FROMROM THE FRONT
Magazine welcomes – like this one – are often faintly comic things to write. In this case, I’m writing this some time before Christmas, and you will be reading it in the new year. I want to say welcome to 2018! However … where I’m sitting (being oppressed by the cat, strangely enough) it’s still 2017. But the sentiment applies. A new year is upon us, with all the excitements and entertainments new years often bring.
The passing year – 2017 – was of the seriously challenging variety. All manner of unexpected oddities popped up to make life endlessly interesting, and I’m hoping for a quiet twelve months ahead. Unusually for me, I sold several bikes, including a couple of my all-time favourites, which was something of a wrench. I’m not one for either raging against the dying of the light, and I’m certainly no tim’rous beastie, but the point has arrived at which I’ve finally admitted that in The Shed there are two kinds of bikes: those for riding a decent distance and those for local jaunts and rebuild entertainment. Until now I’ve somehow kept an awful lot of What-If? machines, as in What If I just replace (anything from a spark plug to a complete power train) then I’d ride it every day…
And there are a few which are simply too heavy – too top-heavy – for me to feel comfortable riding far from home. And it’s no doubt politically incorrect to say this, but as I sprint headlong towards my pension I do not want to endlessly fret that I’ll need to call out the nice man with the yellow van … again. I no longer find the idea that I might not actually get where I’m going to be entertaining. Sad loss of moral fibre, obviously! Or not. Do not for one second think that you’re reading unhappiness here. Quite the opposite. What you’re reading is actually mild-mannered excitement at the thought of all the rides I’m setting up for 2018. There’s a whole pile of events which we’ve either never been to or have been compelled to attend in a van because we’ve had to carry a stand and boxes of stuff. And I have a completely idiotic notion that I’d like to try to visit all of the remaining Little Chef roadside cafés before they vanish completely! I have no idea why this is, given that they serve very little food I’d actually enjoy eating, but I fancy an excuse to both search them out and then plan entertaining routes to ride there. The choice of riding machine will be decided on the day – depending on distance and weather.
And as you’ll see when you reach The Shed, I’ve actually commenced the endless lunacy which characterises my bike rebuilds. This is a build with a difference – for the first time in several decades my personal challenge is not to build the bike back to basically stock. This time the plan is to produce a mild custom machine, and to be quite honest I’m finding the freedom to go non-stock to be both liberating and fairly scary. Something else to look forward to, then. Hurrah!
Ride safely