January 2023

 

January 2023.

 

As the first Sunday of the month was the First of January it was decided that the Observed runs would take place on the 8^th. Understandable because of getting up early to go out on your bike and concentrate after just going to bed from the revelries. Can anyone remember how wet it was? The first bike club meet of the year. It was wet but had stopped raining and the standing water was disappearing. I was there by nine to help man the club shop. It was to be an administrative morning to go through the stocks and create orders. Necessary and time consuming and completed by mid day. Heavy showers had come and gone and I was looking forward to a dryish ride home on the Kawasaki. I started off with the sun shining but that didn’t last as I progressed through driving rain. The M25 was stationary so I came home from Cobham via Walton and Ashford and Hayes. The route was waterlogged with long stretches of the roads almost flooded.  It was a good test for my new Oxford Advanced jacket and pants. I was slightly damp in the nether regions by the time I got home but I was mostly dry. Quite reasonable for a budget outfit I thought. Nothing I have bought before has kept me quite so dry.

On the Monday I slipped and fell in the garage when working on the last piston on the second 2CV front brake calliper. I hurt my back and this has curtailed progress for doing things. It has forced me to do some reading. 

I began with catching up on circulars and newsletters among them was the one from  the British Motorcycle Charitable Trust that announced the number of Free Admissions would be ending soon and that due to the economic climate the BMCT card would only allow a 50% reduction in entry fee for most museums on their list. Not sure this will help their membership much unless you are a regular museum visitor. From this newsletter I have a museum to visit in Gillingham, Kent. The Royal Engineers Museum. This has reminded me of a quest from when volunteering at The London Motorcycle Museum. It was finding the third in the trio of motorcycles that were tested by the military in 1949 to be the machine of choice. The bikes were Triumph TRW, Douglas DV60 and BSA. Triumph won the day and I managed to locate a Douglas but the BSA eluded me. It was still in military hands and in one of the REME facilities but no one knew which one.

I mentioned Dorothy Levitt, earlier, the fastest lady around in 1903 but there are other contenders like Olga Kevelos from the fifties who rode in ISDTs and the Scottish, rode for Honda in the Maudes Trophy team and amassed a number of  Gold and Silver medals. There is a book about her I would like to read called “Playing with the Boys”. The book I have read is one by tom Bartlett Motorized Bicycles. From Motorbikes to Mopeds to Ebikes first published 2010. It is the American look at these machines and views of what has been done. It is interesting in the difference the regulations are to the approach of the builder. In the UK we are stifled by having to register a motorised bicycle electric or otherwise whereas if it still is a basic bicycle in America you can have 100cc engines and loads of electric power and no safety gear insurance or road tax but as important a freedom to build what you want. It has put thoughts in my head of what to do with a Honda 35cc outboard engine.

Early in the month the Open Road magazine form MAG landed in my porch. This is the January/February issue with the report of the demonstration in Hackney. You have seen some of these pictures I have taken before. Nice to see them in print.