Be Excellent To Each Other

That's awesome, do you reckon anyone has the patience though!

I've got the patience, not sure my mitts are small enough to do something that fiddly though.

And the commentator seemed to ignore the fact that Tom had his L plate covering the headlight.

I think this is my next bike guys; I love the 'Rod but I just don't think I can resist the charms of this (very rare) 1800cc Harley Breakout CVO any longer and am trying to close the deal...

Pure art for me. Man, I'll break my heart if I drop her.

Paid the deposit on this bike today, will be getting delivery mid April in time for BBQ, if happening/I'm invited

http://www.harley-davidson.com/en_GB/Mo ... y-features

Man, I've finally got a CVO Harley.... only came out today and I had to beat off two others and wave pound notes. I just cant.wait.

That is lovely.

Thanks mate.

Can't wait to sample that 1800cc Screamin' Eagle mill (Stage 1 fitted and de-catted of course, before I even take delivery).
Stomp it has.

I might (if I get the bathroom done, retoof the garage, other stuff) get the ER6 back and running in time for the bbq. 2019.

Although I saw the newer Ducati Monster the other day and it was lovely. I have gone off the Triumph Scrambler since Clara had one in Doctor Whowatchesthisanymore

Oooh, now that Harley is a *very* nice bit of kit.

In motorbike related news I couldn't make my mind up what I really wanted so I'm picking this up tomorrow.
It was very reasonably priced for a bike that's only done 4000 miles and has had lots spent on it so I won't lose any money on it when I do eventually come to a proper decision, and in the mean time I've got something to ride again.

Thanks Dr Z

That Versys looks lovely and clean, a very nice bike! My guess is you'll love it and stick with it, as it'll do everything. These are great, got chatting to one guy who had one last summer. It's all good mate.

It was only £3700 which seemed more than reasonable for a three and a half year old bike with the panniers, scottoiler, new tyres and chain, heated grips, taller screen, 12v power point and a full service history.

It may well end up being a keeper, but if not I know I've not wasted my money.

£3700 seems very reasonable indeed, and it has a massive spec as well!
Excellent stuff. Keep an eye out for me on the road; I'll be the old dude with none of the aforementioned sensible kit but trying to look cool, probably piss wet through and cold (and deaf).

It begins.
Spain Road Trip II being planned tomorrow at the Fox & Barrel. Got to run her in, right guys?

Nice one Cavey, thats a Thing of beauty! Really happy for you, hope you have loads of good times in between all the damp, deafening, vibrating and terrifying times.

Good shopping, Cavey. What are you doing with the current one?

Heh! Cheers Wookie, sounds about right.

Cheers bud.
£9k trade in mate, so a mere £11k to swap....

If you have it for 3 years that's only a tenner a day. Or that pack of fags you aren't smoking anymore!

Very true, I love man-maths.
Still off the fags, 5 months tomorrow - £1500 saved already, which is just crazy.

It's amazing just how much money you save when you stop smoking. Both Mrs JC and I stopped smoking at the same time. Whilst we both smoked a lot we had really bad habits. Like, we both had pouches of tobacco but Mrs JC simply could not roll her own as she became shit at pretty much everything after her stroke, so I would have to roll two at once which was annoying.

Cue the bad habit - off to the co op for 20 Superking black @ £8.70 a pack. And then we would both start chain smoking, so before we knew it it was off to the co op or garage again for 20 more. They would all be gone by the next morning, we would be nearly £18 worse off.

And that was daily. Absolutely crazy.

Though neither of us has dropped the nicotine (we swapped smoking for vaping) vaping right now is just so cheap. I pay £4 for a 30ml bottle of eliquid and that lasts me two weeks. The only other expense is the coils, those cost around £1.20 each and I change them out anywhere between once every five days or two weeks, depending on the coil itself.

Either way at the very most I now spend about £4.50 per week as opposed to god knows how much on cigarettes. That's probably why we now have a 65" TV, £3000 cinema sound system and god knows what else we have bought since we packed it in.

