Leaderboard

Two bikes, Aprillia Tuono 1000 and Firestorm 1000 that I used a little. The Tuono is really only happy in the hands of someone that wants to ride fast all the time and loves bigger roads, not some teenie-tinny roads where it cannot stretch its legs. Bit brutal and difficult in town. Did a nice trip from Germany to Portugal with it, always with Snoopy for company! The Firestorm is a very friendly bike, the labrador of bikes! Its easy, very Honda, almost rides itself! Did many trips to the UK from Germany on this bike, enjoyed it although sport bikes are not my thing!

After 65 days in the hole! Only out for about half an hour because I had to be available for work.......but it was something!

Oooops ! it was your helmet was it ? SORRY

That looks shit Pete, I don't know how you put up with all that traffic

Excellent roads in the Pyrenees (except on the French side. they need to learn how to repair roads and not just throw gravel everywhere!)

You have it in a nutshell Sofia, Honda's are always easy to ride. European bikes take a bit more thought but have much more soul. My Transalps and Africa Twins rode themselves, the KTM's would bite you if you took liberties ?

Staying on the subject of helmets years ago when me and the wife used to go out on the bike i'd chain the helmets to the wheel of the bike so we wouldn't have to carry them with us, This one particular day we stopped at the seaside and went for a walk about and when we got back to the bike later i put the helmet on and it was wet the day was dry so in the few seconds thinking why is it wet the smell hit me something i'm presuming a dog had pissed inside my helmet and i had to ride home with it? I make sure the helmets are off the floor now when i lock them up

Just one problem, after all those great pics, i want to throw away all my camera's and just be like Uncle Buck! lol

It takes a lot of concentration Bob!

Great shots @alfalfa

I've not been in lockdown per se, since you cannot transmit something you haven't got. So I've been out on the bike whenever I've wanted to and only social distance because otherwise I'd get into a hundred arguments everyday. Does that make me a reckless law breaker? Law breaker maybe (or statute), but not reckless. I'm 63 and can and will think for myself. I've never been one for going to work or meeting others when ripe with a virus, so know myself to be considerate and responsible. And I've worked in the NHS so know the lay of the land and, no, I don't clap for them like a fucking penguin every Thursday on cue. If the local hospitals were overrun I'd not have gone out and exacerbated the crisis, but they weren't. A&E Drs and nurses were literally left twiddling their thumbs for the most part and with so few patients one has to ask how many have died as a result of postponing or avoiding to seek help through fear. I doubt we're ever going to know. Most can't be bothered to question authority and just accept their servitude blindly. I've got the one 2007 paper that the 2 metre social distancing directive came from and it's sketchy bollocks at best, based on a belief and then tested indoors ("A large number of infectious diseases are believed to be transmitted between people via large droplets and by airborne routes"). Even allowing that various governments used that one study to practice the precautionary principle, the fog is lifting, the numbers are now coming in and it's clear the mortality rates are grossly inflated with coincidental deaths. It's time for a revaluation of Professor Ferguson's lockdown model that so many governments adopted. The destructive c#nt has got a history, his models have been disastrously wrong in the past costing us millions, this is going to cost us much more than a recession. Having directives based on such flimsy evidence, then shutting down the country down, anyone would think they want to crash the world economy on purpose, or at least all the little guys. No, it can't be. Rant over?

I love Spain. Did an Edelweiss Pyrenees Extreme tour there a couple of years ago. Started in Barcelona and ran thru the mountains to San Sebastian and back. Beautiful place and a guaranteed 50,000 curves! ?

Julian would have a field day with this chit!

