...and treat those two imposters just the same

I do lots of stupid things in the hope that it will make me a better biker. Two Saturdays ago I was paddling a canoe to improve my balance and my upper body strength. My inner ear was the loser in a competition with a boisterous wake and as a result I can say with some authority that the sinking feeling obtained from capsizing a canoe two feet from the mooring is nothing compared to that experienced when standing in the hall in boots, waterproofs and jacket, and reaching for a lid that isn't there. It had gone for a ride in the back seat of PB's car and at 6.30 am on Monday morning was 90 miles away in flattest Fenland.

I hate buying new lids. I've had my head stuck in one; I've crashed in one just a week after taking it out of the box, and I've spent 200 quid on one that didn't fit. The prospect of a distress purchase filled me with horror. But the prospect of having to do my 700-mile lap of the UK (for a poorly-planned set of meetings leaving me with the carbon footprint of Sasquatch) behind the wheel of the car was worse. So I drove to Swansea, which at least meant I could continue my pursuit of the elusive two draw bend, and embarked on a quest for an emergency lid (after the meeting, of course...)

Thanks are due to Busters, who pulled just about every single medium-sized lid they had in their stockroom down to the shop floor for me, but failed to find anything that could accommodate my robust jawline.

Double thanks, respect and a quick advertisement are due to Riders of Cardiff, who treated the arrival of a rather abstracted woman in sandals and handbag who claimed to be in urgent need of a helmet to do a track day as an everyday occurrence and were not fazed when it emerged that the only lid that fit was the top-of-the-range brand new line from a well-known German purveyor of motorcycles that I'm not allowed to mention because they weren't supposed to give discounts. If you find yourself in Cardiff with some money to spend on things motorcycle, please go and spend it with them. In fact, please consider making a special trip. They deserve it.

Back in England I swopped the car for Ruby with much relief, the roundabout wasn't damaged at all officer and I think my tyres are still OK, put on my new lid, enjoyed that fabulous new lid smell (old lid smells of dirty rain and the A14) and headed north to find my pit lane co-host already three pints to the wind and educating the HRT instructors on the finer differences between hamsters and gerbils. I have been given the opportunity to expand my motorcycling skills by running the assembly area at HRT training events. I have a whistle and an orange vest but I lack the commanding air of authority that has men complying at the lift of an eyebrow. I am thinking of bringing a large spanner for the spokes of those who attempt to sneak down the track access road before it is their turn, and a cattle prod for those who are still donning helmet and gloves three minutes after Control has given us the thumbs up. Everything looks organised on paper but in reality it's like trying to manage a box of puppies.

Last week's exotica included the not-yet-available-in-the-shops BMW S 1000 RR. This week, we give kudos to the man lapping Cadwell on a 250cc 2-stroke, and admire the optimism of the man prepared to do braking drills on a vintage Ducati.

The road to Cadwell is the rolling green epitome of the word "undulate." I love riding it, whether through the morning mist to the circuit (Tuesday morning I picked my own 2 ducklings, I was surprised when two sportsbike riders indicated left and pulled in for me to pass them, the exact opposite of normal life. I'm not sure if they could read the Hopp Rider Training sticker against the rising sun, or whether they just made an inspired guess at where a fully-loaded 1200 GS would be going at 7am. They were lucky, I could have been heading for an RBR Landmark...) or at the end of a long day of clock-watching, whistle-blowing and shouting (all I need is a puffa jacket and I can be a PE teacher!) The long road home unwinds under me and I think how glorious it is to be part of this fantastic community of bikers.

This blog uses thousands of words to try and tell you what it's like to ride. PHD nailed it in 15. "It's the best feeling in the world," he told Lydia. "Like riding a rollercoaster, but without the rails."

Deviant Behaviour

The internet is full of surprises. Who would have thought that there was a journal called "Deviant Behaviour," or that it would include an article with the splendid title of "Pseudo-deviance and the "new biker" subculture: hogs, blogs, leathers and lattes." William E Thompson deployed "participant observation and ethnographic interviews" (this is sociologist speak for "riding a bike and chatting to other bikers") to study why middle-class doctors and dentists like to ride Harleys and pretend to be outlaws at the weekend before resuming the suit and tie and returning to the office on Monday morning.

I'm slightly troubled by his bold declaration that "the motorcycle subculture" includes aspects of the "big five subjects, the meat-and-potatoes, nuts and bolts of deviance: crime, alcoholism, illicit drug use, mental disorder and sexual deviance", because now I'm sitting here trying to decide what's deviant about meat and potatoes. And also thinking that since I haven't illicitly used drugs since about 1989, and my worst crime has been three points for 40 in a 30, does that mean I have to tick the boxes for the other three as a demonstration of "the "new biker's willingness to voluntarily enter the world of deviance and stigma?"

