Nige, a Fox, and The Mummy

Mixed Bag

The ride home was late; not leaving work before 8.15pm. It was damp and it was cold and I was extremely aware the tyre pressures were low. There was a tell-tale feeling from the front; one which I usually answer by inflating the tyres back up to 42psi and all feels right again.

Earlier, I had pulled in to see Nige at Taylors Garage in Droxford where he'd promised during Shadowfax's servicing to check my front disk pads when I reckoned them to be near worn. He didn't disappoint and while there I was introduced to an interesting chap who had taken a BMW Transalp from the UK over to Tibet through the various-stahns, Ukraine, and Russia; a regular Long Way Round. Indeed, Charlie had helped brief the trio of adventurers during their preparations. "Don't do it", he said. Nothing could have been more motivating, it seems!

The bloke also has a Honda Hornet on loan from Honda of Portsmouth. Apparently, I can waltz in to the shop with my two licences and a utility bill and ride away on a demonstrator; the Hornet was such a bike. Game on, I say!

Honda Hornet - cup version. Pretty little thing.

We spent far too much time chatting but Shadowfax's forward arresting devices were given a fit-for-use nod to last another month or so. "Might as well get your money's worth out of them." Said Nige. Good bloke, Nige. Bob nagged me for not nodding him when we pass most daily. Funny, Ian said something similar recently, too. It's not that I'm ignorant but I can't always be nodding when I'm chasing down my blue-rinse quarry in front, you know.

Anyway, amid all the delay and tale telling I ran out of the time allocated to getting some pressure in the tyres.

So, here I was riding home in the dark and damp with a front tyre that was feeling the anatomical equivalent of "off colour". And, it was cold; 4-degrees most all the way except where it dropped to 3, and then rose to 6-degrees on entering Fareham. Finger tips were bitten but I couldn't be bothered to pull over for a warm until, by return to Droxford, it was raining harder and I had something to take my mind of them.

Having survived my neurotica over badger attack at Warnford and a real-life flanking attempt to chew a chunk out of the Michelin's made by a hapless field-mouse-type-thing-hard-to-identify-at-that speed who was only stopped by endazzlement by my headlights, which just goes to show how well their eyes must be adapted to the dark, I approached Wickham. Just after the Waterworks S's and old railway bridge jump I saw a fox rather too close for comfort. She was pretty quickly out of my path so I could stand my kidneys down but it just goes to show how limited my dipped lights are in the dark where all I saw was what I thought to be a cat's eyes in the road so I hadn't bothered to put on the brakes.

Just seconds later a big truck approached (the reason I'd dipped the lights) and then I was put upon by an attack I can only describe as feeling like a close encounter with a mummy; the one from the film, The Mummy; you know, all sand and hot air. But boy, was this a full frontal! The screen was down for vision but that aside, a wall of what could have been dust, sand, or spray hit me all at once and nearly knocked me back with the energy. There was grit on the road immediately after, so perhaps I was salted but there wasn't a yellow winky pot at either end of the truck and this is Hampshire, which has been in the news recently for not being bothered to grit yesterday when the North of the county received 2mm of snow (as evidenced in this blog - you saw it here first! Unless you'd actually been there, of course in which you'd have seen it there first: I was late). Either way, given the dark and cold and distraction of the fox, this quite took my breath away.



I was glad to get home after that.