Motorcycling
As a follow up to the Zero S electric motorbike I mentioned recently, there’s now a company, Xero, offering electric scooters, which make another option for commuters wanting an electric vehicle. The prices aren’t too bad at £1500, but unfortunately you can’t seem to just buy one yet, which was the advantage of the Zero S.
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Those with long memories might remember that last year I attended the local bikesafe course – a Police run course aimed at teaching bikers how to ride better and more safely. As good as the course was, it was mostly class based, and whilst it’s good to know aspects of advanced riding in theory, it’s very different from being able to put them into practice.
To close that gap, over the last year I’ve gone through the training for the IAM Advanced Motorcycling Test. About once a month I’ve been going riding for a couple of hours under the watchful eye of a mentor from the Cambridge Advanced Motorcyclists – where I’ve been taught how to read the road, pick my line, and handle the bike better – all of which has lead to my riding being both more reactive to the conditions of the road and more assertive in how I apply the bike. I now have greater confidence in using more of the bike thanks to this training, and I get more out of riding the bike – our trip to Wales last year was definitely a better experience as I could guide the bike through the twisty back roads better. As another metric, the chicken strip on my tyres (the unused strips on either side) have at least halved since I started my training :)
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It troubles me slightly that one of my favourite pastimes, motorbiking, is not the most green of hobbies to have, even given the relative efficiency of bikes compared to cars. So, I occasionally wonder whether I should setup an electric bike company, as all the interest in realistic electric vehicles has so far been dominated in the car field.
However, perhaps Electric Motorsport’s GPR-S (no, not a phone, despite the name) means I don’t have to. It looks a bit ugly, but for $8000 you can get a bike that’ll do up to 70 mph and do up to 60 miles on a single charge. Not quite ready for touring the world, but a good start.
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After a forced hiatus form the bike, this weekend it was good to be out and about again. We went for a couple of runs around Newmarket way and up to Wimpole, and the colours of the countryside at this time of year are just magical. Although I miss the hills of home, Cambridgeshire in the Autumn is a beautiful place.
The bike seems to match the trees this time of year.
...Sometimes the world just amazes. On Saturday Laura and I biked up to West Kirby on the Wirral. West Kirby is on the tip of the Wirral peninsula, facing out over North Wales and into the Irish Sea. They have a nice marina there too, which has it’s own webcam, showing Wales across the water.
As we reached West Kirby late Saturday, I could see the sun was just setting, so rather than heading straight to Laura’s parents, I took us to the water front and witnessed a most amazing site of the sun setting over the sea. This picture totally fails to capture how wonderful it looked, but it’s all I have by way of example:
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This weekend Laura and I went camping again, only this time, with a spirit of adventure about us, we took the bike rather than the car:
This was a bit of an experiment, and I was worried that Laura would suffer at the hands of my biking obsession, but it all seemed to work well. We only missed a couple of items, and those were just forgetfulness rather than lack of space. I was very pleased that the Ulysses coped admirably with being loaded up for a camping trip for two – I’d bought it with this sort of journey in mind, but was worried I might be expecting too much of it. But we managed to fit both of us on the bike along with all our gear (thank goodness for ortlieb bags), and the Buell’s engine didn’t mind the extra load at all, and the bike’s low centre of gravity helped with keeping the bike stable with the extra high up weight.
...As follow on from the BikeSafe article below, I thought I’d mention that next Wednesday, 18th July, is the annual Ride To Work day. The BikeSafe guys are going to be leading one of many groups around the country that are doing a promotional ride in to promote biking as an alternative commuting method. You can find more about the rides here.
The real bonus is that for the Cambridge run I gather there’s discount off your bacon roll (or other breakfast) at the Auto Stop Café :)
...This week I went to the first of three lessons by BikeSafe, an initiative ran by Police forces around the UK to educate bikers further about safe driving. The lessons are classroom based; the first one concentrated on the mental aspects of riding safely, with subsequent lessons covering cornering and overtaking in detail. Following the classroom lessons will be a one hour riding session. Hopefully these will fill in some of the bits I felt were missing from my original training, which did a fine job at mastering the bike safely, but I felt left out a lot of the application in real road situations.
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I’ve been known to complain about the amount of bugs that I end up covered with when out on the bike – both my helmet and bike end up covered after an evening run. But I feel having seen this picture that I’m probably lucky:
Taken from AdvRider, where they have various picture threads, which usually have a reasonably high quality of shots from around the world. The above one came from here, but there’s others about such as this one.
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I’m sure most people that care know, but just in case, the team that did the Long Way Round, are about to embark on another adventure, the Long Way Down. This time they’re biking from John O’Groats in Scotland down to Capetown in South Africa (if you register at the web site there’s a short video explaining what they’re about to embark on). Having found the original both enjoyable and inspirational I’m looking forward to their next adventure.
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On another nice weekend, having done our various Sunday chores, we headed out to Ickworth House, which is just past Bury St Edmonds.
Ickworth is set in very nice grounds, but interestingly it’s very nice inside. Usually I don’t get very excited by looking inside old houses, finding them very uninspiring, but Ickworth was a noteable exception to this. This is probably due to the Bristol family, who had the house built and owned it until recently, all seemingly being slightly eccentric (to put it politely). But they have made a very interesting house, and it’s one which would seem quite pleasent to live in, particularly the drawing room and the hall way, which are almost modern in style despite having been built at the end of the 17th century. It was apparently described at the time as “a stupendous monument to folly”, which could be a the exact reason I like it so much.
...Whilst out shopping earlier today Laura and I spotted this neat looking vehicle:
It’s a Scorpian III – a three wheeled custom car made around a 1200cc engine from a BMW K series motorbike (the shaft drive which gives it away is just out of shot). Very pretty, and looks great fun. We chatted to the owner who seemed quite pleased, even with no reverse gear (he had to push it out of the parking space). And I suspect the very nice orange and black vehicle behind it has more luggage space :) But very nice all the same.
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In an effort to do our bit for the environment and remain Culturally Neutral after seeing Twelfth Night, we went to see Wild Hogs last night. I assume Laura wanted to see the film, a daft affair following four middle aged men who decide to try and get some adventure back into their lives by going on a road trip across the US on their Harleys, to see if she could work out how best she might deal with me or what tendancies I might pick up over the years :)
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Today I took the Uly up to Norfolk, first following Laura and her parents up to Oxburgh Hall then Laura and I drove up to Brancaster beach, where it was quite blustery and cold, but it was a beach. On the way home, seeing as we were at the coast we decided to stop for fish and chips at Hunstanton. Normally I avoid /Hunstanton as it’s usually too busy, but today it wasn’t too bad. Whilst trying to find a place to park we found a very long and narrow motorcycle parking place, crammed to the gills with many bikes:
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