Shadowfax-ST Blog

First night-time commute home Refreshing your mind of the problem I've had with the battery and head lamp causing the bike to stall and the STILL missing one of two rear bulbs and you may have some appreciation why I wasn't really looking forward to the first dark commute. Add to this the poor riding experience (and even poorer style) I have and you may appreciate further why I SHOULDN'T have looked forward the the first dark commute! Anyway, I was slightly encouraged by the practice ride out to Droxford the other night and I had a good mental image, an artist's impression if you like, of what the A32 would look like. I've recreated this for you below: Artist impression of the road at night by Pat The reason I had a night journey at all was to watch a truck hitch up to a trailer at work where a building has been commenced threatening to land-lock the trailer like a bloke building a kit-car in his kitchen and then realising he can't get it out through the door ...

Linking Squirrels There are a few American reviews of ST1300s that remark how accomplished they are when the road gets "squirrelly". What's "squirrelly"? I took this originally to mean the road threw in bends that mimick the squirrels' erratic and unpredictable footwork as they zig-zag along branches and fence tops in a way possibly designed to put off stalking predators*; or perhaps that curve, wave-like; as do their backs and tails as they arch along at a run. But no. This morning the A32 got squirrelly by Corehampton when the little fur-ball bastards threw beech nut grenades at us. It caught me off-guard to begin with and we swerved to avoid this "shape" launched at my swede but the you could see the well-timed incoming missiles on lobbed tradjectories: these were no natural wind falls. So now I know. A squirrel lobbing his nut around

I F&%$ing hate scoots Slow traffic through Peel Common and on toward Collingwood. Two scoots buzzing annoyingly behind me. One overtakes. Now, I didn't overtake as the Pan is easy to get going along a line of traffic but a pig to get back in if there's no room and the bend was blind - this kid just gunned all of his 48cc 2-stroke mosquito imitator and went for it. Good luck to him. What got my shit was the kid who pulled up on my left-hand-side and rode along with me. I didn't know if I should kick him off his ride or phone for his Mum! In the end I simply gestured with my hand - civil like - not to take my space again else I'd put him in the ditch. Amazing. It worked. Freaks. Obviously there are going to be some moped riders you might still respect in the morning!

Monday Night Pub Night Ka told me our near neighbour who passed his bike test just a couple of weeks before I did and bought a Yamaha Diversion wished me well and asked when I would put in an appearance at the Red Lion in Stubbington. The Orange BIkers (Paragon Training) instructors promote the weekly meet but it's not on the scale of the Fox Cafe in Oxfordshire or Loomies at the A32 / A272 junction in Meon. On arrival I remembered my first visit with Dilbert when no one else turned up as the weather was poor (bunch of fair-weather bikers!) and I ballsed up the parking. This time I looked more carefully for a spot I could either reverse out of or in to, and sacked it; practically abandoning it in the middle of the car park. Fair game though, this is exactly how I used to park my first cars. That landed me in trouble with a Ford Capri though when I dropped it down off a curb I was too lazy to park against right onto some poor bugger's Cortina tow hitch. I had to wait some time...

Light Test It was dark, which qualified the evening as night. I've ridden in the night but only through street-lit town and for the quickest of blasts down one junction of the M27 and with evenings rapidly qualifying as night I guessed I had better get some time in before mornings do likewise. I set off with the rain-proof beneath the jacket. It didn't feel cold. By reaching the A32 outreaches of Fareham I saw the air-temperature to be reading 12'C. I always see chilly as starting around 15'C (local warm early-spring day) and cold at anything below 10'C; so this was borderline with added wind chill. Chilly. I was brave but the memories of a snotty-nose and steamed visor came flooding back as my nose dripped and visor; well, it steamed. About the lights The dipped beam was very dipped; it's like everything in the twin-H4-bulbed lighting was concentrated on a wide beam about 15m in front of us, which is great at dawdling speeds of 30 to 40mph, but critically deb...

Road Pilot 2s ??! "Um", said Nige with his wry manner over the phone, "your tyres have arrived but they didn't have the Bridgestone BT020s and sent the Michelins instead." "And they're okay?" I asked naively. Yeah, they're the new ones; Michelin's answer to Dunlop and Bridgestone; there's nothing wrong with them." Nige: reassuringly. "Okay, it's not like there's much choice really", I mused, thinking back to the baldness of Shadowfax's rear rubbers, "Yeah. Fit those please, Nige". Now I've been "brought up" on the BT020s, Honda's favoured tyres for the ST1300 along with Dunlop's alternative OEM (original equipment manufacturer) recommendation. I know that the ST1300 2002 "Police-killer" wobble had something to do with soft walls and the Michelin was slammed in something I read for it's being too soft and out of breath after only 4000-miles if it hadn't slipped ...

Dry Wit It has to be blogged - today it rained a lot; not in a single downpour but in a soaking wet persistent kind of way. I popped in to Gosport to swap over the crap watch bought on Saturday, mosied around for a parking spot, and stopped. It began raining. Half way to work I was in the clear but the left-over spray was thick - doubtless from this week's fresh badger and other assorted road-kills. I arrived at work in fair spittle with a minte brown polka-dot splatter across the fairing and tank. Otherwise, reasonably dry. On return I checked out Google Map's My Maps weather page where the European (thus UK) rain radar is displayed as a layer over Google Map. There was a thin space of no rain between large swathes of iminent wet. I had missed the gap! It rained - more wet stuff - but today I just didn't get wet. The helmet had been soaked all the way home in rain and spray but the bib was only damp; the rest was fine. I got home and didn't have to dry a thing. ...