I strongly doubt I will ever be able to ditch nicotine completely due to my mood swings, but most recently I did drop from 24mg liquid to 18mg so hey, never say never

Congrats on the bike it looks stunning. Sadly bikes (and most notably Harleys) make JC sad. Given that you have bought two Harleys now I will assume that at some point you have spoken to/met Robert (AKA Rob) Warr? He is one of my brother's best friends. He owns/runs/works at HD in Chelsea. Well a few years back Rob's brother died on his bike. It was one of the saddest things ever. Rob and Adrian (his best mate) still ride their Harleys (Ade is my cousin) and they still do their Europe trips but ever since Rob's brother died it hasn't been the same. My brother sold his and stopped riding completely (though I'm not sure if that was down to my brother himself or his wife...)

Be safe dude.

I have, in theory, saved about the same amount from not smoking. Which doesn't explain the fact that I'm £5000 poorer than I was in August.

I wonder how much my mum has spent in probably 55 years of smoking?
She wouldn't be living in an old terraced house with various smoking related health conditions if she hadn't.

Anyway, motorbikes.....

First impressions of the Versys were good. Just need some warm dry weather.

Shots, tits, poker chips!

That was only one night, and you're the only tit I remember from it.

I remember yours disturbingly vividly

Cheers man (and the smoking stuff as well).

I don't know Rob Warr but I know the name; his is a very well known Dealership who've had loads of success in custom competition etc. Sorry to hear of his brother; I'll always say this to anyone - much as I *love* bikes and I will always be a biker in my heart and soul, to my last breath, they are fucking dangerous and I did everything I could to stop both my girls from getting scooters (and I'm glad I never had a son in this respect). Yes it is totally hypocritical and part of me rails against this but what's fine for *me* isn't fine for my kids. I only rarely take my OL anywhere on the bike, too, for that reason - even though she too is totally bike-savvy and was on the back of an RD400 at 14 years of age (the tearaway she was, and still is lol )

If something like this happens close to you, you either stop (like my own bruv had done - and he loved bikes even more than I do and was an amazing rider, far better than me), or you get back on immediately. There really is no middle ground here.

I hope nothing happens to me but if it does, I was doing something I love, more than most things in life.

Here's a vid of a CVO Breakout at some show in the States.
It's not the best quality but at least shows the actual bike, in the colours I'm getting, rather than a render/virtually engineered image.

That tank is enormous! How much fuel does it hold?

To be honest I have no idea! I could find out if you want. (Hope its "a lot" 'cause she's an 1800, she won't be the most economical bike I've ever owned ) All I know is, it's pretty and I wants it...

Old Man Afterthought has embarked on his Round Britain Rally with a trip to Wales. It seems to be something I'd like to do.

Everyone that I personally know that rides motorbikes has been involved in at least one serious accident. One guy lost his wife who was riding behind him and was convicted of some reduced form of manslaughter due to his blood alcohol level. He even did about a year of jail time.

Another guy went face first into a fence post on the Whitby road. He was wearing one of those helmets with the full face flip ups. That broke away and basically every bone in his face was smashed.

Both of these guys still ride

Tempting fate, but I've never crashed a bike at all.

The locations on that quiz are the kind of obscure and eccentric buildings, plaques, and monuments in strange places that I like. Disappointed they rejected our suggestion of the Shrine to Ianto in Cardiff, but it's not accessible by motorbike.

I low sided a 125 on ice in front of a gaggle of schoolgirls 30 yards from my front door. I ended up on more ice so had trouble getting up. It was a bit embarrassing. I also walked away from the Erfive once, having neglected to put the stand down. That's when I found out a crash bar had rusted through.

This is something I'd really fancy at some point also. Too late this year, but maybe we could organise Team BikerBeex entry for next year?

Just need to get your two wheels in order guys, me and Dr Z are already sorted. Reckon I could convince Grim... of the man-maths involved for his entry over the BBQ and/or Cottage over 10 beers.

Smashed bike (and myself to a degree) on many occasion, mainly in my youth, although I did manage to spectacularly embarrassingly crash the Bonneville into the M6 Toll Booth at 2mph whilst being watched by about 300 people in their cars, including me throwing a strop at myself leaping up and down having a fit of rage, then picking up the 900 off the deck as if it were a 125 (I could never do this normally).

Another time I slid down a gravel road with the bike on top of me at 60mph; ground through my jeans ("genie-ing" a box of Swan Vestas matches hard against my leg - I still bear the battle scar - good job the massively dented petrol tank did not rupture otherwise it would've been human torch time), and most of my lid, too.

