Afternoon at the museum

I’ve been very lucky this year – I’ve actually got a few biker friends to go to cafes with and ride in the sun. We’ve been out most weekends over the summer and I’ve enjoyed it so much that the thought of going to things on my own has become quite unpleasant.

This weekend it’s Museum Live at the National Motorcycle Museum – a sort of open day when it’s free to get in and there are lots of talks and stalls. No-one else was free to go and I sulked a bit, did all my boring chores in the morning and decided the autumn sun shouldn’t be wasted so took Second Africa Twin over about lunchtime. This is why all museums should be free – if you don’t have to pay to get in, it’s much more justifiable to drop in for an afternoon or just an hour.

Second Africa Twin doesn’t have a name yet – being quite orange and from the Low Countries most things that spring to mind are a tad sectarian which I’m keen to avoid! But we are getting along well, the new wheels from Central Wheel Components are just brilliant to ride on, and I’ve even got a couple of winter camping adventures lined up. He’ll let me know his name when he’s ready.

The NMM felt a bit emptier than previous years but it turned out everyone was in the main hall listening to Henry Cole. More space for me to rummage in the sticker box – I had to strip Second AT of the ones that he wore as I don’t agree with stolen overland valour, so he’s a bit naked at the moment – and a lull for my annual catch-up with Midlife Classics Tim.

I don’t need anything and I don’t have spare money to fritter on tat. That was my mantra on heading in but I thought a 2023 MZ calendar by Talanah Gamah counted as a household essential since I no longer have an actual MZ to look at.

And that was my visit really – I’m awarding points to myself for going, it would have been easy to stay at home in my dressing gown but that’s not how I want to live. Ironic really because I’m writing this in my dressing gown using my extra Sunday morning hour. I will be putting actual clothes on shortly, I promise!

The devil farts in my face once more

At least I still have the Triumph, I foolishly said out loud in the Wednesday sun, talking to a friendly chap outside my favourite engine builders where I had gone to ask about getting the rusty bolts out of the W650 head. 

On Thursday morning there was a small puddle on the concrete underneath the old girl.

Could it be condensation? No, it was faintly blue and slightly slippery. Coolant.

Could it be weeping from the lowest bolt on the water pump, which doubles as a drain point?

No, it’s dripping from the back of the pump. 

What does the book of lies say?

“Failure of the pump’s mechanical seal.”

This makes me sad. 

No, no new tyres for you

I would have bought the Africa Twin some new tyres about 4 weeks ago but some scrotes decided to nick the wheels off my pushbike when it was unattended at my local railway station. So the £250 quid that would have been invested in new rubber went on replacing the stolen wheels and I took the AT very tentatively and gently north to a camping weekend with the promise that we’d get new rubber as soon as the next payday rolled around.

Well, that’s today. So I took the bike up to Wheelhouse Tyres, my local excellent tyre place. Last night I took all the plastics off the front forks because that had caused some bafflement when I had taken 2Moos for new tyres in Cambridgeshire. (It does puzzle me that slapdash places think you won’t notice when they’ve put your bike back together wrong. There were some significant howls of protest when I stood over them in the workshop to show them how to do it correctly.) Dropped the bike off, went to buy some Rokstraps from the shop on the same site.

Man in overalls approaches. “We can’t put your new tyre on.” The inside of both the front and back rims is corroded away to the point where it’s not safe to go back on the road.

Old ATs are prone to this but I suspect a vendor would react badly if you asked to take a tyre off to check the inside of the rim.

So no new tyres for me. The bike is still there, while Central Wheel see if they can source a rear rim for me. I was very fortunate that Platonic Road Companion is on lates this week so could come and pick me up.

It feels like I am in some psychological experiment to see how much distress one person can take before she folds like a 2CV chassis. 300 quid for the tyres, plus rims (if they can be found) plus spokes and wheel-building – well, that’s going to be a grand, minumum, isn’t it.

The 2CV is in the rented lock-up until I can invest £3,000 in a chassis replacement.

The W650 outfit is off the road until I can get 4 rusty cylinder head bolts out. Have been applying penetrating oil for a month, and getting nowhere

I have the Triumph with no Name and a pushbike. I pray daily that nothing happens to either of these.

Never assume…

I try to be wryly amused these days rather than unleash my feminist rage but sometimes it’s still a challenge!

The 2CV has died  Its chassis has folded. Given that Hortense is 38 this has been on the cards for a while but it still creates a problem for me in my new disguise as Itinerant Folkie. While I do own a music stand, like most things in my life it is heavy-duty and wouldn’t look out of place on a tank.

