Everyday's a school day. So what did we did we learn from this weeks' 706 mile blip? Well we reaffirmed "coincidences and the weather" in that if I clean my bike the next day as soon as I go out it will piss down. I think I managed 1.5 miles out of 300 ish on day one before it rained. During the course of the "turn left on to the M5 and continue for 160 miles" journey it rained so hard it was stinging my arms through my BMW Enduroguard jacket, the M5 was flooded to the extent the police were operating rolling blocks. The phmode puncture repair was still in, the tyre had dropped about 0.5 bar in a couple of weeks stood in the garage but after topping up stayed up all day.
I wandered into the Canning Motorcycle Emporium to see what magic was being conducted in the gearbox department but the magicians had taken it away to their shed to work on so I was again fed copious quantities of cake and tea, and stories of all things including motorcycles. I could tell you but i'd have to shoot you. Even though a motorcycle has been temporarily removed from the garage to make space I still managed to trip over several electric bicycles. Must take some cake next time. Meanwhile I will be searching to buy tyres as rumour has it having a stack in the corner of the garage might be useful.
A day mostly spent getting wet and squaring off the tyres that had been rounded off nicely on the wrinklies. I also found that the panniers are not waterproof. Water makes its way up through the hinges at the bottom. Fortunately anything susceptible to water was in waterproof bags. I'm not using the BMW liners at present but need to think about doing so, or investing in the horribly expensive but nicely made USA made ones I was pointed at earlier. Its also noticeable that there is a lot less room behind the standard screen than the MRA Vario screen on the K12 for the RAM mounted phone used as a sat nav. In the rain the phone case was getting wet at lower speeds which was causing the phone to think I was touching the screen and doing all sorts of things.
On the return trip I determined to avoid motorways as much as possible. This worked fine as I rattled down the Welsh borders to the Olde English Martindale's Bring Your Own Biscuits Cafe. On this day the rear tyre and its tyre pressure sensor decided to tease me again. I have never had the yo yo ing of pressures like this with the K12 but during the course of the day I topped up the pressure 3 times. Sometimes I would ride off and have excessive pressure, other times i would scroll through the information menu to find it was low pressure. The only consistent thing seems to be is if I let the bike stand for a while it will lose pressure, if you don't stop for longer than a fuel stop its fine. Anyway, soon I will need a new tyre so that'll fix it, he said knowledgeably.
Anyway we discussed the pros and cons of a South West Wrinklies and having a few days back in Wales again whilst consuming too many chocolate biscuits, and I impolitely stuffed myself with a garage special sandwich lunch.
The next exercise was phase 2 of the "find a way around Bristol avoiding motorways". Brian has probably been wondering why I disappeared off Northwards from his place . The last attempt after the Wrinklies was too close to Bristol and very hard work, slow, unenjoyable etc. This time I went too far North and too far East, but astonishingly the all up mileage from Chateau Sanders in North Shropshire was only 10 miles further then the inglorious M5. Mrs FJ was not impressed when she called me to find I was on the A303 and far from home at a time she was expecting me for dinner, although not half as surprised as my grandson when the bath time Whatsapp call revealed a black helmet with trees whizzing past in the background. At some point 17000 miles arrived on the A350 North of Westbury
I have to say that LED headlights and a white fairing works very well as a traffic splitter, far more cars move over for the K13 than the K12. As we progressed into the evening all the comms died as first my phone died and then the Sena. The phone turned out to be as a result of the 3 year old connecting cable having flexed beyond its life and the wire casing had spilt to revel bare wires. I need to buy a new one and to give some thought to a more permanent power supply solution. (Did I get the jargon right?). The Sena had done 2 days without recharge and had simply run flat. Anyway I have been up and down the A303 once or twice (irony - for our foreign friends, I think if you have followed the K12 thread you'll know this is closer to one thousand or 2 thousand times) so knew where i was going. Having been schooled by the Eurokclub webmaster in the rules about filling panniers with all things other than kitchen sink (although my dad thought i was collecting an unwanted 8 place setting crockery set for my son...without the large softbag I had to disappoint him) I was carrying another cable so the phone soon came back to life. Why bother you may ask? Well at this time of a long 400 mile day there's a lot of motivational satisfaction to be had out of kicking the sh1t out of the satnav arrival time. Especially when Storm Evert delivers stroppy sidewinds and gusty headwinds and torrential showers for the last 60 miles. Average speed for the last tankful begins with a 7...
