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.

When the going gets tough ....

Our Indian Summer is over and the leaves are falling big time, even though the air temperatures became mild again temporarily last weeekend.  If you haven’t already done it this is a good time to decide whether to lay the Wing up for the winter or prepare properly for riding in winter conditions.

The risk of snow and ice is still low, unless you live or ride on very high ground, and there are still riding events and activities on the calendar to be enjoyed as well as the occasional day when the weather presnets a glorious riding opportunity.  Last Saturday here in Lancashire was such a day and I’m now kicking myself that I didn’t grab the opportunity.  The Manchester Salvation Army Toy Run is also coming up (November 19th) and there are other worthwhile (and worthy) events still to come too.

If you decide to lay the bike up for the winter, as I might have to do in order to face another hip operation, then it’s important to give it a little care and attention as you do so.   Dave Partridge, proprietor of AwingAway and Tecnical Editor for the Federation Website  wrote a very helpful article on Laying up your GoldWing last year which you might want to read again.

And if you are going to lay the bike up don’t forget that you can surrender your tax disc and get a refund from DVLA; I discovered after an interesting series of encounters with our local DVLA Office that timing your arrival at about ten minutes before they close, so 4.50pm, even on their bsuier days, ensures a short or no queue at all or anyway some pretty snappy service because they all want to go home.  If you haven’t read it, my article about the DVLA has its entertaining moments.

But let’s not get too defeatist that the biking season is over just yet.  Let’s think about continuing to ride as winter approaches – and therefore about the implications for our riding skills and style, the extra things we need to look out for and deal with as hazards on autumn roads. continues………

Safe to overtake?

Lots of GoldWings are equipped with CB radio so that bike-to-bike communications is available to some if not all during a group ride.  Chatting on the radio can add both enjoyment and humour to a ride, as I was reminded recently when we were out in a small group, all on CB, and while passing a primary school Ian announced that it was his old school – and that he had been kept back by his teacher at the age of five for not being able to draw a frog.

For some reason this really tickled me and it was fortunate that there was nothing complicated to do in the way of riding at the time because I couldn’t stop laughing for ages.  This early but major life-event had clearly scarred him deeply.  I couldn’t stop laughing again when he confessed sadly that he still couldn’t draw a frog.

I can still remember laughing out loud the first time I heard Dennis chirp out of nowhere with “So I said to this horse, why the long face?”.  It was very funny. Of course Dennis did have a tendency to say the same thing quite frequently and it wasn’t quite so funny every time but on lots of tours I did with Elite Wings the CB radio was both useful and entertaining.

CB communication is also useful in a number of ways for group riding and it can make dropping off or other ways of keeping everyone on route and together almost completely unnecessary.  Of course CB only works reliably “line of sight” and out to a maximum of about mile so it’s not the complete solution. continues………

Until very recently it wouldn’t have occurred to me to write on this subject and I certainly wouldn’t have considered myself in any way qualified to do so.

in the wake of my second proper session on a race track, when I did 50 plus laps, most of which involved scraping the foot pegs on most of the bends for most of the time, the old brain started ticking and it occurred to me that what I had been doing that day was potentially useful on the roads as well as a fun experience on the track.

So, I’m now a bit better informed but can it really be useful on the road to have had the experience of scraping your foot pegs in this way?  Are there any circumstances in which you would want to touch ground with your foot pegs on a GoldWing on the road, other than for showing off?

During my early days on a Wing, riding a GL1200 and before I developed any sort of appetite for “making progress”, as the IAM calls it, I had no thought at all of leaning over far enough to scraping anything on the ground and thought, as I suppose most Wingers do, that riders who do that sort of thing must be barmy.

I suspect that some of my fellow IAM riders on that day think I was barmy for chucking my GL1800 around on the track like that, especially the guy on a replica Repsol Fireblade, wearing the matching riding gear, whom I tried to overtake on one of our warm up laps because he was getting under my feet.  He didn’t let me, the spoilsport, he just accelerated away.  I had no illusions that I could out perform a Fireblade on a racing circuit riding a GoldWing unless he had been willing to let me come past but I would have claimed the bragging rights anyway at the next IAM Group Meeting.

So scraping foot pegs on a GoldWing is for showing off and nothing else – right?  Well no, actually I don’t think it is.  Being confident that you can scrape your GoldWing’s footpegs can be very useful, as I’ll try to explain. continues………

Parts supplied

CLICK ON ANY IMAGE FOR AN ENLARGEMENT

Having read many good reviews about fork braces for the GL1500, it seemed like a good idea to fit one to my trusty Wing.  As my birthday was also approaching, this was a golden opportunity not to be missed when family asked “What do you want for your birthday?”

The question was, though, which one?

The front runner in the brace stakes seemed to be the Superbrace which has been around for a little while, but appeared to have the disadvantage of not allowing the chrome cover above the mudguard (fender?) to fully sit home after fitting, but leaving an ⅛” gap between the two.

Searching a well known auction site, (oh, go on then, Ebay), revealed an alternative in the shape of the Blackwing Brace.  Having read the description of the brace and its advantages over its competitors, I was beginning to warm to the idea.

