a fanatic feeling, we gave each other a huge hug and a kiss right there in reception ….. only afterwards we thought of the poor sod who was also waiting to go in and take his test, he was only a young lad and obviously quite nervously and there we were jumping about quite triumphantly, I’m sure that did nothing to ease the pressure he was under ….but hey …we passed …….we passed …we passed!!!
The pass mark for the Multiple Choice is 43 out of a possible 50 and the pass mark for the Hazard Perception is 44 out 75
Our results: Claire: 45 / 50 Multiple Choice 62 / 75 Hazard Perception – Alan: 46 / 50 Multiple Choice 61/ 75 Hazard Perception.

Recently Claire decided to go shopping in Plymouth and when she came back she announced that she had bought two new Caberg headsets for our helmets at a cost of £299.98p They didn’t have them in stock at the particular shop where she paid for them but they would be delivered by courier some days later from other branches. Sure enough some three days later one of the headsets arrived.

I took one looked at the instructions and decided it was all way too complicated for me, so when Claire came home from work it didn’t take long before she had all the innards of the helmet apart and had sussed out how the wiring loom should go, I was watching closely as I knew mine would probably arrive tomorrow and I would like to attempted putting it together myself, but I have to admit it did look very fiddly and the instructions extremely vague, but somehow she managed to fit everything in and put all the bits and pieces back together, that just left charging up the helmet before finding out if it worked or not. Once again very vague with the instructions but she managed to successfully communicate to the helmet from her phone via Bluetooth so at least we now knew one of the headsets worked.

The following day the second headset box arrived by courier so I set about trying to fit it all together with my helmet, I’m glad I had watched Claire putting hers together the night before as these instructions were something else, there where a whole series of small black and white photo illustrations with text at the side with didn’t relate to that particular picture so you had to read the instructions and try to find the picture that related to what it was trying to explain, anyway I did managed to strip it all out, put in all the ‘gubbins’ then piece it all back together. My set up was slightly different to Claire’s I think that was to do with one being a master set up and one being the slave. Once I charged up my helmet I set about ‘pairing up the helmets’ so that they could communicate with each other, thankfully the instruction on this section were more direct and easy to follow, and within a few minuets I could talk in one helmet and hear it in the other and vice versa … Joy! … it all worked …we had managed to fit it all together and get it to work without trapping any wires and cocking it up.

When Claire got home from work we took the bikes out for a short ride just to test out the helmets. It was brilliant, I don’t know what I was expecting but this system was excellent, nice and clear with minimal interference, I thought we might struggle to hear each other over the bike engine and wind noise but nothing of the sort, Claire came through on my helmet crystal clear it was really quite weird in a way almost like she was on the bike with me, … now Claire will be able to shout at me …”turn you’re ‘FN’ indicators off!” ….. and I’ll have to watch my swearing when she goes round the bend too slow! …”‘FFS’ you’re on a motorbike ….lean in!”……..just kidding!
Saturday 17th January
Weather predictions for the next few days where not looking good, severe gales and heavy rain for most of the week-end, this was due to start coming in around midday on Saturday and continue right through until Monday. So when I woke up reasonable early on Saturday morning and looked out of the window I was pleasantly surprised to see the whole area bathed in sunshine, I knew this wasn’t going to last so I woke Claire up and said “come on let’s go out on the bikes while the weather is still good as this will probably be the only chance we will get this weekend”. By the time we were both up and dressed and breakfast out-of-the-way the sun had already gone in, it was fairly obvious that we would only have a couple of hours at best before it stared getting nasty. Having packed a flask of tea and some sandwiches we set off to find the small village of Lerryn, it’s a place we stumbled across a few summers back and thought how nice it was then so it was ideal for a short ride as in the scheme of things it was only a few miles up the road.

What I did remember of Lerryn was that it is tucked away down some very narrow single track lanes, the type with grass growing a long the middle, these lanes tend to get quite muddy and God forbid you meet a car coming the other way, thankfully Lerryn still remained quite sleepy and we never met any other vehicles at least along the tightest spots. We rode in to the village and onto the car park and found a place to leave the bikes so we could go for a stroll.

We walked firstly past the local shop along the river bank until the path eventually turned into a private road, it was very picturesque along this little stretch
but there were quite a few warnings regarding flooding at high tide.

We had our first cup of tea and admired the scenery before heading back along the path and round towards the other side of the village which took us over a very narrow stone bridge, so narrow in fact that it didn’t have a footpath, It seemed to me that it must be a local pastime to wait for people to start crossing this bridge before attempting to cross it at the same time in their cars …. it was suddenly like the M6! the bridge did provide some points a long its length that you could just about stand in to let the cars go past although they didn’t give us much time to reach them.

Before long we had reach the end of the village on this side as well and having had a lovely day we decided it was time to head back home as the weather was definitely threatening now. It was great to get out on the bikes again it seemed like it had been such a long time, but we thoroughly enjoyed it and can’t wait until the next opportunity presents itself.
February 19th 2009
This morning both Claire and I set off to Claire’s work on the bikes, as Claire likes me to accompany her on the journey there and back and its good practice for both of us on the bikes. We hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when I heard a ‘clunk’ sound from my bike and then had a sudden loss of power, I rolled into the side of the road and wondered what had gone on, it sounded like I had left the stand down and it had caught on the road as I took the corner, but I soon realised that it wasn’t that because the engine was still running, on closer inspection it was clear that the chain had come off, and it didn’t look like it was going to go back on to easily either, anyway that put a swift end to my journey so that meant Claire would have to travel on to work by herself while I attempted to sort out the problem.
My first thoughts were, Tim, he maybe able to help and in the scheme of things he is not that far away and I could at least push the bike on reasonably flat ground to get to his place.
Some fifteen / twenty minutes later I’d struggled to get the bike outside his computer shop and at 8:45 he was actually in work I couldn’t believe it, so I went in and explained the problem and asked him if he could help and he happily came outside to take a look. I was hoping that he would go, ‘yeah, that’s a very simple job I’ll have that done for you in just a few minuets’, but Tim plays a shrewd game and helpful though he is he’s not about to dive in and get his hand dirty not without the time and just reward, but what he does do very well is explained to you how you can get your own hands dirty and attempt the job yourself and thereby saving money and possibly even learning something.
So grateful on one hand to now be armed with instructions on how to put it right but also miffed on the other as I had just pushed the damned bike past my own house to shown him the problem and now I was going to have to push it back up the slight hill, not forgetting the two steep steps onto the path which leads to the front of my house.
Eventually, sweating like ‘a Turkish wrestlers jock strap’ I’d successfully managed to get my heap of metal on its stand outside my own house and set about trying to find all the bits and pieces that might assist me in my quest to right the chain. The job itself was not too complicated at all but for me and my complete lack of hands on spanner skills it was a pain in the backside I could do without. I had to loosen off the front chain cover to reveal the chain all coiled up around the small drive cog from the engine, with quite a bit of pulling and tugging I eventually got it untangled and hanging free, I then put a makeshift stand under the frame by the rear wheel, this allowed me to tilt the bike and raise the back wheel off the floor enabling the wheel to move freely, it was then just a matter of easing the chain back onto the large cog while turning the wheel round in neutral gear.
Low and behold the chain was now back in its rightful place and to prevent it from leaping off again I then tightened up the chain by adjusting the position of the back wheel, something I had attempted once before and I had also watched Andy from A&A Motorcycles doing it when he sorted out my seized back brakes so I at least had a clue about how to go about it. using the markers on either-side of the frame to make sure that the alignment was correct, I then tightened up the main axle bolts to secure it all in place. Now feeling quite pleased with myself I took the bike for a quick spin down to Tim for him to give it a glance over to make sure I had done things correctly. Happy that I had done the job properly I can now add putting a chain on to my ever-increasing list of useful ‘mechanicy type things’ I can do.
March 2nd 2009
Now we have decided to step it up and actually go for the big one, no time like the present. We now both feel reasonably confident on the bikes and have been using them as often as the weather will allow so having got the CBT and passed our theory tests its seems like a good time to go for the full bike tests. I decided to make some enquiries regarding cost and wondered if perhaps we might be able to just get a few professional lessons before putting in for the tests ourselves, that way we could substantially reduce the cost of the whole thing. Having phoned round and spoken to a few people it seems that it is not possible to get a few private lessons and then go for the full test, there doesn’t seem to be anyone that offers that kind of service, plus as it was pointed out, if we go for the test on our 125cc and pass, we will be restricted to 33kw or 67bhp for two years on an A2 license, This will not stop us from buying a Harley but we will have to legally have it restricted at our own cost of somewhere between £50 -150 depending on the dealer for two years. If you want to go for the full license then we need to take the test on a 500cc motorbike, and unless we go through a proper training agency it will be highly unlikely that we will get insurance to hire a 500cc as we are still only learners. So the options come down to this, we either go for an A2 restricted license or pay £500 each and go for DAS (Direct Access) a full license entitlement through a recognised training agency. To add to that the DSA (Driving Standards Agency) are going to change the current motorbike test from April 27th 2009 and it will become a two-part test with most of the maneuvers done in the first part in an off-road section which will apparently be more involved and certainly more challenging with much more emphasis on handling and balance, it is expected that there will be a much higher failure rate on these new tests. plus the cost of the training is expected to go up to cover the extra training that will be required for the new regulations.
Basically if we want to go for a full license we have to do it before April 27th and we have to go through a training agency and pay around £450 / 500 each, also baring in mind that should we fail we will have to wait ten days before we can take another test, so to be on the safe side and not get to close to April 27th it would be best to get the test in ASAP.
Not expecting to be quite so rushed as this it turned out to be just as well I made the calls when I did otherwise we could have easily missed the current test deadline and ending up having to take the new test. So, left with little choice but to go for DSA (Direct Access) I phoned round several places to try to get the soonest available test dates. Only one place had dates available in early March which was 1st Class Motorcycle Training of Plymouth, they had friday 6th and Monday 9th available, none of the Agency’s had two tests available on the same day until well into March so 1st Class was our best option, but this means that myself and Claire will have to do the training and the tests on different days which was a bit of a shame but we are confident enough in our own ability now to be able to go for something like this without each other to actually be there for support. So we made the decision to go for it and book these tests. Claire is going for the Friday 6th test at 8:30 and mine will be the Monday Test at 9:27. Unfortunately Claire’s three days training before the test on a 500cc will not run on consecutive days it works out like this: full day Monday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday Test Day. and Mine will run: Full day Friday / Saturday / Sunday / Monday Test Day, Claire has had to go for the Friday test because it best suits her work arrangement.
Exited and pretty damned nervous at the same time we decided to get as much practice in as we could particularly with the maneuvers that will be required such as turns in the road, and emergency stops, hill starts and anything else we could think of, I also downloaded a short list of the type of mechanical questions that they will ask us with regards to the actual motorbike, and carrying pillion passengers, thankfully there are not too many of these and we should be able to learn them off by heart. Many hours were spent going over and over maneuvers on Saturday and Sunday that I managed to get a numb bum. Claire seems to be dealing with it all in her stride and doesn’t appear to be showing any outward signs of nerves at all, considering Claire has to do the Training and take her test this coming week she seems to be coping with it all very well where as I on the other hand am not sleeping at all well, my stomach is churning I have to confess but at the same time I’m really looking forward to getting on a 500cc and getting to see what its like on ‘proper’ bike for a change.

Monday morning has arrived and its Claire first day on her own, she going to drive the car into Plymouth as it is much too far to go on the 125, so helmet in hand, biker jacket with day glow vest and newly purchased armored trousers she kissed me good-bye and set off for her first full day, this morning she did show signs of nerves and was even quite shaky but I’m pretty positive that once she gets there and has a go on the big bike she will be fine, I have to be honest I was quite jealous watching her go, I really wanted to be going with her, I know she’ll be fine once she gets going.
While writing this the phone rang and its Claire….. “Guess who’s just been riding through a slalom and doing u turns on a 500?” …..”its awesome” ….she phoned me to say they were just having a quick break before taking the bikes out on the road …. now I’m really jealous!!
Monday 2nd March 2009 Claire’s first training day.
Having started the day feeling very nervous and quite shaky Claire returned home around 4:30 full of confidence and excitement about her day and couldn’t wait to impart her new-found knowledge on me which I was just as eager to hear.
She was full of praise for the 500cc bike that she had been riding around on for pretty much the whole day, she said the handling was so much better and to have a bit of power was just fantastic, she thought that maybe it was because the bike was much heavier than she was used to that she felt safer and even more in control, she had one or two minor points about having to get used to the new gear position and the huge petrol tank and something to do with the indicator switch being slightly odd compared to what she had become used to but it seems she quickly adjusted to the new bike and it didn’t really cause her any problems, she was able to perform u-turns in the road, hill starts and emergency stops even better than on her own bike and even had to overtake a truck on the bypass at 70mph. The instructor took them around some of the routes and obstacles that the various examiners like to favor, some of which could easily catch you out if you were not alert and paying attention, such as obeying all speed limit signs which can often drop down to 20mph in and around Plymouth, and one particular stretch they may ask you to perform a hill start while still in a 20mph zone which turns into a 30mph zone in only a few yards, a sign which could be easily missed because of concentrating on the maneuver, and another ‘catch you out’ one was on an approach to a traffic Island they may say something like “take the next available left” but the first turning left will be a no entry, this might seem gaping obvious but in a test situation you have to be fully aware of what is going on around you to avoid making unnecessary stupid mistakes because of nerves and unfamiliarity with the area.

Tuesday 3rd March 2009
Having had a relaxing day off Claire took advantage of the time to get some bits and pieces done around the house before we went out on an afternoon session on our 125’s, I suppose the Marauder was now going to seem quite small compared to the 500 she had been riding the day before and sure enough “how small”…”It seems like a toy” comments were coming out, I can just see the pair of us having passed our tests and owning much larger bikes turning into ‘bike snobs’ and refusing to nod at anyone with anything less than a 500cc and being completely dismissive of anyone with ‘L’ plates on a 125
and as for ‘spotty oikes’ ridding those ‘fizzy dysons’ … forget it! … It’s quite funny really the whole bike snob thing, will they give you the nod? won’t they give you the nod?, At the end of the day, if its got two wheels and an engine then they deserve a nod, as they are putting themselves as much at risk as someone on a Harley 1400, it’s not the size of the bike that should matter, it’s a fellow rider out on the road taking all the same risks and just going for it and enjoying themselves that is worth a nod, everyone has to start somewhere.
We rode the bikes down to our local car park to practice maneuvers, I found this very interesting as up to now I had tried to work out for myself what the routine of each maneuver might be, but it seems that I had been over doing it a little here and there, A u-turn in the road does not require any indicators, you must take a good look over your right shoulder, move forward a little bit, take a second good look before turning the bike round in the road and pulling into the curb on the other side. I had been indicating to pull out and indicating again on the other-side to pull in apparently none of which is required.
Also the hill start, I had been pulling in to the side of the road, switching off the engine and getting off the bike, and going through the whole procedure of taking the bike off the stand, putting it in gear, staring it up, signaling to pull out , looking over the shoulder before finally moving off, but apparently you don’t have to get off the bike, they will just ask you the pull into the left and then perform a hill start as I was doing but without getting off the bike. We also practiced the angle approach which is basically pulling out from behind a parked car, I found this strangely tricky to begin with mainly because I was tending to put too much lock on the steering in order to pull around the parked car and ending up going quite wide into the road because of it, so once I found a less angled approach it became nice and easy. Claire was also saying the instructor kept stressing the need to always look over your shoulders both right and left, when pulling away, left turns, right turns, approaching junctions etc and keep checking your mirrors as often as you can, keep and eye out for road signs and obey speed limits at all times checking over each should to acknowledge that you have seen it and that you are ok to adjust to it.
Tomorrow while Claire is on her second days training I am going to go out on the bike and practice some more and try to get into the ‘proper routine’ of things most of which I have already been doing but perhaps not quite as vigorously as I should be.
March 4th 2009
As Claire set off on her second full days training on the 500cc in Plymouth, I set of to our nearest busy town to try putting myself in busy traffic situations, dealing with junctions, traffic light, traffic Islands, varying speed limits etc that you can’t experience in Looe. Even Liskeard isn’t that busy compared to Plymouth but as its only ten miles up the road it is the nearest town that has got some of the situations similar to the test. I tried to put into practice some of the ‘looking over each shoulder’ things that Claire said they were looking for when approaching all the usual obstacles but particularly when noticing a difference in the speed limit from say a 30mph to a 20mph, apparently they like to see you on approach to the change look over both shoulders, and touch the brakes, this will apparently make everyone aware that you have noticed the speed change and you are adjusting accordingly. This particular performance I found to be a pain in the backside and caused me no end of hassle particularly turning left at junctions, what used to be quite a smooth operation has now turned into a right rigmarole. At lunch time I get a phone call from Claire who was also having lunch to let me know how she was getting on, she said todays instructor had introduced her to a seemingly easier way of performing a u-turn in the road from a standing position, you angle the steering out, take one good look over your right shoulder, and gently move off and complete the u-turn in one movement, she said ‘I have tried this a few times and I’m finding it a lot better than the usual method’. After my lunch I thought I would give this new method ago myself …oh dear … what a mess I managed to get myself into, I could not do it, several times I tried and nearly dropped the bike, and kept putting my foot down I decided that I should stick to what I know, at least I am comfortable with the usual method so why try to change it, So I ignored that for a while and just went on with the normal riding. Later on I decided I would give it another try and this time managed to execute the maneuver quite successfully although not consistently, out of every ten attempts seven were excellent and three were complete rubbish, so I have decided to forget trying to master that method as I can currently do ten out of ten times using the tried and tested method and it’s too close to my test to try learning new tricks, but I can at least see that it does work and for Claire if that means she does the turn correctly every time then go for it.
Claire arrived home from her days training about ten minuets after I got home, she looked quite tired and it had been a tough day, she said she is finding that in the morning she is bright and alert and full of enthusiasm but by the second half of the day tiredness begins to creep in and the enthusiasm wears pretty thin. She said that she had fallen off the bike this afternoon trying out one of the new fandango turns in the road, this particular road had quite a steep camber and as she pulled round to the others side to put her foot down the lean caught her out and basically she fell onto the footpath with the bike on top of her, thankfully she was not hurt but for a minor bruise on her leg although she was a little shaken up by it and didn’t really have her heart in it after that. She said she’ll be fine and can’t wait to get back on the bike again tomorrow and try out the turns again so hopefully that was just a minor blip that could have happened to anyone.
It seemed to be a day of niggles, the instructors have different foibles and things that they believe will get you through the test if you follow them to the letter, such as, apparently they don’t like to see your hands hovering over the brake and clutch lever when performing the emergency stop because in real life you won’t be expecting to stop and therefore your hands will not be in that position and should only be in that position when pressing the levers.
It seems there will be quite a bit of readjusting to suit what the examiners are looking for, but at the end of the day if it means it gets us successfully through then we will just have to adapt.

