weeksy wrote: ↑Fri May 22, 2020 7:51 am
I'm moving to Japan !!!
I would not offer life insurance to the camera rider. He's riding just like the useless yanks you see in crash videos who love taking off into the scenery.
But the lead rider, Mr Smooth.
I thought that. His timing and road positioning is pretty poor. He keeps turning either too soon and running wide or too late and then struggles to recover in time for the next opposite curve. I suspect he's riding his mate's tail lights and not reading the road and riding his own lines. Probably not helped by chattering into his go-pro at the same time.
The road has a hint of the A82 alongside Loch Ness about it, albeit with more twits..
weeksy wrote: ↑Fri May 22, 2020 7:51 am
I'm moving to Japan !!!
I would not offer life insurance to the camera rider. He's riding just like the useless yanks you see in crash videos who love taking off into the scenery.
But the lead rider, Mr Smooth.
I might video a ride of me on the 690, I'll show you the meaning of erratic!!
Gimlet wrote: ↑Sat May 30, 2020 12:10 am
The road has a hint of the A82 alongside Loch Ness about it...
Now that is a stonking bit of road!
Last time I rode that was about this time 5 years ago, me on my shitbox commuter SV650 with the largest givi panniers and top box known to man.....
....and a mate on an Aprilia Futura with a set of huge, noen, throw-over panniers that were determined to take every opportunity to throw themselves off the Aprilia.
See the hills in the background with the snow on them? This is the same bit of road, the A9, the week before we were due to go...
We were carrying out a recce' run for a charity John o'Groats to Lands End motorbike ride I used to organise and were trying out a potential new route.
Rode up from Kent to Wick in one hit, about 13 hours riding and only making it thanks to the fine selection of hot pies on offer at Scottish service stations....
....and stayed overnight with a mate, a maniac GSXR 1000 riding train driver, who lives there.
Set off from John o'Groats in a howling gale.
And then it started raining, in only the way that it can in Scotland. Biblically. Dour, brich, torrential rain.
After 8 hours we were on the A82 by the side of Loch Lomond and it had stopped being fun. There were rivers of deep torrential water running across the road, which even if you went through on a closed throttle at barely walking pace saw the front and back washing out simultaneously, and meanwhile the locals are driving like it's a glorious summer day; which to be fair, for them it probably was. Our textile gear was soaked through, my gentlemens bits were so cold and shrunken I was starting to get worried about how I was going to piss.
We stopped at a visitor centre by the Loch and it was like that scene in "Withnail and I"....
...when we asked the lass behind the counter if there was anywhere to stay locally so we could hide from the rain and dry out and have a restorative drink or 10. She directed us to a country Inn a few miles back down the road.
Very odd place. It was as if someone had given a Hollywood set dresser a huge budget and been instructed to make the place "look as Scottish as fuck". Roaring fires, crossed swords, all the staff in kilts, more stuffed dead wildlife than you can shake a stick at...
..and the bint on reception was very keen to explain to us at great length, as we stood there shivering and dripping all over their wood floors, that the place, and in particular our shared room, was haunted. Cue my mate, Nick, loudly telling me in front of her that if I woke up in the morning covered in something it was ectoplasm, definitely ectoplasm....
A bottle of whiskey for Nick and a bottle of Amaretto for me soon put the world back on an even keel and we retired to the room, separate beds, pissed and glad we were no longer out in the storm that was battering the outside of the place.
Woke in the morning to bright sunshine and a brisk wind and a noticeable lack of ectoplasm. Set off and things were a lot better than yesterday but it was still pretty sketchy. Back end spinning up everywhere, the front pushing on the brakes. We were taking it as fast as we dared and had just, at a quick stop to re-attach Nick's panniers for eleventy billionth time, agreed that you couldn't ride a motorbike on this road, in these conditions, any faster than we were doing....
...when we were overtaken by a BMW GS, fully loaded with huge metal box panniers and top box, 2 up with a Howard and Hilda couple identically dressed in the their BMW textiles. Both of them sitting bolt upright and leaning the fuck out of it. Going about twice the speed we were. The pillion gave us a cheery wave over her shoulder as they fucked off around the next bend...probably while they were listening to The Archers on their in-helmet speakers and talking over the intercom about how disappointed with breakfast at the B&B they were and "I don't like an undercooked tomato with my breakfast, Howard, and as for those baked beans! Well!".
We stopped at the next layby and agreed that we would never, ever, tell anyone what had just happened.
Anyway, the A82 looked like it would be a fucking hoot in the dry and it's been on my bucket list, when I get the Ducati finished, to pop up there during the week in summer when the weather looks good and attack it with some gusto. If for no other reason than to restore the balance and "Fuck you mr. & mrs. BMW!"...
Cracking ride down to Ross-on-wye and the Wye valley. Stopping for lunch at Symonds yat rock. Superb views looking down to the river Wye. One of those rides where you say, " I'll have to bring the mrs here sometime ". and I will try, but bnb will be needed for a proper look around.
Again I forgot photos but it did happen. I found a photo on maps of view from the rock, might work.
Dodgy knees wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 7:26 pm
245 miles and my arse is not happy.
Try 500+ miles on a 98 R1 in one day, Ipswich to Abergavenny and back avoiding motorways, just because I wanted to ride somewhere.
Try 906 miles, no motorways, on a GPZ305S (that cost £300 to buy and prepare) in one day, John o'Groats to Lands End. Sunrise on the 21st of June to sunrise on the 22nd. All for charidee.
Dodgy knees wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 7:26 pm
245 miles and my arse is not happy.
Try 500+ miles on a 98 R1 in one day, Ipswich to Abergavenny and back avoiding motorways, just because I wanted to ride somewhere.
