Victoria of HondaUK viewing this Blog on her IPad. Brains and beauty, poor Bob was completely outclassed

I made it to the NEC after all this year, my troublesome hip having responded well to an injection and a jolly good day out it was too, in the Company of Federation Chairman Bob Summers and GoldWings North West Chairman Ian Duxbury, who kindly substituted for Frank Goodman as male model for my photos of the lycra-clad ladies.  Since Ian’s wife was stuck at home with no transport and serious toothache I thought this was very brave of him.

HondaUK had very kindly offered me some free tickets and so we were met by the lovely Hannah at the gate who handed them over.  Straight to the Honda Stand we then went of course, pausing only briefly to collect a coffee from their splendid Honda Cafe before making a beeline for the 2012 Model GL1800.  A white pre-production model was displayed as one of an arc of bikes behind rails around the back of the Stand but I was nevertheless able to get around the back and do a bit of sniffing about as well as take some photos.

Then the delightful Victoria accosted us with an offer of a prize drawn for one of everything from the Honda range – i.e. one car, one motorcycle, one generator, one lawnmower etc etc for the prize winner and no entry fee.  I’d been wondering what to get Management for Christmas so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the lawnmower will be small enough for her to handle.

continues………

The title of this Article is a recent quotation from a long-standing GWOCGB Member which seems to me to sum up the Club’s current position very clearly.

GWOCGB has only ever tried to be a national Club.  If the Club’s National Committee lose the confidence of the membership and there is no prospect of replacing them with people who could  run the Club as a national Club, GWOCGB as we have known it will indeed fail.

And with the announcement today that another Region, Surrey Wings, has folded, things are not going well.

The National Committee were told recently of another Region which is currently tottering on the verge of leaving the fold.  The first reaction was to point out that all remaining funds would have to be handed over.   Perhaps they thought it would discourage desertion.  Don’t worry was the reply, we’ll have a party or something, there won’t be any money left.

It hasn’t been a good NEC Show for the Club this year either; the Club usually gets a decent crop of new recruits each year and has had over a hundred in the past – this year there have been less than a handful, indeed if I overheard correctly when I was there yesterday only one couple have been signed up all week.  And all week long Members of GWOCGB have been calling at the NEC Stand to make it clear that they won’t be renewing this time.  Things are not going well at all.

The principal value of having a national Club, as GWOCGB has always focused on, is that friendships across the whole country can be fostered.   Every member has a right to attend continues………

Stylish Coffee bar too

The place to take the wife shopping before Christmas has to be Knutsford Motorcycles, where Paul and his staff will be offering bargain prices on shiny bits for a whole week and a day in early December.

Kuryakyn stuff will be 20% off List and everything else 30% – and these are genuine discounts on normal list prices, not some artificial price, so a real bargain.

A Burger Van will be in attendance on both Saturdays and the Coffee Machine will be free all week, so a hearty welcome too.  Knutsford Motorcycles do of course also have the most civilised ladies toilettes in the motorcycling hemisphere so she’ll be well catered for too.

Knutsford Motorcycles are in the GoldWing Accessory business long-term and they carry very big stocks of Show Chrome, Add On, Superbrace and Hopnel as well as Kuryakyn, all well displayed on wall racks and similar so that you can drool in comfort whilst sipping a free beverage.  This is the place to bring her indoors along in order to drop hints about Christmas presents for the bike.  Alternatively of course you could leave her at home and bring the credit card instead.

Accessory fitting services will be available as usual.

Open 9am to 5pm daily except Sunday 4th December when it will be 11am to 4pm.

For further details ring Paul on 01925 752600 or visit www.knustfordmotorcycles.co.uk

Jim Cretney and his wife Tracy, so it’s a joint award really and they’ll both get Badges, have done an exceptional amount of work using their various GoldWings to collect money and toys for charity.  If Jim is present at almost any GoldWing event he will be seen energetically lifting children on and of his bike for photos or in some other way bustling around, working his socks off for a worthy cause.

And for several years Jim and Tracy have also organised the Manchester Salvation Army Toy Run, usually requiring a lot of physical work laying out the parking markers as well as all the planning effort.

Jim well deserves the status of Good Egg, as does Tracy for her support.  Tracy is currently in hospital so hopefully the award of this exclusive patch will cheer her up a bit.

Breakdown by hour of day for 1st - 20th November. Click on th image for an enlarged view.

When the Blog’s web hosting was migrated to a new web hosting service a while ago the viewing statistics I receive altered so that it has become difficult to compare apples with apples.

You might recall that the Blog was getting 5,000-7,000 “unique visits” per week.  I was never sure exactly what this meant and I got other statistics which reported different figures (against a different definition or description)  so that the best I felt I could do was report the same type of figures each time, which were the ones which have now been lost.

