Autumn Journey

At the end of this month, a younger cousin of mine is getting married. The wedding and reception are going to be in the Newcastle area, and of course I will be there. The wedding and reception are in the same hotel, so I have booked in for the night before and the night after as well. I don't see my family often, so there will be plenty of catching-up to do, and I foresee some alcoholic consumption as well.

So, how to get there? Well, the obvious answer is the car. Warm, dry, comfortable, Radio 4 when I got bored, and plenty of CDs for when The Archers or a 'radio drama' comes on, plenty of room for luggage, hook over the back door for the suit. Satnav, hands-free phone, drink and snax on the passenger seat.

And boring.

So I'm going on the bike. It's a long time since I did a long journey at this time of year on two wheels. I ride year-round, but from October to March it's generally only commuting and errands, with the occasional fun run. This will be 340 miles each way of mixed A-roads and some of the busiest motorways in the UK. On a Friday. And with less then ten hours of daylight to play with. It will be cold, although not midwinter cold, and the possibility of rain is quite high.

On the positive side, I have got all the kit to keep me warm and dry ("Up to a point, Lord Copper") and the bike is easily capable of the journey. I have two decent-sized hard cases to carry all my stuff, and an Ortlieb dry-bag if I can't get my suit in the cases. I can rig up a power lead to run the satnav (useful for route-finding at the far end, plus planning fuel stops and so on) and the Ride Logger iPhone app. I can't mount the TomTom like I did on the Pan, as the Bonnie has no fairing, but it can live in the tankbag and I will consult it when stationary.

And the hotel has dedicated motorcycle parking. In fact, when I read that on their website, it's what made me decide to go on the bike in the first place. It would seem rude not to.

I am also planning to call in on an elderly relative in Richmond that I haven't seen for a long time, and on one of the legs, depending on time, I plan to take the pretty route across the Yorkshire Dales and the Forest of Bowland. That's a landscape that I don't see enough of.



I'm looking forward to it. If your life doesn't bring you much adventure sometimes, you have to make your own.

Handlebars

One of the least interesting parts of a motorcycle is the handlebar. What can you say about it? It comes in ⅞" or 1" flavours, to suit normal bikes or Harley wannabes. If it's an off-road bike, or has off-road pretensions, it may have a brace to stiffen it. If you have a taste for biker-bling, you can order them in various garish anodised colours.



Apart from sundry oddities, like clip-ons, ape-hangers and Jota bars, that's about it. And yet the right handlebars are crucial to comfort on a bike, and make a big difference to how the bike feels, and consequently how the rider perceives the handling. High, pulled-back bars encourage a laid-back riding style; conversely, low bars which a long reach forward make the whole bike feel more racey and you ride accordingly. But between those extremes, even small adjustments make a big difference.

One of the things that made me buy the Bonneville was the position and angle of the handlebars. It is said that the method for getting the bars adjusted right is to sit on the bike with your eyes closed and put your hands where you think the bars ought to be. Get someone to measure the position of your hands, and adjust the bars to suit. I didn't need to do this with the Bonnie. From the moment I sat on it in the dealer's showroom, I knew that the bars were dead right. They made the whole bike feel tailor-made to my dimensions, and that was a big factor in persuading me that this was the bike for me.



But most men, me included, are never happy until we have had a fiddle about. Take that how you like. Yesterday I started to wonder if they might not be even better if they were a little lower and closer to me. I moved them a small amount backwards and downwards - possibly an inch at the bar ends, no more. Then I went for a ride.

For about half a mile, they felt great. But then I started to wonder if they were as good as all that. I felt a bit like a rider on one of those vintage machines, where the bars end somewhere near the rider's knees. The position they made me adopt, which was only a fraction different from the normal position, felt wrong - too relaxed, not 'on top of it'. And I was less able to hang onto the bars in the wind, which meant I could feel my back taking more of the strain of keeping me upright. With two miles, I was heading for home.

So I put them back to normal - or so I thought. In fact, this time I went too far the other way, even though they looked perfect. It took three or four attempts before I had them back to standard. I have just been for a ride into town to pick up some stuff for Anna, and they are perfect again. Phew.

For the record, I have never felt any desire to go as far as this:



A couple of safety notes if you are thinking of altering your handlebars (sorry if this is obvious, but ...)

1. Make sure the bars are bolted up tight when you are done. And then check again.
2. Swing the bars and make sure that they don't either hit the tank or trap your thumbs on full lock in either direction.
3. Start the engine and swing the bars from side to side, listening to the engine note, to make sure that the throttle cable isn't under strain at any point.
4. Finally, adjust levers and mirrors to suit the new position.

Sorry if this is an inconsequential and dull post. I haven't been writing anything about bikes for a while, and I wanted to get back to that. Politics and current affairs are all very well, but they're not important, if you know what I mean.

Sincerity

Fred Allen (1894-1956):

You could take all of the sincerity in Hollywood, put it in the navel of a fruitfly, and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.

Another of Allen's bons mots was this, perhaps a little more relevant to us:

I never look a gift horse in the mouth, but I am not averse to looking an organisation in the motive.

Chile-related humour

What with all the God this and God that and Praise The Lord the other, I am reminded of an old Jewish joke:

A Rabbi is in a boat out at sea, and a storm blows up. The boat takes on water and begins to sink. He starts to pray: "Lord, when I dedicated my life to you, you promised you would always look after me. Now, when I need you most, please save me from the raging sea and bring me safe to land."

After a short while, he is aware of another boat alongside him. A man on the other boat shouts "Quick, Rabbi - jump across into our boat and you will be safe!"

"No, thank you. The Lord has promised he will save me, and I trust in him." The boat drifts away.

Later, the storm gets even worse, and the boat is being tossed to and fro like a child's toy. And then a lifeboat comes alongside, with searchlights and three lifeboatmen wearing buoyancy vests and holding out a lifebelt. "Come on, Rabbi - grab the lifebelt and we will bring you to our boat and you will be safe!"

"No, thank you. The Lord has promised he will save me, and I trust in him." The lifeboat waits for a moment and then turns and speeds off.

Later, the storm is crashing and thundering around his little boat, the waves are smashing down on the deck and the Rabbi is sure that the end is close. Suddenly, he hears a noise above him, looks up and sees a helicopter. The winchman looks down and shouts at him through a loudhailer:

"Stay where you are, Rabbi, and I will come down with a harness for you, and we will take you to safety!"

"No, thank you. The Lord has promised he will save me, and I trust in him." The helicopter hovers for a while, but the crew see he is determined, and eventually it moves away and out of sight.

A moment later, a huge wave capsizes the boat and the Rabbi is drowned.

Soggy and bedraggled, he enters Heaven and meets God.

"Lord, Lord, you promised me that if I dedicated my life to you, you would always look after me! Why, when I needed you so badly, did you let me down?"

"Well, Rabbi - I sent you two boats and a fucking helicopter. What more did you expect?"

What brought those miners to safety against incredible odds was not some divine intervention. It was the skill, experience, professionalism, expertise and sheer dogged determination of the rescue team. Watching it made me proud to belong to the human race.

You can argue where those qualities came from for as long as you like, of course. But let's not dismiss the contribution of the drilling teams, the paramedics, the engineers and the winchmen. If God was at work at the San Jose mine, it was through real flesh-and-blood people.

Anna Raccoon - update

I received a link to GOT in the comments to the last posting on AR from Gildas the Monk. Here is the text of an email from Anna, explaining her abrupt departure from blogging, and the internet in general. Very sad, but very understandable.

All good wishes to Anna, and may the future bring her health and peace.