Jo Ackroyd’s Big Biking Adventure

As always, strange days and an even stranger disposition.
Well, lots to say, but lets try to boil it down, condense it to what really matters.

I took the bike out on saturday and found it to be very different to anything i might have ridden before.

The vibrations of a single cylinder are amazing. It compares to a Japanese motivated twin poorly and is a worry to ride. While you know it runs and starts the worry is that it will stop on the next stroke of the piston.

One piston half the size of a bottle of Coke being thrown up and down, up and down 4000 times a minute, imagine what that means. Think how long a second is, stop and count it and consider. Think.

The vibrations! I got off and everything shook. I felt a tingle in my toes, my fingers vibrated for ten minutes and although I thought I needed a pee, I found I was numb between my legs. Many female friends would say thats not changed…

The ride made me consider all sorts of things. One moment I was thinking of how hard the bike is to ride compared to my Honda, how I might of made a mistake.

Then I thought I need a relationship with my bike. My Honda has the benefit of years of feeling and thought, perhaps I need to consider a relationship with an inanimate object. While logic tells you this is stupid and nothing more than romantic mechanical notion, we all admit to quietly talking to our cars, our bikes, our electric carving knives as method to soothe our souls and not theirs.

My aluminum adventure for the front end seems to have been poor design. I blame the forethought.

I think the gearbox is dodgy. Maybe highly viscose oil has made it sloppy but it’s not quite right, especially for the mileage. I dont really know!

The Autocom doesn’t work, need to think that out, the back brake is low, I wonder if it will be comfortable the further the relationship develops? The helmet peak seems to create a vibration in my head, the top box doesn’t fit and the panniers - well we shall save that for another day, but generally I think you can plan but adaption is the key to existance, when I forget this I become worried and torture myself with thoughts of plans I havent laid or of plans I failed to deliver, when actually the answer lies in adaption.

Time will tell.

Things are OK. Today I’ve had a revelation.

While some people are cynics and some are supporters, far more are quiet and have a relationship and children and feel they have lost the adventure and wish they might of, kind of, would have.

Well, for now, they dont realise that their lives are as fulfilling and entertaining as mine but viewed through a different times and relationships.

So perhaps this is not an adventure for me, as much as living a smile for others.

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