The new figures are reported on a monthly basis and I haven’t had a complete month yet because they started part way through October.

However it’s pretty clear from comparing the other figures, which I still get, that the numbers are keeping up well, indeed there has probably been a sustained increase, even allowing for the likelihood that the recent burst of controversial articles about GWOCGB have also pushed the viewing figures up temporarily. continues………

The Pacific island of Nauru - with the runway showing at the bottom of the picture.

I came across an interesting Blog Article by a retired airline pilot who used to fly into a small pacific island, where the locals would race the departing aircraft using a road which was close and parallel to the runway.

One of the bikes was a GoldWing GL1500.

The Article is well written and interesting, especially to learn which was in the lead, bike or plane, as they got up to 80 mph.

I won’t spoil the story by telling you the answer but you can read the Article for yourself by Clicking Here.

By the way if you are ever offered a used GL1500 which has been imported from Nauru it would probably be wise to give it a miss.

Derek Hayward, a professional photographer, took lots of pictures of the recent 2011 Manchester Salvation Army Toy Run of which this is an example.  You can view on his website by clicking here.

You can also purchase higher resolution images from Derek by contacting him using the phone number at the bottom of the page of photos.

The turnout is reported to have been down a bit on last year but there were plenty of GoldWings, the weather was good and a great time was had by all.

Well done Jim and Tracy Cretney, the Organisers, and of course the Caterers of the Salvation Army for the excellent bacon butties.

No doubt there will be another Toy Run next year and I’ll publish information about it on this Blog.

If anyone wishes to contact Jim or Tracy please use the Contact Page on this Blog and I’ll pass the message on.

Demoted to mere Web Designer

This will be of limited interests to most readers but I have decided to change the web hosting arrangements for this Blog so that from now on my Webmaster/Designer (and generally useful geek) Nigel Mackintosh will no longer be acting as web hosting agent.

Not that he’s fallen short in any way but Nigel has been subjected to some unpleasant and threatening earache recently in an attempt to intimidate him into pulling an Article from this Blog which I wouldn’t want him to have to face again, so I’ve made direct arrangements for web hosting, instead of doing it via him.

Nigel is a valued friend and I often consult him and not just about geeky stuff, but he has no responsibility for the editorial content of this Blog at all and no authority to make any sort of alterations to any of its content.  I’m the owner/editor, he’s the helpful geek.

Some of you may be aware that under UK Law a web hosting supplier can be held responsible for content which is deemed to be defamatory along with the author/editor once they become aware of the defamation.  As a result of this some UK web hosting companies have developed a reputation for pulling the plug on a website  just to be on the safe side – as soon as any allegation of defamation is made and without even bothering to check whether there really has been any defamation. This makes UK-hosted websites potentially vulnerable to manipulative and/or intimidatory attack.

I was once threatened with this treatment by Chris Hinds, the Chairman of GWOCGB for something I’d written, which struck me as a bit heavy-handed because I’m always willing to correct any error which is pointed out, but there you go.  I wasn’t on GWOCGB’s official Christmas card list even then so maybe a threatening approach from the outset seemed to him to be the best one to take at the time.  Happily that’s never recurred, possibly because I was able to make him look a little foolish for doing it.

This Blog’s web hosting was therefore transferred out of UK some time ago to avoid the risk of knee-jerk closure by the web hosting company.  But Nigel was still acting as my UK agent and his name was on the Blog as web hosting arranger.  He didn’t actually own the server on which the Blog lives of course, that’s not how it works but he was the fixer-upper.

An unhappy reader of this Blog recently took it upon himself to give Nigel a very hard time, threatening that an array of unpleasant things would happen unless the Blog article to which he had taken exception was pulled by a deadline which he set.  Happily no bolts of lightning descended on Nigel and nothing else has happened either since that deadline expired but it continues………

Click on the image for an enlarged view

The annual Salvation Army Toy Run through Manchester is a popular event which attracts support from lots of  bikers and it will be happening again this year on Saturday November 19th.

The starting point is once again the car park of the Showcase Cinema on Hyde Road Manchester, assembling by 11 am and departing at 11.25 promptly for the Trafford Centre, where as continues………

Dave and sophisticated companions in Normandy, September 2011

Dave Sharp, Good Egg of this Blog, has started writing his own blog which you can visit by clicking here.

Dave developed his writing skills by doing the Appy Wanders reports on their website and now that he’s taking a break from that role, I suppose his typing fingers were still twinkling and he’s decided to have a go at writing on his own account.

It’s not all about bikes unfortunately and it turns out that our Dave is a bit of a soft touch on the subject of cats but he’s already written one article about his Tour to Normandy and that’s well worth reading.

If he keeps it up (and I find out how to do it) I’ll put one of those feed thingies on here so that you will be able to see at a glance what his latest stuff is about – now how’s that for being welcoming to some competition for my readership!