F&%$ing Honda! So, there's a tail light out. I pop into Halfords in the weekend and ask for advice - blank stares all round. They sell bike lamps but don't know jiffy about them and have no reference for anything except oil filters. I used the new phone to search Google and came up with the designation of 12V/21 - 5. Yep, Halfords do that one. "Will it fit?" I asked. "Sure, it's a standard motorcycle bulb", replied Halford's hair-dryer technician Sandra. This evening I took the seat off to get at the tail light. No way to get to it. I unscrew the lamp rose but it does nothing to my access. I get on to the .pdf manual I have on the PC. Shocking... ST1300 bulb replacement: Instructions 1. Remove rear fender (black mud guard with licence plate (4 x hex bolts; 2 horizontal and too deep for a hex-key to reach, and 2 vertical requiring care using the modified screwdriver with hex-socket fixed not to burn the wrist on the hot exhausts. "Imagine...

Introducing Shadowfax to Nige at Taylor's Garage We used Taylors Garage for Dilbert after strong recommendations from the instructors (Gary and John) at Paragon . Their hourly rates are reasonable and enthusiasm abounding. I pulled in to the garage in Droxford and introduced Shadowfax to Nige who met him with some enthusiasm once we recalled my journey through the Sanya to Dilbert and rationalised the rapid succession of bikes. We discussed an inaugural service to tie in with the end of Shadowfax's warranty period due around 1,000 miles time (49,000) and all-round safety check as we had done for Dilbert. Immediately we walked around Shadowfax's rear flank Nige was on his knees tut-tutting the rear tyre. "That's not good." He said. "That's bare in it's middle". He was right; for a bike that passed its MOT just 2000 miles ago tread was spartan about the central reaches. Given that I had checked and inflated the tyres this morning I hadn't ...

Victory over gravity and common sense! We've had Shadowfax on his centre stand about, oh; let me count. Once. And that took both Karen pulling from his rear sissy rails and me tugging at his handlebars and flip-out handle made for the reason of leverage in this very maneuver. So, Ka's on nights and tucked up in bed and the kids are too young to pull anything (thankfully in the case of my daughter). Therefore, if I am to have a good go at the job in hand I need to get him up on his stand by my lonesome. Now, I've been planning this for some time. I've even lay in bed late at night and early in the morning pondering this very puzzle where I should have been subliminally charming the pants off Sandra Bullock, Jamie Lee Curtis, or any other unobtainable fillie with whom I might choose to get familiar in my dreams. So, I had 3 scenarios to try ranging from grunt-powered super-lifting to clever use of gravity, inertia, and dumb luck. I've seen John Bagguely put his Pan on...

Shadowfax's Slapped Bottom During our short holiday the postie had finally delivered Shadowfax's reflective panels for the rear of his panniers. Unfortunately the rainy-season appeared to have commenced (if it ever ceased this last month) and I had little opportunity to fix them. In the end though, in my second week off work (where work has contacted me each day and I had to ride in on one day, too) I managed to find a gap in the clouds and wash and dry Shadowfax's shitty end and stick the suckers on. It looks like someone's slapped his buttocks (in my World it does, and I'm comfortable here, so bug-off if you can't see it) and in the flash photo above there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of reflection going on. I can't wait to test them out. There's more rain and I have to look after the kids. (Can't I just put them both in each of the panniers?) The Scotchlite 3M stickies were cut and supplied by Deanoko . He does a variety of other bikes, t...

Despondent Dilbert was cleaned and polished and checked out for the ride over to Portsmouth Harbour train station to hand over to his buyer, John. I confess, I love Dilbert's curves; my favourites around his bump stoppers where their shape is made to appear as if it has oozed from the fairing above them. Each side is as well gravity-formed as a gentlewoman's breast though somewhat easier to caress. I took in the last sweet savours of his company and shook off the paradox of just having cupped the breasts on a bike that's quite obviously meant to have been a bloke in my mind. Dawn of realisation then; why most bikes are referred to in the feminine context. John was desperate to collect the wide panniers and the spare screen, too, so I had to work out how to do this. In the end I found a removals box that could sit in Dilbert's top-box and then wrapped his thin pannier lids in cardboard to sandwich safely the screen. Then black bags and brown tape weather-proofed and wind...

Reason to Return from Somerset John won the ebay auction for Dilbert and his wide panniers making a total purchase price of £1380. The Vario screen looked set to go for £72. John's number came off ebay so we chatted and arranged for me to deliver Dilbert to Portsmouth Harbour Station as previously suggested. This called for a Bank Holiday Monday dash back to Gosport ready to deliver on Tuesday. Setting Off I sat astride Shadowfax with his luggage full and my children buzzing around in excitement at my departure (kids!). We'd parked rear-down-hill on shale in front of the awning and Shadowfax pawed at the loose surface as we emerged up-hill onto tarmac; difficult to hold him back with his choke automatically on despite a warm if damp feeling evening. It was 4pm. We left the camp site and raced into Wells for a well-rehearsed turn toward Shepton Mallet. At Shepton Mallet I stopped no less than 3-times to consult the map to drop down to the A303 early via Wincanton (twinned with A...