Only a few hours left now!

The holidays have gone so quickly I have fiddled about with the bike, topping up the fuel so I don’t have to stop on my way over to Worcester tomorrow morning. If the forecast is to be believed, If I stop I would no doubt be turning back due to the cold.

The route I will be taking after leaving Monk Sherborne is to take a couple of back lanes to Ewhurst on the A339. A part of the journey that slightly worries me as it is the one section that will not be gritted. I will then take the A339 until it joins the A34 just South of Newbury, a quick run through town at around 8am should mean the road is pretty quiet. Then onto the M4 at Junction 13 coming off at Junction 15 I will then take the A419 and A417 until I reach the M5 at Junction 11. The run on the on the A roads, should be pretty good, however I have ridden these before and not enjoyed them one bit, due to being frozen solid. I don’t think tomorrow is going to be any better.

Once on the M5 it is a relatively short run up to Worcester. Thankfully when I come off at Junction 7 it is only a couple of miles to the Three Counties Hospice and the opportunity to thaw out. I’m aiming to get there about 10-10.30am. The RAC route planner says it is just under 100 miles and should take me around 2hrs 10mins. I am hoping to meet some of the staff, have a coffee and get some pictures taken before I head of back not much later than 11.30am.


One thing I have been doing over the holidays is buying in the sales and I have certainly bought some more thermal gear and a nice thin fleece that I can wear underneath my jacket, so hopefully it will help me stay warm, the other things I’ve been able to pick up quite cheap are a new camping mattress and pillow. Wishful thinking you might say but as soon as the weather warms up enough and is not torrential rain I will be camping. If we get to 10 degrees during the day and no less than 5 at night then I will camp thankfully I have the gear, one issue though is finding anywhere open, This is where the Youth Hostels and Universities come into play, I’ve had one offer from a South West University to host me, that I need to confirm pretty quickly now. If I am to stay on schedule I need to be hitting Cornwall, sometime in March at the very, very latest, much later than that will mean a lot of catching up later in the year.

I have been playing around with the Camera over the last few days as well as charging up plenty of batteries as I am hoping to take a small video of arriving and leaving the hospice. It really will be an experiment at this stage but it will give me some ideas for when I get the camera equipment from Mobotix to mount. My good friend Jay has been away over the holidays so I haven’t got his helmet cam yet, in fact when I spoke to him, he didn’t believe I was going to actually start tomorrow. Therefore over the coming weeks I will be I will be inundated with Cameras to track my progress.

Now to a serious message, I want to wish everyone that reads my blog a very. Very happy and prosperous New Year and I really do mean the last part. In this time of global financial turmoil I wish all of you reading a seriously good year.

Take care and as Mick says 'You don’t stop riding when you get old, you only stop riding when you need your head checking!'

Rain stops play, or should I say Floods!

Thankfully I got the message that the Cheltenham Santa Run had been called off due to lack of numbers, which is a great shame and an indictment of the current economic climate I suppose. It was also almost physic as I didn’t think it would have taken place anyway due to the floods of last weekend, which left a race meeting at Cheltenham called off due to flooding on the course as Pittville park is less than a mile a away I am certain it would have been under water as well.

It meant that I was able to do a couple of extra jobs on the bike, fitting the camera mount and wiring up the 12V auxiliary power outlet and Yes I did it right, you will find out why a bit later in this piece. It also left me time to venture into Festival Place in Basingstoke for some Christmas shopping, how I hate shopping! Especially when the place is packed with screaming kids and disgruntled parents, trying their best to work out what to buy. Me I enter shopping arcades like a man on a military mission, I know what I want and where I am going and if I can escape inside an hour I am one very happy shopper. I almost did it on Saturday 1 hr 20 mins for 8 presents.

Anyway I am jumping ahead of myself. The Mayflex Customer Christmas Party at The Gable in Moorgate, London last Thursday was an excellent night and I am very, very pleased that I took the following day off to allow me a lie in. it was good to see so many people from the industry together in one place, especially at a time when people are starting to worry about the economic climate. It also turned out to be a very good night for the cause with Brand Rex, Arthur McKay Building Services and The Pink Elephant Party all stating that they will support me across the year. I will add the Pink Elephant Logo in due course.

I was also due to be on Holiday on Monday of this week however the only chance we had to get a meeting with Acorns was on that day, so I rode up to Birmingham, starting off in the mist and the murk, it did get better but never really that warm, that said it was certainly a lot warmer than a couple of weeks ago. It all went very well until I was less than half a mile from the office, when I got the scare of my life. Just approaching the entrance to the industrial estate, I had a lorry in front of me that braked suddenly and turned right, obviously he had been looking for a specific road, all I did was touch on my front brakes as I had given myself plenty of room, right away the front wheel locked up and started to go away from me, thankfully with my quick reactions I let go of the brake and gathered it back up and straight with a bit of throttle. Basically with so many heavy goods vehicles go up and down that road and there is also a breakers yard as few hundred yards away meant the whole road has a covering film of oil, so any moisture means it is close to lethal for a biker.

