Sunday 9th November over here in the UK was Remembrance Day where we pay tribute to, and remember, the fallen of two world wars and other conflicts and this year it was also to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

To honour this day, Imperial War Museum Duxford held a special free admission day with a 2 minute silence at 11:00 and a Remembrance Service at 12:30, among other events such as a truly amazing Spitfire display!

Imperial War Museum, Duxford

The other event of the day was a Royal Enfield Club-organised classic motorcycle run from the Silver Ball Café to IWM Duxford which, of course, I took part in! It was also a perfect opportunity to record a proper classic biking video with my new helmet camera, which I was very pleased about. You can watch the video of the classic bike run here:

- Video of Classic Motorcycle Ride From Silver Ball Cafe To Duxford

I do plan on editing the above video at some point to make a shorter version, but until I get around to it, the above unedited version is all I have! You can, of course, skip through it to your heart’s content or you can watch the entire 53 minutes or so if you are so inclined!

So, anyway, as for Duxford itself, it was a great day as mentioned previously! Lots of things to see, as usual, many of which can be seen in my photos:

- Photos of Classic Motorcycle Ride from Silver Ball Cafe to Duxford and of Duxford itself

The other thing I’ve learned is that the piston rings on the Matchless are letting oil through! Although I’ve been losing oil for a while now, it wasn’t until Sunday when someone finally told me they could smell and occasionally see the oil smoke coming from the exhaust that I realised it wasn’t all coming from the breather pipe and rocker box gasket, so I have my second winter job to do now (the first being to change the oil and clean the filters)!

As you may know from my blog entry on 23 September 2008 entitled An enjoyable pair of weekends!, at the Matchless‘ MOT at the beginning of July this year (3.5 months ago), the odometer on the bike read 31666 miles. When I got home from my ride today, it read 32668, meaning I’ve now ridden just over 1,000 miles!

What a milestone!

I have also recently obtained my self-bought early Christmas present - a bike cam! This small video camera can be stuck anywhere (car bonnet, car ceiling, bike handlebars, crash helmet etc…) by using the included handlebar mount and universal sticky mounts and cable ties etc… so I did my first test run with the camera today to see how it all works.

It didn’t go completely to plan, as I had intended to video an entire 20 mile run, but I accidentally hit the stop button while putting the recording device back into my pocket, so I ended up recording none of it! I did, however, still have the bit that I recorded going from my initial starting point to the beginning of the route, so I’ve edited it accordingly and put it online, both on Youtube and Mongeese Videos:

- Matchless Classic Motorcycle Ride - Mongeese Videos
- Matchless Classic Motorcycle Ride - Youtube

The sound quality, as I’m sure you will notice, is pretty awful - this is mainly because I haven’t found a sensible place to put the microphone yet - I had it sticking out the top of my pocket this time, hence the wind noise, but I will try putting it in the pocket next time to hopefully reduce wind noise, but still capture the engine noise!

The camera, by the way, was bought from Board-Cams for the price of £129.99. I have the “Board-Cams 520 Helmet Camera & Personal Media Player“.

Anyway, that’s it for this time… so until next time, goodbye!

Great Chesterford Steam-Up

Photos and videos can be found here:
- Great Chesterford Steam-Up Photos
- Great Chesterford Steam-Up Videos

Although I was the only member of the AJS & Matchless Owners Club to be booked into the Steam-Up, I checked with the organisers whether it would be OK to bring a few friends along, and having discovered that was fine, I phoned up 4 fellow members of the club, who mostly agreed to go on the day, depending on various criteria… However, one guy sadly caught flu, another saw the morning drizzle and quite underdstandably didn’t want to risk it, another ended up having to work all day, and the final person had somewhere else to be in the morning and never quite made it over there for the afternoon! Not to worry though, ’twas still an enjoyable day out, and if any of you read this, please don’t feel guilty for not attending in any way!

So anyway, the day started out drizzly, and also ended drizzly, but thankfully during the bit in the middle when there was no rain, I managed to ride to the Steam-Up, spend a good few hours there, and then managed to ride home, without getting rained on once!

I also did my first bit of non-satnav-assisted navigating for a long while… having obtained my first satnav several years ago, I’m slowly forgetting the art of getting to places without automated voice guidance! Nevertheless, I made it there with only one minor hiccup - the map showed a railway line, which was going to be my landmark for turning right to head down to Great Chesterford, but sadly, the railway line runs under the road and is invisible from the road unless you are in a truck cab, for example, so if it weren’t for the fuel stop at the petrol station just on the respective roundabout, I probably would have missed the turn! Anyway, lesson learned for next time!

Instant Farm!

As you can see, this appears to be 3 capsules in a plastic container, which, at some point, presumably turn into farm animals!

