Autumn's Here

There's something about riding in autumn - assuming you can find a dry day. The air is cool and a little crisp in the mornings, and the trees are much more colourful than usual. 
As you wend through the countryside, swerving all the puddles and muddy patches, you can smell things that you can't in summer: woodsmoke, coffee, bacon. 
I have no idea why scents are stronger in autumn - but the ones I notice are the warm and cosy ones, the welcoming ones, the friendly ones.
Plus, my baby looks good next to autumn foliage.

Saturday was one such autumn day, and I had discussed with the in-house meteorologist and consulted the met office website and app, then headed out to one of my favourite places in Kent, because the rain was all supposed to be west of there. 
Supposed to be. I caught the one shower in all of Kent, but stopped off and parked up and holed up in Cafe 1809 while it passed and the roads dried up a bit. 

Soloist

It's officially autumn in the UK now, and the weather is correspondingly getting a touch nippy. I love this time of year - slippery leaves in the road notwithstanding. The weather's still dry enough to allow for regular rides, and cool enough not to have that 'boil-in-bag' effect you get in the height of summer, especially in traffic. 

I had a yen for a pub lunch (ah, Sunday roast dinners at good pubs....) so off I headed. 

I got to a favourite pub, which I know does a mean nut roast, parked up, ordered and sat at a nice little table out the front, where I could see my bike and enjoy the sun. 

As I was sitting there, sipping my coffee and waiting for my food, a man walked past on his way back from ordering at the bar. He looked at me and my neatly piled helmet and jacket, and said, "I can't believe you're on your bike on your tod."

Huh?

Is it that he thinks bikers only exist in packs?

Or is it, which is depressingly more likely, that I'm a woman, who rides an H-D FLS, and has absolutely no need of a man to do the driving or keep me company. 

To the pack theory: I do enjoy riding with friends, but essentially, as I've said before, riding is a solitary pursuit. It's you and the bike and the road, in a symbiosis that needs extend no further. Any group ride briefing will include the reminder that you are responsible for your own ride (both the experience and the vehicle). 

To the other: well, frankly? Get with the 21st century already.

Coffee Views

Recently, I took a different route from usual to get to the dealership from which my baby comes. This meant I wasn't aware of the roadworks and diversion that wound up taking me the very long way round (and incidentally ended up with me on my normal route anyway), but while having this runaround, I spotted a new cafe near Newlands Corner. I like Newlands corner for the view, but hate their coffee, so any new cafe in the same scenery is worth investigating. Even if there was a distinct lack of motorbikes in its parking lot. 

So I returned on the first available dry weekend, and discovered, firstly, that the Squirrel Tree Cafe will never be a biker haunt because the parking is gravel. This is hard to ride on, hard to park in and even worse to try and back a heavy bike out of afterwards because there is zero traction against which to push. Add a gradient, and that will be your workout for the week. 

But I wanted coffee fairly urgently, so I picked the least gravelly bit I could find and kept my fingers crossed.  
The cafe is nice, don't get me wrong. The coffee is good, the snacks are better than expected. There's a lack of bathrooms, but the place over the road (the one with bad coffee) has those. 
Also better parking from a two-wheeled point of view. So next time, I shall go to Newlands Corner, park on the paved side and then go get take-out coffee from over the road. 

WHITE HEAT

The next new thing I learned was that my new baby warns me when she's getting too hot.  Almost all bikes are air-cooled, and it can be hard to prevent overheating as a result. If you're stuck in traffic, you're stuck. (Yes, this is a plea to motorists to please let us through).
The UK is in a heatwave (yippee!) and while stuck in traffic on Saturday, I heard a strange noise while idling. The trademark stutter of an HD engine seemed not louder, but somehow more pronounced. It ceased when I put the bike in gear and moved. Every time I idled, the strange noise started. Fine. OK. I wasn't far from home by then, so I tried an experiment and turned off at the next red light. This didn't do much for my burning jeans, but did stop the noise for 2 subsequent idles.
Of course, 2 days later I had a very clear view from the office of an overheated car combusting - literally - on Blackfriars bridge, and could thus thank my lucky stars that my little baby taught me how to avoid that on her. Before setting fire to my jeans.

SOMETHING NEW EVERY RIDE

They say you learn something new every day. I certainly seem to learn something new every ride.