Got the meetings sorted, covered off some work I needed to do before I left and then headed off back before the light went, or at least got started on my way. It was a nice run to start with, the weather was actually quite pleasant and even the roadworks around Birmingham did nothing to take the edge off. The only problem started when I got off the M40 and onto the A34 around Oxford, the dual carriageway is not the best and it was now dark and around 4.30, when some muppet decided he wanted to pull on from the slip road and go straight into the outside lane without looking. I decided right there and then to give him full blast of headlights and spotlights, I’ll teach him/her a lesson I thought. Then Darkness, Damn, everything appeared fine but my Headlights pack up and my heated grips stop working. Just what I needed on an unlit section of the Dual Carriage way with 40 tonne container trucks racing each other to get to Southampton Docks. I pulled over at the first possible layby, thankfully after a quick check it IS only my headlights that have gone, I still have strong running lights and my tail light is working fine. So I head off again with the intention of finding the nearest Services, I had guessed that I had blown a fuse, if it had been just the headlight I would have suspected the relay but with the heated grips going at the same time it gave me a clue.

I pulled off at the Milton intersection and into the BP Service Station close by, thankfully the lights were strong enough to allow me to change the fuse. Sounds simple, half an hour later I am rebuilding the bike, by putting the side panels and the seat back on, the remounting the pannier rails and boxes. The next part of the ride was quite straightforward all the way to Tadley, which is the nearest town to my Village just when I am relaxing as I am nearly home, it happens, the long scrape followed by a loud, Bang! but thankfully not to me. I didn’t actually see what happened but the Van that had been a few cars in front of me turning down a side road had been brought to an abrupt halt by a young kid on a scooter who had come flying out of the junction. The poor lad looked a right mess and I did stop for a short time but there was plenty of people to help that and the Police Station is less than 50 yards away meant the situation was soon under control. The one thing I did notice though, was this lad had no form of protective gear on apart from his helmet, his tacksuit bottoms and trainers were in tatters blood all over the place.

I used to do some Motorcycle CBT training in the past and the one thing that we used to drill into people was safety. Here is a fact all these kids on scooters seem to ignore. At 30mph if you come off without protection, you are going to lose one layer of skin every 3ft, as you only have 8 to play with, you are soon down to the soft tissue, that goes pretty quick, so by the time you stop you will pretty much be down to the bone. The only way to stop this, is to wear the right gear and believe me the right gear works, I came off in North Wales a few years ago and I slid 60ft down a wet road and got up and walked away with just a few scuffs on my boots a broken press stud on my jacket and damaged pride.

Take care and as Mick says ‘You don’t stop riding when you get old, you stop riding when you don’t wear the right gear!

Thanks Again !

Due to work commitments, and then playing Taxi to my children once again, I’ve not been able to do much over this last week. Apart from sending off begging emails at regular intervals. Unfortunately most of which have fallen on deaf ears, particularly those to the major Oil Companies. Some of these guys really do need to listen to the words of tracks such as ‘A thousand trees’ by The Stereophonics. I have to admit I haven’t listened to it for a while, then heard it on the Chris Moyles Show on Friday during his Golden Hour and it’s been on my MP3 player ever since. In fact listening to the track as I write. I’m even thinking of sending Chris Moyles a quick email to thank him for his show getting me think of this track again.

What it means to me in this context is quite simple something so small as a match or a very small donation can have such huge impact.

OKAY enough of the deep stuff.

Thanks once again to Andrew Stevens of CNet Training, not just for the initial sponsorship, or even the great plug at the BICSI pub club meeting, which lead to additional donations from the two guys from ERICO, but the invitation to the Cinnamon Club in Westminster, London, WOW what a meal!, that plug is for free.

As I mentioned, the latest batch of begging letters has had mixed results. A large number of ‘knock backs’ with various reasons most saying they had committed their funds already. I did receive two offers of help though, one from Scottoiler and the other from Anquet maps. Scottoiler have provided me with a selection of oils and protection spray along with a device called a Crampbuster which acts a little like a cruise control device.

As far as Anquet Maps are concerned they have agreed provide me with a series of Maps at a substantially reduced price, however I am going to have to talk to them in more detail to see. As I finish this chapter off, some further great news has arrived with the news that one of our partners Mobotix have agreed to provide a significant contribution to the cause. They are also planning to provide a digital camera so I can take footage of the ride across the year. Watch out YOUTUBE here we come.

A friend of mine has just come around with his ‘spare’ helmet cam for me to use, but I am loath to mount it on my helmet, I actually fancy mounting it on the front forks, on the rear top box, in fact I am planning to try it in a few place around the bike. I knew when I started this update it was going to be short and sweet, the next few days are going to be busy with both work and heading off to another Acorns Santa Run, So!...

Take care and as Mick says ‘You don’t stop riding when you get old, you stop when you get frozen solid’