How on earth does this work?

It must be magic…

First of all though, I would like to state something that surprised me yesterday… the lead up is as follows; my Grandad, when he owned the Matchless, rode an average of around 120 miles per year (between 1989 and 1999 anyway). When he left the bike to me, it stayed in my parents’ garage for 8 or 9 years doing 0 miles per year. In April this year (2008), I brought the bike home and at the MOT that followed at the beginning of July, the odometer read 31666 miles.

The thing that surprised me is that 11 weeks later (today, roughly), the odometer reads 32440 miles, meaning I’ve ridden 774 miles in 11 weeks! I hadn’t realised quite how much I was enjoying the bike until I realised that!

Anyway… onto the weekends… it started on Sunday 14 September, with a bike meeting at the Silver Ball Café at Reed.

Bike Meeting at Silver Ball Café, Reed

This is one of the first events (albeit an incredibly minor event, bordering on not being an “event” at all due to the fact that it’s not organised by anyone in particular, and is actually just a collection of like minded individuals who all happen to be at the same place at the same time) that I’ve been able to take the motorbike to, so I was very pleased about this!

One of the guys from the AJS & Matchless Owners Club and I rode down together from Huntingdon and met up with several other AJS & Matchless owners when we got there. We ended up having a few cups of tea, a few full English breakfasts between us and a lot of talk about bike mechanics - what could be better? Photos of the Silver Ball bike meeting can be found here: Silver Ball Café Bike Meeting Photos

Someone then mentioned that there was supposedly a bike show on in Meldreth at the same time, so we all decided, when we’d finished our cups of tea, to ride there and try to get in with the bikes. This, we managed, although not without a little negotiation with the guy manning the gate!

Three bikes at the Meldreth Car & Bike Show

We then stayed at the car & bike show for a couple of hours, drinking more tea, eating cake, and talking about more bike mechanics mixed in with all aspects of old vehicles! Photos of the Car & Bike Show at Meldreth can be found here: Car & Bike Show, Meldreth Photos

I arrived home at 5pm that afternoon having had a great day out with the motorbike!

Now on to the weekend just gone…

On Saturday, Sarah and I attended the Kettering Vintage Rally & Steam Fayre at Cranford.

Motorbikes at Kettering Vintage Rally & Steam Fayre 2008

We arrived on site at around 09:30, whereupon I had my first experience of riding on damp, long grass with a passenger! Thankfully, it wasn’t difficult and the bike stayed shiny side up for the entire trip across the field! All 200 yards of it! We then settled up at the bike display area until 2pm when it was the motorbikes’ turn to ride around the arena and have their owners tell everyone about their bikes! Thankfully, this went well too:

Me in the Arena at Kettering Vintage Rally & Steam Fayre 2008 talking to the crowd about the bike!

After a grand total of 5 laps of the arena, I rode the bike back to the display area and Sarah and I then left just before 5pm after a very enjoyable, although hot due to biking gear, day! Photos of the Kettering Vintage Rally & Steam Fayre can be found here: Kettering Vintage Rally & Steam Fayre 2008 Photos

I had originally planned to go back to the rally on Sunday to (a) go through the same experience as I had on Saturday and (b) to collect my brass plaque that all exhibitors receive for being so kind as to bring along a vehicle of some sort (The plaques were only being given out on the second day at this particular rally), but on Saturday evening I heard a knock at the door - it was one of the guys from the AJS & Matchless Owners Club cursing me for being ex-directory and also inviting me to another run to the Silver Ball Café at Reed with some other AJS & Matchless owners!

I decided to phone up the organisers of the Kettering rally and see if they would be so kind as to post my brass plaque to me, and having received the answer “yes”, I decided that another day out with the AJS & Matchless people would be much more fun than another day at the rally! It’s not that the rally wasn’t enjoyable, far from it - it was great actually, but two days in a row, spending 7 hours on-site each day is quite a commitment, and although the people there are great to talk to, I could never turn down a day out with my fellow AJS & Matchless owners!

So anyway, overall, it’s been an eventful and enjoyable pair of weekends! I just want summer to stay with us now! Riding isn’t so much fun in winter, unfortunately!

I shall start with Haddenham Steam Rally…

This rally is supposedly one of the largest in the area, if not the country, with vehicles and stalls from all around the country, but sadly the Met Office had predicted “Heavy rain” from 07:00 until at least 19:00 and as a result, only around two thirds of the steam engines turned up, perhaps a third of the motorbikes, half of the other vehicles and even some of the stalls had failed to show, not to mention the noticeable lack of actual visitors/spectators etc.

However, there wasn’t a single spot of rain until around 16:30, which is when Sarah and I left anyway, so it ended up being quite a nice, albeit windy, day!

