Motorcycle and Scooter appreciation

I've never had an increase of premium for commuting. Small increase in premium for business use of motorbike and car. Which I got off my tax bill.

TFL did research which proved that motorbikes in bus lanes do not endanger cyclists. So they changed the rules and the signs and road markings. But councils were under no obligation to do the same. Some did, some didn't. Some didn't want to spend the money on new signage or give an advantage to private motor vehicles, even the two wheeled ones. This was daft, as many major routes have stretches of council-managed roads mixed with TFL ones. In some places the management of the road changes every few hundred yards. If you bimble around carefree with an obscured plate, perhaps you're safer because you no longer need to check every bus lane sign to see if there's a little motorbike painted on it? You can concentrate on drivers and pedestrians so they never do anything you haven't anticipated. That's my method. Concentrate obsessively. Never be caught out by the unexpected.

Around here I’d be happy if they kept all the motorized bikes of any sort off the sidewalks!

6pts for checking the time on your phone, while not moving is fucking stupid. Not like you can ride a motorbike and look at a phone, they're operated by hand controls. The Met really are useless.

It’s probably about risk factors like more traffic on the road as well as potentially the additional theft risk of parking it away from home for a long period of time regularly.

Both surely add claim potential for bikes over and above a Sunday pootle with your mates.

I dunno, I've seen plenty of (twist and go, tbf) riders operating a kind of 'wedge-it-in-the-hand-muff' method

Same. I've seen scrotes on scootscoots phone in hand, squidding along.

I've seen scooter riders texting on handlebar mounted phones and food delivery riders scrolling through something.

Jeez, reading the last pages of comments makes me feel like the Gardaí aren't quite so bad over here... I don't have an obscene amount of kms under my belt on two wheels but I always get the feeling here they turn a blind eye to bikers as long as you're not totally taking the piss... they're very easy going in terms of lanesplitting / filtering / buslane usage! We also don't have bike NCT (MOT).

That being said bike theft here is completely out of hand and they do nothing about that either so... maybe they haven't heard bikes exist yet?

Bike theft seems out of hand everywhere and they do nothing. In Edinburgh the bikes go to the same place every time, they know it and they have done nothing for years.

I’m fully expecting my scooter to grow some legs one day as it just seems like such low hanging fruit

Very little bike theft here, even in some quite sketchy locales. I've almost stopped worrying about it. Given the number of cameras in central London, it wouldn't be rocket science to have a crack down on the professional gangs that target the bike parks in the centre. My impression from having 2 bikes nicked, is that they just don't care. The last one, the landlord of my local called them as it was having the chain cut and pushed, alarm going off, into the back of a van - he gave them plates / descriptions / the lot. They didn't even come out.

It’s just really disappointing at this point and then you have to claim your insurance and they are as difficult as they come but class at screwing you

Not like you can ride a motorbike and look at a phone

The delivery riders I've seen watching tik toks while riding would disagree. Yeah, it's wild.

In my day m/c couriers all used to be given jobs via terminals which looked like a big Galaxy. Don't know what they're currently using. Whatever it is you can bet they are incentivised not to pull over when they use it.

Taxi drivers have finessed that over years, especially call-up private hire (vs hackney).

Did a 100 mile green lane ride yesterday.

It was the local club’s LDT today and a mate travelled down to do it. Yesterday we did the entire route card as a tester to make sure the directions made sense.

Highlights included stepping off when a rut took me out, loose sheep on the lane nearly running through my front wheel, and frequent errors on distance info on the roadbook. The DR350 was fine except when overheating trying to get it turned around in ruts.

Spent all day today doing the observation for a section of the trial, so got to play about on the Sherco a little in between groups of riders coming along.

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Damn, in my day, we had a radio and a call number. I used to go to bed with the echo of the damn thing in my ears, although there were always hilarious / exasperated exhortations from the controllers. My number was 46, which happened to be my first race number (shared by a then, not particularly famous Italian gentleman.)

Good job @pdlouche - 100 miles off road is always a workout.

My multi-year bike drought broke this weekend when this old heap followed me home from an Oxnard trailer park. I didn’t really want it but at the price I ended up bidding, couldn’t say no. Another project…

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“Oh no what have you done” etc…

Progress report photos expected weekly.

Yeeeeeeees. Probably won't do anything with it for a bit - the tank is glass, and won't hold anything. Might see if I can get it running on the bottle and go from there. I think I'll probably end up pulling the motor and giving it a full refresh. It's got compression but notably less than my mates, which just had a fresh top end.

I did it in that era too. Yankee Two Zero forever! My first controller was a terror. But he did make me laugh once by changing Issey Miyake to Itchin' My Arsehole. Can't remember my race number. It was shared with others (endurance) so it was never really mine.

Wow, 100 miles is fucking solid work. How was the terrain?

Very mixed. There was a fair amount of road work in between, but we followed 5 pages of this, for a route that looked like that… it was 10 miles of missed turns and diversions.

A few lanes were super overgrown rut fests, one was a looooong nice drag through a forest, a couple were up or down hills. Mega long gravel section on the plains, too.

Just a typical day on the lanes.

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Magic! Fantastic that you can put that sort of loop together. Looks especially appealing that you can pull off and have a quick pint / bite in a quiet country boozer.

Anything that length over here, you're way out in the boonies with the only the rattlesnakes for company. Exciting, but decidedly more hostile.

I've still not managed to bleed the clutch on my VFR! stripped the master cylinder and slave cylinder and rebuilt with kit and still no better. It appears when I tighten up the bleed screw air is still escaping? I've replaced the bleed screw and still does is.

Anyone help - I wanted to take my boy to his prom on Friday night on the back as his wanky friends dad has hired a ferrari for his son and mates....

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