This is not terribly convenient when you are trying to bungee it to a motorcycle.

I occasionally pass a music shop on my way home from work so I sidled in to see if they had a folding stand that wouldn’t collapse at the drop of a pin and sever any protruding body parts on the way down.

Yes they did. Brilliant! I explained that I needed it to go on the back of a motorcycle.

Some confusion.

More confusion.

Then it dawned that the comedy banter was premised on the assumption that I was going to be riding pillion and using the stand to hold music that I would play WHILE SOMEONE ELSE dealt with the actual riding part.

Dear, sheltered chaps – Women also ride.

It’s a great stand for a tenner though.

 

Do not let the parting grieve thee

The Bishop has gone to a new life in Lowestoft.  He went in the back of a Transit and spent the trip looking out of the window fascinated by the way the road flashes by at 65mph.

I didn’t really want to sell him. To open the garage door and find an empty space in his corner is another giant step away from my life with the Wingman. Yes, there were some tears as I went to wheel him along the back alley for the last time. I tried to call back to my mind’s eye the Wingman trotting ahead of me, lead trailing behind just in case he decided to do a runner towards the road, wrapped up warm in his racing green Equafleece tank top and ready for an adventure. I find it hard to picture him these days and that makes me sad.

When I bought the outfit it was a bit of a basket case, having stood for a long time and then had a brief resurrection for trials riding. It would run for 20 minutes and then cut out, which is quite trying when you are trying to get to rallies.

I de-rusted and restored the brake caliper, changed the piston pin because it was rattling, removed and de-rusted the tank, sorted out why the regulator wasn’t charging properly, and tidied up the questionable wiring around the replacement fuse box. Steve from the MZ Riders Club came and helped me put an external switch on the back brake light after the internal tang fell off inside the hub.   I replaced the master cylinder and had to come up with a solution for the choke because despite how it was described and sold it wasn’t a direct replacement. I sourced a new front disc which was skimmed by the now late Joe Feast, blessings on his memory.  I returned the float to book settings. And I bought the Wingman the large screen from Watsonian for  his Christmas present and had to quickly learn how to drill acrylic without breaking it.

My heart said “keep” but that would have been just indulgence and greed on my part. The new owner is an older gentleman who has become a bit unsteady on his pins and wants to have the security of a sidecar while he carries on adventuring. I think the Wingman would approve.

Sometimes I get so tired

I’m between jobs at the moment – not for long, just from last Friday to the start of August. And I’m shattered. Sometimes I think it’s because I’m not expecting enough of myself. Sometimes I think I remember that changing jobs is like getting divorced and moving house in terms of the mental load it puts on you. But maybe that’s just an excuse? Sometimes I think that an aching back and a stiff neck is part of getting old.

But then I remember I spent a good few hours today in the garage removing the carburettors from the W650, which involved a lot of leaning over, and the occasional accidental punch in the nose.

“Why are you punching yourself, Highwaylass?”

No, not out of frustration or because Big Tina from the playground was holding my hand and smacking me in the face with it. I was trying to ease a recalcitrant throttle cable end from its lair and the screwdriver slipped. It bloody nearly had my eye out instead of the cable end so I declared brute force the winner and clipped them both with pliers. I’ve got lovely clean new cables to install once the hurley burley is done so it wasn’t the desperate move it felt like.

It seems that the W650 has inherited the Lomax’s love for being taken to pieces every year. I keep swearing I will sell one of the outfits now that the Wingman no longer requires them and upon hearing that the Big K sprang an oil leak. I don’t like to sell stuff with problems so I am on the hunt. So far that has involved removing the cylinder head cover, the battery, the airbox of unhappy memory and the carbs.

I really, really don’t want to have to take the pots off.

“Can I rev it?”

I was getting my lid and my trousers out of the undersized locker at work when I heard Dapper Colleague being turned down for a lift home. He lives not far from me so I offered to drop him home…with just the one small caveat that he would have to ride in the MZ sidecar.

Fair play to him, he accepted with gusto and we had a proper giggle as I chauffered him the couple of miles back to his flat. Him being a Modern Person, he filmed the whole way to post to what I believe the Young People call ’the ’gram’.

As we rolled into the flat’s parking we were met by another dapper young chap, maybe ten years old in high-end football kit and a mountain bike.

“Can I rev it?” he asked.

Of course, but gently as it is old.

“Would you like a quick lap of the car park?” I asked him, and he clambered in to the chair.