March 5th 2009 Day three Claire’s Training
So today is the last full day of Claire’s training before her test tomorrow, as she set off this morning she seemed in good spirits and eager to crack on with it. I told her to watch out for me as I might pop into Plymouth myself and see if I could get a decent pair of weather proof armored trousers to replace the ski suit I have been using up until now, don’t think they’ll be to impressed if I turn up wearing that for my training. I have wanted to travel on the bike into Plymouth for a long time now but had kept putting it of because it’s quite a trek on the 125 which I thought might struggle up some of the larger hills that frequent the main route in, plus it can get very busy along that stretch and it always strikes me as a little risky on the bike. Anyway, no time like the present and needing the trousers gave me the ideal excuse to go into Plymouth and use all the bits of training tips that I had learned off Claire.
I made myself up some sandwiches and a flask of tea as I thought while I’m in there I will have a little explore round some of the busier areas and see how well I can cope with it, and perhaps even check out where the test centre was and have my lunch in Plymouth. I was pleasantly surprised by the journey, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting and if I’m honest I quite enjoyed it except for one aspect that hadn’t bothered me for some time and that was cold fingers, by the time I made it into J&S the motorcycle cloths shop the tips of my fingers were in agony and it took some time for the feeling to return.
This particular cloths shop was one that myself and Claire had popped into while waiting to go out on our CBT’s and it had two floors crammed full of gear and most of it with 20% off in their long running sale. I explained to the very helpful sales person on the second floor exactly what I was looking for and he immediately sorted me out with an ideal pair of weather proof armored trouser with a removable lining for winter and summer use, and they can be slipped over the trousers / jeans that you are all ready wearing which made them just perfect for my needs and with 20% off they came in at a very reasonable £63, quite the bargain. With new trousers on and ski suit stuffed in my back pack I set off via Mutley Plain to find the test centre, I was pleased with myself for going through a particularly busy section of the City and not being phased at all by the traffic, I was expecting to be a little edgy but thankfully it didn’t seem to prove a problem for me hopefully I will feel way the same on the larger bike. I decided I would actually pull into the test centre car park and have my lunch in there and just suss the place out. It was obviously test day for Cars today and lots of very nervous looking students were gingerly heading off on their tests, you could almost smell the fear. I watched one you lad go to the wrong side of the car before being told by the examiner to go round to the driver’s side, he then couldn’t open the door, when eventually he got in he couldn’t start the engine, and when it did finally start he pulled the car forward from the car parking space and stalled it, such a shame, funny as hell, glad it wasn’t me, but still a shame, that’s what nerves can do to you right there, you can be as brilliant as you like but if you don’t get your act together on the big day it’s all for nothing. Somehow seeing just how nervous all the students were gave me great encouragement, don’t ask me why but I just thought, the examiners must see this all the time and they have to allow for a certain amount of mistakes just because of sheer nerves, as long as you don’t let it get to you and completely fall apart you’ll be ok. I’m sure that poor kid could get into the wrong side of the car and the stall it all before getting off the test centre car park and still pass his test, providing he gets it together and doesn’t do anything disastrous while he’s out on the road.
I set off again to find some new areas to test myself when I get a call from Claire, she said they had just arrived back at the training centre and were going to have lunch, so I said would it be ok if popped in to see you as I’m just round the corner. I rolled into the park and ride car park a few minutes later to see Claire sitting on the back of our truck eating her sandwiches waiting for me to turn up and I asked how her day was going, “Its good today” she said, “we have been spending time ‘tidying things up’ working on specific areas and making sure they’re on the ball”, I have to admire how amazingly confident Claire is considering her test is tomorrow, I’m a bag of nerves and I’m only starting my training tomorrow I really hope I’m as confident as Claire after my third days training, I will be well happy.
March 6th Claire’s test day – Day one Alan training
I travelled in with Claire today as her test had been moved to 2 o’clock which meant that she didn’t have to be in so early. I watched at the training center as she disappeared off on the 500 for the last few hours training before her test, she looked good on the bike and seemed supremely confident.
Meanwhile I was at last introduced to my 500cc training bike. It felt great but if I’m honest it was also awkward as hell, having got used to forward gears and a forward rear brake to now have my feet angled with the soles facing backwards did not feel right at all, and I could now see what Claire was going on about with the indicator switch, it felt as if you had to lift your thumb up and across the get to it instead of a convenient slide across that we had both become very accustomed to on the 125’s, to add to that in order to pull away smoothly you had to keep the revs up to 2500 while easing out the clutch. I found all this extremely frustrating, I just wanted to get on and ride I didn’t expect to have get used to a whole new way of doing things, it was worrying enough without all that as well. Anyway after a few goes up and down the car park I found myself adjusting to all the changes quite quickly and the feel and power of the bike was just fantastic, My instructor introduced himself as “The Bastard” “or Mike if you prefer”…. I think this was down to the fact that he bares an odd resemblance to Alan Bastard (Rik Mayall) from the TV show ‘The New Statesman’ rather than him being strict. He was in fact very friendly and I was grateful for that, although he was quite insistent that things must be done a particular way to the point of annoyance, but then again I was having to cope with so many different things all at the same time it probably just felt like that. finally he said “let’s try some emergency stops before we go out onto the roads”.
The other guy who would be training with me and also had his test on Monday was called Matt, he had apparently taken his test some three times before and failed and had got himself a bit of a reputation as being a bit ‘stroppy’ if things didn’t go the way he thought they should. That said, he seemed to have put all that behind him as today he was quite the cool customer, he certainly knew how to ride and already looked so competent on the bike that I’m pretty sure if he went for his test in an hour he would pass. Although he wasn’t ‘cocky’ with it I found it sligtly was annoying to be put alongside someone who was so well advance in his riding skill as him, I was always going to feel like ‘the newby’ who was ‘ballsing’ everything up and potentially holding him back which added a little extra pressure on me to pick things up quickly. Matt went first with the emergency stop …off he went, raced down the car park and stopped neatly and smoothly without any problems at all, next it was my turn. I had practiced this maneuver until I was blue in the face all week and was pretty sure I had got it down ….Off I went …first gear, second gear ……apply the front bake, clutch, foot down …..REVED THE HELL OUT OF THE ENGINE!!! ….. oops! “Try that again please Alan” …off I went through the whole procedure again ….REVED THE HELL OUT OF THE ENGINE!!! …..again ….once more …..same thing again! ….I kept doing it and couldn’t work out why I was doing it but try as I might I could not correct it, Eventually the owner ‘Dan’ came out and basically said “we’ll give you another couple of goes at this if you can’t do it properly them I’m afraid we can’t let you go out on the bike as I’m not prepared to risk our insurance should you have an accident, because if your hand slips off the clutch when you’re revving it like that in an emergency stop then the bike will just fly off and you could kill someone if not yourself”, I knew if it come to it that I could stop the bike in an emergency but for some reason I could not prevent the revving of the engine, worried now that I might not be allowed take my DAS course at all I really felt the pressure to sort the problem out, suggestions were coming at me from left right and centre, “you’re doing this ..when you should be doing that” but none of the suggestion were working, luckily for me I somehow managed to fluke two or three stops without revving the hell out of the engine enough to satisfied Dan that he could take the risk but he said quite sternly to Mike ….”He needs to sort that out”. I knew he was absolutely right but I was concerned because I just didn’t know how I was going to do it. Relieved that I wasn’t going to get hoofed off the course we got kited out with some extremely uncomfortable ear pieces and off we set to venture around Plymouth. Matt was out in front, followed by Mike the instructor and myself behind, with myself and Matt swapping positions at fairly regular intervals. Mike took us on various routes the examiners like to use and pointed out some of the pitfalls that tend to catch people out and generally kept the whole thing quite amusing and light heart if a little ‘whimsical’ at times, he does come out with some odd things but that’s his way and it seems to work and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the rides out, some of my Maneuvers need at little work but they weren’t beyond repair. The weather having started out fairly nice took a turn for the worse so we headed back to base as it was getting pretty late now anyway and I was desperate to find out how Claire had got on, as we rolled into the yard I could see Claire with a cup of tea waiting by the car, I parked up the bike and went over to asked how she got on ….. “I failed” she said… my heart sank … she said “I was nervous wreck” ….”when I got to the test centre I just fell apart, I was shaking and couldn’t think straight, my mind was a complete blank …he asked me questions about the bike before we set off and I just busked the answers …then we set off ….and then I made a complete balls up of the first maneuver, he asked me to pull into the curb and stop, and then pull away again, when I signaled to pull away I just gave a quick look over my shoulder but didn’t really look properly because I was so nervous and I pulled out in front of a car that was speeding up the road, that is what basically cost me my test, I made one or two other minor mistakes but I knew as soon as I had done that, that I had blown it, so I have booked another test and I’m determined to go for it again as soon as possible” … I was amazed that Claire had got herself worked up into such a state as I had seen her at lunch and see seemed really on the case and not in the least bit fazed by it, like i said before that’s what nervous can do to you, any other time Claire would have sailed through all of that but as soon as you put the words TEST and TEST CENTRE into proceeding then somehow everything just goes out the window and it’s a job to hold yourself together and keep a level head. She seemed to be taking it quite well under the circumstance and hadn’t got too emotional about it, she was just angry with herself for being so stupid and not having a proper look over her shoulder and letting her nerves get the better of her and really just wanted to go back as soon as possible and go for it again, which was great to see, she is strong and determined and realised the mistakes she made and I’m sure having gone through the mill on this occasion she will be better prepared the next time. At least she was happy to talk about it all so I quizzed her about all the aspects that I had also got concerns about, getting to grips with the nerves was obviously going to be a major part of this for me also, I had not been sleeping very well if at all since we booked these courses and I didn’t want it to turn into a monster for me, I was glad that I had already seen the test centre at least. Claire said the examiner asked her to do a U-turn in the road that had the most ridiculous camber, so much of a slope in fact that she was unable to put the stand down for the first part of the U-turn which is to get off the bike and manually push the bike around before then getting back onto it and riding it in a U-turn, that all seemed unfair to me, since the new test that comes in on the 27th of April has all the maneuvers done off-road on a flat car park, if its ok to perform a U-turn on a flat surface in a months time why are the examiners picking ridiculous cambered roads to test people out on now, I had a taste of some of these horrible cambered roads they like you to turn in myself as Mike had early tested us out on quite a few of them and if the U-turn wasn’t difficult enough, it certainly is not helped by some of the humped slopes with wide cobbled rain water troughs running along on either side of these roads the examiners like to use.

March 7th Alan day two training
Bright and early Saturday morning I was up and ready to get out the door having had yet another sleepless night, I had studied my grip and realised that it was this that was giving me the revving problems, maybe it’s because I played the drums for so many years that its natural for me to go for the ‘fist grip’ instinctively on the emergency stop and this was causing my thumb to roll the accelerator round every-time I pulled the front brake sharply, at least now I could visually see what I was doing wrong so I worked out a new grip which I’m calling ‘the claw’ that involves just pulling in the ends of my fingers while my thumb remains locked, this may come easy to anyone else but for me it was a struggled to prevent my thumb from wanting to wrap around each time, so consequently I’m lying in bed all night just practicing the ‘claw grip’ in an effort to finally nail this emergency stop problem.
Claire had also got up early with me to see me off, as I went to go out the door she broke down and had a cry, things had clearly got the better of her and she said “I don’t know if I can do this”, I was expecting this kind of reaction yesterday but she had obviously been bottling it up, I gave her a hug and a cuddle, I told her she’ll be fine, everyone at Ist Class had been raving about how good Claire had been over the last week and were amazed that she hadn’t passed, you just have to beat the nerves, you can do this, you’ve booked the test again, you have a clue what’s coming now, you have had professional training and you can’t let that go to waste, I’m convinced that next time you’ll do it without any problems, she seemed to recover a little so I gave her a kiss and said good-bye to head off for my second days training.
Today we had a different trainer his name was Darren, on first appearance he can look a little threatening with his shaven head and bolt through the eye brow but he turned out to be quite civilised and could talk for Europe!. he was quick to make us feel at ease once again. We had some time to practice in the car park before setting off so I was finally able to put my ‘claw grip’ to the test ……Yay ….it ‘fn’ worked ..woo hoo …I was chuffed to bits with myself …at last I’d nailed it …I was worried that I might fail because of ‘busking’ the stop …but now I had got it sussed and could pretty much do it every time although my thumb did try to get in on the act on the odd occasion.
Matt went out front first again and was his usual annoying smooth self, he really did have it down with only minor things which were almost not worth mentioning then it was my turn in front. Up until now I had been left to my own devices to find out how it should be done and since my CBT basically just tried to work out for myself what I was supposed to be doing, I had gleaned a lot of information from Claire during the past week about various thing that we should having been doing and I had tried my best to incorporate everything together, thinking I was doing the right thing, checking over both shoulders on a regular basis making sure I checked my mirrors regularly, trying to acknowledge all the speed changes while trying to keep a steady constant road position, the result of as this was a complete mess, confusion or what! by trying to do all the right things all the time I was basically all over the place, Darren to his credit was able to give me what was basically a ‘controlled blocking’ … it had to happen … I knew what I was doing could not be right I just didn’t know what was right anymore. He said “you basically need to start again” ..”forget everything you have been doing and throw it out the window” …”it’s great that you are doing your checks but you really don’t need to be doing so many all the time …..it causing you not to focus on the road ahead ….. cut the checks down to only when its required and you’ll be fine”….. he said “I know you think I’m nagging at you and you’re probably cursing me under your helmet , but I can assure you that you can be a good rider if you listen to what I’m telling you” ….I wasn’t cursing him, he was absolutely right, this was exactly what I needed, at last this was a professional telling me how to go about, it is exactly what I wanted, show me what I’m supposed to be doing and I’ll do it, I want to be good at this.
We then set off on another ride with myself in front once more this time armed with some knowledge about how to go about things, what a difference it made, my riding suddenly became smoother, not looking over my shoulder every five minutes but only when required, moving off at junctions after the mirror shoulder checks, cuts out the wobble, not being in such a desperate hurry to get to the required speed limit all the time, taking it easy around left turns and corners until I have lined up before applying the acceleration and basically just relaxing with it and enjoying it, how much more easy it all became almost instantly, all it took was some professional guidance and I was away, it didn’t suddenly make me an expert, I still made silly mistakes, but boy oh boy what a vast improvement, hat’s off to Darren for that he deserves full credit.
March 8th Alan day three training.
Today being Sunday was generally quite quiet on the roads but the weather could not make its mind up if it wanted to be sunny, lash it down or blow ten force gales or all three at once. Since this was the last training day before the tests tomorrow Darren asked us if we had any areas that we felt needed particular work on, I felt that although yesterday was a major step forward for me I was concerned that we didn’t do any maneuvers and I would like to really nail U-turns particularly on some of the dodgy camber roads that the examiners might take us on, Matt said he would like to go over a particular nasty junction by the Cherry Tree Pub that was the result of him failing at least one of his previous tests before, Darren had a fairly good idea that it would be that very same examiner that would do both of our tests tomorrow. I also suggested that I would like to go to the test centre once more just to get that monster out of my system once again.
And so started a much more involved day, the plan was that we would use the Test Center as a base and take turns being in front while Darren took us around various potential test routes performing all maneuvers where they would expect to do them all except the emergency stop, because of legal reasons they can only be carried out at the training centre so we had made sure and practice them before we set off.
Each time we arrived back at the Test Centre Darren would run through a critique of our performance pointing out areas that individually we may need to watch, but overall being consistently encouraging. By the end of the day I was feeling pretty confident with myself and just hoped that the weather would not be as awful as it was today, its tough enough without the weather chipping as well.
March 9th Alan Test Day.
I had to be in nice and early because Matt’s test was at 8:30 which meant we had an hour to go over things in the car park before he was taken off to the test center for the big one. Having been cool as a cucumber all week Matt was showing real signs of nerves this morning, I said to him “come on Matt you’ve got it down, you shouldn’t be worried, you should be wearing one of these orange instructor bibs that’s how good you are”. Once the bikes were wheeled out of the shed and fired up we both took turns riding up and down the car park trying emergency stops and U-turns until Darren said “ok, lads lets give the bikes a rest because Matt you’ll be leaving to go up the Test Centre shortly”, Dan the owner of 1st Class training accompanied Matt on the short journey. Meanwhile I was left at the yard, my test was not until 9:30 so there wasn’t much I could do but try to compose myself and have a cup of tea. Having had yet another sleepless night I was doing alright, in fact considering the nerves I’ve had all week this was probably best I’ve been, I was feeling pretty confident largely because I was convinced I had also nailed the ‘counter balance U-turn something I had only really been experimenting with a couple of times the day before and wasn’t sure if I’d be brave enough to try it on my test, but having had several goes with it again this morning it felt right.
Dan had arrived back from the Test Centre and within no time at all it was my turn to be heading up there with him. Kited out with the ear piece we set off, I was very nervous but once on the bike it was all down to concentration. When we pulled in to the Test Centre I saw a very shell-shocked Matt standing over his bike “I passed” he said, I slapped him on the back “well done mate, I never doubted you could do it” I was genuinely pleased for him, if someone as skilled as him could not get through the test then we’re all in trouble, Dan asked Matt to wait for him while he organised me and my paperwork etc. I followed Dan into the Test Centre building through a couple of doors and eventually into a small office. He asked me for my paperwork and took it out of the wallets and laid everything out on the table for the examiner to see, apparently they like to see it that way so no £50 notes happen to ‘accidentally’ get mixed up with it all in an attempt to bribe them. We then sat down and waited for the examiner to arrive and a normally very quiet Dan made an attempt at small talk in order to keep me calm which was much appreciated.
Eventually Jeff the examiner made his way into the room and introduced himself, he quickly checked through my paperwork and began his well rehearsed instructions about the radio and if I understood him I should nod and if at any point I couldn’t hear him I should shake my head from side to side and he would pull over and sort out the problem, I followed him back out to the car park and did the required number plate reading, we then made our way to the bike whereupon he asked me some questions …. “Can you tell me where the brake oil reservoir is and how you would check for sufficient oil levels please” …I then went into great explanation about having to clean the eye-glass if the bike has one fitted and checking the oil is between max and min marks and then removing the dipstick, cleaning it , replacing it and checking its between the max / min mark, pleased that I actually remembered it all he then said …”so that’s how you’d check the brake oil reservoir is it? ….like a donkey I realised that I had just given him an explanation about checking the oil and not the brake fluid, it was the word ‘Oil’ that threw me…..I said “my apologies, I thought you meant checking the oil” ….I immediately pointed to the brake fluid reservoir on the handle bar and went into that explanation. Eventually we set off , he gave me some instructions about getting on the bypass, so I moved off and followed them to the letter and before long I was riding at 70mph on the bypass and then I hear “can you please take the @£$%&* exit please” ….the what? what did he say?….these were not two-way radios and I had no way of asking him to repeat the instructions, so I thought I should shake my head to let him know I couldn’t hear him as he instructed me to do …still nothing so I took the decision to pull into the next lay-by and hope that he would also pull in and we could sort out the radio, but instead he kept going and giving me instructions via the radio. He told me to get back on the bypass, come off at the first exit and I would see him at the lights, whereupon I should overtake him and continue with the test, ….I thought I’d blown it but what else could I do? it must have been the speed that was causing the interference I guess. Anyway I managed to catch up with him again as instructed and we continued on before arriving at a quite side road where he decides to test my maneuvers, this wasn’t a road that I had previously been to….it was nice and flat , I went through the emergency stop, push round U-turn and the ride round U-turn with the counterbalance method and it went like a dream, he said that concludes the maneuvers part of the test if you’d just like to pull in front of my car and we’ll continue…. that was a bit sneaky as he was also testing me on my angled approach without actually letting me know but luckily enough I got that down as well. The rest of the test went pretty smooth except for one time I looked down and my indicator was still flashing, I wasn’t sure how long it had been on but I cancelled it immediately and hoped to get away with it. I realised after a while that the road he was taking me on was going to come out at the nasty junction that Matt was so afraid of and that I had only seen once the day before by the Cherry Tree Pub, it’s an extremely busy intersection with no road markings in the centre to give you a position, if you are turning right as I was you have to keep to the right of centre in the middle of the junction to allow oncoming traffic to pass by you on either side and it can get a little hairy if you don’t get it right, plus if you are stuck behind two or three vehicles you can easily get caught out when the lights change as there is barely enough time to make it across before the traffic from the left is descending on you. As luck would have it a stream of cars were waiting to turn right which meant I was either going to be first in the queue when it came to my turn or I ‘m going to be stuck at the back struggling to make it across, thankfully one car in front of me had to wait at the lights because they couldn’t make it, this meant I now had some sanctuary behind one car turning right and it gave me sufficient time to turn right without getting caught out, relieved once again to have negotiated a particularly nasty junction quite successfully I knew now that we would shortly be heading back when I got a message over the radio “can you cancel your indicator please” ……Shit …..shit….I was concentrating so hard on that junction I forgot to turn my indicator off and worse still the examiner had to tell me to do it!….as far as I am aware that is a definite fail, it is one of the major cardinal sins of Motorcycling and is the sort of thing that can get you killed, I really though that’s it, I’ve blown it now, you only need one major fault and its all over, within five minutes of that we were pulling back into the test center. I watched him leaving his car with a very long face and I had resigned myself to having failed, he asked me to follow him back into the little room where we started and he sat down and said “well, I’m going to give you a pass with three minor marks, two for leaving the indicators on and one for an incident of lack of planning. I said “Can I have your permission to run around the room like a headless chicken please?” he cut a wry smile and carried on with some paper work.
I couldn’t believe it I had…. PASSED…..I BLOODY PASSED …still shaking it just wouldn’t register I thought there must be something else still to come I can’t have completed everything ……. CHRIST …….I’VE PASSED!!!!! when I eventually calmed a little I asked him about the ‘incident of planing’ and he said “oo …I can’t remember now” ….I thought it can’t have been that bad if the examiner can’t remember it and we’ve only just got back from the test ….but hey who cares …I passed.
Outside Dan was waiting to accompany me back to the training center and I told him I had passed, he said “well done” …. I’ll be honest, I don’t think Dan had me down as passing today as he did look a bit surprised, especially after my debacle with the emergency stop on the first day, but that’s how it goes you just can’t tell as Darren said, he’s seen some very accomplished riders turn up and fail their test and other dodgy shaky riders manage to pull it off, its all down to that 40 / 45 minutes riding and a certain amount of good fortune. Today the weather was fantastic for me and I most certainly got the rub of the green.”
When we got back to the training centre Claire was waiting there for me, she had made her way into Plymouth on my bike to come and see how I’d got on which was lovely, I rode in with my fist waving in the air …”WHOO HOO ……I PASSED”. Claire gave me a big hug and a kiss and we jumped about with joy it was wonderful, I was a little hyper as you would expect, just waffling on about this and that, and still visibly shaking with disbelief. I really wanted to say a big thank you to Darren without whom I wouldn’t have stood a hope in hell but unfortunately he was already out with a new batch of students so I said my thanks and good byes to those that were there before Claire and I made our way home for the ritual ripping up the ‘L’ plates passing out ceremony, perhaps now my body will allow me to get some sleep.

March 20th 2009 Trip to France.
Some time ago we spotted and advert in our local paper advertising cheap day trips across to France from Plymouth, it basically consisted of an overnight ferry to Roscoff, spend the day mooching around France before returning back to the ferry on the night for the return overnight journey back to Plymouth, you just make a week-end of the whole trip, the offer was too good to refuse at only £30 for both of us return including the bikes, so we cut out the advert and kept it safe until we might be able to use it and hopefully remember to book it before the offer ran out. Just before we took our Motorbike test we decided this would be a good time to book the trip to France that meant we would have already gone through all the business of the tests and we would then be in a position to try out our first touring trip on the bikes proper. Having booked it up we decided to go for a little upgrade and have a small cabin between us as the ferry journey would be over night and it would at least give us the chance to get our heads down and a place to leave all our stuff while we wandered about. It wasn’t long before the trip was upon us and I must admit I was quite exited by the prospect, having packed the bare minimum of essentials we strapped a couple of small bags to our bikes, armed with tickets, passports, license’s we set off into the night. We left Home about 7.30 aiming to get to the ferry port in Plymouth for around 8.30ish, We were not due to sail until 10 so that would give us plenty of time to find the place, get the bikes on, and sort out our cabin etc. Even the journey into Plymouth was exiting particularly as it was dark, we arrived in good time and checked in before riding the bike onto the ferry to be strapped down for the trip.
I couldn’t quite get over the enormous size of the ferry, I don’t really know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn’t this, stunned by the sheer size of the thing we made our way up several flights of stairs eventually emerging into a very swanky restaurant and bar area, as it turned out our cabin was situated at the far end of the ship so we wandered though yet more bars, shops, mezzanine floors stage and entrainment areas before finally reaching the cabin section, very impressed with the ships modern decor it must have been fairly new in service as everything was still spanking new with all the carpets and furniture still looking pristine. We soon found ourselves standing outside our cabin door fiddling with the card board key slot to gain access, once inside it was ‘bijou’ to say the least but for the money we had paid we couldn’t really complain, although we did think for a while that we had been conned because there was only one bed which really was only wide enough to fit one person in, so slightly miffed at that I volunteered to lie on the floor and let Claire have the bed when like a pair of donkeys we suddenly realised that a second bed could be pulled down from out of the ceiling forming the top bunk, pillows mattress bed cloths and all! …what are we like …it’s a good job we didn’t go and make a fuss…how embarrassing that would have been.

