Mock test today, eek, so a list of things I need to polish up on. I’m a bit down in myself having looked at the list of things I need to work on, but I’m sure I’ll be out of it later on and rearing to work on the stuff to do better!

The old nemesis of nerves got to me, which means I close down and the quality of my ride drops. But at least this is in advance of the real thing.

Cheers to Simon B for taking the time out. I might post more detail when I have the time – I’m off to our Northleach office tonight.

I was ready for rain this morning, but the wind dried things out and it was a dry run. Today was labelled Motorway, so I had checked my chapter in RoadCraft on Motorway driving, and answered my set of questions on Motorways and speed.

We headed through town from our starting point just off the bypass, and headed in towards Dreghorn. I wasn’t confident of the area, which doesn’t help the quality of my riding, but I am managing to calm the nerves more these days and just get on with it. From there we headed towards Westerhailes, Longstone, Corstorphine and over the Drumbrae roundabout, stopping up for a debrief.

Then down the big steep hill and left at Queensferry Road, heading out towards Barton, the A92 and the Forth Road Bridge. We turned off at the last exit (after the roadworks) and took the road along through Newton, where Bob the observer demonstrated an excellent overtake while keeping to the 50 limit. It was good to see that done.

Then up onto the M9 and along to Grangemouth for a Coffee, Bacon Roll and another debrief. Then back along through the refinery, along through Bo’ness and back to the BP Garage just off the Forth Bridge.

A bit of everything from urban city roads to Motorway, with all other limits and sizes of roads inbetween. I’m continuing to improve, and now it is keeping up the concentration and planning, and remembering safety first in all occaisions. I missed a few signs, when warning signs are spotted the first thing to do is check behind in the mirrors (make it obvious!) so that you can see whether slowing down will create problems with following traffic. Hence when i don’t register a sign it is obvious to the observer. The other thing is looking as far as possible and scanning around – there is always more information out there in what can be seen. Hence the first phase of the system of motorcycle control – the information phase – is when you Take information in (by looking, listening, smelling etc) then use that to decide what to do, then consider what information you can give to other road users by way of indicators, brake lights, position in the road etc.

A good run today, and I understand I get a mock test next week. I had been nervous at the prospect, but Bob has been quite good at allaying nerves and building me up to the idea. So I’m looking forward to this next stage.

Just caught 5 minutes of the live coverage of the 24 Hours Motorcycle Race at Le Mans and they mentioned that a BMW is running and on the first page of the results. Yay!

Bike number 17 is one of the boxer twin bikes, the same configuration as my bike, and with the same telelever and paralever suspension front and back. The specifications (in French) say it is 1170cc, so I think it is likely to be based on the R1200S. As I write they are 20th in the race.

I thought they might be running one of the new nice and fast K bikes, but the predecessor to the R1200S was the R1100S which supported MotoGP races in the boxercup a few years back.

 

I was at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Edinburgh and District Advanced Motorcylists last night. These are annual fayre for regulated organisations of any sort, and being run under the charity laws in Scotland they have to observe the formalities. So I went along to have a look.

As I haven’t obtained full membership through the process of reaching the required level in an Advanced Motorcycle Test, I was along as an Associate, meaning I could watch but not vote when it came to that bit in the proceedings. It was typical of these things, with a tinge of unavoidable dryness due to the formal nature of the thing, but ok. It is always good to get together with a group of motorcycle enthusiasts, and we had a few guests along including the honourary president Jim Pryde, the scottish IAM Motorcycle Coordinator David Coia and the IAM Staff Examiner for Scotland, Rennie Ritchie.

And the main event for me was being presented with the Associate Trophy as a result of my efforts at the Miss Laidlaw event last year. It’s the first time I’ve been awarded a trophy for anything, so I’ve got the quaich on its plinth sitting here on my desk, and my name engraved in it! They took a photo of the presentation, so if I get a copy of it I’ll try and post it here. You know the kind of thing, cup handover, hand shake, mugging at the camera. Superb.

Took a break over the easter weekend and did a bit of riding on my own, practicing observations doing scanning, reading road signs etc.

This mornings run was mainly the borders, but with lots of corners to practice my road positioning. Every speed limit (apart from 50 I think) with right and left hand corners. We went from our venue near the hillend ski centre, headed south and I followed Bob my Observer for a demo run down a wee twisty B road (Pentland Road). Thankfully he didn’t quite go as fast as he could have on that on his VFR, so I mostly kept up. Then we headed South on the Straiton Road.

I’ve got a bit of refining to do with my speed limits, keeping up unless there is a hazard giving reason to slow under the limit that has been chosen for the road. This firstly means knowing the speed limit for a particular stretch of road, and then combining the right gear with the right throttle.

We went down towards Auchendinny which had a series of 30 and 40 limits with up and down and left and right roads. Down to Leadburn and all the way down to Peebles. Then left at the Petrol Station in Peebles and off to Innerleithen.

Points to work on are remembering to sacrifice position for safety. This happens when taking the visibility line for left handers, I need to move across to the middle of my side of the road to keep away from oncoming traffic on the other side of the road.

Head checks for junctions i.e. just before the turn to make sure any undertakers are spotted.

