Throttled

If you do not take your bike with you to sea, you are not an all year biker who goes out in all conditions.

This is what will I do to my bike tomorrow and the answer is... https://allyearbiker.co.uk/treatment/ Paid for as a Christmas present. That means, for the first time in a few years, mainly due to the pandemic, there will be a winter bike tour.

Once a week, unless the weather is really bad.

We love Whitby, been visiting annually for over a decade, and part of the day was admiring all the bikes in the station car park. For them to not be there is really sad.

Can I get 57 & 1/2 this time please?

I took my bike for a 30 minute ride, as that is the best way to preserve it over the winter. It also keeps me rider fit.

The YBR125 was my first bike. I bought it with 4k on the clock and 4 previous owners and sold it with 10k for only a couple of hundred pounds less than I paid for it. It was reliable, but I had a constant battle with corrosion, though I was riding it every day through the winter. I got good at cleaning the front calipers and adjusting the rear drum brake.

I found those hand pump things were not up to the job during the winter months.

You do what I do when it gets really hard going, lots of talking to yourself, phwars and mumbling! You hope the inevitable will not come, but the front tyre is going to give up on snow like that. Thanks for sharing.

My bike came with Oxford hot grips, fitted by the dealer in preference to Kawasaki's own heated grip option, because they have had fewer problems with the Oxfords.

I wanted to speak to the dealer before I posted anything here, because that was awful, because of the engine. It sounds horribly agricultural and tappety. I could not cope with that horrible noise on a motorway trip. It was very jerky and coming up to a roundabout it surged. The idle was shooting up and down and I stalled at the next junction. Apparently Cfmoto use an engine KTM had to drop, because they could not get it to meet the emissions for Euro 5. Cfmoto have supposedly managed it, but after my experience, to do so they have made a bike that verging on the unrideable. Again, apparently, the engine will settle down as it learns its mapping, or something and by 300 miles it should be OK. Is that just dealer speak? I am the first person to ride it, so I did not take it over 5000 revs (which meant it could do 70mph with ease) and no hard accelerations. Still, if I was guessing, I would say it was A2 compliant and 40 odd hp, not the 90hp it is supposed to be. The rest of the bike is good. I like the design. It is light, flickable, fun and rides well and has lots of space for my 6"2'. The dash is great. It has an odd touch sensitive indicator stalk that I am sure once you got used to it, would be fine. The barely adjustable screen is OK, as are the mirrors. The seat pad is thin, which would help the shorter rider, but I felt like I could feel the frame underneath it. But, in my limited experience, all bikes now come with crap seats, and options to upgrade. The nearest competition I have ridden is the Versys 650 GT and it is infinitely better, but for a similar specification, £2k more. I would buy a second hand Versys 650 rather than a new Cfmoto 800MT touring.

Loan bike, when the tyres for my own bike failed to appear at the dealers. The Cfmoto 800MT, advertised by them as "multi-functional touring" for £9,199, though already they are reducing that by £1188. https://cfmoto-motorcycle.eu/uk/en/motorcycles/multi-function-touring/800mt-touring "Broaden your horizons and shake away your doubts with the possibilities offered by the 800MT Touring. While the 800MT Sport is happiest devouring the freeway, the 800MT Touring likes to absorb the bump and rough of different surfaces." Some photos, as it looks good, before the review; 800cc, 67kW or 90hp, 75Nm or 55 ft-lb, 2 cylinders, apparently a KTM design. I will ride it some more before further comment.

For the past few years (with an obvious gap) I have been going to the gym, to make up for 20 odd years of no exercise and starting to look like Jeremy Clarkson. I did not think of dieting, just cutting out some snacks, halving alcohol intake and exercising more. The gym worked its way from once every two weeks to twice a week and I started to monitor how much I could lift and my weight. Since the start of the year I am nearly 2 stone lighter and a third stronger. It is nice doing tasks I previously struggled to do, with ease. Digging out the compost bin at the allotment and lifting myself up on to the shed roof to repair a leak, are far easier than last year. My clothes are all now slightly too big and I will need new trousers soon, as I intend to keep going with another stone, which will put me into a good place with BMI and I can lift like the youngsters at the gym. The gym was a revelation. I felt self conscious as the old, fat bloke. But no one cared and it is more usual that there are a few other older, fat blokes. Maybe a post covid affect has got people to the gym who put on weight and lost fitness during the lockdowns. The diet of eating slightly less and moving around more has meant I have consistently lost between 1/4 and 1 lbs a week for months now and recently people have started to notice the difference. I may have to take up modelling.

Yes. My bikes lived under a cover for 10 years and that happened. I then got a lockup and it no longer happens.

I learned a lot about waterproofness buying my recent jacket and trousers. A good waterproof tent has a hydrostatic head of 3000. A ground sheet can be 10,000 and that is similar to the breathable products that imitate Gore-Tex and manufacturers like Alpine Stars use. Gore-Tex is something like 16,000, the highest rated of all. Arguably that is overkill, but after 8 hours in the driving rain, which is any rain when on a motorbike, I like overkill.

Gore-Tex and other breathable fabrics do not breathe when wet. The water vapour of sweat cannot get out when out is covered in water. They either breathe when dry, or they keep out the wet. To stay dry, a decent dry over suit with taped seems will work just as well in the rain. Gore-Tex has the advantage of as soon as it stops raining and the outer fabric sheds its layer of water, it can breathe. That is why a jacket with a Gore-Tex liner can still be sweaty, as the outer shell is soaked and the vapour cannot get out. A laminated Gore-Tex sheds water from its outer shell very quickly. A dry suit needs to be removed as soon as it stops raining, which in the UK, with its variable weather, is very difficult. A day ride in the rain in Gore-Tex is not going to be that sweaty anyway, as it is unlikely to be that warm.

Worth watching this video by Fortnine about Goretex

I remember some tags from past Challenges there and was very impressed with the area, for riding and scenery and how quiet it was.

I started to watch Itchy Boots a few weeks ago. Her bike Basanti is a fantastic advert for RE. I am up to her in Iran, where she gets another service and bike clean and it still looks brand new.

Visiting Monaco and walking the GP circuit, we saw a bike fly through the tunnel, the rider in shorts and a girl on the back in a bikini. I suspect the girl in the video did get off lightly. She shouts she is alright, but that will be adrenaline. Her skin must have been badly scored and bruised.

Exactly 4 minutes in to this video of fails. Bet she wished she wore ATGATT.

I forgot to mention that the zip on storm guard for the neck is very effective.

Now tested in hours of heavy rain and it is totally waterproof. The cuffs and ankles have long Velcro adjustment that means a tight seal and no leaking.

After plugging a tyre, it is perfectly normal to have a little bulge afterwards.

Yes; https://metro.co.uk/2022/09/08/three-areas-called-dull-boring-and-bland-named-trinity-of-tedium-17322748/ "The union of three areas named ‘Dull’, Boring’ and ‘Bland’ has apparently made things much more exciting for locals. Dull, a village in Perthshire, Scotland was paired with the town of Boring in Oregon, US in 2012. Five years later, people in a town called Bland in New South Wales, Australia, decided they wanted in on the act. Ever since then, they have been informally known as the ‘Trinity of Tedium’."