Happy now that at least we both had a bed to sleep in we changed out of our biking gear and set off to find the bar,

Entrainment was already underway when we arrived with a Duo on stage who were good at what they did (not as good as us obviously!) followed then by what seemed to be a spontaneous appearance by a traveling jazz band called Panama who just happen to have their instruments with them, it wasn’t long before some very lively jazz tunes were being thrust upon a captive audience who for the most part were quite appreciative. By this time the ship was well underway and the very strong and very pricey beer was also beginning to kick in and it was hard to tell if it was the beer or the sea that was causing our unsteady foot work but it all felt a little weird. Magicality follow the jazz band and they proved to be very entertaining, with lots of close up tricks and illusions that I hadn’t seen before, by the time they had finished it was beginning to get late so myself and Claire thought it would be a good time to stagger back to the cabin and try out the old sleeping on a ship thing. It was extremely odd to begin with but once you got used to the gentle sway for me at least it was quite soothing and help me drift off to sleep.The following morning we were gently woken by mellow harp music at 5.50 coming from the speakers in the cabin, as Claire was nearest she reached over and turned it off, minutes later it came on again, the process went on until we decided it’s probably a good idea to get up since the music was not going to be stopped. We got up and dressed and went out onto the deck so that Claire could have her first cigarette of the day, and what a day, its not often I’m up and about at 6 in the morning catching the sun rise appearing over the horizon but this was truly glorious, I hoped this was a good sign for the weather that is to come for the rest of the day. We thought it would be best to have a full on fry up which would keep us going for the morning so for €4.60 we got the works, the knifes and forks had barely touched the plate when they started asking people to collect their belonging and make their way to the car decks as we will shortly be arriving in Roscoff. Awesome, back at the cabin fully dressed in our bike gear making final checks that we had got everything we needed we excitedly made our way down to the car decks to the bikes, this was it our first venture onto foreign soil on bikes and we were really looking forward to it, although a little bit worried about remembering to keep on the right side of the road. Disembarkation went smoothly enough and as we were at the back it was simply a case of following what everyone else was doing until we made it clear of the port and out onto normal roads, we pulled in after only a few miles so that we could check the map and Claire could have another cigarette. The area we were in was quite rural and it seemed the main source of farming around these parts was cows and cabbage and the combination of smells was pretty pungent as you can imagine, but it was great to finally be off the boat and on the the roads. I brought with me a map that I had downloaded off google and had worked out a rough route that we might take which basically was a large loop to the city of Brest and back to Rosscoff with plenty of stops at towns and villages on route and anything else that might catch our eye. We realised that we hadn’t got any euros, the plan was to change some money on the ferry but some how we contrived to miss all the opening times and still ended up with our pounds, so now the plan one was to head to the nearest bigish town and try to find a cash machine. This town happened to be Le Folgoet. We managed to make it to Le Folgoet but it was becoming apparent that either my google map was not detailed enough or the French were not particularly fond of sign posts as we literally went round the houses on quite a few occasions to eventually end up on the right road, this was to become quite a theme throughout the day.

At last reaching our first destination we parked up the bikes and set off to try to find a cash machine and having tried looking in a few likely shops and been unsuccessful we thought it best to ask a local, this was going to be fun as neither I nor Claire could speak any French and chances our in a small town like this they wouldn’t speak any English. I spotted a lady who looked like she might help us and asked with the only bits of French I could remember from school “Excusez moi parlez-vous anglais?” she said “non” I gestured with a card “Le Bank?” …”Ah Oui” …..and off she babbled in French but although we couldn’t understand a word of it we got the gist of what she was trying to tell us …’their is one up the road on the right and there is one up the road on the left’ ..”Merci beaucoup” I replied and off we set to find it and Et voilà ! there was indeed a cash machine and it had an English version on it… Fantastique. So armed with euros we chose to head for the big city which in this case was Brest, we were a little apprehensive about traveling around a city with all the traffic on a Saturday but decided to tackle it full on, The weather was simply gorgeous and if you didn’t know better you’d have said it was mid summer, by the time we arrived in Brest we were extremely hot with all our bike gear on and so it was a welcome stop, it seems in France that when it comes to parking motorbikes you can just put them where ever you want, as long as they’re not causing an obstruction. We found a suitable place to leave the bikes and wandered off around the shops, but first stop toilet, this is another thing that the French don’t seem to want to let you know about, try as we might we could not find a public toilet so I came up with the idea of asking in a hotel if they would be kind enough to let us use their facilities. I have to say that If I’m honest I didn’t have a high opinion of the French before this trip due to previous experiences in France when I was in a band millions of years ago but my opinion has definitely altered throughout today as people have been only to willing to help us out and considering we are in France and we don’t speak any french that’s very good going, the lady on reception was only to happy for us you use there facilities of which we were very grateful.
Next stop we wanted to have a coffee while sitting at a table out on the pavement as we have seen in many films, we picked a delightful little coffee shop on the corner and sat out in the sun drinking a thimble full of the most bitter coffee you’ve ever tasted with a side order of mini dark chocolate …when in Rome …do as the French! …..God it was horrible …although the setting was just what we wanted and the sun just baked us ….beautiful.

              

After that we looked around a few of the shops, communicating in Frenglish, basically pointing and nodding with a few ‘Oui’s’ and ‘Merci’s’ thrown in for good measure, even Claire started to throw one or two Bonjours in! We ended up with a few little gifts and a couple of gloriously fantastic eclairs from a Patisserie that emitted the most invitingly ‘come and eat me’ smells out onto the street as we passed that we just had to partake. Once back at the bikes we gorged ourselves on sandwiches and cakes before piling on all the bike clobber and setting off in the heat to the joys of lack of sign-age to be able to navigate our way out of the place.
This point represented halfway on our bike tour as from now on we would be heading out to the coast and following the road eventually leading back to Roscoff. It was great to have a change of scenery and different points of interest and we were definitely getting the feel of being somewhere completely different, we particularly liked the houses, they had a type of Hansel and Gretel thing going on that really appealed to us
even the older villages, the farms and manor house’s with their weather beaten shabby chique looks were completely charming. The only part which was a little ‘dish of ointment’ was the overall landscape, it was pretty flat with not a lot going on, I was hoping to see tree-lined avenues and hillside vineyards but alas this was not the area of France for that, this had more in common with Norfolk, England. Don’t get me wrong I thoroughly enjoyed it but I was hoping for a little more spectacular scenery.

On one of our many stops we pulled into a village called Cleder, while looking a photos of the route on google I noticed that Cleder had a Chateau which I thought would be nice to see and maybe take some pictures, Once in the village there were indeed a few signs directing us to the Chateau, but in typical style they just stopped, we followed roads for several miles in different directions but could not find the Chateau and in the end resolved to ask a local again. The only person that was around was a little old lady going about her business, I pulled up along side her and said “Excusez moi parlez-vous anglais?” she said “non” I then said “Chateau?” she looked completely bemused, I said again “Le Chateau” in my best Inspector Clouseau accent but to no avail, she clearly didn’t understand what I was saying ….. I mean we were in a village with a ‘Chateau’ that we couldn’t have been very far from at all and it seems this little old lady was not aware of it …..I mean what’s the French for Chateau? ….in the end I just gave up….I let her waffle on in French until she drew breath and just said “Oui Merci beaucoup” and rode off… Claire and I thought we had best make our way back to Roscoff and see if we could find a Hypermarket in order to stock up on cheap cigarettes and some wine to take home. Here again it was a little ‘dish of ointment’ all the supermarkets and hypermarkets that we happened upon where just regular supermarkets as we would have at home distinctly lacking in any bulk buy wines, beers or cigarettes. We did manage to find one place that boasted bulk wines and beers but once we looked around the prices didn’t seem any cheaper than they were in England so we only bought one bottle of French wine and a bottle of Plymouth Gin, the fags would have to wait until we checked out the shops on the ferry. We rolled back onto the ship about 6.15 having had on reflection a fantastic days riding which I’m sure will live long in the memory, Claire and I were completely shattered by the time we made it back to our cabin.

We thought we had best get ourselves some dinner after which we would check out the duty-free shops then head back to bed for a little rest before hitting the bar again. That all went according to plan with a lovely stake and chips dinner and a few souvenirs from the gift shop

but once we got back to the cabin and our heads hit the pillows that was it, we were out for the count and didn’t wake up until the sound of gentle harps through the speakers again the following morning. We had a very light breakfast this time

before disembarking at Plymouth around 8pm and heading back to Looe on the left hand side of the road. All in all is was a superb trip and has only served to wet our appetite for some more, hopefully the next time will be on larger bikes, but either way we can’t wait.

         

Tuesday 24th March 09

Today is Claire’s second test day, we have gone out every possible evening to practice turns in the road, this is the area that Claire feels is her weak point, everything else she is quite happy with and is confident that she will be alright. So turns in the road we mostly practiced at our local car park where there is a small section of road which is not to busy and is at least away from people’s house’s to avoid annoying them with the constant noise of the bikes.

Claire suffers a lot from sciatica which affect is like an aching in the bones, she seems to get this particularly when the weather is changing, usually when it gets cold and wet, but it can be most uncomfortable for her and in this case resulted in her limiting the amount of time she was able to devote to practicing the turns as it was hurting both her leg and back. So each day resulted in about half and hour to an hour before she’d had enough and had to stop.
Her turns as it happens were not bad at all, when she concentrated properly and focused then she completed each turn without problems although she is still prone to slight lapses and ending up bodging the turn although thankfully this didn’t happen to often and I was convinced that once she got back on the 500cc she would find the turns even easier.

On the morning of her test she was able to practice quite extensively on the 500 in their yard and by all account was doing an excellent job turning well within the space without any problems whatsoever.
I decided to make my way in on my bike once again to greet Claire at the test center when she got back from her test and hopefully celebrate with her, I didn’t go with Claire on the morning as I thought it would be best to let her get herself together and in the right frame of mind without my interference. I arrived at the training centre at 10 and Claire was due to arrive back between 10.15 and 10.30. Pacing backwards and forwards on the car park in anticipation I began to feel very nervous even though it wasn’t me taking the test, every little noise that sounded vaguely like a motorbike I jumped up to see if it was Claire arriving back. Around 10.30 the bikes rolled back in from the test center and I tentatively put my thumbs up to which Claire with helmet on began to shake her head …she hadn’t passed!! ….please tell me she’s having me on…I thought….but when she parked the bike up and took her helmet off she told me what had happened .. she failed on the turn in the road!! …she got nervous …started off all wrong and put her foot down which is an instant fail …apart from that she only made two minor mistakes and the rest of the test went perfectly no major mistakes at all ….I couldn’t believe it I felt terrible for her after all the effort we had been putting on turns in the road and that is what cost her the test…she was very down as you can imagine, so much so that she said she didn’t want to put in for another test, but I insisted that she did otherwise everything she has done up to now will have been for nothing, I said “you failed on one thing that’s all….we must work even harder on that ‘one thing’ and get it right, everything else is clearly fine so you must put in for another test while you still know what you’re doing… if you quit now you will lose all of that” …so I insisted that Claire must go for it again and I went into the office to book up another test for her “don’t waste this opportunity by wallowing in self-pity, be determined that next time you are going to do it and be positive”… she agreed to go for it again and so we booked test number three for Monday April 5th at 9:30.
Our first Harley Davidson:
I decided that once we got back from France that I should try to sell my Suzuki Marauder 125 on Ebay as the next step for both of us is to look at getting bigger bikes although we are now in two minds as to what type of bike we should go for, Since we have been doing the DAS course both Claire and myself have really taken to the Honda 500 and the normal road bike riding position as opposed to the cruiser style that we currently have, its something we never thought we would take too but there you go so, although I still love Harley’s and we still aim to do the route 66 thing, we have come to the conclusion that for the English roads and touring that perhaps normal road bikes / tourers might be a better way to go for us unless we happen to come across a Harley that we just cannot say no to, In which case perhaps we could get one of each and that way we can get the best of both worlds. So I also began looking in earnest on Ebay for a possible large bike that we may be able to afford on our budget of around £2500. For that money you could just about get a reasonable second-hand road bike but Harley’s were few and far between unless they were very old or beaten up, for a decent Harley you need upwards of £5000 – £15,000 there were some beautiful bikes for sale out there but they remain un-reachable for us at the moment. But then I found one, it was a Harley XHL1200 1990 with 30000 miles on the clock it looked in excellent condition for the year and had a lot of extras included in the sale, even the odd orange colour didn’t put me off, it did have a reserve price and it did have some bids on it already although they were around the £2000 mark I decided I would e-mail the seller and ask what his reserve price was to see if it was even worth my being interested, if it was too high then I would just have to forget it and keep looking. The seller eventually emailed back and said his reserve was £2850. As the bids on his bike hadn’t gone up yet I decided to see if he would accept my £2500, he e-mailed back to say that if the bike did not make the reserve by the end of the sale then he would e-mail me. So happy with that I continued look around while keeping and eye on the Harley.
Two days later the Harley sale had ended and it hadn’t achieved the reserve, I waited patiently in the morning to see if the seller would email me and sure enough he did, his name was Simon, he was reluctant to accept my offer but in the absence of any other offers near his asking price he said he would be willing to accept my £2500 providing I wasn’t going to be a ‘tyre kicker’ and try to ‘haggle’ with the price, he also was insistent that I show him proof of insurance before he would let me take the bike away and he would also require a letter of acceptance that I agreed to buying the bike as seen.
I told him that I would not be a tyre kicker nor would I try to haggle the price I would happily pay a £500 deposit and he could rest assured the insurance would be in place, I told him that the bike looks good in the pictures and the description also sounded excellent and I trust that he was being perfectly honest with me and was not trying to hide anything, I would be happy to write an acceptance letter for the bike. So everyone happy with that, the next step was to set the wheels in motion, I arranged with a professional bike collection company called CBT (Complete Bike Transportation) who currently had a special offer on of £99 no vat to collect and deliver any bike to any destination in England, since I live in Cornwall and the Harley is in Duns, Boarders which is practically Scotland it would be at least a fifteen hour journey each way for me to collect the bike so CBT’s offer was just perfect and better still they said they could pick the bike up tomorrow!
Claire and I were both exited by the idea of actually owning a Harley, when she came home from work we set about sorting out the insurance and dealing with the bank transfer. I had to speak to Simon via e-mail and telephone conversation several times throughout the day and in that brief time I found him to be a very honest chap who obviously cared an awful lot about his bike and really didn’t want to see it go but his circumstances were dictating it, he was happy to forget the paypal deposit and just have us pay the whole £2500 via bank transfer into his account, he supplied me with all his details to be able to complete the deal, this way the money would be in his bank account tomorrow morning and CBT would be coming to collect the bike in the evening, Claire had already sorted out insurance for the bike which was to begin at midnight tonight, that just left the acceptance letter, again thankfully he was happy for us to email a letter of acceptance to him, he had also gone from being very weary of me in the beginning to accepting that I too was an honest and trust worthy guy who would be true to my word, he obviously loved the bike and wanted to make sure is was going to a good home that was pretty much it.
The following morning I had confirmation from Simon that the £2500 was in his bank account and the the bike collection company had been in touch with him about picking the bike up, he had also received our letter of acceptance and was generally happy that everything was going according to plan. He did get a little concerned later on that evening because the collection company hadn’t arrived yet, but by 6.30 I had and email from him to say that the bike had now been safely collected and was now on its way. So halfway there now, the Harley now officially belongs to us, the log book has been partly filled in and should arrive at our house in a couple of days for me to complete and send off to the DVLA, the bike is fully insured in my name and it is bought and paid for, that now just leaves delivery, Unfortunately for us, CBT have also got other bikes to collect and deliver and we have to fit in with their schedule which means that they won’t be down in the Cornwall area until Tuesday so we still have a few days to wait before we can take the Harley Davidson 1200 out for a spin …..come on ….come on ……
Tuesday 31st March 09 Harley Delivery Day
7 o’clock in the morning the phone goes and its CBT calling to let me know that the Harley is waiting outside ….yay! …I rushed around like a headless chicken trying to find something to put on and remembering to bring the camera to take some pictures of the event, I didn’t take my helmet deliberately so I couldn’t ride it until Mike from CBT had left, I just wanted to try it out without an audience, at least the first time.
As I went down the path Mike had already got his bike trailer detached and most of the contents of his van namely other motorbikes strewn about the place to make way for my Harley which was strapped down right at the front of the van, 