Further digging showed there to be a video on You Tube which demonstrated the fitting of the brace with the absolute minimum of dismantling and in less than approx 15 minutes.

So, the choice was made and my brace was duly ordered (thanks, Lynette and son, Alex!) and I settled back to eagerly await its arrival. This, I’m pleased to say, happened today, but I should point out just a continues………

Honda Staff at their Slough HQ

Staff at Honda’s UK head office came out in force today to take part in a range of two-wheel activities, in support of the annual National Ride To Work Day.

More than fifty riders, many carrying a colleague as a pillion, rode their various Honda machines into the Company’s Head Office near Slough, where everyone gathered for a group photograph and ‘bikers’ breakfast’, joined by hundreds of non-rider colleagues from both the car and power equipment areas within the business as well.

Honda motorcycle models spanning over 30 years, from the Honda 400 Four Supersport from the late 1970s, to a GoldWing took part – highlighting Honda’s diverse range of scooters and motorcycles as well as their impressive longevity in engineering as well as appeal.  (This is based on a Honda Press Release – you’d never guess would you!)

Other staff took the opportunity to experience life on two wheels for the first time either by taking a continues………

As you might have gathered from this video clip, I really enjoyed my second proper go on a racing circuit using my GoldWing yesterday.  Indeed I enjoyed it so much that I thought that other Wingers might well find an opportunity like this one useful – so would they?

Three Sisters Race Circuit

Last year about this time I was invited via my IAM Group to take my bike to a track day laid on for the benefit of visually handicapped people, when they would have the opportunity to ride in sports cars and as pillion passengers on motorcycles provided by enthusiasts as well as to drive dual control cars provided by local driving schools.  I wrote my first experience of this up for the Blog in a previous article which you can find by clicking here.

This time I wasn’t quite so much of a newcomer, we got less rain and we were a bit better organised marshalling-wise, so I was kept busier and enjoyed it even more.  I also discovered that the compact digital camera I have used for years and can mount on my handlebars records video, hence the clip heading this Article.  It shows two laps of the circuit, starting from the pits and coming back into them.

Freddie Mercury and Queen was playing on the stereo but if you listen carefully you will hear the continues………

The Trough of Bowland on a Spring day

It was a perfect biking day in the North West recently, clear sky and sunshine and warm enough to sit out and enjoy tea and a toasted tea cake at Slaidburn when I got there with another couple of bikers who had the same idea.  One of them was even older than me and hadn’t brought his bike that particular day, but he took the opportunity to join us for a chat, as I had done by joining the other biker at his table when I arrived.

I chatted to another elderly Honda VFR rider at the Devil’s Bridge, Kirkby Lonsdale, also in the sunshine, on another ride a day or two later.  He had ridden over from Ripon and was feeling a bit tired because he’d taken an indirect route and he was a bit worried he’d taken on too much and would be very, very tired when he got back home.

He was perhaps entitled to feel tired after that ride at 79 years of age, on a Sports Tourer like the a VFR.  My idea of the bike I will ride when it’s time to give up the Wing is more like a Honda Deauville.   I used to say I’d like to be shot by a jealous husband at the age of 85 but if I can still be enjoying a longish day out continues………

Spring is here!

Winter is all very well in small doses and I suppose we’d miss it if it never happened but exceptionally cold weather and dark afternoons do get wearing after a while and the sight of daffodils and other spring flowers has really cheered me up.

Not that I’m any sort of gardener, indeed I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to avoid learning the difference between the plants and the weeds, but after a couple of weeks away from home in Lancashire, coming back to see colour appearing (or at least colours other than green appearing) is really heartening.

Getting the bike back on the road might have had something to with it too of course and with a weather forecast set fair for today and the weekend, life feels pretty good at the moment.  Bit of a struggle to fasten my biking gear but nothing a few less pies won’t fix.  I’m retired, so no daily grindstone to trouble my nose – and endless list of jobs at home to be done of course but I’ve dealt with the urgent ones, so I’m off the leash.  For a day or two anyway.

At this time of year the Lake District is a delightful biking area; the tourist season never quite stops up continues………

Expectancy is the term which psychologists use to describe our tendency to see what we expect to see, rather than what’s actually there.   And likewise to fail to see something because we expect to see nothing.

You will probably have been fooled into missing the double “the” words in the sentence on the left because your don’t expect to encounter double occurrences of “the” when you are reading.  Of course placing the extra word at the line breaks also helps to mislead you.

The significance of Expectancy when you are riding your GoldWing is however not so much that you will be fooled into missing things, although you might, but that other road users will put you at risk because they fail to see you.

It’s well know of course that an important cause of fatalities among motorcyclists is car drivers pulling out of side roads in front of them because they haven’t really looked for a fast approaching motorcycle, they were looking only for the cars, buses or lorries which might hurt them in a collision.  They fail to see push bikes for the same reason and it’s also why the Sinclair C5 was doomed to commercial failure.

I had a near miss recently at a mini-roundabout because a driver didn’t expect to see anyone in his path and assumed his way through the roundabout was clear, even though he didn’t have a clear view. continues………