Where do we go from here?

It’s a valid question that we must all have asked ourselves at some point in our lives. It is a sign of being at a junction. A cross roads in the journey. But life doesn’t come with a satellite navigation system, or indeed an AA route map! What’s left is educated decision or blind pot luck. Whatever the process we all have to make choices and I guess I have recently reached one of those junctions. The sign pointing straight on says freedom, adventure, danger and hedonism. The sign in the other direction says safety, stability and mostly boredom!

You might be thinking what the F*** is he on about, but as some of you who know me will appreciate I went through a life changing experience in 2010. In fact looking back things had been getting steadily worse over the previous couple of years to that, with crisis after crisis seeming to loom large. Anyway with all that in the past and things getting back to normal I have now made up my mind to make something better from a fresh beginning. Well apart from the bikes.. That is one constant!

My sports bike journey kind of tailed off in 2009 when I sold my long suffering GSXR and built what to me is the perfect motorcycle. But that also meant my biking focus changed a bit. No longer chasing faster and faster times or quite so keen about getting my knee down, ragging the tyres to the edge (actually that’s not true I still want to do that!) or wringing the last ounce (showing my age!) of performance out of a bike, the Triumph gives me huge grin factor running through the corners, lifting the front wheel away from the lights and making a mockery of superbike road riders generally! Childish? - maybe, but hedonism is my new friend and It makes me feel alive. Which I am!

A brand new horizon is in sight. It involves a bike a mate, a long journey and a huge adventure and it will happen. Of that I have no doubt.

I am though currently of a mind to think that I have sort of done with trackdays for now. My life on track started back in 1994 on a CBR600 around Mallory park, quickly graduated to an Urban Tiger Fireblade I had from new and which I fell off at Oulton’s Lodge corner chasing an R1. On to gaining a ACU licence to go racing. Initially on a steel framed CBR600, to KRC Endurance races and an ex Speed triple challenge race bike, reconverted to Daytona spec. I’ve lost count of the trackday events. Filmed a few crashed at a few, visited virtually every race circuit n in the UK and a few abroad until the Ultimate trackday that isn’t a trackday playing with the rich boys Porsche’s and the like on an ex MRO championship GSXR1000 at the Nurburgring. Its been like a drug addicts journey into oblivion. And like most reformed addicts it lost the thrill somewhere. Maybe Germany’s ultimate hard stuff was a step too far. I was aware that it’s a place that can hurt, but was confident of my own ability to deal with it. In the end it’s a matter of odds, luck and often a case of bad judgement. Maybe I played all of them and go away with it.

I look back on all that with no fear, no sense of failure and huge smile about the thrills and excitement that it all brought.

Where does that leave someone who owns and runs a trackday forum I wonder? Well I can identify wholly with everyone’s fun and excitement at riding Britain’s finest race circuits. I can also understand the desire to not ride on the road anymore because a track is the only place where a modern superbike works. Totally impractical a wasted on the public highway a GSRX/R1/CBR/ZX has been built by the manufacturers to win superbike races. In years gone by that improved the breed and you could justifiably argue that it still does. But in modern Britain with successive governments accident targets high on the agenda and an over protective society that demand that everyone conforms to drastically silly speed limits where, how and why would you use a 169bhp 190mph machine and be able to justify it except for the pose value? For me that isn’t biking, That is the general public stepping into our world to taste the excitement and probably explains why I see so many superbikes parked up at bike venues with what look like tyres that have just rolled out of the showroom and full race leathers where the knee sliders have never been and will never get anywhere near creating that wonderful sound of plastic kissing tarmac.

For me , now, it’s time to get real. Back to what a motorcycle did for me when I was 17. A 250 was not just a bike. It was absolutely wonderfully fantastic. I lived every moment. And every time I opened the garage door the sight of MY bike made me grin. That is what the Triumph that I created from an accident damaged slightly disappointing and very yellow Daytona does for me. After that, what more can I expect from a motorbike? More to the point what more do I need from a motorbike. Because with all the superfluous crap removed, the elemental beauty of living a biker life is that the two wheeled device of choice creates that passion.

So refocusing away from the bullsh*t that prevails with modern superbikes and the associated press coverage that encourages us all to believe that we too can emulate Valentino Rossi and pretend that the bike is just like one in the WSB paddock. Where points are gained for the brand of leathers, the race tyre for the road or the traction control/anti wheelie/anti lock brakes electronic rider aids that remove the need for a rider.. In the end why not make the bike ride its self, that would make it a whole lot safer wouldn’t it? Safe for novice riders? If that’s the case why is that rider choosing that bike? Other than he/she believes the marketing hype that it will make them super cool, super fast, super smooth and super human.

I don’t get it and never will

Here’s to the thought of wrapping everything I have into the package of a XT660 Tenere and aiming for the rising sun. To far off hills and valleys, to open lands and new horizons. Here’s to a celebration of life and finding a new way to live it.

Ride on!


Now with a carbon fibre upgrade