I looked on as he carefully rolled the bike gently down the ramp and onto the road putting it on the stand for me to have a look at, by this time Claire had also made it out to have a look and we took some pictures of each other sitting on the bike.
Mike handed over the various documents, and the keys and other bits and pieces and then went through how to start-up the bike
With this Harley’s you have to put the key in the ignition fire up the start button then remove the key so it doesn’t fall out while riding.
Once the bike fired up what a sound, it was still early in the morning and it must have woken up half the town, the bike is equipped with ‘screaming eagle’ exhaust pipes and boy can you hear them, because the bike hasn’t really been running for a while it required some choke, but here again on this Harley the choke automatically springs back in, so you have to hold it out while the bike warms up or alternatively use the acceleration lock something that Simon the previous owner had mentioned to me that I might find useful its is a small screw device fitted on the handle bar that when tightened with thumb and forefinger allows you to lock the throttle making  it ideal to warm up the engine.
We handed over payment to Mike for delivery then waited for him to disappear up the road before taking the Harley for a spin, again just incase I made an arse of myself and dropped it or something.
Once the way was clear I fired up the Harley and set the acceleration lock once again, Claire had brought me out my helmet and gloves and now was the big moment, my first ever ride on a Harley Davidson and a 1200 at that!
I rode the bike for about a mile up the road before turning it round and heading back to Claire what a truly awesome sound, In that short time I could already see that I would need to make some little adjustments to the lever angles on the handle bars and the gear pedal needed to be angled up to a more comfortable position, but overall it was fantastic, I also noticed that the turning circle was not as tight as I had been used to but I’m sure I will adapt to all that or it adjust to suit in time. Claire was waiting for me on the pavement outside our house and on my return as I was approaching I revved the engine (showing off) before pulling over to the right to slow down and stop.
The brakes on Harley’s are notoriously bad and I’m told one of the first things new Harley owners do is get ‘Billet’ brakes fitted, the guy who I bought the bike off told me to be weary of the brakes but in the excitement of a new bike and everything I kind of forgot that,
I had also forgotten to take the throttle lock off and worse still what was happening was when I revved (showing off) the throttle did not spring back because of the lock and so instead of slowing down the bike picked up speed consequently when I tried to slow it down it didn’t want to know. So I was heading for three cast iron bollards and I could just see myself slamming into them, I tried my best to avoid hitting them, and just caught the outside of the last bollard which bent the foot peg and brake right back, don’t know how I didn’t brake my leg, the bike then went over because of the impact and luckily I landed with the bike on top of me on the footpath and not in the road, right outside my house with Claire looking on in horror.
Because the oil cap was just a push in cap it fell out on impact and engine oil just poured out everywhere, plus it was constantly leaking out of the oil pipes that had now been split by the bent foot peg.
With assistance from Claire we manged to get the bike up again (its frigging’ heavy!) and began to survey the damage. For me I just had a slight graze on my knee, how I didn’t come off much worse is just a miracle, I could have slammed into the bollards, a wall, an oncoming car or even someone else on the pavement, it makes me shiver just to think about it.
But a grazed knee is all I have to show for it and I’m extremely thankful that’s all it was. I was absolutely distraught, our new Harley, that hadn’t been delivered more than ten minuets was now un-ridable, I could have cried, I really didn’t know what to do, how was I going to get it to a garage, who was going to repair it, how much would all this cost, when would I ever get to ride it again? all this stuff was just running around my head, I was pretty stressed out by it all, and couldn’t believe what had just happened.
Between myself and Claire we managed to get the bike up the path and parked outside our house before Claire had to go off to work, having calmed down a little one thing was certain If I ever got the bike up and running again I most definitely will not be using the throttle lock ever again. I decided to look in the yellow pages for the nearest bike repair garage as Andy from A&A Motorcycles who we used before had since moved back to Bristol. Before he left he did recommend ‘Liskeard Motorcycles’ to me so I eventually tracked down their number and called them up and spoke to a chap called Peter, I explained to him what I had done to my bike and asked if he would be able to fix it for me. He was very calming and reassuring and basically said he could pick the bike up no problems, he would check it over thoroughly and if it can be mended he was definitely the man for the job, and if it needed replacement parts he reckoned that they would be easily sourced and he could get the bike up and running for me again no problem. I found him to be very reassuring and arranged for him to come and pick the bike up tomorrow.
In the meantime since I couldn’t ride my Harley I decided to give the bike a good clean, although it was still in fairly good condition it definitely needed some TLC, I may not be very mechanical but I do like to keep my bike clean and gleaming, I likened this bike to a ‘wild horse’… It just wasn’t happy about being moved, kept in a van for a few days, new owners etc, and it was basically pissed off, and decided to take it out on me …. so we had a little chat and now we’ve come to an agreement .. and that is … that if I look after him …he will look after me and we will develop some respect for each other. By the end of the day he was looking ‘show piece’ all chrome parts were gleaming, parts had been cleaned that hadn’t seen polish for a few years and it really was looking stunning and worth every penny I paid for it and more, it really is a beautiful bike.
Wednesday 1st April 09.
Today was an odd day indeed, at the beginning of the day I had two bikes, a Harley 1200 and a Marauder 125, but by the end of the day I had neither. Peter arrived at around 3 in the afternoon to pick up our Harley to be repaired, I helped him get the bike down the path and loaded onto his trailer before watching the bike disappear up the road and out of sight for an undetermined amount of time, although he did say he would call me tomorrow once he had been able to really asses the full damage and keep me informed of the cost.
During the day I had also received a phone call regarding my Marauder 125 for sale on Ebay, a young lad wanted to come over and view it and said if he liked it he was prepared to pay my £700 asking price. Within about ten minuets of my Harley disappearing he turned up to view the 125. He took the bike for a quick spin around the car park and said…. “yeah, I like it ….I’ll take that off you for £700” …..with that we strolled back to my house to sort out money, paper work and keys etc before he too disappeared up the road and out of sight …so now as Claire so eloquently put it ….I’m “Billy no bikes”
Thursday 9th April 09
Claire took her third Motorbike test on Monday 6th and unfortunately did not pass, apart from the ‘major fault’ she actually failed on she only got one minor mark on her test sheet which is basically a near perfect ride, she completed all her maneuvers this time without any trouble and was on her way back to the test centre within a stones throw from finishing when a set of traffic lights caught her out, these were on quite a busy carriage way which at this point has three lanes running together with the right hand lane being a ‘filter lane’ and when their set of lights change it can be a little confusing and easily mistaken for the main lanes and this is unfortunately what happened to Claire although she only slowed down she didn’t actually stop, but that slowing down was apparently enough to give her a ‘fail’ which I personally feel was incredibly harsh, but in the eyes of the examiner he deemed it to be a serious enough offense to cause Claire to fail her test. When Claire got home she was understandably distraught ….I mean she was just so close and everything else was spot on…its heart breaking. So we have put in for yet another test for her and the only one left available is on the 25th of April two days before they change the Motorcycle test to a new two-part test which may mean Claire having to take the full DAS course again if she were to fail a fourth time. But she’s adamant that she will pass the next time, she pretty much had it in the bag this time but for one stupid mistake so next time she is determined to nail it.
Meanwhile I still await progress on my Harley. I originally found Pete from Liskeard Motorcycle quite reassuring and he gave me the feeling that my bike was in good hands and would be back on the road shortly, but as I write it’s still in the garage not being fixed. It seems he was trying to track down second-hand parts to keep my costs down, don’t get me wrong I’m grateful for that, he was supposed to get them on Saturday, and then fix them to my bike on Tuesday as he was too busy with other stuff on Monday, but it turns out that he wasn’t able to get hold of the parts on Saturday and didn’t keep me informed, so I’m merrily going about my business getting all excited about getting my bike back on Tuesday only to phone him on Tuesday to find out that he wasn’t able to get the second had parts, so nothing has happened to my bike whatsoever. He is obviously very busy with other bits and pieces and it seems my bike has been pushed to the back of the queue, I have to say I was extremely annoyed with this, Pete has now had my bike for a whole week and nothing has been done. He has been on to a local Custom Harley place in Roach called B&H and enquired about new parts and they run in quite expensive at somewhere in the region of £300 for a full set of forward controls, so with all the other bits and pieces that would be required this was now looking like quite a major money job. I decided it was time to call my insurance company, something I wish I had done from the beginning now, so anyway I spoke to them and told them about the incident and that I would like to make a claim and they were happy to go ahead and process that, they just needed Pete from the garage to fax over all the details of the damage and repair estimated so they can arrange an assessor to come out and view the bike and process the claim if its acceptable. So I phoned Pete and asked if he could fax the repair estimate in as soon as possible and in what is becoming all to familiar style he said he was too busy to complete the estimate and would not be able to do that until this evening.
I get a phone call from my insurance company this morning telling me that they have received the repair estimate from Pete, but because it is now Friday and Monday is also a bank holiday that the assessor will not be able to come out to see the bike until Tuesday at the earliest next week …oh frustration!!! ….Meanwhile I get a call from ‘H’ at B&H’ in Roach to say that he now has all the parts in that Pete ordered for me to come and collect the cost will be £502, I have decided that I will to pay for the parts come what may even if the insurance company turn down the claim I still need these parts so sod it if the parts are there ready to be fitted it will at least save some time either way once the decision is made. So I have arranged to go over to pick up and pay for the parts at 4 o’clock today and I will drop them round to Petes in Liskeard if he is still open.
Tuesday 14th April 09
I phoned up my insurance company today to find out if the assessor will be going to check my bike out today and lo and behold they said ‘yes’ he is scheduled to assess my bike today, so as it stands my bike is still at Pete’s garage awaiting the assessor, although it also has all the replacement parts that are required to repair the damage and come what may the bike should be repaired before this weekend hopefully with the assessors approval, I await the phone call to say that he has been.
Around 4:30 having not heard from anyone yet I decided I’d called Pete to see if the assessor had been but unfortunately he said ‘not yet’, Pete said he’d been waiting there all day but as yet no-one has turned up. I decided to get back on to my insurance company to find out what was going on. After navigating my way though the various phone options eventually I got to speak to the same guy I spoke to that morning and asked him if the assessor would still be viewing my bike today as it was now getting late and as yet he hadn’t turned up. he then said he would chase them up and get back to me, within a few minuets he announced that because of the backlog of work over the Easter Bank holiday the assessor will not be able to get out to view my bike until tomorrow.
So it gets put back yet another day!…. but my insurance company assure me that the assessor will ‘definitely’ be calling out tomorrow. I gave Pete a quick call to let him know what was going on.
Wednesday 15th April 09
Much the same today, I have once again been in touch with my insurance company who this time gave me the number of the company who will be doing the assessing, so I phoned them up who in turn gave me the mobile number of the actual assessor who should be coming to see my bike today, but in keeping with the way things have been going, I phoned him only to get a ‘orange message service’ …anyway I have left a message for the guy to give me a call to let me know if he will definitely be going to check my bike over today …. as yet no reply.
I called again at 2:30 and this time got to speak to him personally. He assures me that he will definitely be going out to see my bike today, he was currently in Plymouth and had one more to see in Torpoint before going out to Liskeard. So fingers crossed that he does actually turn up, I have spoken to Pete and asked him to let me know when the assessor has been. Pete called my around 4:30 to say that at last the assessor had been to see my bike, he apparently had a good look all around the bike and then asked how much it was worth and then asked to see the replacement estimate which he thought was all little expensive but did conceded that it was a Harley and certain parts will be expensive. with that he said his goodbyes and left without saying if it would be acceptable or not. Anyway I have told Pete to go ahead now and fix the new parts to the bike and just get it done, if the assessor decides that the repairs are too expensive then we’ll just have to deal with that situation when and if it arises I’ve waited long enough now I just want my bike back in working order.
Friday 18th April 09
I phoned Pete today to see how he was getting on with the bike and he said “its done …I have taken it out for a spin and everything is working ok, no oil leaks or anything, I’ve just got some minor adjustments to make but basically its ready for you to pick it up” Yay …..how long has it been!….I get to have a second go on my Harley, but because my first go was so brief this will be like having the bike from new once again, I’m very exited now about getting it back I can’t wait….Claire and I will go over this afternoon when she finishes work and pick it up and I’ll get to ride it back from Liskeard to Looe. At last a proper go.
We called in to Liskeard Motorcycles around 4:00, I was very exited to finally see my bike again out side waiting for me, ready to go, We paid up Pete’s bill which had gone from a possible £75 -£100 to a whopping £180!.. and that was apparently as a favor …but at this point as annoying as that was it was just good to get my bike back, so we paid up sorted out all the relevant paper work and at last I was ready to set off, I must confess to being quiet nervous as this will only be my second ever go on the bike and I hadn’t really had time to get the feel of it the last time so this was very much like starting all over again. I started up the bike, Pete had been complaining about the battery not being so clever and had even had it on charge over night but thought it might need replacing, anyway it started on the button so I put it in gear and set off up the road a short distance before turning right and then left onto the main road. I hadn’t gone a 100 yards on this road when I pulled over, try as I might I could not get the bike into second gear, Claire was following me in the car, I shouted back to her that we will have to go back and have Pete make some adjustments as I can’t ride it like this. We turned round and headed back to Pete’s, these new forward gears seemed to be as awkward as hell, instead of the gear lever being forward of the foot rest in the usual manor its was almost sitting directly above it which meant that you couldn’t casual select the gears by using the end of your toe but you had to physically pick your foot off the foot rest and force the gear lever up that way, and in reverse slide your foot out from under the footrest and place it on top of the gear lever and press down, not something I was used to at all and it felt extremely unnatural and certainly not cool as other Harley riders make it look, the set up just felt wrong and I wasn’t comfortable with it at all.
What followed was a succession of crap advice, people butting in who had no idea what was going on and Petes assistant turning up smelling of booze getting Irate with me thinking that I’m ‘knocking’ his work because as it turns out it was him who fitted the controls and not Pete, it was just a farce and I really was not happy. Pete to his credit could understand my problem but seemed to not be able to do anything about it, he could only make subtle adjustments but after what seemed like two hours of battling to get a happy compromise I decided to take the bike as it was and try to adapt to the horrible new controls and if I found I absolutely hated them and can’t cope with them then Pete would make me a ‘custom part’ which would extend the gear lever forward of the foot rest in order to make the riding more comfortable and the gears easier to select, he would do this for an extra £50 and get it chromed for me at no extra cost, so eventually I rode the bike away up the road once more. So unhappy with the situation I was seriously considering putting the bike back on Ebay and forgetting the whole Harley idea because I bought the bike to enjoy the experience and at the moment I was not enjoying any of it at all. After the first mile or two I slowly began to adjust to lifting my foot up and down to select the gears and I found that I could rest my foot on the outside of the foot-peg and so not be in the way of the gear lever in general riding, I slowly began to relax with it and dare I say it enjoy myself, I just took my time and cruised home as I just wanted to get the feel of the bike at long last and get used to all its little ways. By the time we arrived back in Looe I had gotten quite used to how to operate the gears even thought I still think they are awkward as hell at least I know that I can ride it now and enjoy it mores the point.

Saturday 19th April 09
Today I planed to take the bike out for a decent run and really get the measure of it, but it wouldn’t start! ….click click click …the engine would not kick in, I had to get some help to bump start it and after about seven attempts it finally fired up, I thought now that I have got it going I’m going to go on a long run and hopefully that will re-charge the battery again. I set off to Polperro then onto Pelynt and out to Boddinick before finally heading to Liskeard Motorcycles to see if they could make some minor adjustments. By the time I had arrived there I was really into the feel of the bike and throughly enjoying it, I just needed them to raise the gear lever just a little bit so that I could get my foot under it properly when it was in first gear, this was really only a minor adjustment and it took the assistant only a few minuets to sort that out, I also had him ‘bend’ the left side mirror bracket a little so that it could be adjusted enough to be able to see behind, something that wasn’t happening at the moment. He was happy that I had adapted to the new forward gears as that meant no more hassle so everyone happy I set off from there once again.
Shortly after leaving two other problems occurred, firstly I ran out of petrol and the bike cut out completely, so I put it on to reserve but then the battery would not fire up the engine again!, luckily I was on a slight hill and managed to bump start it without any help, I rode it into Morrison’s petrol station and filled up the tank, the fuel tank on this Harley 1200 is ridiculously small I believe it has the nick name ‘the peanut’ because its capacity can only be two gallon if that, which basically means I will have to fill up the tank every fifty/sixty miles or so something, that I will have to keep an eye out for especially on long journeys. Anyway I filled up the tank which came to  £6.75p !!……for a 1200 …its madness, so I get on the bike to set off for home and ….it won’t start yet again!! ….damn, this time I’m in a petrol forecourt with no hill, no help and no phone, I managed to find some space where I could have a run and try bumping it …but no luck …. God this bike is heavy!! …. thankfully two bikers happen by and were willing to give me a push, once again it took several attempts but at last it kicked in so I was able to get it going, I thanked them for there help and set off back to Looe, I thought I had better get myself a new battery as apart from being un-cool and very embarrassing this situation could catch me out and leave me stranded somewhere without any help.
I called Pete since he had already spotted that the battery was a ‘duffer’ and he had an idea of what was required to replace it, he said he would find out some prices and give me a call back on Monday and he would be able to order it then and fit it for me on Tuesday. Once again I was a bit miffed with that because I had only just got the bike back and had arranged to go into Plymouth with Claire all day tomorrow so she could prepare for her next test on Saturday. I decided to call B&H at Roche and spoke directly to ‘H’ who didn’t mess about and said “yes we’ve got those in stock, you tell me which way round your terminals are and I’ll get one on a trickle charge for you now”. Fantastic, that’s the kind of service I like, no’ if’s’ or ‘buts’ or ‘I’m too busy’s’ …just straight to the point. Having faffed about trying to suss out which way round the terminals were I eventually set off for Roche to buy a new battery, ‘H’ said that they usually close at 4 but he will hang on for me until I get there which was very good of him. I went as fast as I could and made it from Looe to Roche in my car in just over half an hour which was seriously good going, I paid the £89.99 by card and thanked them for going to the trouble and headed straight back home, Claire and I had a gig tonight so I wouldn’t have any time to fit it when I got back so it that will have to wait until tomorrow. Bright and early on Sunday morning I strolled over to the Quay car park and eventually installed the new battery once I’d messed around trying to find the right sized spanners etc I eventually got it all sorted out and the new one in place, stuck the keys in the slot and lo and behold it fired up first time…YAY!….it ‘FN’ works, chuffed to bits with my handy work I strolled back over the bridge to my house and went back to bed as I was ‘knackered’. I fitted the battery early just in case it wouldn’t start and needed to be charged then I could put it on charge while I went back to sleep but since it started right on the button I wouldn’t need to charge it.

Sunday 20th April 09
It was an absolutely beautiful day today, you’d swear it was the middle of summer, Robyn my daughter suddenly decided that she wanted to have a go on the back of my Harley and if she liked it the she would come out with us for the day, the only slight problem to that was that she didn’t have a helmet. Claire suggested that we she go down to the Millpool car park and Robyn could get on the back of the Harley and wear her helmet and try it out first to see if she would take to it and not wimp out on us.
I rode the Harley round to the car park (it started on the button) to meet Claire and Robyn by our car. Claire brought the camera just incase this turned out to be the one and only time Robyn was brave enough to try it as up until now she was completely against bikes and would certainly not entertain getting on the back of one so this latest change came as a bit of a shock, anyway armed with leather jacket, jeans, and Claire’s helmet Robyn climbed onto the back of the bike and was raring to go, I took it very steady as I didn’t want to crash the bike with Robyn on the back, I would never forgive myself. We rode gently round the car park just so Robyn could get the feel of it and she seemed perfectly happy with everything so I suggested that we should try taking it out on the road and around a few bends to make sure she was still is completely comfortable with it before we committed to buying Robyn her own helmet. Claire waited by the car and watched the pair of us disappear out of the car park entrance and out onto the Polperro road, although at this point she couldn’t actually see us any more she most certainly could hear the bike for some distance.
We arrived back a few minutes later with Robyn declaring that she loved it and was more than happy to be a back seat passenger. So slight change to the original Plan, this time Claire and Robyn would follow me into Plymouth in the car while I rode the Harley. We were going to the bike shop to get Robyn a suitable helmet and then come back to Looe and head out on both our bikes to ‘The Butchers Arms’ at St Eve near Liskeard who were having a ‘festival of bikes’ today. By the time we got back to Looe with Robyn’s new helmet it was getting towards 3:15 the day was still beautiful. Robyn and I followed Claire on the bike out towards Liskeard to the ‘Festival of bikes’. Once we eventually found the place it seemed that we had missed most of it and people were already packing down and making their way home, we were able to stroll in without paying as there was no-one on the gate to take our money but in truth there was very little left worth paying for to see, it came down to two fields one full of old tractors and the other one full of mostly classic bikes, it still had the feel of a lovely summer fate and the very warm weather most definitely helped that. Thankfully we brought with us a picnic so we found ourselves a table to sit down and eat our spoils, it was a wonderful day and it was nice to have Robyn out with us for a change, I think she really enjoyed herself and hopefully she decides to come out with us again on some more biking adventures in the future.
Monday 21st April 09
Having had good use of the bike both yesterday and this morning without any hassles Claire and I had planned to take the bikes down to the Millpool Car park again this afternoon so that she could practice her U-turns for the test on Saturday. Around 7 we strolled over to the Quay to our bikes and once again I find my bike would not start ….click ,click ,click …..was all I was getting, I was really angry, all day it’s been fine starting on the button no problem, it could have only been stationary for no more than three hours and now it wouldn’t start. With a little assistance from Claire we managed to push the bike up to a little slope enough to bump start it, I followed Claire down to the car park and left her to it while I took the Harley for a spin to try to charge up the battery a bit, I rode it down to Polperro and back then parked on the top of a gentle slope and switched the engine off to see if it would start-up properly again that way if it didn’t I could at least bump it down the hill, Alas… it wouldn’t start…it just didn’t want to know, so I bumped started it once again and resolved to try to get the battery fully charged somewhere tomorrow.
Tuesday 22nd April 09
I took the battery down to Fred at the Millpool Garage, he’s a very friendly chap who I used to live a few doors down from about five years ago, and if ever anything needed sorting out with our cars he’s the man we take them to, so I popped down and asked if he might be able to charge my battery for me, thankfully he said ‘no probs…call back about 4 /4.30 and it should be ready for ya’. I’m hoping that is all the problem is and once a fully charged battery is back on the bike it will stop all the nonsense, I have already checked all the obvious stuff, cut off switch is in the ‘On’ position, fuel is ‘On’, and there is enough fuel in the tank, checked the spark plug leads are fully home and properly connected and no obvious loose connections elsewhere ….fingers crossed a fully charge new battery solves this annoying problem.  I picked up the fully charged battery at 4:30 from Fred’s and went straight back to my bike to fit it, now getting quite used to the fiddling about and actually having the correct sized spanners it didn’t take me too long to install it, also discovering that these new fandango all in batteries don’t need the little breather tube that kind of fell off the old one and until someone explained to me what it was all about I was a bit confused as to where this left over tube was supposed to go. Anyway, battery in place, keys in slot and ‘Et voila’ ….It started on the button …Yay!!! Woo hoo…this means Claire and I could now have a ride into Plymouth and go around some of the areas that may be included in her forthcoming test.

Once in Plymouth and on some of the ‘dodgy camber roads’ Claire seemed to have no trouble at all with the U-turns now, she was completely relaxed and confident with them every time, which was great to see. Claire also took me on pretty much the same route that she had on her last test performing all the same maneuvers in the same places and pointing out the dreaded set of lights that cost her the last test…. so harsh I have to say, an injustice even. On the way back we stopped off briefly to say hello to Elliot (our son) who was working in Saltash before heading back home to Looe. As we pulled off the bypass into a little lane through Horningtops I had to switch to reserve fuel as the bike just suddenly cut out, once on reserve I said to Claire we need to find a petrol station fairly quick because I have no idea how long the reserve fuel will allow me to travel …..we soon found out as we rounded a sharp left bend at Sandplace the engine cut out once more, we could only have done 2/3 miles maximum.. and still 2/3 miles from the petrol station at Looe and it was now getting dark, Claire decided that it would be better if I went to get a plastic petrol canister and some petrol using her bike while she waited in the lay-by with the Harley and I was under instructions to be as quick as I could. Getting back on the Marauder having gotten used to the Harley it suddenly felt like I was on a zippy little moped …it was quite bizarre as this bike used to feel quite big to me not so long ago. All in all it took me about ten minuets to complete the task and arrive back with Claire having balanced the canister on the petrol tank and in between my knees. Once topped up with fuel the Harley fired up once again we were finally able to complete our journey back to Looe.
Saturday 26th April 09
Claire’s Test day, We had been out every night during the week including two trips in and around Plymouth to get Claire nice and prepared for this test, we decided to take both bikes in today for a change so we set the alarm for 6:30 to allows us time to get up and ready and make the journey into First Class Training for 8. With all our gear and everything ready we set off only to find my Harley would not start, what ever was going on with the battery before had reared its ugly head once again and I was just getting  …click,click,click …because of the time both Claire and I pushed the bike to a bit of a slope and managed to bump start it and finally got on our way, we arrived at the test centre in good time, Claire had a cigarette and a cup of tea before trying out some yard maneuvers on the Honda 500 that she would be taking out on her test. At roughly 8:30 she then went out on the roads for a bit of practice before going onto the test centre for her test at 9:30, I gave her a kiss and some encouragement before she set off. Today she seemed really confident about everything which was really evident in her riding. I passed the time away talking to some of the other very nervous riders who would also be taking their tests today, time passed reasonably quickly and it wasn’t long before the rumble of the returning bikes could be heard coming back into the yard. Dan the instructor rolled in first shaking his head from side to side followed shortly afterwards by Claire who had her dark visor down and not looking at all happy. My heart sank, I was literally shaking, not again, I could not believe it, once Claire had parked the bike up I walked over to console her and she slowly lifted off her helmet and shouted “I PASSED”,…. once it registered that they had been having me at it I shouted “YOU BASTARDS” “fancy putting me through that”….I was like jelly ….Claire had finally done it this time ….she had passed and it wasn’t a joke, she had actually passed her test!! …YAY…we proceeded to shout like drunken fools and began jumping around like a couple of kids who had just been given free goes on a trampoline at the fair… well, its what you do when you’ve have passed your test!! …the next thing we did was remove the L’ plates from the Marauder and bin them before heading off on the much more enjoyable journey back home.   