I can only speak about rural Andalucia........and they have a very different mentality to Spaniards in other areas. If something isn't Andaluz......then it's shit! And if it's Catalan then it's shit and somebody should get stabbed, or at the very least, twatted. On the whole their level of education isn't very high, and they're unable to grasp new ways of doing things. It's like the ways of the past are set in stone. What is going on in the outside world goes right over their heads.......I'm sure there's some old people here who don't even know Franco is dead. There is a serious degree of laziness with many.......generally if you want something done speak to a woman. The emphasis on leisure time is top priority......and much of that leisure time will be spent boozing. But with families......not a pub crawl. And unlike Brits they don't get punchy......they're good drunks so to speak. To say they're laid back is an understatement.......their house could be burning and they'd just shrug and say "no pasa na".......in correct Spanish "no pasa nada". They're very noisy and gutteral.......which, coming from Swansea, suits me just fine. In fact my level of noisy and gutteral is way above theirs and they actually look up to that! Don't ask! Sounds pretty grim doesn't it? But I gotta say that if they like you and accept you there's nothing they won't do for you. And ask for nothing in return. This sort of environment doesn't suit everybody. But we've been here since 2005, and lived in a lot of places in Britain before that, and I can tell you there's no other place we'd rather be, and no other people we'd want to live with. And one important thing here! We did not change or try to integrate at all. Reason being that we were temperamentally a perfect fit for Spain in all respects.....in many ways we were more like Spaniards than Brits. It's like I say to Brits who ask me about moving here.......it's not a matter of whether Spain is right for them. It's more a case of are they right for Spain? And in most cases it's no.

It was supposed to be an easy morning for me, followed by picking up my shocks at the shop for them spaniards to collect them from my place tomorrow for testing and fixing, with a brief stop by the office for picking up some boxes of samples to be distributed by most of my clients tomorrow. Thing is, my spanish plant is stoping for two weeks and they were meant to have everything on stock for all deliveries for these two weeks, today they realize there is only enough for two or three days. As always, they had a month to plan it and still turn it into a complete fucking shit show, as they say in Spain, un merdero! Now I've been on the laptop and phone stressed as fuck, but the rest is still going to happen. I'm just posting to make myself seem as busy as @yen_powell

I've ridden two 1090's and 1190 before that, they are nice bikes but it's not a proper KTM imo, the 950/990's are true KTM's .

I actually like the yellow one and i dont normally like yellow....

Now that is the best ideia! I would go to Wales 1000x times faster then to Spain! Sorry Pete... You should have moved to Portugal! You evn had @Pedro here! Anyway, for Pedro and to meet you, I will happily cross to the dark side. For 48 hours. xx

I might put my panniers on, pop an empty lemonade bottle in and wee discretely into it whilst pretending to lean on the bike.

Work has been pretty normal for me all through this, and I've been practising social distancing for years so no change there lol just haven't been able to ride the bike ? seriously thinking of leaving the van home one day this week and taking the bike in just to see how it goes after all the work I've done on it.

.......normal service will be resumed on Monday! Get ready for more pitiful displays of Namby Pamby Riding like this! Just remember that the only good moisture is vaginal!

I went on the bike to the shop for a few bits. Only a mile but I managed to stretch it to eight and a half along the lanes. People out everywhere walking, and hordes of the Lycra clad brigade. Twas good for the soul though.

I'm off to non 'working from home' work in the morning. Going to meet my Irish and Hispano/Caribean chaps at one of the storage depots with my trusty tape measure to look at big concrete blocks and posts to see if they will be fine to hold up some large signs for the re-opening of the Recycling Depot to the great unwashed which we will be installing on Tuesday. This is to make all the local people arrive from the same direction and queue like civilised people.............. No fear of that, it will be like The Hunger Games on Steroids. Hopefully the signs will turn up later tomorrow before I leave work so I can check to make sure they don't say something like 'REESICLING DEPOH PLEEZE FOLOE AROES' and make me look like a twat. Then it's a quick dash to the office to print out some setting out drawings for Wednesday and an OS base sheet. I shall hiss at anyone who approaches me and queue for the single toilet between 50 of us. Then off to some roads where I have to design some old bollocks to temporarily make the footpaths wider in a couple of market areas which I got given on Friday afternoon and they want on Monday night. This I will sketch on to the OS base before drawing it up when I get back home in the evening, only then realising my handwriting is rubbish and mostly unreadable. Then It's off to a new building site to measure up a temporary crossing for cranes and shit so I can price it and send them a letter demanding money with menaces. Then shoot over to another road to make sure Parking have put up suspension signs so I can swap some parking bays to the other side of the road on Friday. I have upset Parking last week so there is a chance they will play silly buggers with me as a punishment, or give me a foot way parking ticket again. Then marking out some new islands because we are being allowed to carry out any site work that takes less than 3 days and if I mark it out tomorrow I won't have to get up early on Wednesday when they want to start smashing holes in the road and want to know where all the power supplies are coming from/going in. Then 50 miles back home on lovely twisty country lanes because the weather report is glorious for tomorrow!!!!