Recently, I was waiting at a petrol station meeting point, when a vintage Triumph rider came over to admire my bike. I'm always happy to chat about how lovely she is, but at the time, she had melted tar and cover marks on her exhausts, which detracted somewhat.
I mentioned the need to try WD-40, and he pointed out that I'd lose the shine of my pretty chrome.
He suggested an old armourers' trick: soft steel wool and oil.
Steel wool? On my pretty shiny pipes? What?!
But I did some fairly intense googling, and then I tried it. If you use the very ultra soft extra fine steel wool (not all that easy to find in the UK) - the stuff that feels like stiff candy floss - and baby oil, then the marks come off and the pipes stay smooth and shiny.  You just have to be careful to do this when the bike is cool, and also to ensure there are no little bits of oil-soaked wool hiding on the bike before you start it up again.

COMPANY

Riding is something of a solo pursuit, in many ways: there’s you, the bike, the road. It’s not exactly a situation that promotes conversation, other than swearing at traffic. But when you stop, it’s good to have company.

Recently, I arranged to meet up with a friend for a short one, mainly to introduce each other to our respective new bikes and have a mutual admiration session for said machines.  It’s nice when you’re talking to someone who doesn’t think you’re nuts to give your bike a name or refer to it as beautiful, or snarling/ growling/ purring (the stages in which mine wakes up when you turn the key. Like me, she’s not much of a spring-out-from-under-the-blanket type).

Besides, it gave me an opportunity for a photo shoot with the bike.

INCLINATIONS

One of the joys of biking is twisty roads. And on the new one, it turns out that the safe lean angle is far greater than on any bike I’ve previously owned. This is fantastic, as it means I feel safe at more inclined angles, and can take the curves with far more confidence – up to a point, as I recently discovered.

That point is defined as the angle at which the bike is perfectly safe and happy, but the footboards are scraping up sparks (and scraping off their paint) on the asphalt… Which, for some strange reason, doesn’t make me feel very secure at all. (Because? Wah! My pretty paintwork! My beautiful unblemished new baby! Sob. Scowl).

Caution! Unexpected Driving

The rain briefly stopped, and I took the chance to get out on the bike. She coughed indignantly (once) before starting, protesting the lack of attention. Subsequently, she went back to her usual growl/purr.
It's good to know that riding came back to me more smoothly than did driving, but I guess, when you compare the lengths of hiatuses, that makes sense.
As I was getting back into the swing of it, I found myself behind a mini-4x4 with the bumper sticker: Caution! Sudden Braking. I've seen similar signs on buses, rubbish trucks and the like, which by virtue of their function have some excuse. On a private car? It might as well read: Caution! Bad Driving. I'd quite like to put the sign on various pedestrians, cyclists and taxis, though...
Because the hardest thing to get used to again is always the traffic. In South Africa, a red light is a suggestion, and indicators can mean anything you want them to (as can hazard lights). In the UK, most people obey the basic rules, but indicators are often seen as either optional or something you use once you've started to manoeuvre.
Also on some roads, particularly the ones with unexpectedly tight curves, the signposts seem to set out to confuse. Not only does every country I've ever ridden in have a different gauge for how sharp a bend needs to be before it needs special signage, but within the UK, every council has its own ideas on the subject too.
When you add into the muddy road conditions a curve, adverse camber and a bunch of cars without a clue,  sudden braking becomes the norm, and all you can do is try to sit far enough back not to have to do it yourself.

Indicative

I haven't been in SA for some years, and I'm not as familiar with its ins and outs as once I was. The trusty map book always sat in the passenger seat, usually open. Allowing time to pull over and consult further was a factor always to be added on. 

The most nerve-wracking moment was one fine evening, driving through Jo'burg. 

Now, in the interests of no longer doing rolling power cuts, Eskom has decided not to bother supplying power to most streetlights. This makes post-sunset navigation a new level of adventure for those of us no longer familiar with the city. 

I had been having a very social day - a drink with lunch, a little wine with friends in the evening - so I knew I would probably fail a breathalyser. As the cops like to do random checks, I was trying to be a very good driver, and not look anything less than completely sober and confident. 

This is hard when you're slowing and peering through the gloom at every cross street, and occasionally pulling over to consult the map book.
As it was, I overshot the turn and wound up on the motorway looking for the first junction that presented the potential for a U-turn (luckily, junction 1B on that motorway)

All of this meant I wasn't really concentrating on the actual mechanics of driving a car - which meant I forgot, at crucial moments like indicating direction, that This Was A Car.... 

Indicating Right was fine. In a Japanese car, so the indicator stick is on the right. Indicating Left, however, I repeatedly tried to do with the wipers, because I am used to having each direction's indicator switch conveniently placed for the corresponding thumb...