Tuesday 12th May 09

Claire’s new bike arrived today, after a couple of weeks of searching one managed to stand out and shout ‘buy me’. Having gotten used to the training bikes which were Honda CBF 500 this was a bike and riding position that Claire felt very comfortable with, so much so that she was in the market for something similar, it had to be a Honda but hopefully some thing with a bit of umph when you needed it. The bike she bought in the end was a Honda YTR Firestorm 1000cc in black that looked like it had just been driven out of the show room it was ‘P reg with 31,000 miles on the clock and really looked the business and boy did it sound good, it has a lovely ‘growl’ that will make you jump when you fired it up. After we both finished work we couldn’t wait to take the bikes out for a spin, although exited with the new arrival we were also extremely tired and so only went on a very short run but that was enough for Claire to begin to get the measure of this extremely powerful bike it is most certainly not for the fainthearted, that said neither of us are about to go out and be road racers and act like idiots on it in some vain attempt to recapture our youth, with age comes a certain amount of common sense, …. ok maybe also nasal hair, wrinkles and beer belly’s but mostly common sense .

Saturday 23rd May 09
We decided to take the bikes out for a run today and headed out to Newquay to check out what ‘Run to the sun’ was all about. The weather today was just gorgeous, the sun was blistering down and all reports said that it will stay this good the whole weekend. We packed a small picnic to have at some point on the journey back. Riding on days like these is what it’s all about, the roads were not too busy considering it was a bank holiday weekend and the views were stunning. We rolled into Newquay around midday and found the main area that they were using to display all the V-Dubs(Volkswagens) and classic cars amid a festival atmosphere of loud music, burger bars and surfer dudes trying to look windswept and interesting. We bought ourselves a nice big fat bacon burger each before perusing some of the outlandish vehicles on display. Some of the V-Dub vans were awesome, I particularly like the ones that looked like they had just been towed out of a field with the old style split front windscreen and seemingly rusting all over but by design, they had a kind of ‘shabby cheque’ fashion which was just the complete opposite to the highly polished show piece machines that you usually get, that said they still all seemed to be low slung with wide alloys, these were made to look beaten up and still seemed to command some serious money if you wanted to buy one.

Friday, November 28, 2008 

One the way back we managed to find a nice quite lane with country views in which to have our picnic, I don’t think the cows were too impressed when we pulled up, but what an awesome day for it …just beautiful 
Saturday, 30th May, 2008
We decided to go into Plymouth on the bikes today and try to find the new Harley shop which had recently opened in Plympton, we went via Liskeard as we had to pick up some spare bike keys we had cut just in case we lost our originals. The day was yet another scorcher on the weather front but that was about all that was good about today. After we had collected the keys we set of to Plymouth, but before we left the car park Claire lost her footing and went over on her new bike and it fell to the floor with her underneath it, I rushed to her help and thankfully she managed to get out without any damage to herself, we both picked the bike back up and discovered that she had broken the clutch lever in half on impact with the tarmac, but at least there was still enough of the lever left to still be able to use it.
Safely back on the bikes Claire felt happy enough to carry on with the ride into Plymouth so we got on our way, I had a vague idea of where the new Harley shop was so I took the lead once we got to Langage. As I rounded one of the roundabouts just before the Harley shop Claire notice that something had fallen off my bike, so as we pulled into the shop car park Claire managed to point this out to me as our Helmet intercoms had decided not to work. We immediately set off back to where the bit came off. It turned out to be a chrome cover which fits over the fuse box area at the rear of my bike, as we came back along the road I could see the missing part sitting untouched on the white hatching in the middle of the road so I pulled over to the left and parked my bike to go and retrieve it, because I had pulled over to the left the car behind me then pulled around to over take and proceed to run over the chrome piece bending it completely out of shape, I couldn’t believe it!!, when I finally got hold of the cover it was now useless and was fit for nothing more than the bin…. just bloody brilliant! Totally miffed we both headed back to the Harley shop to console ourselves by drooling over brand new bikes that we couldn’t afford.
My bike of choice in the show room was the new ‘Rocker C’ …wow, this was some machine and it came with some price tag too …£15.995 …that’s the price you have to pay for off the shelf customizing! I also like the new design for the V-Rod that looked like a meaty bike indeed coming in at roughly £3000 less than the Rocker C, meanwhile Claire was checking out the type of Harley that we would possibly be riding route 66 on from the hire company, we reckon that it would most likely be something like a Electra Glide Ultra Classic or Road King, something more of a traditional /classic style that could cope with both the distance and the comfort. Overall the new Harley shop was nice, it has a small cafe and merchandise shop upstairs with a balcony overlooking a decent selection of new bikes downstairs with friendly staff in a brand new silver clad building what more could you ask for?
Next we set off to J & S Motorcycle Clothing shop for a general mooch, once their and parked up we thought it might be a place that would have a spare lever for Claire’s bike, no harm in asking, having had a brief stroll around it became clear that we needed a proper bike shop that sold spares and parts for bikes so we decided we should pop up the road to GT Motorcycles instead. This is when Claire discovered the ‘Datatool’ alarm on her bike had decided that it wasn’t going to switch off and therefore allow her to move the bike or start it up. After several attempts both from claire and myself we had to enlist some help from a guy at the shop who coincidentally happened to previously own a bike exactly the same and said he also had experience difficulties with his datatool system, he suggested that we try a new battery in the key fob and there just happened to be a place round the corner that might have them. Ten minutes later we arrived back at the bike with new key fob battery in place and ……. still not working!  …He suggested joining the AA and then calling them out, so given our situation we thought we didn’t have a lot of choice ..I called them up and explained the state of play, they basically wanted to take advantage of our predicament and charge us £108 to join and send someone out to help ……Claire said ‘tell them to shove it” …what a rip off!! …so we decided against that idea…The guy from the shop said he knew someone who worked at GT Motorcycles who just happened to be an expert on Datatool systems and he would give him a call on our behalf and see if he would be willing to help. It turns out that this guy does not work weekends but would be willing to come out and have a look at it for us but not until tomorrow at a cost of £40…so again as we really didn’t have much choice so we agreed to that.

Claire got on the back of my Harley and we set off to have a quick look around the shops in Plymouth before heading home. Oddly enough as we were looking around the shops we saw a guy trying to get people to join the RAC for £39 so we took the opportunity to join up and then call them out later, as is the way with these things the advertised joining fee was just to draw you in and didn’t really cover you for a fat lot, so by the time we had added cover for road side assistance and being taken home etc it ended up being £60, but as this was still better than the AA’s £108 we thought we should go with it and took out the cover there and then.
Half and hour later we phoned them up to come out and help with the bike, when we arrived back at J & S the RAC van had just pulled in so it was perfect timing and within minuets he set to work on the bike, he got all sorts of testers and bits and pieces out but it soon became clear that this guy hadn’t got a clue how to fix the problem and the only option left was to get the bike back home or at least to a garage where they could repair it, this is when he announced that our cover only allowed him to take the bike ten miles which meant that he would not be able to get us back home as that was at least twenty miles from here …can you believe it!! …by this time J & S  the shop had closed and everyone had gone home, they had offered to put the bike inside for us overnight where it would be safe but that was another opportunity missed thanks the RAC man faffing about and getting nowhere. In the end we thought we should leave the bike where it was and come back early in the morning and try to get the guy from GT Motorcycles to come out and have a look at it as was originally planned.
The following morning back at the shop we successfully managed to get everyone reorganised, the ‘Data Tool’ guy was coming out to have a look at the alarm at around midday which meant that we could again go shopping into Plymouth and he would give us a call later when the job was done. Around 2 we get a call for the data tool guy saying that the circuit-board had gone and basically the alarm was useless and the best solution was to strip it out completely which was a long and laborious task that he would have to charge us £100 to complete! …..this was turning out to be a vary expensive weekend…we had no choice but to agree to it, Claire would then be able to ride the bike home albeit without an alarm but to be honest that particular alarm had always been a complete pain in the arse since Claire had bought the bike so it wasn’t too difficult a decision to have it removed. We are fast discovering that you need very deep pockets to own and run the freedom that is motorbikes.

Wednesday 17th June 09
My parents had decided to come down to Cornwall in their camper van and had booked in to a site by Harford Bridge in a place called Peter Tavy just on the edge of Dartmoor about thirty mile from where we live, so Claire and I had arranged to go over and see them as my Dad was keen to see the new bikes that we’ve been going on about for months, plus it was a good excuse for both of us to get out on a decent run as Claire in particular had not been on her bike now for a couple of weeks. It was a nice sunny evening when we set off, ideal for biking so we headed out to Liskeard, Callington, Gunislake and through Tavistock and turned right to head out towards the moors and then a left turn just before the moors really got going which was a shame because I would have liked Claire to see the awesome views that are on show on that beautiful stretch of road out to Two Bridges and on to Moreton Hampstead, that will have to wait until another day. As we reached the junction at Harford bridge we stopped to figure out which way the campsite was and then we spotted it over on the left side, as we set off Claire, who was leading, stalled her bike and lost her footing and dropped the bike hurting her leg quite badly in the process, I got off my bike and rushed over to help, she was very shaken and a little sore but otherwise ok, the two of us managed to pick the bike up and get it back on its stand and asses the damage, there was only very minor stuff thankfully and nothing that you would really notice, but Claire was getting concerned that maybe this was not the bike for her, this was not the first time she had dropped this bike and she somehow keeps stalling it causing her to flounder, so we said we should maybe look at getting another cruiser style bike for her as the seats are generally lower and she could have her feet flat on the ground when the bike was stationary, as on this bike she is not able to do. She was a little upset and asked me not to mention it to my parents as she didn’t want an inquest into whether she should really be riding a bike this size etc which I fully understood. As we were nearly there I decided to take the lead and the pair of us rode slowly through the camp site along the gravel road until we spotted my parents camper van in the far corner of the field under some trees, my Dad had obviously heard the noise of the bikes as we rumbled in and came out to greet us rather excitedly and was jumping around and (as my mother would put it) ‘acting the goat’, As we cut across the grass I in turn thought I could show off a little and show my Dad what a 1200 Harley sounds like so on approach I revved up the engine, this in turn caused enough increase in speed for the back wheel to spin out on the wet grass and the front end to take a noise dive into the turf resulting in my doing a somersault over the handle bars and landing in a heap in front of my Mum and Dad. The Harley was still running and trying to dig is way into the soil and find the direct route to Australia, my Dad rushed over and managed to shut the engine off    …..stunned!! ….. that’s the best word I can think of to describe how I felt ….what the hell had just happened? …..I crashed my bike again ….equally as embarrassing as the first time …it’s almost like I was doing an action reply of my first crash just so my parents could see it! …… My Dad and I picked the bike up which was covered in mud and bits of grass and put it on its stand and checked out the damage, thankfully once again I was completely fine, one or two minor crazes but other than that just completely pissed off with myself for doing it again! ….. the bike on the other hand suffered once again, bent rear brake pedal, front foot rest, and a twisted rod to the master cylinder head all of which I damaged before and this time to add to that I managed to bend the handle bars ….. any day now I am due to get the cheque from the insurance from the last time I buggered my bike up and now I’ve just gone and done it again. My Dad to his credit set about trying to repair some of the damaged parts, I think he felt a little guilty and thought he may have encouraged me to ‘act the goat’ on the wet grass and crash the bike ….. but really it was entirely my own doing ….. but all help at this point was gratefully received. He took the badly bent rod from the brake pedal to the cylinder head and set about trying to straighten it by using a nearby gate and post for leverage ..he’s very good and inventive when it comes to things like that, if there is a way he will generally find it….here we were in the middle of a field with little or no tools and somehow he’s managing to get my bike into a position where I might be able to ride it home, eventually with all the bits and pieces back on the bike it was once again ridable, not exactly comfortable but at least I could get it home. He offered to come over to our house tomorrow to see if he could help straighten the brake lever foot peg and handle bars, so we agreed a time for that and Claire and I set off on the journey back home as it was now becoming quite dark. As we set off Claire noticed her fuel light had come on, and I was also concerned about my fuel situation because my bike only does fifty odd miles to a full ‘peanut’ tank of petrol and we had done roughly thirty to get here, plus the bike lost a whole load of fuel when I crashed it so I wasn’t at all sure how much was actually left in the tank, certainly not enough to get home. The best hope of finding a petrol station at this hour seemed to be Tavistock as that was the nearest and probably biggest town on the route home. We rode through the town and couldn’t find a petrol station anywhere so we tentatively carried on and decided it might be a good idea if we free wheeled down any available slopes and hills in order to conserve what little fuel we had, not only was it now dark but it was also starting to get very cold and the weather was taking a turn for the worse, we made it through Gunislake and the only two petrol stations we found so far were both closed, with no choice but to carry on and hopefully make Callington I was praying we would make it and not brake down along any of the very spooky sections of woods which were invariably along the narrowest most dangerous stretches of road. Once into Callington it to had little or nothing to offer in the way of a fuel stop so we opted to risk going onto Liskeard, somebody must have been looking out for us because we made it into Liskeard on fumes and like a beacon in the night the green and yellow logo of the BP sign shone out and it was still open so we were able to fill up both tanks and finally make it home. 

Thursday 18th June 09
The following day my parents came round to our house and my Dad and I began to suss out how best to approach the damage, I phoned B&H at Roche and as luck would have it he did have a set of ‘Medium buck horn handle bars’ in stock priced at £75, and he said he would take 20% off that for me, I had one hour to get over to Roche to pick them up before that shop would close up for the night, so I zipped over in my car to picked up the handle bars, I also picked up a new choke cable as that was a separate issue on the bike that has been bugging me for a while, the thread had worn and the choke just hung loose rattling on the bits of chrome around it. I made it back to my house with the goods at around 5:30. Immediately we started work loosening off all the nuts and bolts and detaching all the handles and switches and cables to make way for the new bars. I was extremely pleased when the new set went on as they were exactly the same size and shape as my old ones and once everything had been fitted back on you couldn’t tell that anything had changed other than my wallet was a little lighter. We decided to leave the choke cable until tomorrow as it was now getting quite late.
Friday 19th June 09
I had arranged to meet up with my Dad at my house after work, when I got back my parents were already there waiting for me. Fitting a new clutch cable was not an easy job, and it wasn’t long before my Dad had the bolts off that were holding the carburetor in place and various ‘flanges and seals’ lying around here and there, It was at this point I got quite worried that it might not go back together, what if it won’t work! …. I needn’t of worried…. although my Dad admitted to being a little unsure he at least had clue of what did what and where it was supposed to go, before long it was all being pieced back together and the moment of truth was about to happen …… will it start …and will the choke work? ……. on the first button it gave a little cough, but on the second button it kicked in and fired up a treat and Yay …the choke worked! to much relief all round I must say. Next we pondered over how we might set about trying to straighten up firstly the foot peg and secondly the rear brake pedal, in the end with some carefully placed spanners were able to ‘smack it with a lump hammer’ on the ground and eventually bring the peg to a close approximation of where it should be, the chrome was now looking a little beaten up here and there but at least it was usable.The brake pedal however proved to be slightly more problematic and really needed a metal vice which I certainly didn’t have, in the end I suggested that we should take it over to Liskeard Motorcycles tomorrow and ask Pete if he might be kind enough to let us use his metal vice to straighten out the pedal.
Saturday 20th June 09
Now with the bike outside Liskeard Motorcycles I gingerly asked Pete if using his vice might be a possibility as we were a in a bit of a predicament, Thankfully Pete was more than willing to help even though he seemed already very busy with other customers, he gave us some tools to go ahead and get the pedal off and he would help us bend it into shape when we were ready. I was expecting him to put in his vice and use metal bars for leverage but no, Pete had other ideas, he used an oxy-settling torch to heat up the affected area until it was glowing orange and then just pulled the top part of the pedal back in the vise into its correct position, amazing when you have the facilities and you know how. Once cooled down with water and dried off it only had slight discoloration on the chrome but otherwise it was back to the way it was. He also lent us a small bar to bend the foot peg properly into position, which did a perfect job until I split one side of the holding brackets on the folding peg, it was all going too well!! ….never mind, it was still strong enough with just the one side holding it and unless you looked really close you couldn’t tell that there was anything wrong at all. We even fitted a new flasher unit so I now have working indicators, this was another one of those little annoying things that I kept meaning to put right and finally its been done …yay! …Dads are great aren’t they! ….We gave Pete £20 for helping us out and letting us use his stuff. So the bike was finally back in order and even had some little extra jobs done on it that I hadn’t planned for, all that was left now was to take her for a spin …….click…click….click ……it wouldn’t start, I couldn’t believe it, I just get the bike back into working order and this old battery problem rears its ugly head again ….we managed to get it bump started only for it to happen again …..once it bump started a second time I decided it would be best to just take the bike home as I didn’t want to get stranded somewhere without any help so I headed home, its a shame because the bike is now probably the best its been since I’ve had it, if I can just get to the route cause of this very annoying starting problem I will be very happy.
Sunday 21st June 09 Fathers Day.
Today we had invited my parents over for Sunday Lunch as it was Fathers Day and this would be the last day that they would see my son Elliot as he is moving to Canada on Wednesday. Besides none of us had really seen my parents since they were down here as I had kind of hi-jacked my Dad into helping sort of my bike, something I have to say he was more than willing to do and today was no exception, I asked him if he would take a quick look just incase it was something stupid that was preventing the bike firing up. In the end he arrived at the conclusion that it must be the solenoid or possibly the started motor as the battery seems to still be in good order, this means I’m going to have to get the professionals to have a look at it and probably charge me a fortune in the process. Claire’s bike had also given up and refused to start but the conclusion on this one is that it is most definitely the battery and it needs to be fully charged.
Friday 26th June 09
I’d had just about enough of the continual ‘dodgy’ battery situation so I decided it was time that we invested in a new battery charger and a set of jump leads so that we could dig ourselves out of trouble without relying on other people. Claire ordered the equipment from Argos in Liskeard and I picked it up. I charged up Claire’s battery first which didn’t take long at all and then tried it on her bike, no joy, it still wouldn’t start which meant it was one of two things, either the wiring from the removal of the Data Tool was not done correctly or that the current battery was ‘duff’ and wasn’t holding sufficient charge. I then thought that it wouldn’t hurt to put my battery on the new charger for a while and see if it makes any difference.  It took almost three hours before my battery read ‘Fully Charged’ and once back in position on the bike the engine fired up straight away much to my great relief, so it was the battery after all, it had retained enough power to work the lights and horn etc but not enough to turn over the engine but once boosted with the new charger it worked a treat!. I then tried the new jump leads from my now fully charged battery onto Claire’s bike and lo and behold that too fired up first time which meant Claire’s battery was definitely a duffer, so Claire ordered a new battery which should now resolve her bike problems.
Sunday 28th June 09
Claire and I took the bikes out for a spin today and decided to go to ‘Sibly Back Lake’ which was just outside of St Cleer this was to be our first ride out together since our ‘leg bruising incidents’ last week and Claire was still feeling very unsure on her bike particularly when having to wait at junctions incase she might stall and drop the bike again, it was a crazy situation to be in always afraid that you might drop the bike kind of spoils the fun of it all. We discussed it in great length over a cup of tea while admiring the view across the lake and came to the conclusion that perhaps a ‘cruiser style’ might be the better way to go for Claire as they tended to have lower seating positions and she would feel more confident if she could place both feet firmly on the floor while stopped at junctions. So we decided that when we got back that we would have a look around and see if there may be another ‘Sportster’ that might take her fancy on Ebay or something and we could look at selling the Honda in order to buy the new bike. Quite exited by the prospected of perhaps getting a new bike we set off back home eager to check out what was available. Ebay did throw up one or two possibilities although they were mostly 883 but Claire didn’t seem particularly bothered by that as long as the bike looked good, that said none of them nice as they were leaped out and shouted ‘Me Me’ and any that did tended to be on the more expensive side, so as we were in no hurry we said we’ll just keep looking until the right on comes along.
Monday 30th June 09
On my travels in my truck I regularly pass a garage that sells mostly commercial vans but on a couple of occasions I had spotted a cruiser style bike for-sale as I whizzed past that did have a price tag on it but I couldn’t see exactly what make the bike was and how much they wanted for it, so after our discussion yesterday I thought this time I would find a convenient place to park my truck and take the hazardous walk back on the grass verge along side a very busy main road to have a closer inspection of the bike. It was definitely worth the trouble, It turned out to be a Suzuki Intruder 1400cc, two-tone with metallic turquoise and cream paint work, forward gears and foot rests and only 9500 miles on the clock, that said it was a ‘P’ reg and he was asking £2995, The bikes condition overall was excellent except the chrome on both wheel was beginning to show signs of weathering, apart from that it was spanking! I asked him if he would take £2500 as that was the price range we were looking at, he wasn’t too keen but said he would be prepared to take £2700. I asked ‘as the bike was for my wife if it would be ok if Claire came out to view the bike and see if she likes it and then we can go from there depending on what she says’ he had no problem with that. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Claire all about the bike I had spotted, I was pretty convinced that she would love it. So with Claire now in the picture I managed to persuade her to come straight from work to check out the bike, I had already spoken to the guy at the garage to tell we were coming out to view it and he was quite happy to hang on and wait for us. We arrived at around 5:45 and almost straight away Claire said “I want it”, I said ‘sit on it feel the weight and make sure you’re totally comfortable with it’… she loved it and looked good on it too, The guy started up the engine and was happy for Claire to take it for a short ride on the forecourt to see if she could handle it … Claire had no troubles at all, she was like a duck to water and looked entirely at home with this bike, when she rode back up the forecourt and stopped she said …”Its mine…I want that bike”. I tried to talk the man down to £2500 once more but he wasn’t having any of that and Claire was so happy with the bike that she said we should just pay him the £2700 that he wants and not mess him around…so we shook hands and agreed on £2700 and said we would get in touch with him to arrange all the ‘who, when, what and whys’ some time tomorrow. Having sorted out how we were going to pay for the bike all arrangements were put in place to collect the money from the bank on Friday and Claire also managed to sort out some insurance. We have also advertised the Honda on Ebay so hopefully we will get some interest for that shortly. I have also spoken to the chap at the garage to arrange to pick up the bike on Saturday at 11.00 and he was fine with that.
Saturday 4th July 09
The big day had arrived and with everything now in place we set off to pick up Claire’s new bike, she was happy to ride pillion on my Harley so off we set to meet the seller at 11.00. When we arrived the bike was outside waiting to go, Claire handed over the money and we exchanged paper work in their small office before going over some final instructions regarding the alarm, choke, fuel switch etc. Armed with those minor details it was time to leave, it’s always a difficult time for someone who clearly liked this bike to have to see it drive off with someone else at the helm, he stood there with his wife and the owner of the garage as we cautiously moved off the forecourt, Claire was a little nervous not only because everyone was watching but it was a new bike and she suddenly had to get to grips with it quickly. She managed very well and she rode past me to take up the lead before pulling out onto the main road. This was also an instant tester for her because it was on a slope facing up hill on a busy road to get onto so when the right gap presents itself you have to be on the ball, once again she rose to the challenge and didn’t let the worries of dropping the Honda affect her, having merged out on the road and making our way up the hill she shouted ‘Woo Hoo’ “this feels fantastic ….I love it” … so no worries there then, I think it’s fairly safe to say that she has taken to the new bike quite quickly, she even said “can we go the old way to Looe and go via ‘Seaton beach’ for a pose” ….I thought things must be good, Claire wants to pose on it already and we haven’t got home yet. Stopping briefly at the beach we had a bottle of pop and some sweets and took some photos with Claire’s phone because we forgot to bring the camera! …Back on the bikes and heading to Looe we turned left at St Martins Church and took the narrow back way which brings you out at the bottom end of Looe by the ‘Fish Pub’, we then turned left and followed the narrow one way street back through Looe high street up to the bridge through all the tourists just so that we could have a pose ….you gotta’ love it!

