Preparations for Australia #2

This is where I'm going to be riding. The Aussie sent it to me to console me for the fact that he's going to be doing a double shift at work instead of riding with me. As the south-west corner used to be his manor, my hopes are high for great roads and excellent pubs.

The other fantastic thing about this route is that it includes a Giant Ram. I have only just discovered that Australia is famous for its Big Things. I feel a calling to visit them all by motorcycle...

Preparations for Australia #1

These are the important necessities which I have gathered so far. In no particular order, they are:-

• small purple sundress (diet is going well; hopefully in 4 weeks time I will no longer be at risk of being harpooned by the Japanese).
• kick-ass noise isolating headphones for the flight.
• Sam Manicom's book, Under Asian Skies, which includes his travels in Australia.
• 2 books by Simon Gandolfi.
• HEMA's Australia Motocycle Atlas - Peter Thoeming reviews 200 of the best motorcycle roads so I will know which ones to aim for.
• upper-crust cabin bag.
  

I'm planning to buy Nathan Millward's Going Postal when I'm in Oz for the return trip.

I think that pretty much covers it. Though I guess knickers would also be useful.

Objects of desire...

When it comes to visits to the NEC, I feel like a chameleon. Obviously if you've met me this stretches credibility. How much blending can a 6 foot woman built for comfort with hair the colour of a London bus do?

It's more of an internal adaptation. The first year I went to the show I had a guest ticket courtesy of Craig Carey-Clinch. It said VIP on it in silver leaf and I enjoyed the insider status that came attached to a job working as head of campaigns for a Large Motoring Organisation. I spent the next few years getting closer to the industry, until one year I found myself with a staff pass, which came with an obligation to spend my time in the show having meetings with chief executives about sales data rather than having meetings with the rest of the lobby, motorcycling friends and journalists in the bar. Though I did sneak off for the Wall of Death.

Paradoxically the nearer I got to the centre of things the more of an outsider I felt. So I walked away from that job, and 10 months later out of work all together. Oops.

Last year I went to the show in a new disguise - freelance journalist. I'm still not sure it's a role I'm playing terribly well. I feel like there's a Haynes manual for it that everyone else in the motorcycle media has got, and all I've got is a smudgy pdf of the page that says "reassembly is the reverse of disassembly."

But it must be true because editors ask me to write for them. Sometimes they even ask me twice.

This year was my second visit on a press pass. I've come full circle and am about to start again. Instead of discussing data with Chief Executives and Chairman I talked travel with Paddy Tyson and Sam Manicom. I looked at off-road bikes and I asked lots and lots of questions. KTM were happy to let me stand inexpertly on the pegs of the new Freeride 350. The lovely people from Bumpy's walked me in a nervous figure of 8 on their Gas Gas, finishing their lunch ten minutes early to make it possible and offering me a warm welcome at their Yorkshire Trials Park. And I entered all the competitions offering trail riding holidays in warm places with the gusto that I used to enter the ones offering shiny new fast bikes.

What's it all in aid of? I'm going travelling. I'm starting with Australia, and when I get back I'm going to find out just how little money it's possible to spend on the tedious business of living so that I can build up enough funds to just keep rolling. It's not an original plan, but it's the one with my name on it.

I nearly bought Building the Ultimate Adventure Motorcycle: The Essential Guide to Preparing a Bike for the Journey of a Lifetime for three pages in it by Austin Vince. He's incredibly rude about guided tours and writes of the importance not only of making your own plans but also of creating your own diary, movie or website about what you did. His view is that we should be doers, not passive consumers. Something that it's been too easy for me to forget these last few years. Slightly ironically, it was the point about not being consumers that stopped my buying the book, because one of my great failing is the belief that reading about something is pretty much the same as actually doing it and that's a trap I'm trying to escape.

So this year for me, just as it was way back in the beginning, the NEC was all about possibilities. It's about becoming a new rider again, and about finding the allies who are going to help me reach the horizon. Probably rather slowly, and with a lot of stopping and putting my feet down, but, after all, as Ted Simon said, the interruptions are the journey.

Looking at bikes makes me smile

I was feeling rather sorry for myself last night. I'm damaged again having nearly broken my neck trying to change the bed sheets. (Got my foot tangled up and fell into the pointy edge of the wardrobe. Normally sympathetic colleague couldn't stop laughing at this point of the story).

This morning is much better. The RBR has ended (boo) but it does mean that lots of people are posting their photos (yay!).