If only more people were able to experience bike riding, the fun, the freedom and just the sheer coolness of it, I think we would be better off. Dapper Colleague says he absolutely loved it and slightly wickedly greeted me this morning with ”thanks for the ride of my life last night!” No need to involve HR though as he is Out and Proud and I’m not in his dating pool [grin].

Make someone happy

If it’s Sunday it must be time to ride. Thanks to a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Triumph’s battery yesterday’s tour party ended up as PRC’s Africa Twin, Diana Rig (a splendid Ural combination) and the W650, that doesn’t currently have a name. 

During the faffing between parking up and shedding enough helmets, gloves and other detritus to make the walk to the cafe more straightforward, a small voice said “when I was younger, I rode all around France in one of those.”

The voice belonged to a diminutive but well-turned out dowager on her way back to her car from the garden centre. (Yes, dear readers. I am 50 and I had come to a garden centre on a sunny Sunday. But at least it was on a motorcycle).

She knew her sidecars – the W650 has a Velorex, but “I travelled in a Steib,” she said, before ribbing me for “turning to the Japanese side” for the sidecar tug and going on her way.

Next time this happens I’m resolved to say “I would love to hear more about that, do you have time to chat?”

 

The Cathcart Towers Hotel

The Proprietor of the Northern Rest Home for Distressed Machinery used to joke about a bit of workshop kit you might struggle to get from Halfords.

If a nut or bolt was proving particularly recalcitrant, he’d ask “have you tried the psychological spray.” A quick skoosh (after a short break to find a can that still had some go in it) and 9 times out of 10 victory would be mine.  

Psychological spray

Of course, it probably wasn’t the mystical powers of WD40. Which, as old hands like to point out, isn’t actually designed to penetrate and loosen, it’s designed to disperse water.

It was probably just the short break from the task, which can be equally well achieved with a cup of tea or just a moment of Zen-and-the-Art staring out of the window. Or it was a burst of confidence provided by believing that the spray would dissolve the rust. Belief is a powerful thing, as manufacturers of motivational posters know.

I was thinking about this as I refitted the tank to the Triumph, for about the millionth time since the autumn, after fitting a new set of coils. For the Triumph has been stuttering like Ken from A Fish Called Wanda since its encounter with the tank of E10 last year

Ignition problems often manifest as fuelling problems. Fuelling problems can manifest as ignition problems. And if you’ve checked both of those you still might have a mouse nest in your airbox. I’d had the tank off, taken the fuel tap to pieces and cleared out an aquarium’s worth of sand. Yet still we stumbled at idle and when pulling through 3,000 revs.

A hundred quid for aftermarket coils seemed worth a go (although three hundred quid for Triumph branded ones did not.)

A short test ride suggested that they had done the trick. But maybe I was just persuading myself that the money and the swearing had been worth the effort?

There was only one way to find out. Platonic Road Companion and I agreed that a couple of hours run to a heritage railway would be a suitable distance to test the coils and their breakfast. 

And after a hundred miles or so, double bacon and some very fine toast I’m still on the fence. The bike feels perkier, and feels like it picks up with more gusto. Is that the new coils? Or just the approach of spring?

But then, it doesn’t actually matter, does it? Confidence starts with con for a reason – if my brain can be tricked into believing that the problem has been cured, and so is prepared to throttle on through a corner, reducing the embarrassing lag between myself and anyone else I’m riding with, then the job has been a success.

As was the breakfast.

Happy New Year, 2022!

Time, wrote Douglas Adams, is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. And when you think about it, the New Year is a pretty arbitrary way to slice up time. The solstice makes more sense – an actual, objective moment of change – the shortest day, the longest night. But the difference between 31 Dec and 1 Jan, other than a lot of fireworks and the chances of a hangover?

Well, this year it was the difference between endless, incessant rain and blue skies.

And when the sky is blue we ride motorcycles.

It’s about six weeks since I’ve been out on a bike, because of a lot of boring and complicated things including a left knee the size of a football. It’s longer than that since the MZ has been out. It did very well, though the Africa Twin and Trevor the Triumph were rather champing at the bit as we hit our maximum speed of about 48mph up a steep bit of the A5.

As the Wingman is now in the beyond, Badass Pooh Bear has taken his place in the chair. He is less motivated by bacon and seems phlegmatic in the face of rain.

We ate bacon sandwiches cooked on a Coleman stove and talked about plans for the year ahead. I cannot think of many better ways to spend New Year’s Day.

And as for resolutions? I am resolved this year to do more of the things that bring me joy.