The lack of vehicles wasn’t so bad either - it just made the rally a little more “normal” as opposed to “huge” like it normally is and the lack of visitors made it possible for me to take lots of good photos without people getting in the way! Click here to view the photos of Haddenham Steam Rally 2008!

So basically, Haddenham Steam Rally still ended up being a fun day out, which is great!

Now onto the 3rd Legion Bike Show at Histon…

Overall, this turned out to be a fun day out too, but not in the way we had originally planned!

The original plan was that Sarah and I would set off on the Matchless at around 10:00 to meet up with the rest of the Fenrunners section of the AJS & Matchless Owners Club so we could all go on a nice long run before turning up en-masse at the Bike Show! The forecast for Sunday, by the way, was considerably better than the forecast for Saturday and the sky looked fine when we woke up!

So… Sarah and I set off as planned and almost half way to the meeting point we hit what felt like a torrential downpour! Being on the A14, we had to keep riding until we could pull off the dual carriageway into some shelter, which is exactly what we did at the Hand Car Wash place just past “Cambridge Services”. By the time we got there, though, the bike was drenched, Sarah’s jeans were soaked and despite me wearing full motorbike gear, I was soaked in places too! Fortunately, my efforts to waterproof the electrics on the motorbike paid off so far because it was still running fine!

By the time the rain had subsided, we had clearly missed our opportunity to meet the rest of the Fenrunners for our motorbike run, so we decided to see how the weather was along the next stretch of road and decide at the next junction whether to ride home and visit the show by car (in case the electrics weren’t as waterproof as I had hoped) or to continue on straight to the show (and arrive several hours early!). The downpour started as soon as we left the shelter, but again, being the A14, there was no turning back, so we rode the rest of the way to Bar Hill, turned around and rode straight home!

Thankfully, we made it and I must say, despite arriving home completely soaked, slightly cold, and with a 42 year old motorbike absolutely covered in water, we were still in good spirits and unbelievably glad that the motorbike survived! At least I now know it’ll be OK in the rain!

We then got changed and headed off to the biike show by car. It turns out that instead of 20 or so AJS & Matchless owners taking part in the run, there were just two, but we met them there in the end and had a relaxing and enjoyable day! Click here to view the photos of the 3rd Legion Bike Show!

Thank you again to the organisers of the run… sorry we couldn’t make it, but we did try, and it was still great to see you at the show anyway!

There were two events this weekend - my Birthday on Saturday and the AJS & Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners 2008 Motorbike run on Sunday (today), and fortunately, both have been a complete success!

My birthday on Saturday was a quiet day… but I received gifts that I like (mostly from my Wishlist!) and generally had a very nice day with Sarah!

Then, today (Sunday), Sarah and I took part in the “2008 Fenrunners Ride” organised by the AJS & Matchless Owners Club, and again - had a thoroughly good day!

The weather didn’t look too good initially, with “Thunder showers” forecast for the afternoon up to 24 hours beforehand (which would have meant we simply couldn’t go), but having woken up on the day to a foggy, but otherwise calm morning, the forecast got better as the day went on and in the end probably only 100 spots of rain hit my visor all day long!

The run consisted of two “legs”… one of 38 miles and another of 28 miles, so together with the “getting there” and “getting back”, we rode 108 miles today! Our legs ache, my arms ache, my back aches slightly, but the bike performed wonderfully and we loved it! We cruised between 45 and 50 mph all day long, and the bike didn’t shudder or backfire once! The routes can be found on my Motorcycle Routes page… they are labelled as the “Fenrunners Ride 2008″ routes, in case you are interested to see where we rode.

I have also been able to figure out that today I obtained around 62 miles per gallon, which isn’t quite as great as I had expected from a 350cc single-cylinder motorbike, but considering we were going through villages, up and down gentle slopes and I had two people on the bike, I don’t think it’s too bad. Time will tell what mpg I’m getting on average… if you are interested in keeping an eye on the mpg, take a look at my Mileage page - this will be added to as time progresses, and when I have enough values in there it’ll produce a nice graph like it does with the other vehicles!

Anyway - one of the better weekends of the year overall!

Just looking forward to next weekend now - Haddenham Steam Rally on Saturday and another AJS & Matchless Owners Club bike run ending at the 3rd Legion Bike Show in Histon on Sunday!

<…snip>
Anyway, we were in the “what is wrong with the young of today?” mode of a Daily Mail editorial, discussing the next generation this evening. In particular why the lazy hooligans are not taking IT at A Level. Some thought it was because it was too difficult, but I think it is in fact the very reverse.

Let’s face it, any kid who has grown up net-savvy is going to know more about IT than anyone they are likely to meet this side of a white-board.