All in all it seemed to be coming together better, probably down to more practice, and perhaps my new boots 🙂

On the way home I was almost collected by someone riding a GSXR in a group, I was on my own heading west along the Seafield Moor Road, and the group did various overtakes towards me, then out pops this bike and just keeps coming, so I had to get out of the way. I just hope they don’t create an accident statistic in the borders. I’m not sure if they expected me to give way, or didn’t see me, it was a bit wierd.

Way back in the olden days, Kev pointed out the error of my ways when it came to my choice of footwear for my motorcycle. Today I got my new footwear, to give them their full name – Sidi Black Rain. And I got them in EU size 50, and like other Sidi boots they have a zip that goes almost to the sole, dealing with the problem I have with my big fat ankles. Black and waterproof, excellent, goes with my other bike stuff.

Have a picture!

Different routes today, and I pretty much sucked. I’m stuck on using Observations properly, my cornering is a bit iffy and my slow speed stuff too.

The cornering is getting worse, the other bits have hung around for a while. Harrumph. I’m taking a break from the training next week, I thought about giving it up today but I’m not the type to quit a course.

I’m due to cover cornering in my EDAM run tomorrow, and I’ve found a section in Roadcraft that bears out my previous post on experimenting with how I sit on the bike.

On page 89 of my edition of Roadcraft (the first impression way back in 1996) it says under “Riding Position and balance”:

“When you are moving, sit in a comfortable position with your body slightly leaning forward. Sit so that you can reach the controls comfortably without locking your arms straight. A slight bend to your arms will prevent the transmission of shock from the handlebars to the rest of your body and the bike”.

In my case it seems that I have to lean a bit more forward than “slightly” but if I work back from having my hands on the bars, bend my arms slightly then the position I adopt comes from there. It certainly works better in practice.

The R1100RS had its MOT booked for this morning at 09:30, so I was out early and used the opportunity to go out for a ride and try some different options for cornering.

I’ve started the advanced riding training again for 2007, and I’m on to weak areas in the lead up to the test. My slow speed maneuvering and cornering are needing work. A big part of this is how I get on with the bike, e.g. sitting in a different position or leaning forward or back can make a big difference to both of these. I went out to look for some twisty roads to see if I could work out what was better for me.

I headed out on the A71 and decided to turn left down a road to see where it went. I turned left at the roundabout outside the Hermiston Park and Ride and discovered that following this road (Gogar Station Road) took me to join the A8 just outside the new RBS campus. I headed along the A8 and decided to try one of my “Nemesis” roads. There is a back road to South Queensferry which I take to go to drop the bike off to get serviced that has a tricky set of low speed corners that I ran wide on once. This was a classic running wide on a left hander, so ever since I’ve almost tip-toed along there. As I passed over Newbridge I spotted Peter Woollven, the EDAM Secretary and gave him a wave going the other way. Through Newbridge on the A89 I turned right at the lights into New Lisbon Road. This road goes from a 40 mph limit into a 60 mph, with a sweeping right hander just before the road goes under the M9, then a tighter left, kink right then 30 mph limit. I gave a go at leaning foward on the bike to stop my elbows locking up – the recommendation is to have your lower arm parallel to the road. And I think it worked, it was a lot easier to apply the countersteer to keep the visibility line through the corner. It’s not quite what you would call a “racing crouch” but it points to what I need to do to tidy up my cornering.

I headed up Path Brae on to the High Street, then Station Road and turned right into Main Road. Then a turn left, leading out of the 30 mph limit into another 60 mph. This road is quite narrow, then leads to a 80 degree left, 90 degree right, then another left then right. It wasn’t as tidy as it could have been, but it wasn’t a problem. So I followed this road out to the A90 and headed North. I turned off at South Queensferry before McDonalds and headed West along the A904. I headed along there and cut left under the M90, then headed back east through Winchburgh and back to Kirkliston to try those sweeping corners again.

I’ve still got practice to do to get used to it, but it seems that how you sit makes a big difference.

After all that I headed to C & J Wilson in Uphall to put the R1100RS in for its MOT, and it passed. A couple of advisories on the front left hand disc bobbins and the front shock lower mount.

Just back from my last evening class at Borders College on the Know Your Motorcycle course. Hats off to Shane Black for knowing his stuff, and tweaking the course content to allow us to get on with the spannering.

It was great fun, and the only downer for me was having to travel all that way to Galashiels. I can’t believe that I have to travel 40 miles either South or West to get a basic mechanical maintenance course. I guess the city bikers must be too posh to get their fingernails dirty. And its not as if they have to, I wear nitrile gloves and stay clean thankyou very much.

We did everything from removing wheels to electrics, changing the oil, changing the brake fluid, removing the forks (the suspension at the front) and we had one bike running tonight, one almost running (it had a spark) and another not working. As we didn’t even know which of the three bikes worked before the course, that was reckoned to be good going.

Shane has a day job working at a Chrysler dealer as a diagnostic technician on Jeeps, and has worked on quads, bikes, cars etc etc. Turned up on his Fazer tonight, one of the other guys was on his GSXR.

Having got the reputation as the guy with the BMW, one of the others (who is an associate with Borders Bike IAM) gave me a link to a video of a BMW R1150GS going round the Isle of Man during TT time – they do strange things with roads during that time.