Okay; Sunday, as promised previously…

Having nearly been blown off the road on Saturday, I was considering the wisdom of going out on the bike again on Sunday, until I remembered it was time for the monthly meeting of Thames Vale Advanced Motorcyclists [www.tvam.org.uk] and an opportunity to get some much-needed practice in, on an “observed ride”.

Thus the alarm went off at 0715h and by some means – involving coffee, a shower, and BBC Radio 4 choral music at full volume – I managed to be kitted up, out of the house and on the bike, en-route for Wokingham by 0820h.

Coffee, chit-chat and watch as the 200-odd bikes turn up at the schoolyard, meet the locals and chat with the organisers, sip coffee, and eventually two of us are assigned an bouncy observer (Chris, who manages geeks at Merrill-Lynch for a living) – and go off for a ride.

By now, it is probably 1015h, and the sunny morning has given way to occasional bouts of blatting rain, cloud, and patches of brilliant sunshine. British weather, gotta love it.

So we go for a blat down the motorway, around Reading, down to Fleet, and back on the reverse route – the latter with Chris doing a demo ride and pointing-out / illustrating hazards as we pass ride, including the insane pheasant hurtling along a field’s edge.

I am getting better at observation – I got a B+ grade overall, which is not bad. Still a long way to go, though. So we get back to the school, and consider why it is that the traffic is so heavy “today” – only to twig that we were probably caught up in the mothers’ day lunchtime rush hour.

Ah. Mothers’ Day. To coin a phrase, “oh, fuque”.

No card, no flowers, no phonecall, I know what I’ll do, I’ll turn up in person, on said bike, so: stopping at the adjacent Shell petrol station I filled-up with Shell Optimax, and set off on my merry way to Worcestershire.

A brief aside: Shell Optimax Super-Unleaded has a near legendary reputation amongst bikers I know, being the budget-race-fuel of choice; I’d never tried it in the DR-Z400S before, but wanted to give it a go. The difference was instantly noticible – instead of feeling like I was sat on top of a washing machine on spin cycle, I felt I was now parked on top of a gatling-gun and it was spitting fire. The bike picked-up much more rapidly, overtaking was sidesplittingly fun… it was a significantly improved machine.

Let’s see: Reading (again) over the Chilterns to Oxford Ringroad, thence A44 to Chipping Norton, stop off for 20 minutes at Rollright Stones to see the new works and site improvements, watch some crumbly Ramblers (perhaps rambly Crumblers) amble past, then Stratford, top-up with yet more Optimax, then Alcester and Droitwich.

The aged P’s were in good nick and pleased to see me, and expressed as-ever their polite astonishment at my shiny new toys. We chatted, updated each other on family events, sorted out a few minor chores to do, and I set off again, an hour or so later.

It was now 1710h.

Droitwich passed, as did the M5, M50, A419 and then I was heading towards Ledbury on a rather pleasant road to visit Jane, a friend who lives there with three cats and a horse fetish. Black coffee and more chat and catching-up, but alas she was not free to join me for dinner at a favourite restaurant – so I decided to go on my own.

Finding Jane’s nearest petrol-station to be shut, barred and otherwise sealed for the night – lacking only barbed wire and patrol dogs to complete the isolation – in the fading twilight I buzzed down the A419 towards Gloucester, and for the third time stopped to refill – this time, at a BP garage. Oh well.

At least they had the new BP Super-Unleaded, BP Ultimate, and having any high-octane fuel makes a pleasant change for backwoods petrol station. I’d had this stuff before and had not thought it much cop, and was therefore not expecting much.

Boy was I surprised.

No longer a Gatling-gun, I was now sat on top of one of those British Interplanetary Society stardrives that works by exploding a tiny atom bomb every few seconds. It was another boost in power, and I was not going to argue with it.

Arriving at the M4 via Cirencester, I broke my trip home, heading west one junction to Brinkworth and the Three Crowns pub [www.threecrowns.co.uk] – a favourite watering/fooding hole. Rump steak with Stilton and Prawns of deep prawnyness, excellent veg, fiery ginger ale (never touch booze on a bike) and a chilled chocolate mousse on a brandysnap that was more of a galette, and I felt nicely satiated; alas that they were runnng on a slightly reduced menu, but even with that the choices included Alligator, Ostrich, Kangaroo, several steaks (out of T-bone, sigh) and other wonderful things.

Wrapping up around 2140h, I jump onto the bike, and we both jump onto the M4. The Suzuki DR-Z400S is a street-setup trailbike with almost no aerodynamic qualities whatsoever, a 10ltr tank, long-travel suspension, mixed-surface tubed road tyres on large wirespoke rims, an upright, sail-like riding position, and a 398cc single-cylinder four-stroke engine that most bikers would consider to be wimpy.

Regardless of this wussiness, it seems that with a good tank of fuel it may well also be able to easily cruise at around 92MPH on an uphill gradient, and likewise perhaps 97MPH on the flat — but whomever might admit to attempting such foolhardy things even in the most careful of conditions might also probably admit to bottling-out before pressing his/her luck too far / to a ton.

One can only wonder what would happen were a fairing to be fitted?

Such theorising aside, I got home at 2315h, rinsed-off the bike, locked it up, showered-off the odour of oil, leather and sweat (“ah, so this is what a biker is supposed to smell like“) and clock the fact that I have covered about 320 miles in 14 hours, with considerable breaks in-between.

And I survived. Not bad. Normandy, here we come.

Postscript: trawling around for BP Ultimate yields an explanation, eg: [www.pistonheads.com] – apparently it’s the first 100RON petrol on the UK market; Optimax being 98 or so: I can only presume that my previous encounter was atypical, cut, or mis-labelled.