High-sided my GSX-550 with my new gf pillion (which was nice; I was *so* "on a promise" as well, and en route to a 'quiet country location' for this very purpose, she nagged me for ages to take her on the back. Gutted!) Some old gimmer up to his eyeballs in anti-arthritis pills or somesuch just pulled out... you see it in slow motion when you're the rider.


I dunno, bikes are SO dangerous but once they're in the blood there's almost no shaking them off. Driving cars is just such a pale, 2-dimensional experience even compared to a 125, let alone the big stuff. I just can't wait for my 1800; she's coming in a couple of weeks or so. Here's hoping for a good summer.

I've never fallen off on the road (although I came fucking close once after hitting a rabbit with both wheels on a corner - fuck knows how that stayed upright).

I came quite close when a doddery old codger clipped me on a roundabout but got away with a speedway style slide.

Sorry mate, but I laughed really hard at this.

I don't dare think about trying to ride bikes, I've had enough close calls in cars.

Everyone I know with a bike seems to brag about how they enjoy riding like a total cunt at times and when they're not doing that they're moaning about how bad car drivers are. LOL.

Meh! No worries bud, glad it give you a laff, my mate was laughing so hard when we did pull up at the service station he had to dissappear to the bogs, I think he literally pissed himself for real. I've never felt such a complete bellend in my entire life.

I really don't see how those two things are mutually exclusive; it's perfectly possible to drive/ride badly in one respect AND for others to drive/ride badly in another, and it's still perfectly valid to discuss and complain about the latter. (Otherwise it's the "you can't say nowt unless you're perfect" fallacy we discussed a few months back)

The fact is, many car drivers DO have a shit awareness of bikes, probably because they're distracted by the myriad of shit that we all do in cars these days besides actually driving (i.e. phone calls, pissing about with menus/screens/infotainment/NAV) but most importantly, most of them have never ridden a motorbike so don't know quite how terrifying it is to see some Volvo or 4x4 'mumbus' driver pulling away from a junction whilst yelling at kids in the back, talking animatedly to their passenger and/or pushing buttons and not having even looked left properly (or even at all) before doing so. Trust me, it ain't pleasant.

"SMIDSY".

"because I hadn't checked my mirrors during the 0.5 second interval between when you pulled out from the lorry behind and got alongside me, you stupid cunt"

I should say that only ever happened to me once, and I nearly wiped out a biker because I moved right to make room for a cyclist. Most bikers I find to be really good, just some of the more casual ones enjoy being seen as risk takers but they're actually a bit shit and nervous and they turn into road safety campaigners as soon as their inappropriate use of speed nearly goes wrong for them.

Non-indicated lane changes
Swerving to avoid stuff
Pulling out when flashed by another road user
Changing lanes on a roundabout
Closing gaps to stop filtering
Mirrors mirrors mirrors
Changing radio stations
Motion camouflage
Misjudged speed
Not being on the correct side of the road around a bend
Being a dick and thinking a car can out drag a bike (if your car is slower than a WRX Impreza, you can't).

Swing them around by the chinguard. That'll learn them

Speeding
Overtaking when you shouldn't
Never, ever indicating

Bikers are sinners too, guy

The o ly places you shouldn't overtake are on zif zag lines, if there's a no overtaking sign, or if you cross a solid white line. Bike indicators ate shit.

Um, you should be checking your mirrors if you're pulling to the right.

Right, so you maneuvered without checking your mirrors, then? See now, that's exactly what I'm talking about. 0.5 seconds or no, it's YOU who has made the manoeuvre so regardless of how inconvenient and/or superfluous you might think these peskily frequent mirror checks are in your metal cage, for us it's literally a matter of life or death. (I'm not especially singling you out btw; there are millions just like you out there right now, who positively regard motorcyclists as an inconvenience and impediment to their god-given right of progress and especially resent the fact we can filter through queues and slow moving traffic especially).



I hate this more than ANYTHING: the car driver who thinks he's being so considerate to cyclists and lurches right out into the middle of the fucking road (or whatever) without checking their mirrors RIGHT THERE AND THEN and doing a full set of observations also before said manoeuvre (see above). (And then, more often than not, look at the biker who is glowering right into their drivers' side window at this point, heart pounding and very much wanting to kick their door in, as if THEY are in the wrong for having the temerity to even be there).



"Most bikers" just want car drivers to use their mirrors and make their observations before manoeuvres, whether "casual" or no. Which doesn't seem like too much to ask.