When I first started the Rally I waited in anxious anticipation for the Gallery to go up so that I could check whether I'd got the right landmarks. These days, between the Conkers arbitration weekend, and the speed with which Dave the D emails back with comments, that's less important. The photos are much more about happy memories of a year's riding.

Publish and be damned?

I am unfashionable among my smarter friends for two reasons. I quite like Liz Jones, and I watch the X-Factor with enthusiasm.

The man I left London for judged me for reading Liz's columns. Every week he would pick up You, read the back page, making increasingly outraged harrumphs, and then regale me for a few hours about how shallow and self-obsessed all media types are.

I stand guilty as accused - I've kept this blog going for 5 years with an endless stream of tales about me and my life - but I take the view that if you don't like something, don't read it (or watch it, for the X Factor). And don't judge someone else because they do.

Liz takes stick for being shallow and for moaning about her single life. But being single is difficult, especially for women. Not because we're not emotionally complete without a man, but because there are some jobs which require either physical strength or 2 people. I have an armchair I would like the council to come and take away, but it's upstairs and I can't get it down on my own. My chain needs adjusting but I can't get the Africa Twin on its centre stand without help - apparently there's a knack, but I haven't got it yet. If I had a man around the house, or even a lodger, the job would be done in two shakes.

I usually recognise something in what she has written (though I promise I have never done this). This week I recognise the whole column, because we share a problem slightly more serious than not having anyone to hold the ladder while I try and clean the gutters:-

She's writing about her new partner:-

"How about a bath together," he says. "That would be something to put in your column. You could write about how I displace so much water because I'm so fat."
"Ha ha. I wouldn't do that."
"Yes you would. You did it to your husband."
This is true...I wrote about my husband because I didn't really care about him. My column, my opinion. was more important."

I don't write as much here as I used to. I have become worried about trampling on the people who make my life the incredible adventure it has become. The people I used to write about as strangers have become my friends. Is it better to write from the heart, publish and be damned, or to say nothing because words can bruise just as much as tarmac, even by accident?

Liz then worries that she's become addicted to misery, because "happiness isn't interesting." A post I actually wrote here.

And then they go out where she used to live in London. "I have a flash of my life if I'd stayed here: I could walk to Waitrose and the cinema. I'd be clean and happy. I start to sob." I've done the same, in the back seat of a black cab heading from the Embankment to Euston, because if I'd stayed in London I'd have been able to walk under the fairy lights strung between the trees outside the Royal Festival Hall and get a night bus home, instead of having to book expensive hotels and worry about missing the last train.

Graham says that everything happens for the best. I live in the countryside now. I shop at the Co-Op. I have time instead of money. This weekend I went to the Dirt Bike Show, next weekend I'm going to see friends, then it's the NEC show, and in less than 2 months I'm going to be in Australia. That doesn't sound too bad.

Oh, and the X Factor? I help run a jam night. We welcome anyone on stage who wants to give it a go. Some people are amazing, some are just enthusiastic. The X Factor is a silly, manipulative entertainment show but it takes a lot of courage - or, I suppose, iron-clad self-confidence - to get up on a stage and sing. So knock the judges, or Simon Cowell, but not the contestants. They're singing live every week and some people will watch and be encouraged to think "I'm better than that." And hopefully they'll find a lovely local jam night or music venue and get up on stage. Sharing music is a Good Thing. Unless it's you with your mobile phone on the back seat of the bus.

Sticks and stones may break my bones...

... but sprox and chains excite me

Another first today - the Africa Twin had to go in for replacement chains and sprockets. The Triumph hasn't needed them yet, and Ruby had a shaft drive, so this is a new experience. After another excursion on the dinky Suzuki ("better than walking, but only just" said the man behind the counter, handing over the keys) I collected 2Moos and rode back to work.

I like new tyres. I love the three-dimensional fluidity they bring to my riding, for the brief period before I square them off again. The new chain brought fine throttle control and the re-introduction of engine braking to my arsenal. And we could accelerate without sounding like there was a spanner stuck in the spokes.

But the gear change didn't feel right. So when I was back in my parking space I knelt down for a look and found the chain was tighter than a mermaid's fish mitten. If I'd been sensible I'd have checked it while I was still outside the shop, but it didn't take long to nip back over and ask politely for someone to come and check the tension with me.

There was a slight rolling of eyes and a patient explanation of how to check a chain. You do this, and then you do this, and then yes, it's too tight. Which was a relief. Junior garage person was chastised and told to try again, and I've been given a compensatory tin of chain lube. Thanks due to Graham for showing me how to check!