Road Music

I learned to drive in a 1982 Ford Capri with a broken radio. You could play with it as much as you liked – push in button 1, watch button 5 pop out (and note to Generation Y, yes, that’s why a list that you can only select one of at any one time is called that)– but no sound would emerge, for at some point in the car’s past a passer-by, enraged by the extravagance of its three-mile bonnet and power hump, had snapped off the aerial and funds never stretched to a replacement. After the Capri I moved on to 2CVs, where the lifespan of the in car entertainment system (a five quid radio/cassette from MotorWorld on Nantwich Road) was determined by how long it took for the water dribbling through the windscreen wiper gasket and pooling on the front parcel shelf to submerge the live wiring.

As a consequence I find music while driving fantastically distracting and have been studiously resisting any thought of radio or Bluetooth MP3 players in my lid. But in recent weeks my resolve has been sorely tested by the sheer tedium of my regular 90-mile dual carriageway ride, and, led into temptation by a conversation with RBR Steve, who told me that I could load mp3s onto my Zumo, I have tentatively filled up with some classic blues and some 60s psychedelia.

It is odd to have company inside my lid. Normally my tinnitus and I ride along, trying to concentrate on looking for gaps and playing the what-if game, while my inner monologue thinks of witty ripostes to imagined slights, dusts off fading grudges, and tries to come up with sparkling opening lines for these posts. The ride itself should be the entertainment. But there is limited delight to be found on the A14, and if Country Joe and the Fish want to divert me with a song of verve and caustic wit about the futility of foreign wars in hot places, I’ll take what I can get. And then I’ll try and figure out the chord progression and the rhythm pattern for later, for while I can squish my pink jelly headphones under my lid, there isn’t yet room for the harmonica.

Memory Lanes

There are three perfect smells in the world. One is rain on pine. One is broken chair burning in Gwyrch Castle, Wales. And one is the bloom of petrochemicals coaxed by the warm sun from my motorcycle. Lean closer, take a deep breath and hit the starter, because on a sunny August day with just the right amount of fresh in the air to stave off Friday night’s hangover, there is no finer duty than to ride a hundred miles to eat cake with cix_bikers.

Some might say that a two-party weekend, the first in Worcester and the second in Hackney, was overambitious. I say to them, as a certified finisher in the first Brit Butt Lite, there is no such thing as too many miles, (This reply sounds almost as credible as my attempt to persuade the alarmed onlooker in Reflex that I wasn’t exceptionally drunk, bruises and broken toes being the regular consequences of my dancing style) . And if you are going to ride a hundred miles on a perfect English summer’s day, there are no finer roads to ride them on than the quiet leafy lanes of the Cotswolds.

It was a weekend for revisiting old haunts. On Friday, I was back in the 1980s. Between 1987 and 1989, you’d find me three nights a week, dressed in black from head to foot, scaring the unwary and drinking Southern Comfort and lemonade at the Cheshire Cat, Nantwich’s premier nightspot. In the 80s, purple flock walls studded with fishtanks were the height of sophistication, a look wisely eschwed by the Reflex club in Worcester in favour of giant posters of Mister T. My dancing companion and I being the only people in the bar actually of legal drinking age in the ‘80s, we persuaded the DJ that no authentic experience could be complete without The Passenger, The Only Way is Up, a little Smiths, and Blue Monday by New Order. Distressingly, it appears that the youth no longer know that the correct response to Oops Up Side Your Head is to sit on the floor in a long line and clap. Nor are they aware that when Come On Eileen comes on, you form a hokey-cokey circle and do a lot of stamping. My apologies to the gentleman in the Hoff-style leather jacket who was enlisted into my attempt to demonstrate correct form. No wonder he later armed himself with a rubber truncheon.

On Saturday, the two natural laws of my existence came into conflict. The first is this:-
Highwaylass + motorcycle = rain

The second is this:-
Highwaylass + hangover = brilliant sunshine

The sunshine won, and a hundred miles later I was back in the 1990s, when, back before the internet had pictures, I first encountered cix, the online conferencing system populated almost entirely by tech guys and programmers, a large number of whom were also bikers. The cix_bikers argued, swopped fettling tips, organised track days and rideouts under the banner of Team_Waste, and welcomed wannabe learners (like me) with warm insults and open hearts. I never knew anyone’s real name, but they sold me my first bike, delivered it to my door, verbally dusted me down after I crashed it and kept me on two wheels until I started to enjoy myself. After an OLR lag of about a decade, it was fabulous to be once again talking about fettling and arguing about the politics of personal freedom, this time with the benefit of being plied with cheesecake.

And since I have given up sleeping, I also got to do my third favourite thing which is to get up in the small hours and ride through pre-dawn London, when everyone except the shady, the romantic and the insomniac are in safer and warmer places. All bikers are grey in the dark, but I’m happy that my grey hairs remind me that sometimes on my journey so far I got to come in from the Wet Wild Woods and sit by the fire in the cave.

Adopt a Word

This is a real cool idea to raise funds for I CAN, a charity which helps children to communicate.

No prizes for guessing which word I now own for a whole year...!