Dreaming of Jupiter

The bike is a BMW, black and orange* in appearance almost exactly like the little GS I have just sold, but looking down I see it is an airhead twin. Anna is on the back, we have a mass of luggage, and we are touring somewhere quite exotic - somewhere in Eastern Europe, perhaps. The landscapes and townscapes are bare and empty, and the shadows are deep and the lines sharp, like a de Chirico painting.

I need to get to the British Embassy to sort a problem out. They invite me to ride up the steps into the building for security, and I park the bike on a vast marble floor.  We wait in a huge room full of strangers. Anna is talking to someone and I see my sister-in-law across the room. She asks me what we are doing here, and I jokingly shout that Anna has been arrested. Anna storms off in a huff, and thereby misses the cup of hot cocoa (served in a pot with a sealed lid, like Petits Filous). After the issue has been sorted, I am shown out of another exit. We're on the first floor and there is a massive drop in front of me, but to the left I see I can ride along the top of a wall to get back round to the front of the building. I'm no good with heights, but I manage it OK until I get to a right-angled turn, which I know the bike cannot negotiate. I lean it against a nearby railing and climb to the end of the wall and start looking for assistance, maybe a man with a winch or block and tackle.

Meanwhile, we continue the journey with Anna driving. I hear the different exhaust note and see that we are on an old Triumph twin, painted in that mid-green colour that was so popular in the 60s. She rides well and corners hard, and I begin to enjoy the journey.  We end up at the house of the friends we had planned to meet, but find they now live in a commune and have become very hippified. I am told the bike has been recovered, and I go to see it. It is parked at ground level, thank heavens, but it has fallen on its side. However, there is no damage and I ride it back to the commune.

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I finished work yesterday morning at 7 am and had about three hours' sleep and then got up. By 10 pm last night I was extremely tired and went to bed. I read a few pages of Ted Simon's Dreaming of Jupiter before I went to sleep. The chapter involved endless meetings in the Sudanese embassy in Egypt while trying to get a visa to enter Sudan. The night before, he had been invited to ride his bike up the hotel steps for security reasons. I just find it highly comical that my dream could be such a literal mashup of what I had been reading and some recent bike-related events in my life. (I even had a minor walking-speed tipover on the new XTR as I was riding in through the front gate while bringing it home. No damage.)

Dreaming of Jupiter, literally.

* I seem to remember reading that there is some debate over whether we dream in colour.  This one was definitely in colour, and nice bright colours too.

Note:  Ted Simon's original work Jupiter's Travels is a brilliant and ground-breaking book, and is probably ultimately responsible for the current fashion for adventure touring and round-the-world (RTW) trips.  It is a great read, and if you haven't read it yet, you should.  Yes, even you non-motorcycling readers.  It's intelligent, interesting and profound, and it isn't even much about bikes.  In fact, Simon couldn't even ride when he decided to set off, and is quite explicit in his view that it was the bike that facilitated the journey, rather than the journey bthat justified the ride.  However, fascinating though it is, it is rather melancholy and troubling in parts,and it's certainly not a feel-good tale.  Dreaming of Jupiter, which was very kindly bought for me as a Christmas present, was written when he decided, at the age of 70 or so, to travel the route again and see what had changed.  I'm not even quarter of the way through, and I am hooked.  Both books highly recommended.

Continuous Insurance Enforcement

This is a plea for information or advice, or probably confirmation.

I sold the GS last week and picked up the XTR on Saturday.  This was quite good timing, as the previous insurance policy ran out on the Sunday.  I did a bit of research, found the cheapest quote (Devitt, as it happens) and insured the XTR from Saturday on a new policy.  I have been planning to take the XT off the road and give it some serious attention for quite a while now, and this seemed a good time to do so.  Therefore, the new policy is for the XTR only, and the policy that covered the XT has now lapsed.

I won't be riding the XT on the road until I get it restored, and when the tax runs out I had planned to SORN it, as I have no intention of running foul of the rules.  However, it is now uninsured.  I seem to recall reading recently about proposals to oblige owners to maintain a vehicle's insurance even if it is off the road, in the same way that you must now SORN a vehicle if it is not taxed.

There's nothing on the main Gov.uk site in either the vehicle tax or insurance sections, just:

You have to have motor insurance before you can drive on public roads.

But visiting the Motor Insurers' Bureau website I find this:

As part of Continuous Insurance Enforcement (CIE), it is now a legal requirement for registered vehicle keepers to insure their vehicle(s) at all times. 

It continues:

You don’t have to be driving to be caught. It is an offence to keep a vehicle without insurance unless you have notified DVLA that your vehicle is being kept off the road by means of a Statutory off Road Notice (SORN).

I guess I had better SORN the poor old XT without delay.  Unless anyone knows differently?

Update: found it.

The rules for insuring vehicles are called ‘continuous insurance enforcement’. They mean that if you’re the registered keeper of a vehicle it must be insured or declared as off the road (SORN).

They are keeping this quiet, aren't they?  Or have I just not been paying attention?)

Zaphod's Day In Court

I was contacted by Zaphod, a sometime commenter here, regarding a post he had put up on his own blog forum, and I thought my readers would appreciate it.  (Zaphod is one of the authors of the Nothing2Declare blog, and a fine fellow he is too.)

And now for something completely different-
I was in court today, for speeding. Apparently, I drove past a speed trap van doing 35mph. Allegedly.
I had ignored the offer of a speed awareness ritual humiliation course. And the reminders. And the subsequent repeated offers to pay a fixed penalty. They couldn’t believe I would be so stupid as to contest it in court, when they had a signed confession that I was the driver. Or did they?

