Shadowfax-ST Blog

What's The Point? Okay, so I made a late overtake in the dark – it was measured; I know the road and I had the right gears and I knew I’d be in in time enough not to endanger the approaching cars. It just needed a little accuracy through the road studs on re-entry and care to miss the grate on the close of the bend while keeping out of where the deep puddles would be. I had good vision through a clean visor and excellent road picture from Shadowfax’s extraordinarily effective HID front lamp; my timing was spot on. So, why did the oncoming car feel compelled to flash me? All they did was rob me of my night vision and dazzle out my views of the known hazards I was so far avoiding in a measured and planned manner. Tosser.

Footloose Shadowfax’s front foot rubbers were mightily worn, which bothered me cosmetically if not on the grounds of safety so I ordered a set off (you guessed it) eBay. Fitting them was straight forward and surprisingly “engineered” in their design. The ride is unaffected but certainly more sure footed!

Posh Backrest Ebay has a steady flow of Hondaline top boxes passing through it. Having a white bike presents the problem of whether to buy any top box in any colour and then re-spray it or get a red, black, or grey one that could just as easily sit on the bike without looking too odd. The normal price range is £160 to £230 second hand; David Silver Spares will set you back £275 for a new one. List is a little higher, of course. We bought ours at £160 BRAND NEW in the box and plastic bags!!! (See below - rough and upside down but at least it's complete!) The top box might have been brand new but the outer box was past its prime! This was an excellent deal but Ka still gave me a length of scorn over the price paid. It was a delight to see a second hand one go this week for £196 second hand from a bloke with a kitchen in his garage. The box was not the easiest farkle to fit; the instructions are a technical diagram with notes 1-5, which do not correlate with the order of fitting t...

Clearing Vision Lucky bastards! I mean, those with screens they can see through. Shadowfax’s screen is so scratched up with microscopic scuffs and cleaning abrasion there’s no hope of looking through it in sunlight and zero in headlights. Mat recommended a product he’d seen at Heine Gerick’s in Aldershot, a polish called Xerapol. It sounds like something you’d spread on a sore anus but with a little elbow grease it works up into a superb restorative for the acrylic screen. Not only is the screen improved in its through vision but also the lessoning of scratches on which road shit can cling has given the screen the properties of Rain-X (to some degree). The rain just gets blown off as it does from the visor – not so as you can see through it, it still needs a screen wiper fitted (HONDA!) – but its a vast improvement on before. The screen looks “clearer”, too. £3-worth of packaging...thanks guys. 'Appreciate it. So for £8.99 plus £3 P&P (including a box big enough to take a...

Portsmouth Motorcycles Service I’ve now paid up a fair amount of hard earned green and purples for servicing on Shadowfax and always in the belief the smaller garages will be cheaper – or at least better value than the main dealer network. I’m delighted to report I may have been wrong. Portsmouth Motorcycles conducted a full 12,000-mile service and rented me a bike for the day for just shy the £200 quoted. Sure, the evil bastard on morning shift who thought I’d have more fun on a rented CB600F than on a Deauville 700 is on my hit list of men whose testicles I’d most like to stamp on. Phut-Phut came to mind; naked, too low geared and totally uncomfortable and untrustworthy in traffic (although I did warm to the 600 a little more as the day wore on but there’s no way I could have done 100-miles commute on it). The unprotected visor also allowed the wind in and made me cry; most undignified! Anyway, for a few quid more than Nige at Taylor’s Garage and Mike at Motorcycle Mechanic cost ...

Cock It was a skid; it was for sure not what I expect ABS to feel like. 50m into the near-accident (incident) the rear wheel was doing everything it could to compete with the front, which was now under serious compression from the down force exerted through the forks. There were also 3-poits of sound; rear tyre, front tyre, and my arse. It was all over in 100m. This was lucky really; at that point the Transit was close enough to see the driver’s own efforts to stop and his mouth shape the immortal critique, “cock!” It was foggy and you may recall my triumph over my fear of fog some weeks ago. I had followed car drivers crawling at unreasonably slow speeds of 30mph in 60mph fog and around the waterworks I had made up some position in the road train of ailing crates by picking them off one by one within what vision I imagined I had of the approaching road in front. The last couple of cars were piled close to one another; clearly a difficult over-take requiring some space. As we en...

Seeing the Light Cruising speed through the Meon Valley and I can’t help but develop a feeling of vast and fathomless euphoria. Corehampton Brooks The Sun’s shining down on a frosty vista and the cold wind is biting through my skin and warming my sole. It’s beautiful: the colours are more vivid than I recall ever seeing them along this stretch and I am oh, so comfortable at this speed with my visor part up sniffing in the freshness of the air. I stopped and took a picky, or two. The iPhone camera couldn’t cope; not really, but I knew that. I was just drinking in the eqarly morning winter’s day in the countryside listening to the jackdaws and cows squabbling in the field opposite. Shadowfax and I were on a new level and I hadn’t even had a drink; an epiphany. Shadowfax: his dismounted rider's epithany indicating Prozac is beaten off for (at least) another week Superb. If you don’t ride far or fear grabbing the bike out of the garage for fear some salt wise up, get out, and tak...