I rode to a filling station to get some petrol on my Lambretta when I first had it, after paying I came out and couldn't find my helmet. After a lot of searching I rode home without it thinking someone had stolen it. When I got back I found it sitting on the shelf in my flat

June 2019, I'm in the Algarve and it's a warm night. I need groceries so decide to take the bike and my backpack, go have a pizza and then to the supermarket. As I am leaving I remember I forgot the backpack and go back inside for it, then on the way to the restaurant riding down an avenue on shorts and tshirt at 21:00 I am thinking: "man, summer evenings here sure are great, such warm air all over your body, I can't even tell I'm wearing my helmet" and as I am parking the bike and walking to the pizza place I go to take the helmet strap off and there you go, forgot my helmet at home. I was sober! I would need to ride past a police station to go home, which I don't have the nerve to do as riding with no helmet gets your license taken away, so after dinner I walk back to get the helmet like a twat.

This will.

December 1981........I hit a patch of black ice doing about 70 on a country road approaching Lampeter in Mid Wales at about 7.30AM in the morning. Car went sideways up the road for about 100 yards till it impaled itself onto the main pole in a petrol station forecourt. The guy came running out of the office and said......"This is exactly what happened on an episode of Quincy last night".

Billy and Jim, the top of Engineer Pass........

(well, just accidentally lost some paragraphs and i'm too tired to rewrite. so, just look at the pics and see how much fun we had in the snow). GSs make rally good snow machines So, this one almost went for a 1000 foot free ride to the bottom. After this happened, we formed up along the edge to tackle anyone else trying the shortcut into the snow bank on the left. Several other passes were ridden on our way south to Lake City. Lake City is the eastern side of the Alpine Loop and has a great restaurant ran by a Polish, or Slovakian couple. Great food, great beer. A must do, if the Covid panic hasnt put them out of business. Packer Saloon and Cannibal Grill. Named in honor of a Cannibal who once roamed the area! ? We played in the mountains for a couple of days, with our grand finale planned to be Imogene Pass - 13000 feet! Jim had let us know that he was carrying Billy's ashes and wanted to spread them on top of Imogene. I can understand why. This pass looks down on Telluride to the south, and Ridgway to the north. It is a beautiful place. But, first, you have to ride a 700lb bike to the top. Oh, and this time in the rain. We entered from Ouray side, crossing several water crossings before heading up the steep part. Bip and I had gotten out in front and were waiting at the top for the others to catch up. When the lightning started, we figured it might be prudent to diver over the side and lay on the slope as flat as we can be! At 13,000 feet, there is no protection from the weather. However, at 13,000 feet they CAN hear you scream. Eventually the rest of the group caught up, but instead of stopping, charged over the hill down the Telluride side. No one else wanted to watch the light show. We regrouped a couple of miles down from the top, licking the wounds of the bike carnage and trying to dry out. It was at this time we looked back up at the top, and the sun was out and the clouds disappearing. However, Jim decided spreading Billy's ashes would have to wait. The group continued on down to Telluride for the traditional pizza lunch before splitting up. After eating, the group separated into three parties, one headed back to SoCal, one headed back to Big John's, as his bike was not going to make it to Louisiana. The other three guys from back east decided to try again the next day to spread Billy's ashes. The ended up back on top of Engineer's Pass, finding a little point where Jim had a moment with his friend.

Just wait until I start posting Frijole's pics! (for a preview - frijole.smugmug.com)

yellow is faster, everyone knows that!