Read on here.  It's ideal heart-warming stuff for a cold January evening.

Another day, another IAM poll

The latest IAM poll is about restrictions on young drivers.  The Association of British Insurers wants to see more restrictions in place - graduated licences, bans on night-time driving, number of passengers, and so on.

As motorcyclists, we have put up with graduated licences for many years now, and although as a liberty-minded chap I am never in favour of more state control of our lives, I would say that generally they have been a Good Thing.  The days when you could turn 17, buy a 100 mph 2-stroke road rocket the same day, pass a ludicrously easy test, and then without any instruction whatever jump onto a bike of any size and power are long gone, and perhaps rightly so.  These days, you have to start small and work your way up.  It's expensive, and there are a lot of very difficult hoops to jump through before you can throw away the L-plates and ride off into the sunset on your new hyperbike - hoops which may involve the selling and purchase of three or four bikes of increasing size and power before a full licence is granted.  If I am honest, today's new riders are far better trained than we oldies ever were, and probably better protected from their own foolishness.

For a youngster to get a car licence is much easier.  A theory test which can be learned parrot-fashion, a reasonable test of your basic abilities, and off you go.  One day, you have never driven without someone sensible sitting beside you, have never driven on a motorway, and have probably never driven after dark or in bad weather. The next, you can fill your car with six drunken mates and drive up the M6 to a rave, in a car which could legally be anything from a banger to a Bugatti Veyron.

Perhaps a more graduated approach to getting the freedom of the road would be a good thing.

Anyway, let them know what you think.  As always, the IAM want as much input as possible, so fill your boots.  You don't have to be a member, ect ect.

The poll is here.

Full Circle

I tried, I really tried.

I had the BMW for six months.  I wanted to like it.  It had everything going for it - a full set of luggage, an economical and reliable engine, lots of expensive accessories, and it looked pretty good too.  But last week I sold it.  And yesterday I rode home on a new bike - the rather pretty Yamaha pictured above.

What was wrong with the Beemer?  In a word, it was dull.  In another word, it was the wrong shape. And in a third word, it was built so far down to a price that it reached Australia.

Dull, first.  Whatever a bike does, whatever you use it for, however much it cost you, it must be fun.  It must light a fire somewhere in your soul.  If I want utility, I will use my car.  The engine was reasonably powerful (50 bhp) and yet managed to make that power in such a somnolent way that it seemed like half that.  The exhaust note was (and I mean this literally) less engaging than my lawnmower.  There was a mild duff-duff from the back end, and an annoying pockety-pock from the induction, and that was it.  It gave no sense of excitement whatsoever.  At least the mower sounds businesslike.  Yes, this could have been cured with an aftermarket system, but only at a cost of several hundred pounds - and I didn't love it enough to sink that kind of cash into it.

It was the wrong shape for me.  Even with a higher seat (at a cost of £160) it was too low.  I felt like I was riding a cruiser, all feet forward and arms in the air.  I exaggerate, but that's how it felt.  And it wobbled round slow corners.  Great for a shorty, but for this almost-six-footer (5' 11⅞" to be precise) it was like riding a roller-skate.

And the build quality was depressing.  Perhaps I had high expectations of a Bavarian product, but it was disappointingly poorly-made.  The fork lowers were starting to pit, the engine had lost most of its paint, and the quality of the fasteners holding it all together was dire.  Many chassis bolts were simply rusty (and looked awful), and several times I had to resort to cobalt-tipped drills and witchcraft to get seized bolts out.  Electrolytic corrosion between dissimilar metals and a complete lack of anti-seize compounds during manufacture made it a DIY nightmare.  It had a full BMW main dealer service history, and from the amount of paperwork that came with it the previous owners must have been anally retentive to the point of solidity, so I don't think any of it was owner neglect.  Nope, BMW build these as entry-level bikes to the BMW 'family', and my guess is they are not built to last more than a few years, just long enough for the first owner to trade up to a £12k monster.  I know I bang on ad nauseam about how good the XT600 is, but seriously - a 19-year-old Yamaha with eleventy-six owners, evidence of neglect and abuse throughout its life, and which lives out in all weathers and is rarely cleaned, has less rust and is easier to take apart than an 8-year-old 'premium product' from one of the world's most famous bike makers.

When I got back into riding in 2007 after a break of nearly ten years, I bought a Yamaha XT660R - partly because it was the right price, I liked the look of it, and I had owned two smaller XTs in a former life.  I sold it on after a year (for reasons which were entirely incorrect, I now learn) and subsequently had everything from 800 to 1300 cc, straight fours, parallel and V-twins, a V-four and even a triple.  But all that time, guess what?  My hyper-secure password that I use for all critical internet logins is a cleverly-scrambled mix of characters based on that Yamaha.  It was in 2007 and it is today.  And my desktop backgound?  Yes, that's right. Still.  It's a bit like that number that you never quite manage to delete from your phone, the photo you can't bear to throw away.

I rode it home from 'up the line' yesterday and had a total blast.  It's got 2 bhp less than  the GS, and with the lack of wind protection it's probably as comfy at 70 as the GS was at 80.  But it jumps off the line like a terrier, grunts and snarls on the throttle, and has a tall and commanding riding position that puts you where you want to be - in charge.  In other words, it's just like the older XT, but better.  And coming from me, that is high recommendation.

Needless to say, I am in lurve all over again.