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…

Such Sweet Sorrow

For some time, I've been tossing around the idea of changing bikes. To be precise, ever since I did the new model test rides in Cascais, I've been tempted to trade my faithful Sportster in for a new model - ideally a Softail Slim.
On Saturday, on a lovely spring morning, I bit the bullet, and headed off to the Guildford dealership (where there is a man who has been trying to sell me a new bike for at least 10 years. I thought I'd help him finally achieve this ambition).
I spent some week nights digging out such items as the manual, the DVLA documents, the original grips, the full size number plate for passing MOTs*....
As is always the way with such things, my baby ran beautifully all the way there. I took the scenic route, too. (Because I know the scenic route. I'm less sure about the signposting on the straightforward route).
Once there, I spent some hours talking money and mileage and extras and details, and ultimately left nominal owner of a new bike, and no longer with the keys to the original. A clean break was easier.

*There is a weird almost loophole in the law here: there are specifications about the font, colours and layout, and spacing around letters, but no actual overall dimensions for numberplate on the DVLA website. I checked. So its usual plate might be legal, or nearly so. Using the definitely legal plates, however, would foul the back-rack and any straps attaching stuff to it.