Try 906 miles, no motorways, on a GPZ305S (that cost £300 to buy and prepare) in one day, John o'Groats to Lands End. Sunrise on the 21st of June to sunrise on the 22nd. All for charidee.
Drops mic........
You liar, a 305 couldn't manage a full 906 miles without a rebuild!
Try 500+ miles on a 98 R1 in one day, Ipswich to Abergavenny and back avoiding motorways, just because I wanted to ride somewhere.
Try 906 miles, no motorways, on a GPZ305S (that cost £300 to buy and prepare) in one day, John o'Groats to Lands End. Sunrise on the 21st of June to sunrise on the 22nd. All for charidee.
Drops mic........
You liar, a 305 couldn't manage a full 906 miles without a rebuild!
The bad boy in all its glory....
It made it Lands End with all of the same faults as it had when it set of from John o'Groats and no new ones. The fame was bent, so if you let go of the bars it veered wildly off to the right, and it only got an MOT on the basis that I was the only person to ride it and once the event was complete it was going in the skip. I was fully expecting it to live up to the reputation the model has and set off well prepared.....
...but it didn't miss a beat.
I had done some preparation. The 305's reputation for shitting itself seems to stem, largely, from the oil pump drive gear being made of plastic and losing its teeth so that the patented "Kawasaki Oil Pump Failure Detection & Indication Device" - the camshaft shitting itself - has to come into play. So I checked the oil pump drive gear, for all the good it does as the gears aren't available new any more, and cleaned the oil pick up screen as internet wisdom is that the pickup getting clogged cause the oil pump to become reluctant to turn which causes the gear to strip its teeth off.
I also stuck 2 inline fuel filters as the inside of the tank was looking a bit rusty. This is the state of the filter, which was brand new and unused when the bike set off from Scotland, in Cornwall....
millemille wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 10:02 pm
Try 906 miles, no motorways, on a GPZ305S (that cost £300 to buy and prepare) in one day, John o'Groats to Lands End. Sunrise on the 21st of June to sunrise on the 22nd. All for charidee.
Dodgy knees wrote: ↑Tue Jun 02, 2020 7:26 pm
245 miles and my arse is not happy.
Try 500+ miles on a 98 R1 in one day, Ipswich to Abergavenny and back avoiding motorways, just because I wanted to ride somewhere.
Try 906 miles, no motorways, on a GPZ305S (that cost £300 to buy and prepare) in one day, John o'Groats to Lands End. Sunrise on the 21st of June to sunrise on the 22nd. All for charidee.
Drops mic........
Cool. I did Inverness to Blandford, Dorset in one go, going down the east side of the country avoiding motorways. 700 miles and 14+ hours. It was fine. I was back out on the bike again the next day.
Try 500+ miles on a 98 R1 in one day, Ipswich to Abergavenny and back avoiding motorways, just because I wanted to ride somewhere.
Try 906 miles, no motorways, on a GPZ305S (that cost £300 to buy and prepare) in one day, John o'Groats to Lands End. Sunrise on the 21st of June to sunrise on the 22nd. All for charidee.
Drops mic........
Cool. I did Inverness to Blandford, Dorset in one go, going down the east side of the country avoiding motorways. 700 miles and 14+ hours. It was fine. I was back out on the bike again the next day.
I did the ride, as well as organising the whole event, back in 2013. 28 riders started from John o'Groats and I ended up riding all of the way with a guy who I barely knew at the time but who, as a result of the ride together, has become my best mate.
The first 700 odd miles were a piece of the proverbial; the weather was great, traffic was light, we had some awesome roads to do a bit of scratching on and we stopped regularly for food and power naps. It was just like a long Sunday ride.
And then we got down to Cirencester, as it was getting dark, and a howling gale blew in off the Atlantic just as we turned right on to the A303. And it stopped being so much fun and became a grimmer than grim test of endurance.
Barely making 60mph along the A30, pitch dark, horizontal rain and leaning into the cross wind, at what felt like 45 degrees, just to go in a straight line. Having to stop at every services to get a hot drink.
I was behind my mate at one point - he'd followed me every other mile of the ride, because I'd drawn up the route I knew it off by heart so he took advantage of that - on Exmoor when he, without warning, indicated and pulled over on verge. I rode up to next him and all I could see was his huge, wide eyes staring out from behind his visor. "Did you see that?" he shouts. "What?" says I. "That fucking huge Polar Bear!!".
Just what you want to hear, after 20 hours of riding and in the middle of nowhere, pitch black and in a storm. Your riding partner is hallucinating.
Mind you, after we'd stopped at the next services and found that the McDonalds was still open and shoved some hot food down his face, I was convinced the GPZ was dying. Every time I got up to 50 it started misfiring and juddering. I backed off and wound it up again and it kept on doing it. it must have taken me 10 miles of rolling off, rolling on, misfiring, rolling off before I realised I was in 4th, not 6th, and I'd been bouncing it off the rev limiter.......
millemille wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 10:02 pm
Try 906 miles, no motorways, on a GPZ305S (that cost £300 to buy and prepare) in one day, John o'Groats to Lands End. Sunrise on the 21st of June to sunrise on the 22nd. All for charidee.
So you didn't think of just giving them the £300. They would have been very grateful.
millemille wrote: ↑Wed Jun 03, 2020 10:02 pm
Try 906 miles, no motorways, on a GPZ305S (that cost £300 to buy and prepare) in one day, John o'Groats to Lands End. Sunrise on the 21st of June to sunrise on the 22nd. All for charidee.
So you didn't think of just giving them the £300. They would have been very grateful.
Given I raised over a grand in sponsorship, no.....
