Best laid plans…
It’s not been an easy year for planning rides, events have been postponed, foreign travel is verboten, and it seems the challenges continue for a while yet
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – what a year it has been so far! Late start to the riding season has meant that we’re all playing catch up. So many places to visit, roads to ride, friends to meet. The whole summer needs to be crammed into a few short weeks while the Covid restrictions are still in place (in some places more so than elsewhere). It looks like some motorcycle events are now starting to happen again, although one local one near me, the ’Normous Newark Autojumble, was called off just days before it was supposed to open due to a local spike in Covid cases. Better to be safe than sorry, but it’s still frustrating – I had marked it in my calendar so I could go and stock up on all the nuts, bolts and bits I need to keep my bikes going. Instead, off to the web I go. I’ll get all I need there, but it’s not the same as buying them from a real person, having a little chat and maybe spotting something else that might be useful (which then gets put away in the garage for years, is forgotten, and resurfaces at the exact moment when you have bought a replacement…).
As you can imagine, after the lockdown we are busy planning lots of content for the magazine, and it looks like we will have a busy few months ahead of us. I’m not complaining though – it’s an absolute joy to fill your days with bikes to ride, poke at and write about.
I’m not sure if it’s the fact that we had a late start to this season, but it seems like time is flying… It says October on the cover of this magazine. Although it’s only August as we go to print, just seeing the word October starts to make me feel a little uneasy. Not because I have anything particularly against the month, but most years that’s the time that signals the end of the good riding season. Of course, many of us continue to ride throughout the year, but from October all-weather riding starts to demand more ‘dedication’ for the cause.
That’s also the time when many test bikes are disappearing from the streets as manufacturers are preparing for the launch of the new models, so we need to ride as many bikes before then as we can. How exactly these new models will be launched if the virus is still bothering us I don’t know, but whatever happens we’ll be sure to bring you the news and tests of the latest bikes as soon as we can.
In the meantime, my brain is on overdrive trying to come up with as many riding plans as I can to make the most of the good weather we have. As it stands, I have plans to visit every corner of the UK, but how many of those plans are actually realised remains to be seen. There are still too many question marks in the shape of local lockdowns and travel restrictions that could potentially throw all manner of spanners in the works.
Anyway, enough about me. I hope you have had a great riding summer so far – long may it continue! Mikko Nieminen, Editor