Hopefully, all the confusion is one way, and getting back on the bike will be as smooth as - well - new asphalt.

This Is A Car

A few weeks ago, I tucked my baby up in her cover, all plugged into her charger, and headed off on holiday.  In South Africa, access was only to cars. I offered to take over driving my brother's car when my Mom was having trouble with the gears, and once safely ensconced behind the wheel, and desperately hoping I could remember how this driving lark went, I mentioned that I hadn't driven a car for about 6 months... 
But, like cycling, the knowledge creeps back via muscle memory, and the only real Notes to Self were: 
1) This is South Africa. You must carry your licence at all times. (Oddly, in the UK I do)
2) This is a car. You cannot filter in a car. It's too big.  (Contrary to the evident belief of several drivers both there and in the UK)
3) Also, this is a car. This means you are not in the centre of it, but off to one side. Allow for this with lane placement. No, seriously. 
4) This is a car. You cannot lean it around corners, so stop trying. You have to steer with the wheel. 
5) This is a car. Indicator switches change sides of the steering wheel depending on region of manufacture. 
6) Also, this is a car. You have a rearview as well as wing mirrors. 
7) This is a car. You have to use said mirrors to reverse, because looking over your shoulder just shows you car, and also go very gently because you're used to reversing by muscle power alone, and on something vastly smaller to boot. 

Easy Like Sunday Morning

My new baby, is – well – new. Very new. Running-in new, which means no caning it, wheelies, stoppies or donuts for at least 200 miles. So until the brakes and tires are a little less sparkling new, and the until the engine components are a little better bedded in, I am avoiding big chapter runs and roads that have an odds-on chance of making me slam on brakes.

As I am running within a limited rev range for now, I have to take it easy. Baby steps.  

Sunny spring Sunday mornings, though, demand riding. Even if it is at a stroll. 

I meandered down the A24 (a nicely predictable road, most of the time) to Denbies Vineyard, which is always a pretty destination, with decent coffee and an interestingly eclectic gift shop. 

Yes, it's close to Box Hill, and therefore lots of speed bikers, but there are currently road works on the fun twisty bit, so everybody has to slow down. 

Denbies also tends to have the kind of visitors who see a pretty bike and come over to flirt and get a better eyeful. Can't say I blame them, and it's nice that she gets the attention and I get the implied compliments to my taste. 

On that Sunday, a classic Jaguar club meeting took up 1 side of the parking, and a display by Henfold Birds of Prey was positioned next to the other side. I’m not sure the owls appreciated my engine….

(Either  they were glowering about that or the fact they'd been woken up in bright sunlight, when any sensible owl should be sleeping). 

APRIL SHOWERS

I watched the forecast last week avidly. More avidly than usual, which is saying something.  On Saturday, I did a further weather check and then sighed, and headed for Guildford to fetch my new baby.

I like Guildford. They fetch bikeless customers from the station, and will do nice little things like give you a big backpack for your paperwork, including a mini bike cleaning kit. In my case, this included an additional full size bottle of paint cleaner, because my baby is a Denim finish, not gloss, so the usual suspects won’t work. It’s kind of like jewellery – I may never forgive H Samuel for returning my matte white gold ring to me all shiny.

As my new bike has a solo seat and no back-rack, all luggage must be attached to my person.

Of course, by the time we’d sorted out all the paperwork and payment bits and pieces, and got the DVLA computer to spit out a tax receipt so I’d be legal to ride, the April showers I’d been hoping to run between had changed their schedule, and wandered over to have a look at this pretty and beautifully cleaned and polished new beastie, growling on her stand.

So naturally, I got escorted home by drips and drops of curious rain, under a sky that almost matched my paintwork (the paintwork’s prettier, though).

UNSURANCE

So, I traded in my baby for a new one.  The new one is vastly more valuable (given the age and mileage on the old one, not hard).  

So I call up my insurer to terminate my old insurance and get a quote for the new one.  They tell me that: given the value of the new one, they cannot quote me for Fire, Third Party and Theft (what I had last time around) – they can only quote me for Third Party Only – the lowest level of cover. That’ll be about £900 for the year, please. Yeah. Right. I’ll call you back, shall I?

So I call Harley Insurance. They tell me that, given the value of the new one, they cannot quote me for Fire, Third Party and Theft – they can only quote me for Fully Comprehensive. For less than that TPO quote, too. So…um… What?

You want the full extent of the irony?

When my insurance docs came through from Harley, the email domain made it clear that they’re part of the same umbrella company  that can’t, apparently, cover my lovely new baby other than TPO…