Riding with Respect – a trip to remember
On 23rd October 2018 I will be donning my best gear, cleaning and polishing my boots and saddling up my new F850 GS to undertake a pilgrimage to Savona, a town close to Genoa, both to put the bike through its paces but also to draw some closure to a story that spans a century. […]
Blood, sweat and breastmilk – we carry on
September has been a pretty good month so far. I’ll explain. I signed up to be a Blood Biker last year, which in case you don’t know is a volunteer post in which you give up at least two nights a month to be on call to collect blood or tissue samples from a hospital […]
Your perception is your reality. To control your bike, first control your mind
I was having a morning WhatsApp chat with my daughters the other day when No.2 mentioned that she had missed the Perseid showers the night before but had dreamt it and it was amazing, so was that the same? It was just an offhand comment but of course it mentioned dreams and the mind so […]
Left or right at this junction? How to avoid decision overload
Do you find that sometimes you just don’t want to have to decide where to go today, what to do, eat or buy? You wish someone else would come up with the plans and not ask your advice or opinion on each tiny detail? You’re not alone and probably have a form of decision fatigue. […]
Relativity: how riding fast actually slows you down
When I’m riding it tends to be an ‘in the moment’ experience. The feel of the wind in my face. The next bend, the next hazard, the sound of the engine. If it’s an uncomplicated road and there are no hazards it’s possible for an existential thought to pop up and smack me in the […]
Feeling at ‘one’ with your machine? That’s because you probably are
On my return from Africa I had a yearning to get out on the bike, the call of nature was strong, my body was telling me it wanted to assume the position. So, I’ve managed to clock up over 500 miles since last week, including demo rides of the new Triumph Tiger 800 XRT and […]
Why ride? Use the ‘5 Whys’ method to find out
In my former life I used to be a bit of a process improvement nut and even qualified as a Lean Six Sigma green belt at one stage. You could be excused for thinking it’s some kind of martial art practised on skinny people, but no, it’s a methodology with super complex statistical analysis built […]
It was risky but I still did it. Why was that?
As I write this it is the Muslim celebration of Eid and I’m in Tanzania. There’s a definite air of holidays about the day. Call to prayer started at the usual time of 5am but this time went on until 7am, with about four Mosques competing audibly within a square kilometre. In terms of denominations, […]
Motorbike riding improves your sixth sense, but you knew that, right?
Bikers are worldly. They’ve seen things, man. They have perspective, probably the result of always looking farther ahead than most people. Well, you know, the vanishing point and all that. It may seem like a tenuous connection, but it’s actually not. I mentioned in an earlier post that where you look is where you go.. […]
Maslow at work in Mwanza
Tanzania does not have much of a culture of prevention yet. This is what businesses are up against here, the ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ mindset. Trouble with that and motorcycle maintenance (or any kind of maintenance of course) is that to ignore a problem that is developing is to prepare yourself for […]