Red Lion: "Is he quick?"

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 for the owner to tip up and help release me by putting our combined weight on his boot lid!

Anyway, on dumping Shadowfax I saw Ewan and aimed to say hello once free of helmet and clobber. And that was it really.

Anyway, toward my cut-off time a fella with a lush Ducatti 916 in yellow, black, and red (??!) - no, really. It was a lovely clean looking R'Reg thing that sounded really Ducatti; nice.



Anyway, this fella took a cursory look across to Shadowfax and says, "they're pretty quick, them." I took a moment to reply, "Not as quick as I thought it would be."

Now, Tuesday morning I'm threading my way between traffic out of Fareham and reflect on this statement. Did I mean the bike didn't feel as quick as my previously quite quick cars, or in relation to Dilbert? Was this a lack of experience of anything else, I wondered? So...as I left Wycome I kept him in 2nd gear...

Skid Marks

Shadowfax is every bit as quick as the books would have you believe; by the time I had settled into 3rd gear and expended only 6000rpm of the available 10k I had passed a convoy of casual commuters and needed to prize my eye balls back out of their sockets with a wire clothes hanger. This was fun. By Warnford I risked not only loosing my licence but also my nadgers on the tank under braking again as I cut the overtaking distance allowance agian and again with practically no skill enough to keep us both upright - inertia and centrifugal force spinning out of the wheels to stop us spinning off the road. This was serious skid-mark territory, and as Shadowfax technically shouldn't skid (ABS) these marks were all mine!

At Meon I used the new-found power and zippyness to nip into the front of the traffic light queue just as the lights turned and blatted off up the hill to catch a slow lorry threesome closing in at about 85mph. Road clear to the top I pulled the throttle still further back in 3rd and whooped for joy as my ride just clean took off past the slow-coaches and engine braking resumed normal control for the entry to the sharp right-hander (always slowing for to avoid oncoming jocks missing the turn or the junction joining right at the end of its apex).

A quick ST. On we screamed again past the Privet turning and swooped over the connecting curves - just matching 4th gear as there's came the next braking point for another blind junction; back to a slower feeling 85mph again, I noted. Twist back again and over the hill's crest onto the wooded tunnel and time to ease off and take stock of what a knob I was being.

Yeah... The bike's quick. It's the rider who's slow.