We popped home for a whistle-stop to show Robyn and Pat the new bike before cruising off to Polperro for yet another pose, this time we parked the bikes at the top car park and walked down into the village to get some chips and do the whole tourist bit. We walked all round the harbour and the ‘toy town streets’ before heading back home,

the weather was lovely and it was a fantastic day and its safe to say that Claire loves the new bike, it is a mean muscle machine it has to be said …. and did I detect a little saddle smile?

Monday 17th August 09
Well I haven’t reported in for a while because of being busy with work and not really having too much to add until now. Claire and I have ventured out on the bikes on one or two trips here and there and things have been ticking over smoothly, but we have decided to up the ante a little and test ourselves out on a decent road trip in preparation for Route 66 so at the end of August we have both booked some time off work and are planning a trip from Cornwall to Perth and back, a round trip of some 1200 miles, Claire’s uncle ‘Ron’ lives in Perth and also happens to be into motorbikes so we can combine a long over due visit with a road trip adventure. We aim to do the trip without going on any motor-ways if at all possible and as we have allowed ourselves several days to complete the trip we intend to take our time getting up there with a stop off at my parents in Ashy de la Zouch as a half way stay on day one before hopefully making up to Perth on day two. Ron is promising to take us to see the ‘highlands’ which we are quite looking forward to before we head back. On the way back down we will hopefully stay once again in the Midlands area only this time with Claire’s brother. In preparation for this trip I have decided to try to sort out my fuel tank situation as my Harley will only do 50/60 miles tops to a full tank at the moment and I don’t want to have to be looking for a petrol station every five minutes on the way up to Scotland, So over he past few weeks I have been on the look out for a larger Sportster tank on Ebay but have come a little unstuck because they all seem to advertise decent gallon capacity but under closer inspection they turn out to be US gallons which is considerably less than UK gallons, A UK gallons is 40 quarts and an US gallon is 32 quarts so if a fuel tank is advertised at say 3.4 gallons then to find out what that translates to in UK gallons you need to do the following 3.4 (US) x 32 =108.8 divided by 40 = 2.72 (UK) So I figured out that I wasn’t really gaining very much with these tanks and it wasn’t worth going to all that trouble for hardly any benefit so I decided to look at another way of doing it. I considered carry Jerry cans in my saddle bags to top up the existing tanks as and when but then thought that it might be a little dangerous so I opted to just to have a look in general at the Harley tanks that were for sale and not just those available for the Sportster, this will probably mean that it will need adjusting to fit but I would more likely find a bigger capacity tank. As luck would have it I spotted one on Ebay off a SoftTail FXST it came already sprayed albeit in red, it has fuel cap, fuel gauge and pet lock and holds roughly 4/5 UK gallons and seems to be exactly what I’m looking for, the problem now is whether it will actually fit. I have arranged for a guy to have a look at fixing it on the bike tonight so fingers crossed he is able to do it, I have bought it specifically for long journeys, the idea being that I can swap the tanks over myself as and when the need requires but if it works out and the tank looks good I may even keep it on and get it sprayed up to match the rest of the bike, I know the traditionalist Sportster fans would be up in arms at the the thought but looking for fuel stations every 50/60 miles is a pain in the backside!
Tuesday 18th August 09
Yay, the tank is now fitted, it didn’t go quite according to plan but it is on now and its working. When I took the bike round to Michael at 4:30 in the afternoon he whipped the old tank off within five minuets, no probs, I thought this is going to be a quick job, he then offered up the new tank to work out what would be the best way to approach the fitting, the brackets at the front did marry up with the existing holes on the frame although some spacers would definitely be required, in the process of making up some spacers come brackets it was decided to lower the tank at the front about 2″ to make it sit better and allow a little more space between top of the tank and the indicators on the handle bars. Securing the rear end of the tank involved drilling a hole into the frame and tapping a thread for a sturdy bolt to hold it in place, this whole process took a surprising amount of time and by the time we had packed up and left his work shop it must have been nearly 11, but it was worth the trouble it used to cost me between £3 and £4 to fill up my old tank and this one which did have some fuel already in took £15 odd to fill, quite a difference  I would expect to get anywhere between 120 / 150 miles to a full tank if not more, I have zeroed the counter so we’ll see what it actually does. Michael also removed Claire’s data tool alarm system from her bike because just like the last one she had this one was also proving to be a pain in the backside and she felt it would be better off without it, so most of this evening was spent sorting that out, another problem with Claire’s bike has emerged and that is the bike is miss firing slightly and we would really like to solve that little problem before we embark on our trip to Perth. So Michael having tried all the obvious suspects now believes it’s something that will require a little more involved mechanical investigation and would be best left for another day when he has more time to look it over.

Cornwall to Perth and Back:
We figured that if we are really going to do Route 66 then we need to know if we were up to such a challenge before we got out there, so we came up with the idea of riding up to Scotland from Cornwall and back. We should take a week off work and ride up to see Claire’s cousin Ron who lives in Perth, Scotland. He has also recently passed his test and has bought himself a brand new Yamaha V Star 650 and had been in touch with Claire over the last year or two, due to our combined interest in bikes and biking. He often e-mailed photos of various places in and around Scotland that he had visited on his bike. When we told him of our plan he was more than happy for us to come up and visit as he was very much looking forward to seeing us and the bikes he’d been hearing so much about. We had also made arrangements to pop in and see my parents on the way up as they live in Ashby De La Zouche, it may also be possible that we could stay one night there if we found that we were struggling too much at that point. We also aimed to pop in and see Claire’s brother who lives at Brierley Hill on the way back down, all being well. As we had never taken on anything like this before we had to prepare and spread the time over more days if necessary rather than giving ourselves to much to do and in the process not really seeing that much because of the need of having to be at a certain place at a certain time, we planned to do the journey without going on any Motorways if we could help it, to be able to see things and places that we wouldn’t ordinarily get to see. Claire had printed off a route via the AA website and this was going to be the general idea that we would try to follow. It estimated the round trip journey would be 1200 miles which would be roughly half the distance of Route 66 but none the less quite the achievement if we could do it. We broke that down to try to do approximately 300 miles a day depending on how we were feeling, but this was the target that we were going to try to stick to. If we left early enough on each day and kept a steady pace this should be easily achievable, aches and pains permitting, it should also allow for a few stops along the way. The day we were going to leave would be August bank holiday Monday, ordinarily not the wisest choice of days to be going anywhere but since we would be traveling against the traffic for the first leg and heading towards the Midlands it was perhaps not a bad day to leave after all. Both of us had been having mixed feelings of excitement about the trip but we were also a little bit anxious if the truth be known because of the enormity of the challenge and if we, and our bikes, would be up to it. We each had a sports bag covered in a bin liner strapped to the back of our bikes, Claire’s contained most of our ‘smalls’ and bare essentials, tooth paste, tooth brushes etc while mine contained the ‘flotation suits’ that we had purchased from a fishing shop in Looe especially for this trip, we intended to put them on if the skies opened up, then at least it would give us some protection from the rain, and if it got really bad on a biblical scale, at least we’d float!. Although both bikes had panniers these contained mostly peripheral stuff like, jump leads, WD40, spanners, bike locks and covers etc. We had each bought a map bag to place on the fuel tanks and were held on via magnets. I had checked the oil levels on both bikes and we had made sure the tyre pressures were set near as damn it to the manufactures recommendations. The other new addition we bought especially for the trip was a two-way radio set up, it was a bit cumbersome to begin with, all the wires and the push button devices in order to talk to each other. Unfortunately the blue tooth set up that we had been using had packed up about a week ago so while it is being repaired we thought we’d try this radio system out, it had good points and bad, the bad ones being mainly the wires and having to press the button each time you wanted to talk, also we noticed that when riding at high speeds 60/70 it was not possible the make out what was being said, so speed needed to be kept at around 30/40 if clear instructions/directions had to be given. Where as the blue tooth set up remained clear for the most part and allowed us to talk to each other as you would in normal conversation without having to press any buttons first, the advantage that the radio system has over the bluetooth is that it will allow you to be as much as seven miles apart and still be able to communicate unlike the Caberg set up which would disconnect if you went out of a 30/50 foot range of each other. Once we had gotten used to how to cope with the radio system it wasn’t too bad…. “ten four good buddy” … “over and out rubber duck” ….. “convoy”.

Day 1 Monday August 31st 09

We intended to set off as early as possible somewhere around 8, most of the bags and gear had been packed and ready to be loaded onto the bikes the night before, we set the alarm for 7, had a light breakfast then started bundling up the bikes. By the time we were actually ready to set off we looked like a couple of bag ladies with motorbikes for supermarket trollies but still kind of on time. After all the ‘good byes’ and ‘good lucks’ had been said we made our way out over Looe bridge into what was quite a seriously misty morning.

At last after what seemed like months of planning but was really only a few weeks we were finally on our way. Could we take it?, would our bums be able to stand it? Will we cope with the weather and the serious distances? there was only one way to find out and this was it … Scotland here we come. I travel the main route to Exeter from Plymouth most days through my work so until we made it past Honiton, to me, it wouldn’t seem like we were actually on our way. Once through Honiton heading out on the A30 towards Illminster, still shrouded by mist, we decided to have our first of many stops at Newcott Chef,

although it was not a motor-way services it was still extremely busy. We were fortunate enough to get in and get a seat before a coach trip on a ‘mystery tour’ rolled in all wanting tea and biscuits, it must have been a pretty disappointing trip for them so far, as you could see bugger all for mist it should have been called ‘a misty tour’. We ordered two ‘basic fry ups’ and it wasn’t long before we were eagerly tucking into the fried bread and bacon ..yum yum!  There is something about bikes that seems to attract people’s attention, strangers will just come up to us and start asking questions either about the bikes or where we were heading, this was also to be come a bit of a feature of the trip. After being well fed and watered and leaving some of the inquisitive mystery tourers with their jaws on the floor by telling them we were riding to Perth, we headed out onto the road again. As we started to get out towards Bath the mist then gave way to a regular ordinary dull day which was pretty good for riding in. Avoiding the motorway may add twice as much time on the journey but we would have missed some beautiful places and scenery that perhaps we wouldn’t ordinarily have a reason to go and see. Bath had a very grand feel to the place, lots of very well-kept 3/4 story Edwardian style town houses and antique/curios shops, a very up-market well to do area. We had a brief stop on the A46 just past the M4 heading for Stroud for a cup of tea and a ‘fag’, yet another popular feature of the trip.

Unfortunately this stop was cut rather short due to the excessive number of wasps that took an instant liking to everything we were eating and everything we were drinking! … moving swiftly on we took a right towards Cirencester and on through to Stow-On the Wold and Stratford, once again beautiful scenery and beautiful places that kind of re-new your faith in good old England, it hasn’t gone completely to the dogs just yet, if you believe the papers, there are still some wonderful places out there. Unfortunately following the signs we kind of skirted Stratford heading for Warwick and Coventry which is a shame because given more time we would like to have seen some of the glorious old oak beamed houses in and around the town. We pulled in for a fuel stop about ten miles before Coventry, this gave us a chance to call my Mum and Dad to tell them that we were not far away and hopefully we would see them shortly, they promised to get the dinner on ready for our arrival which was very nice of them. First we needed to negotiate the ring road around Coventry …simple …follow the A46 heading to Leicester …can’t go wrong!  We really wanted to avoid going on the motor-way, but try as we might, all roads lead to the M69 Leicester like it or not! also there is not a turning for Ashby from the M69 so we ended up being dumped in the centre of Leicester with no clue about where to go, once we finally found a place that we could pull in some hard studying of the map was required. We had to get on the outer ring road and look for the A50 towards Coalville ….how long were we going round the bloody ring road before the A50 revealed itself!!… now I was getting angry, we’d had a lovely trip so far and Leicester was throwing a spanner in the works, sending us on the Motorway, getting us lost, adding serious time on our journey and putting me in a bad mood! Eventually we rolled up onto my Mum and Dads drive, a good hour and a half over our estimated time, we’d previously said that if we were feeling ok and we’re making good time at this point that we should pop in and have dinner and if possible to crack on with the journey and try to get up around York before we stopped, which would be more like halfway according to the map. I knew my Parents would be a bit miffed that we were not intending to stay but I hoped they would understand that if we didn’t get closer to the half way point tonight it would leave us with too much to do tomorrow to get from Ashby to Perth. They had prepared us a lovely ‘Sunday Lunch’ …spuds, cabbage, gravy and as I thought they were very put out that we wanted to carry on and not stop the night with them. Still it was great to see them and we really appreciated the food but we had to put some more miles under our belt before it got to dark. So once again more ‘Good Byes and Good Lucks’ and off we set once again. Now the ‘no motor-way’ rule had been broken we decided that it would probably be best if we tried to make up as much ground as possible and surcome to the M1 at least for an hour or so. York was our target but it became clear that after about half an hour of constant 60/70 mph that York was out of the question for tonight at least so we said we’d try to make it to the next major services before the M18 and hopefully stop somewhere round there tonight. Our luck was in, this service station had a ‘Days Inn’,

albeit on the opposite side of the motor-way, but with the assistance of a couple of service roads we were able to zip across to the other side and book ourselves in for the night. The area, we were informed by the very helpful and friendly receptionist, was known as ‘Sheffield and South Yorkshire’ and when asked she was able to direct us to the local pub ‘The Pebley’ about a mile down the road …result!  Having chained the bikes together and covered them up for the night we had a quick shower, got changed and headed for the pub on foot. I think we made the pub for about 9ish which wasn’t bad going, I had a touch of arm and wrist ache and was definitely saddle sore, both my self and Claire were walking like we were in a John Wayne western I don’t think we’d make the tryouts for England goal keeper either …. then again!  … still it was good to be on terra firma for a while. Once again the people in the pub were very friendly and were soon asking us why we were there and then all about the bike trip, they joined quite a growing list of people who thought we were completely mad for attempting to get to Perth but wished us both a safe journey all the same. We only stayed for a couple of pints as it had been a long, exiting, but very tiring day in which we’d clocked over 300 miles and now our beds were calling.

Day 2 Tuesday 1st September 09
Having had our second fry-up of the week in the near by services we packed up the bikes and prepared ourselves for yet another long days traveling. Since we had clawed back a little time by coming up the motor-way straight from Ashby, I thought it might be a good idea if we stayed on the M1 and did a circuit around Leeds and Doncaster and followed the A1M and come off on the A168 for Thirsk. It meant we would have to put a hard slog in on the motorway but hopefully we would benefit from doing that later on by having more time on roads where, at least, there was something to see. We stopped at the first services that were available, fueled up and had some tea. Claire was not at all happy about traveling so far on the motor-way, I had to agree, it was just horrible riding and nonstop tedium and she reminded me that we didn’t come on this trip to get from A to B as quickly as possible. So unless it was really necessary she wanted to stick to A and B roads and get back to the plan. I had always intended to get back to the plan as soon as possible, I was just trying to skirt round some areas that were perhaps not the scenic views we were looking for. Anyway after our break it was very much back to the plan, we had to first pop into Thirsk so Claire could get to the bank and the post office.

Thirsk was a very pleasant bustling little town with once again very friendly welcoming people, we only had a brief stop before heading up the A19 past Middlesbrough, Sunderland and through the very long tunnel to Newcastle. Shortly after that we had another brief stop for ‘a cup of tea and a fag’, where we just turned down one of the country lanes and pulled over at the first available gateway. 

After that stop Claire still needed to find a post office, there was one in Thirsk but it must have been pension day or something as the queue was nearly out the door so we gave that one a miss. Having checked out the map once again, Morpeth emerged as the next most likely town that would have a post office and if we could find a nice pub with a car park for the bikes then we would also have lunch. Morpeth like Thirsk also proved to be a very friendly and welcoming town and once we’d tracked down the local post office we parked up right outside on the high street so Claire could pop in, while I waited with the bikes. Passers by would just stop and remark on the bikes and just chat away, like I said it must be something to do with the bikes that does it, but its great if just a little odd at times. Finally Claire had waded her way through the sea of blue rinces to get to the front to sort out her business that meant all we needed now was a nice pub that served good food. As the post office was towards the far end of the town we ended up getting back on the A1 and looking for the first available pub from there. That happened to be ‘The Oak Inn’ at Causey Park Bridge, here we were able to get ourselves quite a substantial lunch and boy were we ready for it, we left the plates with barely the pattern on them when we had finished. 

Claire had been giving the map the once over and decided that it might be best if we cut across to the A697 towards Coldstream, as that would cut off just a little bit of the corner heading towards Edinburgh, and as we were more or less on the lane that cuts across that seemed like a good idea. We’d had quite a long stop and now thought it might be best to get some serious miles under our belt again so once on the A697 we really cracked on, after about an hour or so on this road the weather took a turn for the worse and the dark clouds moved in and the heavens began to open. We radioed to each other that it was probably time to test out the ‘flotation suits’ if we could find a suitable place to pull in then we should put them on. We found the ideal place and pulled into what looked like a farmers yard surrounded by open fronted oak beam barns. I suggested that we ride the bikes into one of the barns and get changed in the dry as it was now really starting to throw it down, it was all a bit bizarre, but it really was the perfect spot to get changed in. Off we set, once again now quite prepared for anything the weather was going to throw at us …’have flotation suit …will travel’. As we passed through Coldstream I spotted a sign that read “Scotland Welcomes You” so we pulled over so that I could get a photo of it, quite the achievement, we’d actually made it to Scotland, although we were both a little travel weary at this point and not very tolerant of anything much less each other so perhaps our achievement thus far went a little under celebrated.

None the less we motored on; the scenery over the last few hours was really beginning to change into mountains and forests and starting to look like what I had imagined Scottish Highlands to be. I was also beginning to get a little concerned about the petrol situation, with Edinburgh still being some 30 odd miles away I knew I had just about enough fuel in the tank to make that, but I also knew Claire would really need to fill up at the next available petrol station, and they, so far, had been few and far between. I pulled over and suggested to Claire that we head for the nearest town and try to find a fuel station, we took a left turn off to a town called ‘Lauder’ which thankfully wasn’t that far away and just before we turned right at the junction for the A68 and the town of Lauder, Claire’s bike started to splutter and came to a halt. She quickly switched the tank over to reserve but it was clear that if Lauder didn’t have a petrol station then we were in big trouble, thankfully Claire’s bike fired up again and we were able to trundle into the town looking frantically for a petrol station, before we made to the far end of town Claire’s bike had conked out completely, but as luck would have it we were within sight of a BP garage. I parked my bike on the footpath and began to help push Claire’s bike while she shoved it along with her feet. I’m glad the petrol station wasn’t that far because it was really taking it out of me, but thankfully between the two of us we had enough steam to get the bike into the garage forecourt and fueled up. The bike was reluctant to start at first but soon sputtered back to life once again with a little gentle persuasion, Claire waited for me at the petrol station while I walked back to fetch my bike. How fortunate we were to reach the petrol station, had we have carried on the A697 I think we would have been in trouble without a doubt. Still with our flotation suits on we eventually made it to Edinburgh, wow, we were really up there now, I didn’t realise the map page numbers went that high. On the outskirts of Edinburg Claire called Ron to let him know that we’d made it this far, Ron wanted to meet us once we had gotten over the Forth Bridge and were heading for Perth. But this would have to wait a while yet as Claire had never been to Edinburgh and want to travel into the city centre and just have a mooch about and maybe see the sights. We’d made good time and it was still light, so why not? I didn’t realise that Edinburgh was so big; it was six miles to the centre from the outer ring road, which quite surprised me. We took a slow ride into the center taking in all the sights that we could see and ended up parking down by the main railway station with a view across to the castle.

