See, I told you all along that the Alpine White / Indigo Blue Metallic was the fastest colour 😡

Only in a dream!   

As an aside and in the light of the twaddle about intercomms, I got this link in the mail yesterday...

http://www.sena.com/rideconnected-app/

Looks interesting, if you have a Sena headset and a brain the size of a planet to understand how to operate it.

Oh, and if you know someone else with a Sena, which I don't 

You can talk to non-Sena devices too!

https://support.sena.com/hc/en-us/articles/214611466-What-is-Universal-Intercom-

The taxpayer paid for that as part of the Rural Broadband scheme that was to deliver fibre to our village by 2012! The fibre cabinet has been in place, less that 40yds from my house since mid 2015 and some of my neighbours have had fibre since then (Hence my enthusiastic application for fibre to my house!!!). They added fibre to the telegraph pole that grows out of my front hedge in early 2016 but they’ve only just managed to get the fibre strung from the pole to my house this week and, apparently, the engineer to fit the termination unit inside the house will visit on the 24th January!

What they did do very efficiently was transfer my telephone bill from Sky to BT. This was even though I made it clear that I did not want the phone transferred until the broadband was in place as I got the TV, broadband and phone as a bundle from Sky that effectively made the phone (rental not calls) free!!

Pairing the Scalas was pretty straight forward (although I’d need to refer to the instructions if I wanted to do it now!). With the Scala bridging we had 9 people all connected together. That was over 2 groups but the auto connect/disconnect when in/out of range meant that we could keep in contact as 1 group passed the other who had stopped for some pictures or an ice cream.

There was no need to press buttons to talk. All connections were "always on" (although would be temporarily suspended if the sat nav/phone required an override) in full duplex so when everyone was together the issue was getting people to shut-up so you could say what you needed to say.

It's OK, I have an extra-long tow-rope to tie to Glen's grab handles this year 

With so many people using so many different means of 'navigation' (from me who was just following the guy in front to Rich who insists on paper maps and so was also following the guy in front on a tactical basis) it is a wonder any of us got anywhere near each other 

The big learning from Glen's 'disappearance' is manifold:

Everyone should stick to 30 & 40 limits!
Everyone except T-E-C should keep the guy behind in sight!
If anyone gets 'lost' they should firstly return to the point at which they last saw the other members!
If anyone gets really lost they should go to the next coffee/lunch stop!
We all need to have everyone's phone numbers available!
We need to have an agreed plan about what we do - wait/ride on regardless/moan and ride round in circles for the rest of the day/call and text/stop and check for calls and texts.....

.....and all because Glen's bloody bike did the stall/hot non-start thing and seeing as mine caught it off him it might be my turn this year 

While I agree with most of what you’ve said Brian, there are a couple of points that we’ve discovered through trying to keep Old Gits groups together.

Each rider does not need to keep the rider behind in sight. Doing this makes for a group that travels only at the speed of the slowest, frustrates the faster riders and can cause problems for other road users. If you are not turning off a road you don’t need to keep the rider behind in sight. You only need to ensure the rider behinds sees you if you turn off the current road.

The person in front’s sat. nav. is right and if yours disagrees, yours is wrong!!!

While the overall number of riders may be larger, keep groups of riders to no more than about 3 or 4. If you’ve got agreed stop off points (site seeing, coffee, butties etc.) then the fact that there are 2 or 3 separate groups all heading the same way shouldn’t cause a problem and having a large bikes stopped at the side of the road because one is having issues does not make it safe for other traffic and is unlikely to resolve those issues any quicker.

On a non-group riding note, I used to agree with you about 30 and 40 limits and used to ride to the conditions but with a maximum speed of the limit. However, there are now so many limits that are there for “political” reasons and have nothing to do with safety I now ride to the conditions and simply take the limit under advisement. A risk, I know, and I’m sure it will result in points at some time but it’s no different to the approach for all other speed limits.

And a happy new year to one and all. Let's hope 2017 is a great year for everyone and that we all manage to enjoy many miles on our bikes.

As always, thanks to Brian for maintaining the site.

The Old Gits got held up in Switzerland in 2013 when someone’s K1300S started making strange noises from around the rear drive. BMW recovery was called and it turned out to be a loose hugger mounting bolt making contact with the disk.

The funniest/most frustrating thing was that the Swiss recovery agent (not BMW) insisted in recovering the bike to the BMW dealer because he had not been trained in torqueing down BMW bolts!!!