After-Afterthoughts

(More anorak stuff.  Feel free to ignore this until I start posting a more interesting travelogue from the real Big Ride.)

I’ve got the bug!  I’d love to do another, longer tour.  And I’d do it so much better now I’ve had a little practice; knowing what to pack, where to stow it, how to plan routes, how long to ride and how long to rest for maximum safety and enjoyment. 

Longer daylight hours or shorter hops are a must: two two-hour rides with a really long lunch hour between them, plus a leisurely start and finish to the day, would be excellent.  I really noticed how my riding got sloppy when I pushed on a little bit further than I should ideally have done and tiredness started to creep up on me.  Vocalising the ride, per advanced riding technique, kept me safe, but it made the ride more of a chore than a pleasure.  Tours should not be endurance events!

I should also put in more frequent ‘comfort’ breaks!  With my saliva glands fried, I need to sip water frequently.  Consequently, I also need to visit the loo more often than Private Godfrey.  I found that, in the riding position, one doesn’t notice a full bladder, but once you stop and get off; ouch!

My bike was more filthy than it had ever been by the time I got back.  Thorough cleaning took ages.  Next time, I’ll clean as I go.  It’s so much more pleasant to see a shiny bike waiting for you in the morning, and to know that small boys look on in awe as you pass by.  Having a little more time in the day would allow for the cautious application of a garage jet wash every other day or so.  Space is precious so I wouldn’t pack my voluminous cleaning kit, but a small squirty bottle of Scottoil FS365 would be worth squeezing in.

I will definitely not take homework with me again.  I had incoming work on the Friday before I left and took the work laptop with me to do it in the evenings.  Another job came in on the Wednesday just as I got to Lowestoft and I made a start on that in the evening before coming home.    I don’t mind the work, especially with long, dark evenings with nothing else in particular to do, but the personal laptop doesn’t have the software to do work, and the work laptop isn’t allowed to have the software for blogging, hence I had to find room for two laptops and accompanying cabling.   I’ll declare myself properly unavailable and leave the work equipment at home next time.

A couple of times, I really struggled to get the bike on and off its stand and move it around.  I wondered if I had been too lax with my exercises lately and was getting a bit feeble.  But once I was back and unpacked the panniers and top box, I realised what the problem had been! 

Funny thing: nobody tried to kill me for the whole journey.  I usually reckon on at least one homicidal lunatic on every ride I do.  (The trick is to see him coming and take evasive action in advance.)  There was one occasion in Wales where somebody coming in the opposite direction swerved slightly to avoid a pheasant, but he barely crossed the white line and I could see that he had seen me coming.  And in Norfolk, a couple of drivers came a bit close to my back end, but there is lamentably little unusual about that and I had a good handful of acceleration to spare if it started to get alarming.  Perhaps spotting the careless and dangerous is becoming so second nature to me that I don’t even register it now.

My bike is excellent.  It trundles around ancient market towns just as well as it munches miles on motorways.  It is more economical than many a smaller motorcycle, but it has the power in reserve to get out of harm’s way when necessary.

With an extended ride in different conditions, I could experiment with the screen position.  At motorway speeds, I found that the screen fully up, so I look through the top section, reduced wind roar to almost nothing.  In the fully down position, the wind roar is constant (though I wear ear plugs and have a good helmet so it is not uncomfortable).  Halfway up, the roar cuts out, but there is a random buffeting from the turbulence.  Curiously, fuel consumption was best with the screen down.  My irregular shape fully exposed to the wind apparently causes less drag than the vortex created by having the screen fully up.  What’s more, the pressure of wind on the upper body allows a comfortable forward lean without putting strain on the arms.

My gear is likewise spot on.  The one-piece suit kept the changeable weather at bay.  It was fractionally too warm, in fact.  The thermal lining is removable, and with smarter packing, I could have left space in the panniers to stow it away.  But I suspect I will only ever really need it in the coldest of riding weather.  Boots and gloves were also faultless.  I wondered if I would miss the heated grips I had on my last bike and toyed with getting some inner gloves – possibly heated ones.  But cold fingers were never a problem; the fairing keeps the wind blast off the hands.

My [not very] smart phone was a disappointment, once again.  I really should have waited longer before adopting this technology!  I’d already established that it wasn’t up to blogging on the journey as I had at first hoped.  Then the Sat Nav app that I’ve had for a while and have previously used to some effect suddenly decided to give up, just when I could have done with it.  (Still, the little holder that attaches to my handlebars,  designed to hold a Sat Nav, is also good for holding paper sketch maps and waypoint lists; my ‘flat nav,’ as it were.  A map in the map bag section of my tank bag might be a good idea next time, too.  Peering down at the tank to check a map while travelling along is not recommended, but it’s sometimes nice to stop and see what’s in the area; alternative routes, places to stop, a general feel for the lie of the land – things that a sketch map or waypoint list don’t show.  I went without it this time and found it inconvenient to keep stopping, getting off and digging out the map from the panniers. )

Music held on the smart phone and played back through the headset in my helmet was a bit tinny, but then if it wasn’t heavy on the treble, I probably wouldn’t hear speech when I make phone calls.  In any case, it was more or less drowned out at any kind of highway speed, though more satisfactory when pottering through towns.  And I find a little music with a driving beat and a not too engaging melody is an aid to concentration in the eyes-everywhere urban environment.  On motorways and when touring through pleasant landscape, it’d just be irritating.

The voice control app was occasionally useful, but definitely not to be relied upon.  My new basso profundo voice probably didn’t help, but the app never was particularly successful.

Perhaps on some future journey, a smarter smart phone that really does do everything – reliably – would be in order, but only if I come into some money or their price drops significantly.

In any case, I pine for another tour already, with or without assorted electronic aids.