We had a brief walk round to find a toilet and some fags before the heavens opened once again, we thought it might be best if we get out of the city and go and meet Ron before it started getting too late. Navigating our way to the Forth Bridge was a little tricky with all the road works that seem to be going on, but with the help of a friendly black cab taxi driver, it wasn’t long before we were taking in the views across the Firth of Forth on the engineering marvel that is the Forth Bridge. It was fantastic to actually see ‘Perth’ on the signs, the distant target that we had set out to reach yesterday, was now only some forty-five minutes away. Ron had arranged to meet us at ‘Kinross services’ on his bike as he wanted to ride the last bit with us which we thought was really nice. We pulled into the services at around 8ish, and sure enough, Ron was there good to his word. We rode round and parked up next to his bike which was in spanking condition and looked like he’d just ridden it out of the showroom. He had a broad smile on his face and greeted us both like long-lost friends, which was also really nice, he seemed genuinely pleased to see us, he said he was slightly disappointed that we hadn’t arrived sooner as he was really keen to show us round the ‘Lochs’. It’s true, we would liked to have arrived earlier but we didn’t have a plan to any of it it and we were just ‘buskin’ as we went along, taking things as they came. Ron had a quick look around the bikes which by this point were in a complete mess, after all they had just done over 600 miles each and with all the muck and bin bags they were not looking their best. But he was appreciative of our making it this far. The mere mention of a takeaway curry was enough to spur us on the remainder of the journey to Ron’s house, it was a very nice short ride. The rain had relented and we found ourselves riding into the sun setting beyond the distant trees, what a beautiful view to finish off a long and rewarding 12 hour day. Back at Ron’s house his neighbor ‘Bill’ had very kindly agreed to let us keep our bikes in his garage while we were staying at Ron’s, which was perfect.

Maureen, Ron’s wife, had made up a bed in their spare room for us and told us to make ourselves at home. Once we got changed and cleaned up a bit we were able to relax and wind down a little, although Ron was scaring me a little with some of his ideas for rides we should do the following day, one he mentioned was a five-hour run! I must admit I had envisaged us just having a really relaxing day and perhaps giving our arms, legs and backsides a real rest after the two days long haul and maybe having a day off from riding, but I could see he was keen and he’d taken time off work especially to show us around, and they were putting us up and everything so it would be wrong not to indulge him as long as it wasn’t a five-hour jaunt!. I had previously been to Scotland several times before with a band when I was younger but we had only ever played in Edinburg or Glasgow and so I didn’t really get to see mountains and Lochs etc. Only when on holiday with my parents did I ever venture into that kind of territory, but I was way too young to really remember. I don’t think Claire had really seen to much of Scotland either, so I tried to steer Ron into taking us on a shorter, more of a sight-seeing trip. It was clear from some of the photos that Ron had taken that Perth was surrounded by picturesque scenery, and a nice easy paced day would suit us just fine. Happy now that he had some kind of an idea of the type of thing we might like to see, Ron came up with a few possible routes that he was going to take us on tomorrow. After quite a spicy chicken Balti and all the trimmings, a bottle of wine and few beers, once again our beds were calling and out like a light we went …..zzzzzzzzzz
Day 3 Wednesday 2nd September 09
Having slightly more of a lie-in today, we got up and had a shower. Ron had cereal and toast on offer for breakfast and we eagerly tucked in,

once fed and watered it was straight on with the bike gear once again, and out for a few photographs before heading off. Today was slightly different in that we weren’t loaded up with bags and bin liners because we would be staying at Ron’s at least one more night, so thankfully all that could be left our room. The weather today was just right, no rain, not too hot, but plenty of sun to set off the beautiful scenery. We followed Ron in our little bike convoy through some lovely little towns, and as we went further on the picture was becoming more and more ‘post card’ by the minute. Claire and I were still in contact with each other via the radio and all we were saying was “wow …look at that”  …..and “did you see that” or ..”this is unbelievable” the roads and views that we were riding through were just incredible, no wonder Ron was so keen to take out to show us round. He was very proud of where he lived and rightly so, it was ‘Chocolate box’ stuff this and here we were riding through it. I wanted to stop every five minutes just to take photos but unfortunately we were not in contact with Ron and just had to wait until he pulled over. But we were not to be disappointed, he made sure and stop at all the most advantageous spots that we could get the bikes in, and the scenery just kept getting better and better, even Ron kept saying “you’ve picked a good day for this”

.         
As far as I know we rode through ‘Crief’ and on out past ‘Loch Earn’

taking in the ‘Falls of Dochart’ which was just like an oil painting, we had a brief stop here and had a sausage and fried egg sandwich  ….oh yes!

Back on the bike’s we followed the road along ‘Loch Tay’ beautiful riding!  …just think, I was contemplating having a day off yesterday, today so far was worth the entire trip up here just for this ….awesome!! This is a totally different view of Scotland that we’re really glad we saw and we really appreciated Ron taking the time out to show us round. Without him these are places that we probably would never have seen, and yet this whole day was making the aches and pains it took to get up here worth every minute. We had another stop at the village of Kemore, Ron pointed out the very picturesque church that one of Claire’s relatives had got married at only a couple of years ago,

we had a little wander around on foot and even found a beach where I took a couple of photos, a very nice, tranquil place, that was until we were just about to leave, two land Rovers roared up and out jumped a load of blokes in green kilts and the whole nine yards, it seems they were just arriving back from some organised adventure day, but at least we saw genuine kilts in Scotland!

I happened to mention to Ron that I enjoyed ‘a wee tipple’ and then he came up with the idea that we should visit a whiskey distillery before we head back for home…sounded like a mighty fine plan to me, and with no objections from Claire off we set to find it. We had a brief stop so Ron could fill up at a local bikers favorite haunt called ‘The Motorgrill at ‘Ballinluig’,

apparently it gets quite busy with bikers during holidays and weekends, but today, apart from one other guy on a Harley Road King we were the bikers! From there it was only a relatively short run to the Brewery which turned out to be the ‘Blair Athol’ …”Heart of the Bells Blend”

Unfortunately it was now around 5ish and we were too late for the distillery tour so we just headed straight for the gift shop, if you’re into your whiskey then you’d love this place, wall to wall bottles of all shapes and sizes with jaw dropping prices to match, but that said there were no shortage of foreigners queuing up to buy them and I have to be honest I was one of them, I was a little aghast at the price of £32.99 for the bottle, but it was a malt and we were buying a genuine ‘Blair Athol’ Scottish Whiskey, to go along side my genuine ‘Black Bush 16-year-old malt’ Irish Whiskey that we also purchased direct from the distillery in Northern Ireland a while back…oh what a fantastic day we were having! Having packed up our purchases, Ron had one more place he wanted to take us before we returned home and that was the thirteenth century Cathedral at ‘Dunkeld’ This was in a quite little village tucked away,

but what a beautiful spot to build it, right along side the river, yet another tranquil place.

Most of the old cathedral had been destroyed in the reformation but the ruins were still standing alongside the re-built part. Wandering through the ruins I read a description of a quiet area that one of the priests used to go which could still be found in one of the corners, and upon looking around I found what I thought must be what they were talking about, but unfortunately it was screened off by a glass door and partition. You could still peer through the glass to see what was in there, so I put my face right up to the glass and looked on only to have Ron jump at me from the other side of the glass …I’m telling you …it was too late for bicycle clips!! ….I have to apologies to anyone else who happened to be there for the color of my language at that point …it appears that access to the quite area could be gained from entering round the side which is how Ron had gotten in there ……it certainly woke me up I can tell you. 

Ron had neglected to mention that he was supposed pick up a prescription for his wife at some point today and so far he’d forgotten which meant he was now in the dog house with Maureen who apparently wasn’t best pleased that he hadn’t collected it yet and it was getting on for seven, he decided that he would show us the way back to his house before going on into the town to try to catch the chemist ….good luck with that one!. Thankfully when we arrived back, Maureen wasn’t in such a bad mood and had the dinner ready and waiting for us as we walked in, steak pie, with vegetables and potatoes …yum yum. Yvonne, Ron and Maureen’s daughter popped round to see us and joined us all as we downed some more wine and whiskey and chatted until it got late. We would have liked to stay a second day so that Ron could show us round some more but we had decided that we didn’t want to be riding 12 hour days on the way home again if we could help it, nice though it was, it was quite exhausting. We came up with a plan to take three days to ride home rather than two and try to get home for Saturday and give ourselves a full day to recover on Sunday before going back to work again on the Monday. So dividing the route into roughly three segments going down the west coast this time it meant we would be looking at staying somewhere around the Lake District one night, before traveling on to Brierley Hill for the second night, and hopefully reaching home in Looe, Cornwall on Saturday. Again Ron was disappointed that we wouldn’t be staying longer but he realised the enormity of the journey ahead of us, and agreed that taking three days to get home would be better than trying to do it in two. So we set him the challenge of coming down to see us on his motorbike at some point, will he be brave enough to take that on?
Day 4 Thursday 3rd September 09
Up, showered and shaved and into the kitchen to see that Ron had knocked up a couple of most welcome bacon butties and two cups of tea. Today the weather was horrible, persistent rain, I’m so glad we did the scenic stuff yesterday as today was not a day you really wanted to be riding motorbikes in. Out came the flotation suits once again with the added most attractive feature of bin liners over our boots, we must have looked like we were going into a nuclear reactor, but at least everything would be dry! We thanked Bill for the use of his garage and loaded up the bikes once more with all the bags, we thanked Ron and his family for putting us up and making us feel so welcome and for showing us around the most fantastic sights. We’d really had a brilliant time and loved every minute of it but unfortunately now it was time to leave, once more the ‘good lucks’ and ‘good byes’ were exchanged and I’m sure with only the slightest of persuasion, even on a drizzly horrible day like today, Ron would have been willing to come along for the ride. He, because he had a bike I suppose, more than anyone else it seemed could really appreciate our sense of adventure in all this, and the look on his face said he was desperate to come and join in, I said to him “come on Ron, even though its chucking down, your jealous aren’t you?” and he was. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t too long before Ron’s knocking on our door to return the favor …we’ll look forward to it. We fired up the bikes and hit the road once again, destination Glasgow. The weather was persistent for at least the first hour before it started to ease a little. Once we started getting close, Claire said that she would like to pop into Glasgow and have a look round, so we followed the signs to the center and ended up riding through quite a rough area which looked like it was being flattened for regeneration, and then up ahead I could see a football ground, and as there where bits of green on it, I guessed it must be Celtic. I asked Claire if she would mind if we went up to the ground to take some pics, that way it would at least prove we made it to Glasgow. As we pulled into the ground we must have been right at the back as we had to ride under the stands to get round to the main front entrance which was a bit weird. I pulled my Harley right outside the front steps and took a few pics.

Claire meanwhile had found the club shop. We text Ron to tell him where we were as he was a Celtic fan and would appreciate that, we also bought him a T-shirt which said “The Bhoys” which we thought he might like. Claire said she would send it up to him when we got home as a thank you for looking after us. We spent quite a while in the shop and we even had a burger at the very friendly burger stall in the car park. After the unscheduled stop we thought we had better make up some ground again if we were going to make the Lake District. I was hoping we could make it to the bottom end, somewhere near Kendal before it got too dark, so we chose the get on the motorway once again. The weather wasn’t good which meant sight-seeing was not really worth it, so if we just got our heads down and cracked on we could hopefully get to Carlisle at a reasonable hour and join the A595. That is exactly what we did, with a few short pit stops thrown in for good measure.

The idea was that we should take the A595 to Cockermouth and then take the scenic route through the Lake district to Kendal but by the time we had reached Cockermouth we’d had enough,

Claire was fed up so we took the decision to stay at Cockermouth (so-called because of its position at the mouth of the river Cocker) and do the scenic bit first thing tomorrow. We tried to find a nice hotel that cooked food as Claire was really in the mood for a nice steak dinner, but we couldn’t find anything until we got to the far end of the town, when Claire spotted the ‘Sheep Shaggers Hotel’ or the ‘Sheep and Wool Center ‘ to use its correct name …… they definitely had a thing going for sheep! …

We booked in and paid slightly more than the usual, at £85 purely because they served steak and we couldn’t find anywhere else. To be fair the room was actually very nice and we showered and changed ready for dinner at 6. Once we walked into the restaurant it suddenly wasn’t quite so appealing, it had some very odd and loud guests waiting to be served and the whole place smelt like an old folks home so we decided to give it a miss and head off into the town on foot to find a cozy pub. Although the rain had long since stopped it was now beginning to get quite chilly and there was a definite autumn nip in the air. After walking the mile or two into town we eventually happened upon ‘The Cock and Bull’ advertising the fact that they were now serving food! Perfect, just what we were looking for, a nice cozy pub, good atmosphere and serving food. We ordered two mixed grills as our hunger was now getting the better of us, thankfully the food came quickly and boy did we attack it, these were sizable plates with all sorts going on, but we soon chomped our way through it with and with the aid of a couple of pints, the food was quickly demolished. That left only on thing left to do …pub crawl …. Cockermouth was not short of pubs; you could stagger out of one and into another and barely feel the cold. At one pub, ‘The Wordsworth Inn’ I had gone to the gents while Claire ordered the drinks and by the time I’d got back we’d been invited on a tour of their recently renovated hotel!

What a fantastic hotel it was too, and their room rate was much less than we were paying, I was quite miffed! ….the rooms were flamboyantly decorated with arty furniture, designer beds, spectacular lighting, I hope they will get the custom in to justify all the effort and expense. They, once again, were extremely friendly and welcoming, and join a long list of people and place’s who are restoring my faith where we live, I’m not pretending for one minute that everywhere and everyone one is fine and dandy, but certainly everywhere we have been, the people and places have been a credit to themselves …and hats off to them for that, and long may it continue. By now Claire and I had had rather a lot to drink and only managed to sample one more pub before we walked the long and slightly ‘wobbly’  trek back to the hotel.
Day 5 Friday 4th September 09
Yet another fry-up was devoured for breakfast before we set about packing up the bikes for the day. I thought I had best check the oil situation on both bikes as we had been doing some serious traveling at this point, its a good job I did because my bike was very low and certainly needed a top up, we only had a little bit of oil left in the bottle so we’d definitely have to get some at the next petrol stop but there was sufficient oil to keep me going until then at least. For some reason we had set the alarm for 8 but we didn’t actually get away until 10, We set off on the A66 towards Keswick, Claire pointed out that strictly speaking this was Route 66 …how about that! 

I took some pictures, again of the beautiful hill sides and ‘Bassenthwaite lake’; we looked somewhat out-of-place with all the motorbike gear on in such a gorgeous setting like a couple of aliens looking for a space ship……”take us to your leader”

Once in Keswick we found a place to park the bikes and had a wander around the town, we sort out the tourist information centre to have them direct us to the Motor Museum. We wanted to see this because our son Elliot is currently mad about Delorean Cars and this museum just happened to have the actual Delorean car that was used in the film ‘Back to the future’ amongst many others in its collection. It was really interesting to have a look round and wonder how they had managed to obtain the actual cars used in some major films, but here they were on display in front of us, unfortunately there were signs everywhere not to take any photos or video, but I’ll be honest I did manage to sneak a quick pick, albeit quite a dark pic, of the Delorean as we walked past it. But if you’re into the stars cars, it’s well worth a visit. 

Now back on the road there were so many places we would liked to have gone but time was now moving on so we had to really stick to the A6, the views were still lovely as we passed parts of lake Windermere and through the town itself and on through to Kendal where we managed to find a petrol station to fuel up and purchase some oil. We thought it best to stay on the A6 for as long as possible, it basically followed the M6 but just wasn’t so hectic, We stopped for a bite to eat a long the way at ‘The Crofters Tavern’ and noted that Claire’s speedometer had now passed the 1000 miles mark,

its incredible to think that we have done that many miles so far and were still miles from home. Having eaten an adequate sufficiency, the road beckoned once more, fed and watered we could now look forward to the next leg of the journey. We were aiming for Preston, Wigan, Warrington and then see where we go from there, This wasn’t scenic county side views or anything now but it was still nice riding though some nice ‘well to do’ areas. Once we hit Preston the town didn’t seem to want us to leave as we couldn’t find the way out, After a couple of attempts we managed to navigate through to re-join the A6 heading for Chorley.Traffic was now starting to get quite busy as the schools were finishing and the world and his mother were out on the roads. We followed signs for Euxton and Chorley and it ended up doing a Leicester on us and sending us on the motorway, like it or not, at this point we were both quite desperate for a pit stop and decided that we should get on the motor way and get to the first services, sort ourselves out and go from there ….a good plan indeed. Having refreshed ourselves we came to the conclusion that we should now stay on the motorway, get our heads down once more and make up some ground as the traffic was really not moving too fast on the regular roads and it may set us back for getting to Brierley Hill before it gets dark because to quote my mother “Its getting late early tonight” the sun was indeed getting its pygmies on and was only to keen to be calling it a night . So that’s what we did, it also meant that we bypassed a few areas that perhaps there wouldn’t have been too much to see. We soon notched up the miles and after quite a long stint of motorway riding we eventually pulled off at junction 2 of the M5 and were at last heading for Brierley Hill and Claire’s brothers house, With rush hour traffic, road works and not being entirely sure of the directions we managed to battle our way to Neil’s house for around 7.30 / 8.

He was waiting for us outside and had cleared enough space in his garage so that we could park both bikes in there for the night, which was excellent. We exchanged welcomes and it was nice for Claire who’ doesn’t get to see her brother too often these days, owing to the fact that we live in Cornwall. A Chinese take away was on offer tonight which was just perfect. Neil gave us a grand tour of his new house which was very nice before showing us to our room for the night. He told us to make ourselves comfortable while he went out to fetch the curry. We sat and chatted the night away before retiring to our beds from a very tiring day. Thanks to Neil and Lisa, they made us both feel very welcome once again and couldn’t do enough to help us, it was very much appreciated.

Scotland Trip Day 6

Day 6 Saturday 5th September 09
Today we were up and about quite early I was determined that we should be leaving around 8ish, this was supposed to have been the idea all along but it had gradually been getting later and later when we were setting off. Overall that meant we seemed to be rushing towards the end of the day to try to stay with the plan instead of just having a leisurely day. So Claire had set the alarm for 7, and we got washed and gathered all our things ready to pack on the bikes, it seems we had neglected to inform anyone else of our intention to go early. We came down stairs to find everywhere was locked up, we couldn’t get out to the bikes and Claire couldn’t get outside for a ‘fag’, eventually I located a key to the front door of the house so at least Claire could have her morning fix, but it seemed we would just have to wait until the household woke up before we could gain access to the bikes. We had a little help in waking up the house hold from their own cat, they hadn’t yet installed at cat flap, so their cat sat outside the back door crying very loudly to be let in to get fed. At last the young lad came down and opened all the necessary doors. Once Neil had gotten up he proceed to knock up a quick fry up before we set off, which was most welcome. A few more photos before we left, and another round of ‘good lucks’ and ‘good byes’ and we were once again on our way. We headed out to Stourbridge and onto Bromsgrove to pick up the A38 which we intended to follow as far as it would take us, Once again this was nice riding through some quite ‘well to do’ areas, we past ‘Chateau Impney’ at Droitwich where Claire and I had gotten engaged many moons ago.

We had a brief pit stop just past Worcester before heading out past the Malvern Hills and Upton Upon Seven.

As we were riding along I happened to notice a ‘Hog Harley Davidson’ sign so I radioed to Claire that I would like to go back and just have a quick look. It turned out to be ‘Revs Hog’, and rather than being a Harley Davidson show room it was more of a one man outfit that specialised in the repair of Harley’s.

That said he did have one or two bikes for sale, and one in particular which caught my eye was a ‘Softail Heritage’  it stood out to me because it was exactly the same ‘orange and cream’ colour scheme that my bike had, and until now I had never seen another one with these colours. This bike was in spanking condition with just over 8k miles on the clock, it had extras like the saddle bags and crash bars and I must admit I was quite taken with it although it was a 1992, and he wanted £7950 which I thought was a little expensive not that I had a spare eight grand anyway, but I’d certainly keep it in mind if the situation changed.

The Rev and his girlfriend were very friendly and offered us a cup of tea, we had explained to them what we were doing and how we happened to find their place, the Rev himself was working on quite a rare bike called a Harley Firefighter, They were rare

because Harley Davidson had made them as specials and issued them to the New York firefighters for helping the city of New York during and after 9/11. Each bike was the same metallic red and had a chrome ‘Firefighter’ badge on the front mudguard and on the fuel tank, the dash listed all the names of the firemen who lost their lives on that day, so it was extremely unusual to see one in this country. This bike belonged to an Irish man who was now living local to the area and he was just having some minor bits and pieces done to the bike by the Rev, when he came to collect it I asked him how he had managed to get hold of it. He told me he knew a fireman that lived in Bristol, who in turn knew one of the New York firemen who had one of these Harley specials and was looking to sell it to move up to something bigger. So the guy borrowed a good deal of money from his wife and bought the bike and had it shipped over to England, and went through all the hassle of getting all the paper work changed so the bike would be legally recognised in this country. At some point after that, the couple fell out with each other and got divorced, his wife demand her money back which meant he had to sell the bike to pay her back, so in walks our friendly Irish man who happened to be in the right place at the right time and picked himself up an absolute bargain, he tells me he bought the bike for £9000!..I mean this is a special issue Harley Davidson, it has to be worth loads more than that, and he’d definitely got a winner there. Before we decided to move on, we bought a couple of items for my bike and struggled to fit them in the already burgeoning saddle bags, we said our thanks and good byes and they stood and waved us off. Before I’d made it to the road the Rev was flagging me down and asking if I could hear the rattling, I have to be honest this bike has always had a rattle, I just thought it was part and parcel of the whole thing. The Rev said I have an idea that is a bolt loose in your primary drive, with a bit of luck it probably just needs tightening up, he said if you have a bit of time, bring it into my garage and I’ll have a look for you.

