All this talk about money is making my head spin [TBB 6.9]. Like technology, it kicks up a lot of contradictions. It's like reading a holiday brochure and really believing you can have a de-risked, pre-cooked, off-the-shelf experience that’s still full of adventure. The ingredients surely contradict each other.
The trip out to Banbury went pretty well. The Black Bullet didn’t blow up, it dropped a bit of oil but I gave it a good hard run and it made it, that’s the main thing, there and back. The oil seems to be coming out from under the front sprocket cover, so I imagine when I get the cover off it’ll be the seal to the driveshaft or something. It’s not much in quantity but it’s blowing onto the back tyre, which is not too clever.
I got a bit fed up of being hit in the face by bugs in studded leather jackets though. I’m new to open face helmets - very safety conscious as a courier - and even though I had my stand-and-deliver face cloth on, the exposed skin between this and my site glasses was shot-blasted by critters and stones and crud lifted up in the turbulent wakes of trucks. It seems a shame to opt for the full face but for a longer trip it’ll be safer and a lot more comfortable.
At times on the faster sections it was just a case of hanging on. The lack of suspension was curiously not a problem, it’s the exposed riding position that wears you out at speed. In fact with a load onboard the handling hardly changes, there’s none of that wallowing sensation in the corners or change of pitch in the riding position. My back is fine after two sprints of 45 miles and my bum did not go numb. You've just got to watch the road surface and avoid any holes.
The exhaust note goes flat in the open, with none of the glorious richness it has in the lanes. I missed the clear aural feedback and relying more on the feel of the bike is not without its problems. It took half an hour to get the feeling back in my hands when I arrived. All that fancy talk about gloves last year has come back to haunt me [TBB 2.8]. The gel palms, on closer inspection, only cover the heels of the hands, which is proving next to useless.
At one point, after a long stretch in top, I slowed for a roundabout and went for the clutch only to find the grip had slipped halfway off the bar, and my fingers were flailing about for the lever in thin air. I hadn’t even noticed this suicidal, slapstick development as I couldn’t feel a thing. This and the oil on the tyre are slightly worrisome.
