More Rubber!

No I'm not a fetishist, least not that I know. I can own up to loving the smell of leather but I don't think that counts.

No, this time the rubber I'm talking about is the circular type that keeps my beloved Bandit in touch with the tarmac. After getting a few quotes for a pair of Michelin Pilot Road 3s, I plumped for a place in Kennington Road, London, just round the corner from the Oval cricket ground, called FWR. They saved me £23 over the next best quote and a whopping £66 over my Suzuki dealer, who as I was booking in for a service, one might have thought would have done a discount.  It's a turn up a wait jobbie but if you get lucky you can be turned around in 25 minutes (like my brother) or in my case, it was just over the hour. I would thoroughly recommend them on my first time experience. Not only do they cut you a deal but the guy running the show, Chris I think it was, is a really nice guy. Not just tyres, they service as well and were working on scooters to a Pan European Honda.

So that's that bit out of the way. Next Saturday is the service at my local dealer, after which we'll be all ready to roll. If the weather is like it was this week, in the South East, then I shan't complain, as I've managed to complete a whole week without recourse to public transport. Bit scary to see the rest of the country under water though!

19 to go.

What's that Grommet?

Well, they have arrived. Good news, though slightly larger than the Suzuki originals they do the job perfectly. No more rattling top box. Bad news, whilst fitting them, wearing shorts and having just ridden home, I managed to burn my knee on the exhaust!! There's the beginnings of a nasty little blister on it's way
 :-(

I'm aware this blog has had precious little in the way of photos thus far, so these should liven things up a little.

OUCH!!

21 days to go. In 3 weeks time, I'll be in Avon Cottage, Tetbury with Grizzly.

Service Booked

Have booked the Bandit in for a service on 7th. I didn't want to leave it till the last weekend before the tour, in case something went awry. It'll probably be about 1k short of the 20k scheduled service but as I'm going to be putting 2.6k on it in under a fortnight, I thought it best to have it given a clean bill of health beforehand.

As for tyres, I asked Laguna how much for a pair of Michelin Pilot Road 3s and he quoted £326!! You can buy them on the internet for around £230 and our local tyre fitter does them for £240. For £86, I'm quite happy to remove the wheels and take them round to the local shop. Dealers, eh?

Have invested in some other rubber too. NO, calm down lads! The rubber in question being little rubber grommets that fit on the rack and stop the topbox bouncing about. I've had a few go awol when taking the box off/on and it does rattle about a bit now. Although the kit came as Suzuki kit, you can't actually buy a grommet from Suzuki (apparently), so I've had to buy Givi grommets, they being the manufacturers of the Suzuki branded luggage. Not an essential but little things not quite right do tend to irritate us bikers.

23 to go!

Time to start packing?

It'll soon be time to decide what clothing I'm going to take with me. With only two panniers and a topbox, space is fairly tight for such a long trip, so I may end up having to turn my pants inside out! LOL! It's a carefully planned operation working out what to take, even more so to pack it. Despite what people may think of bikers, we're not all dirty, smelly, unwashed individuals who walk around in the same clothes for weeks on end.

Talking of clothes, I hear Biggsey's t-shirts have arrived. I can't wait to see them. My own merchandise order has been placed and another will follow very shortly, so we will look like a team (almost) when we are hitting the night time streets of Glossop, Inverness and Blarney ;-) As slick as an F1 pit crew!

Some good news on the bike cleaning front today. The rain held off long enough for me to give the Bandit its first clean of the year. Hoorah! With at least two days fine weather forecast, I'll not be ashamed to ride it to work now!

24 days to go, just.

Starting to worry now

I can hardly believe that the tour is now only 25 days away. It doesn't seem that long ago that the countdown clock was showing 90 days. Now with under 30 to go, it seems to be racing. I've just realised that I only have 2 weekends left to get the bike serviced and new tyres fitted. Next Saturday, I'm off to Cambridge with my brother, for the AMRR, the annual Allied Memorial Remembrance Ride to the American cemetery at Madingley, so that puts the 30th out of the equation. I might just have to drop it in during the week instead and work from home.

I must say I'm starting to worry a tad about the current inclemency of the weather. It just seems to be non stop rain at the moment, so I'm keeping everything crossed summer finally arrives, by 18th July and stays for at least 2 weeks!  The last UK tour I did in 2009, again in mid July, turned out to be the wettest July week on record! I didn't have much luck in the Isle of Man last year either and none of the Hogs will ever forget the torrential rain we rode through in Oklahoma in 2010. So, I'm not expecting it to be dry for the entire tour, especially as we are travelling through Wales, Scotland and Ireland, for the most part of it. Not exactly known for long dry summers in either of those!  Maybe we should have gone to Europe instead. I blame Biggsey totally, as it was his idea to 'do a few days in Scotland'!

One good thing though, at least the hosepipe ban has been lifted, so I should be able to get out (if it doesn't rain) and give the Bandit it's first clean since the wet weekend in March, when it got totally covered in dirt and mud. Sure, some of it was washed off in the torrential rain in Le Mans last month (there's a picture developing here) but it's way overdue some suds and elbow grease.

Merchandise

Seems Biggsey and I think alike. I was toying with the idea of getting some t-shirts made up for the tour, when blow me if he doesn't say he's already sorted some. What the design is, he won't let on. It'll be a surpise. I'm wondering if it is the Wild Hogs picture (which you can see on the flickr link) or maybe something individual for each of us? Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I've not given up my idea though and have designed (with Vistaprint's help), a logo for the tour. I'm looking at getting a polo shirt made up and possibly a cap. I'm just waiting to see if the other hogs are interested and if so what sizes they will need. Once they turn up, I'll be unveiling the design on the blog and posting a pic to flickr. Maybe I'll do a 'I followed the blog' t-shirt for you guys ;-)

Glympse

There's an App, called Glympse, for smartphones, that lets you send people your location. It's really quite useful if you are meeting up with someone but don't know where you are going. They can send you a txt or email Glympse (weblink) that shows you where they are in the world. You can then navigate to them, using google maps or some other such mapping App.  Very clever.

Anyway, what's that got to do with the tour?, I hear you say. Well, it's simple. For those who want to know, I am going to use Glympse, as we tour round, to let people know where abouts we are along the route. If any of you out there want to follow me on the map, as well as on the blog, if just to break up the boredom of your working day, then let me know.

The guys at work will have a map, showing the tour route (just as they did for my R66 tour) with a magnetic me (on a motorcycle), that they can move along as I progress. Though this tour, arguably, doesn't have the glamour of R66, it is every bit as arduous and I'm sure they will remain interested in knowing how I am getting on. Maybe ;-) 

The Oldest Youfs in Town

Had some news from Dudley today. He has booked the four of us into the Keswick YHA Hostel, for the night we are in town. The plan was, as he lives in Keswick, to stay at his house but he's having some work done (a new mirrored ceiling and waterbed, or something), so the place will not be fit for entertaining guests. I'm pretty comfortable with this, as I was going to end up on a camp bed anyway...on account of me being the youngest. The YHA is only a few minutes walk from Dud's place and still close to all the hostelries. That'll be the second of 4 hostels that we'll stay at during the tour and it makes me smile. Us staying at youth hostels and not one of us under 50!!

41 days and counting.