He seemed to know what he was talking about so I thought it was better that we get this done now while we can. Within minutes my bike was on a stand with the side casing off and a tray underneath collecting the oil, I hadn’t seen inside this part of my bike before and tried to pay attention to what the Rev was doing, and he was very helpful in explaining as he went, what each bit was and what it was for. Basically the main nut that holds the sprocket for the primary chain had worked itself lose, this is apparently a common problem, if caught early it’s just a case of tightening it back up, but if it’s allowed to stay loose this causes the sprocket to rattle against the center splines and slowly wear them away, and this was precisely what was happening in my case. The Rev showed me the centre splines and pointed out the serious amount of wear on them already, almost half of the splines had been worn away which meant that even tightening up the main bolt fully would still allow the primary sprocket to rattle a little, I would definitely hear an improvement but this would not solve the problem. I enquired as to how I might be able to solve the problem, the Rev said “unfortunately it requires major surgery, its a stripping the engine down job to replace the spline spindle”, he said “this is not something that I can do now for you or anything, the best I can offer is to tighten the main bolt up, and for you to keep your eye on it, and when you hear it rattling again get it tightened up, it will be fine as long as you keep your eye on it but you will always have a little rattle because of it freely moving on the worn splines”. He did lighten my wallet of £45 for his services, but they were greatly appreciated none the less, at least I had some understanding of what was going on now. But it did leave me thinking that it might be too much trouble and expense to sort out and I might be better off selling my bike and letting someone else have the hassle and just get another bike. It was a bit worrying that it could only be solved with major surgery, if I didn’t keep my eye on the rattle and the splines wore completely through then my bike would be knackered. Off we set once again, grateful for the help but also a little shell-shocked at how much that little visit had just cost us, we spent over £90 …and we were only popping in for a look around!. Having had the unscheduled work done on my bike, that had set us back quite a bit with time, so once again we decided to give into the motorway and joined the M5 at Tewkesbury. The motorway proved to be its usual tedious self with the added extra thrown in of road works causing three lanes of tail-backs from one side of Bristol to the other. The advantage of being on bikes is that you can basically push to the front which is just what we did, although it was a little scary at times and some drivers were determined not to let us pass, but with grit and determination we battled our way through to flowing traffic once again. We pulled off to look for a nice pub for lunch, and after a little bit of searching we happened upon ‘The Harp Inn’ at Clevedon,

Here we managed to get fed and watered before we set off on the final leg of the journey home, Once at Exeter it started to feel like familiar territory, riding back along the bypass which feels like it goes on for hours before it reaches Plymouth,

over the Tamar Bridge, under the Saltash Tunnel  and finally on the lanes towards Looe, The nights were definitely drawing in as if was getting dark around 7.30/8ish. I took some final photos of our arrival back outside our own house,

The speedometer records that we did roughly 1400 miles, Claire said “do you think we can class ourselves as real bikers now?” I said …”after that journey I should think so”. 
Both bikes had stood the test and never let us down. My bike had one indicator bulb go and the other indicator bracket work itself loose, Claire’s had one of the brackets holding one of her spot lights on the front snap, but other than that we had a problem free journey, We both came out of it feeling very pleased with ourselves for the achievement and even now looking back its hard to believe that we’ve actually done it. We have seen some beautiful places, met some wonderful people, everyone we have been in contact with over the time has been extremely welcoming and very friendly, they have put us up, fed and watered us, and have been full of encouraging words for what we were doing. Our backsides seemed to get over the initial aches after a couple of days, we still had wrist ache and general fatigue from riding for long periods at a time but nothing too unbearable. So we both feel that the challenge of Route 66 and its 2400 miles is something that we could handle, and we can now really start to plan this trip and make it happen. A big thank you to everyone who helped us on our way, it was all very much appreciated.

Ok, its been a long time since I updated this blog but hey we’re right in the middle of winter and to be honest we just haven’t been out on the bikes at all.

October 10th 2009

I was asked by Claire what I’d like for my birthday and I said I would like to get my petrol tank sprayed up to match the rest of my bike, having phoned round for a few prices it seemed that I would be looking at around £250 / £300. I eventually got hold of Adam who happens to do the tanks for B&H Harley Davidson at Bugle and I figured if anyone was going to do a good job of spraying the tank it would be him. This was at the beginning of October and Adam said in six days he would be leaving to do some prearranged spray jobs around the Country and wouldn’t be back until the 15th/20th so that meant I could let him have the tank to spray now but he couldn’t guarantee it would be finished in such at sort space of time or wait until he got back when he could devote more time to it, So I opted for the later as I would still have my bike to ride for a few weeks if nothing else and as it was my actual birthday on the 20th that would work out better for me anyway.

I phoned Adams mobile around the 15th but he informed me that extra work had been forced upon him and he wouldn’t now be back until the 25th. I figured that I’d hung on this long now I may as well wait a little longer. Eventually I get the call from Adam that he was now back and I could drop the Tank over to him so he could get started on the job, I also gave him the original ‘peanut tank’ so he could gauge the colours and the stripes around the paneling, I handed everything over to him and asked if he could keep me informed of its progress. Mike from the Harbour had agreed to remove the tank for me and allow me to store my bike in his garage until the new sprayed tank arrives whereupon he will re-install that for me, so it was just a case of waiting until the job was complete, I asked Adam how long he thought it might take before I saw the finished tank he said probably a week or so depending on how busy they get so I resolved to give him a call in a weeks time and see how things were progressing.

One week later I called Adam for an update only to hear that not much progress if any had taken place, apparently the paint shop were experiencing a bit of a backlog and he would just have to wait until he could fit it in. I decided that I would just let him get on with it and not pester him anymore and allow him to give me a call when the job was done at least my bike was in a dry garage as the weather was gradually getting rougher . One month later I get a call from Adam to say that my tank was now finished and waiting for me, the cost would be £280 somewhat more than I was hoping for but at least it was ready and at last I could get it fitted back on my bike which I hadn’t seen for quite some time now.

I popped over to Adams house in Bugle paid up the cash and picked my newly sprayed tank and wow did it looked good, he had indeed done a fantastic job and the new Harley Davidson emblems on either side of the tank were excellent, I couldn’t wait to see how it would look fitted on my bike.

I decided I should take the tank straight round to Mikes garage in Polperro so that he could fit it back on when he had some free time. I couldn’t believe it when I called round and Mike told me that the day before he had fallen onto a pair of shears and severed a tendon in his thumb which was now set in plaster and he would be out of action for at least six weeks before the cast could come off so he wouldn’t be able to fit my tank until the new year! ….you couldn’t make it up! …it already seemed like I’d waited an age just to get the tank back but now I was going to have to wait until the new year before I get the chance to ride my bike again, the only saving grace was that at least it was being kept inside as the weather has really been atrocious for weeks and looks likely to continue right up until Christmas so I probably wouldn’t have been able to get out on my bike anyway even if I could get the tank fitted.

Christmas came and went and still no sign of my tank getting fitted, in fact it wasn’t until the end of January when I finally get the call from Mike to say I could come and collect my bike as he had now fitted the tank …..yeh hey!! …..it had been so long …I was a little nervous about having to ride my bike back to Looe from Polperro in the Dark, It was about 10 o’clock at night when I finally set off from his Garage, but oh what a feeling to be back on bike again after almost three and a half months and the new tank looks superb and really sets the bike off, it looks a real classic now and I’m really please with how it has turned out

         

all I have to do is sort out an MOT for my bike now as that had run out in October so I arranged to take it to Brian at St Cleer garage as he qualified to do motorbike MOT’s.

January 29th 2010

I had arrange to take my bike for its MOT at 11, Claire and I had decided to have our first ride out together this year and she would accompany me to St Cleer and wait with me while my Harley had its MOT, Brian turned out to be a very friendly chap and got straight to work on the bike, he said the test should only take about half an hour and he was happy for us to watch while he went about it.

Thankfully after the replacement of one indicator bulb my bike sailed through the MOT without any problems, I have to confess I was a little worried especially as it had been sat in Mike’s garage for three months without being fired up.

Having got the certificate safely stashed away in the saddle bag Claire and I decided to continue the ride on towards the ‘Minions’

Although the sun was shinning when we originally set off it was still bitingly cold and the tips of our fingers were really suffering, once we headed out over more exposed areas the weather took a turn for the worse and it began to snow, there was already quite a covering of snow around these parts and it was all looking very bleak

so much so that we decided to head back home, it was just too cold and it wasn’t worth the risk, as we got down onto lower ground the snow soon disappeared but boy it was still bitterly cold, we had to stop briefly on the way back to pry our hands from the handles bars and get some feeling back into our fingers, this involved standing on the side of the road doing a dance from the black and white minstrel show and them breathing hot breath into a gap in or hands and rubbing them together like early cave men trying to light a fire, once our body temperatures had reached the right side of freezing we eventually made our way arriving safely home.

February 9th 2010

Finally we have made inroads to actually organising the Route 66 Trip, we knew it would take a while and may well be expensive but at long last we have committed ourselves to doing it and last night put a deposit down of £500 on an organised self drive trip which will start in Chicago on the 2nd of June 2011. The trip will include flights there and back, bike hire (Hopefully two Harley Road Kings) all hotels (with a couple of special hotels that we have to organise ourselves at our own request,) and insurance for both of us for the whole trip coming in at just shy of £7000, we estimate that the entire trip will cost us around £10,000 by the time we’ve added in fuel, food, days out and gifts etc.

We had searched around on the internet and there were several companies offering to organise such a trip and it was quite hard to suss out which one we thought offered the flexibility that we wanted, plus experience and genuine value, but one thing we were absolutely sure of is that we did not want to go on a ‘guided tour’ we wanted to do it with just the two of us so we could go at our own pace and stop at the things which we found interesting that may not appeal to others. Claire eventually found an English company that advertised ‘self guide route 66 tours’ this company was called HC Travel and is run by a guy called David Grist so Claire sent off an email to make some enquiries and it wasn’t long before we decided that HC Travel were the company we wanted to go with, they are members of ATOL and had been organising these trips for several years and covered all the bike hire, hotel bookings, flights and insurance which gave us the peace of mind that we were in safe hands and they were also willing to be flexible with the hotels to allow us to include a couple of ‘land mark’ hotels which were not on their itinerary plus we wanted to add in a trip to Las Vegas, they tailored the trip for our requirements. So satisfied that this was the company for us we went ahead and put a deposit down for the trip in 2011, obviously this is still quite some time away but we wanted plenty of time to raise the £10,000. this for us is a dream goal, a trip of a life time and not something we want to ‘skimp’ on, we want to really enjoy the whole experience.

I was only thinking yesterday what a fantastic adventure we’ve had just to get this far ‘Sunday 13th July 08 was our first step towards this trip, the day we had our first free hour session on 125cc bikes to see if we could hack it or not, going on to pass our CBT’s, buying our own 125’s, passing our Theory tests, the trip to France on the bikes, passing our Full Bike Tests, buying a 1200cc and a 1400cc, taking the trip from Cornwall up the East Coast of England into Scotland and back down the West Coast of England and back to Cornwall, the bruises, bumps bangs and crashes, all the hair pulling and frustrations and expense of it all just to realise this wild dream we had one day that we could ride across America on two Harley Davidson’s, we’ve been ranting on about doing this trip for so long now that I’m pretty sure that most people who know us think that it will only ever be a pipe dream but as I write HC Travel have accepted our deposits and we can now set about all the bookings and the in’s and outs of the trip.

Route 66 on two Harley Davidson’s is definitely on for June 2011.

Sunday 22^nd August 2010

Ok, just a brief update as not a lot has really happened since I last wrote, we have been going out on fairly regular day trips here and there and did plan to go on another major trip from Cornwall via Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and back down through England in our two weeks Holiday but reluctantly pulled out of this at the last minute because all the money we would spend on this trip would have to come out of the budget for Route 66 so we decided to not spend the money and stay at home and go out on a few local runs if the weather held out. It’s quite strange to think that the next time that we are both off work for this much holiday will be for the big one …..Can’t wait.

During our two-week break we did manage to test ride a Softail Heritage from the Harley Davidson Stop in Plymouth, we had hoped to test ride a Road King as well but unfortunately they didn’t have one of those available, as this would be the bikes that we would potentially be riding in America we thought we had better make sure that we were both comfortable with them before we confirm them as a choice’s for the trip. They can’t guarantee which bike will be available when you get there but they allow you to give a choice of two and promise that it will definitely be one of the two. As we had been in the show room some weeks previous and sat on the Road King we both found the seating position to be a little odd in that it pushed your thighs out a little and thereby reducing the distance for your legs to reach the floor, I didn’t find this too much of a problem but Claire was not happy with it as she felt she couldn’t get both feet flat on the floor at the same time and this would cause her to drop the bike, not something she wanted to be happening on the route 66 trip. This is when we came up with the idea of test riding both bikes first to make sure we were both happy with our selection. As I am convinced that I will be ok with the Road King we took the Softail out for a spin swapping over on a regular basis so that we could both get a feel for it, This bike was a brand spanking new Harley Davidson, the first time we had both had a go on “a real bike” with £1000 excess if we damaged it! So even with ‘kid gloves’ I have to say we both thoroughly enjoyed the experience except that it instantly made both our own bikes seem small and shabby bits of tat but hey … We are talking 16/17 grand’s worth of bike here. At the end of our hours test ride Claire was happy that a Softail Heritage would definitely suit her for route 66 and she would make sure that the tour operator did not put a Road King as her first or second choice, meanwhile I was happy with either one so my choices would remain the same, brief though it was is was most definitely worth testing the bikes out before hand.

March 2010

Since I had the newly sprayed tank fitted back onto my bike it hasn’t been running very well at all, it splutters and misfires until the bike warms up a bit and then it will run fine for a while but the problem is always there in the background. I mentioned this to Mike who fitted the tank if somehow he may have got dirt in the carb jets or something of that ilk which might be causing it to run so sluggishly, he had a look at all the likely possibilities and came to the conclusion that he hadn’t got a clue what was wrong with it, everything seemed to be in order. Not satisfied with that I took the bike into Liskeard Motor cycles and asked if they could have a look at it for me and explained to them the problems I was having with it. They kept the bike for a few days and again could not find any plausible explanation for the problems, in the end Pete said to me ‘my advice to you Alan is sell the bike while there is still some value left in it, it’s a fair age now and its put in a few miles and any faults with it are only likely to get worse, get shot of it and find yourself a bike with a decent engine’.

Very reluctantly I had to agree with him and decided it was time for this bike to go, this was my first Harley, it was a unique bike and I had made it my own and was very proud of it and did not want to see it go, but I knew I couldn’t throw anymore money at it trying to put things right as it was certainly not going to increase its value so passing it on to someone else who might even be able to sort out the problems themselves would mostly likely be the best course of action.

So Ebay it had to be, I cleaned and polished the bike to showroom standard and took several inviting photographs of it against a beautiful river and forest background on a gloriously sunny day, it you were in the market for a secondhand 1200 Sportster you couldn’t fail to look at this one especially with its custom tank and other extras, I must admit it really did look the business, I put it on for £2700 and hoped to get that or above

I needed the maximum I could get for it in order for me to get myself another bike.

It wasn’t long before I had quite a few watchers and silly offers of swaps for bikes I had no interest in whatsoever but after only three days I had a call from an older gentleman who wanted to know it I’d take £3k for it and stop the auction, although I had several watchers and it was very tempting to let the sale run its course as it may have reached more than 3k, I decided to accept his offer as he seemed genuine, really keen on the bike and from what he said he liked to dabble a bit with mechanics etc so he sounded like he be the right man for the bike, I did explain to him about its current sluggish running but he wasn’t fazed by that and said he would give it a full service once he got it home, he had retired now and had always fancied owning a Harley and he felt that this was the bike for him, So deal done we made arrangements for him and his son to come and collect the bike at the weekend in their van, they would be traveling up from Southampton with cash in hand.

My self and Claire arranged to meet them on Saturday in the car park where the bike was parked and at the agreed time, they dully arrived eager to check out the bike. Once they saw the bike it was already a done deal but when I fired it up and they heard the Harley growl the old man said ….“stick it in the van…we’ll ‘ave it” . Once the bike was loaded, and strapped in their van it was back to our house to exchange money and paperwork before they drove off on the long journey back to Southampton.

Now with three grand burning a hole in my pocket I was on the look out for a new Harley

I would like to hopefully move up to something bigger like a V-rod but even for £3k I haven’t got a hope in hell, cheapest second-hand ones are 6k upwards so I’m toying with the idea of going to a Motorbike auction just to see if I can pick one up for somewhere nearer my price range, a bit risky I know but that it’s the only chance I have of being able to afford one, I have spoken to my father about coming with me to the auction as he would have more of a clue what to look for than me and besides the Motorbike auction is not that far from where he lives, so I have nothing to lose by just looking.

In the meantime I will still keep my eye out for any bargains on Ebay which might be worth buying, doing up and selling for a little profit in order to build up my funds and eventually buy a V-rod.

The Motorbike auction was going to be on Tuesday and I was very much looking forward to it even if I didn’t manage to buy a bike I was interested just to see how it all worked never having been to an action before, but this was Sunday night and I  just had a brief check in on Ebay before we were going out for dinner, I spotted a 1997 Harley 1200 Sportster with only 7k on the clock, it did have some bids on it but had only reached £2500 with less than 5 minuets to go, so I said to Claire I’m going to bid on this one, its sounds ok, if I win it great, if not there is always the auction she said ok go for it.

Now only having 1 minute left on the time I put a bid of £2700 for it not really expecting to win it, but shock of shocks I won it I was the highest bidder and now this bike was mine, for me this was purely business, this was a bike that had been kept in a barn for three years and needed a serious clean up but the major thing going for it was the low mileage.

As longs as it was mechanically ok I was more than happy to take on the cosmetic stuff.

So over the next few days before the bike was collected and delivered to me I set about buying one or two items which would hopefully help the look of the bike, out of the three hundred pounds difference from the sale of my old Harley and the purchased of this one I bought, a new tank which came of an 2009 Road King and would look stunning on this bike, plus some crash bars, medium buck handle bars, and some cruiser pegs all of which were delivered to my house before I’d even seen the bike.

On the Monday I get a call from Claire telling me that my bike had finally arrived so for the first time I actually got quite exited about the new bike and couldn’t wait to see it. Once home from work I went over to the car park to see exactly what I had now taken on.

and if I’m honest I have to say I was disappointed, I knew that it was basic but seeing it in the flesh so to speak it really was ‘basic’ and lacking in any kind of ‘wow factor’ at all, my other Harley would turn heads but this one was just too ordinary for words and to add to that I discovered that it had mid controls, no indicators, no battery cover, it had a dent in the front mudguard and the alloy casing had been discolored from leaking battery acid from its three years sitting in a barn, plus the alloy wheels were almost black with brake dust and general dirt that even industrial cleaning materials would struggle to shift it.

The Ebay pictures did this bike some huge favours and it was going to take everything I had to make this look more than I paid for it.

During this time Claire had managed to secure a small lockup for us to store both our bikes in and give us sufficient space to work on them and clean them up etc. So over the next few nights I spent several hours in the store cleaning and polishing the Harley, trying all available fluids and solutions to get the alloys clean, after some serious rubbing and scrubbing for an ordinary bike it was at least starting to look show room again and I was convinced that without adding any of my extras to it I believed it would probably get around £3 / 3.5k and was seriously considering putting it back on Ebay straight away.

The only thing that prevented me from doing so was that fact that there was nothing else any good available for 3 / 3.5K, I resigned myself to living with the bike at least until I could check out an auction to see if it was possible to pick up a bigger Harley at an affordable price besides although the bike had no wow factor at all it was at least looking pretty clean now. Over the next few weeks of riding it most days into work I slowly began to come round to liking it and decided that I would try to ‘snaz’ it up a bit, as this was a basic model it lacked in any chrome bits and pieces, the handle bars were black powder coat, as were all the controls, chain guard, oil tank etc but then I had the idea that I should leave all the black stuff on there and go for the mean moody approach it would certainly make easier to clean, but what I really wasn’t happy with were the all black tyres and as these were also very worn and needed replacing that this was a good opportunity to fit it out with a set of white walls.

These made all the difference to the look of the bike, it suddenly began to look pretty cool, I  also added some crash bars, cruiser pegs, and some custom made forward controls

I added a Harley badge on the back of the sissy bar so at least now you can tell it’s a Harley from the back, I also added a small set of saddle bags, I’m not really into them but the Sportster is such a thin looking bike from the rear that these help to fatten it out a bit,

I sold the buck horn handle bars that I bought in order to keep the black bars that came with the bike, the only other thing that I would like to have fitted was the black 2009 Road King fuel tank, but while this really did look awesome it could not be fitted to my Sportster without some serious alterations, because the new tank works via a fuel pump which would mean changing the carburetor etc to cope with it or carving up the new tank to change it to a gravity feed so that my current set up can work with it, I was told basically this tank is just not designed for my bike and it’s just not going to happen. I was well miffed with that news as it really was a cool looking tank but that said I only paid £90 for it and I knew it was worth way more than that, so I decided to put back onto Ebay for £250 knowing that even a that price it would be a bargain for someone, Sure enough it got snapped up for £305, not a bad little profit, but I would still rather have seen it fitted on my bike. I’m currently on the lookout for a good-looking tank that will suit my system,

January 3, 2011

Ok, here we are at last into the new year …the Route 66 year!  I had been using my Harley on a regular basis to and from work right up until the end of November but then the weather kicked in and pretty much put a stop to that, we wouldn’t normally get snow and ice as bad as this until late January / February but it came in and hung around for weeks with the only real let up being during the festive holidays, I have only managed to get out on my bike a handful of times during this period as it’s just too cold, too risky and too muddy, consequently both bikes have been sitting in a cold damp shed and not being run for weeks at a time, I have been trying to make an effort to go over every now and then to fire them but still they have been spluttering and not running very well but what can you do when there isn’t an opportunity to take them out for a run?

Hopefully now that were are halfway through the winter the nights will start getting lighter and the weather will ease up a bit and allow us to go out once again on some more day trips Claire and I did manage a run into Plymouth on the bikes on new years day and boy it was cold, still it was nice to have a run out again. Claire has set up a chalk board in the kitchen with the number of days to Route 66 marked up at the top, each morning when we come down to breakfast one of us gets to reduce the number by one didget in a seemingly never ending countdown, although the number is currently in tipple figures we take great satisfaction in slowly chipping away at it just knowing that one day when it reaches the final last didget standing then that will be it, we will be officially on our way!  

In June this year (2011) myself and my wife set off on Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles on two Harley Davidson’s, if you would like to see how we got on here is our blog of the trip complete with photos and video diary’s. 

https://route66thetrip.wordpress.com/

If you like it please leave a comment, kind regards Alan and Claire Kelly