Bright kids drop out of A-Level IT, or have the sense not to do it in the first place, because all they are asked to do is write essays describing different types of databases. Meantime they are sitting in front of state-of-the-art desktops they built themselves writing code that can bring down the US defence network.
<snip…>

Now, I’m not going to blow my own trumpet by saying I’m “bright” necessarily, but I have a GCSE in IT, an A Level in IT and a degree in Computer Science, and I have spent my entire working life (all 4 years of it!) with software, hardware and everything in between, so I feel that I have a certain gift when it comes to computers, but sure enough, I received grade B for GCSE IT and grade C for A Level IT. Why didn’t I get grade A for both?

I always knew the reason really, but had never realised that someone else knew the reason as well! It’s written there in Computer Weekly magazine as clearly as ever - because IT qualifications are rarely actually about IT skills in a real-world sense!

I’m sure the GCSE, A Level and degree have given me vital skills that perhaps I use subconsciously, or maybe they’ve given me a baseline for the fundamentals of computing, but during all the summer jobs I’ve had, the 2 years working on the university IT Helpdesk part-time, and the several years i’ve now worked full-time I have never knowingly used a skill that was taught to me during any of these qualifications!

Well, actually, a few of the skills that were taught to me I have used, but I already knew those subjects inside-out before they were taught to me, so they don’t count!

Basically, I think IT qualifications, at least in my day, were not that great for a career in IT - my GCSE taught word processing, spreadsheets and database design with huge emphasis on the accompanying documentation (i.e. why you chose this particular design, why the other design options aren’t good etc…) and the A Level was much of the same. The trouble was I never really got on with that - I couldn’t see the point of writing a whole load of junk about why “Options 1-4″ were rubbish, and “Option 5″ was amazing - I just wanted to go ahead and implement “Option 5″ straight away because it was obviously the best, and that’s what I did… it’s obvious why I scored so low… but should things be changed to have more emphasis on the implementation? In my opinion, YES! I agree, there are some corporations who go through a proper “plan, design, implement, evaluate” cycle complete with all the documentation, but I have never been part of one - so far in life, I have just implemented, and maybe I’m in a unique role, but to be honest, I quite like it!

The tail light isn’t fixed yet, but that’s going to be something of a yak shaving exercise unfortunately. To get to the cable I have to take off the seat. To take off the seat I have to take off the luggage rack. To take off the luggage rack, I have to take off the panniers. I know there’s only 3 steps to this, but to be honest, if i’m not planning on riding when it’s dark, i don’t need a tail light anyway, so I have until second Monday in September to fix that (when the local AJS & Matchless Owners Club meeting is happening).

Anyway… i’ve managed to rack up another 50 miles or so in the last couple of days, the first of which was a very enjoyable 20 mile run into the local countryside on Friday which you can find on the new Motorcycle Routes section of my 1966 Matchless G3 web site!

This route, by the way, (and all future routes) was (and will be) recorded with Nokia’s SportsTracker application running on my Nokia E90 mobile phone (which has a built-in GPS) - an excellent piece of software in my opinion that makes the GPS in the phone well worth having (using the GPS for navigating around the country as a “satnav”, using Nokia Maps, also makes it worth having, of course, but SportsTracker is great too). SportsTracker basically uses the GPS to record your longitude and latitude through an entire journey while also recording your speed, distance, time, altitude etc… - it can then export all that information as a KML file which you can either load into Google Earth or upload to your web site and point Google Maps at, which is exactly what i’ve done on the Motorcycle Routes page!

The second run was with Sarah, when we visited Bar Hill to see my grandparents (11 miles) and then rode back cross-country (20 miles). That was also very enjoyable!

Today, it’s raining, so i will probably not go out today!

After making our way to the Thurlow & Haverhill Steam and Country Show by car due to the rain, we ended up still having a great day! When I’m not taking the bike, I am taking the tripod, so some photos of the event can be found here: Thurlow & Haverhill Steam Rally Photos.

Since then, I have successfully made it to the AJS & Matchless Owners Club Fenrunners meeting near Cambridge (despite a few drops of rain en-route) for all local members of the club to have a look at it and good old chat…

When the meeting came to an end, however, I set off for my first ever ride in the dark (of nearly 20 miles, along the notorious A14) only to find, 50 yards down the road, that my tail light didn’t work, and neither did the brake light!

So, I set off back to the meeting place whereupon we decided it was too much to fix that night, and we simply stuck a torch in the red casing and strapped the whole lot to the luggage rack, and I then successfully made it home, thankfully!

Since then, I’ve managed to fix the brake light by soldering one of the wires back together that looked like it had been either cut or pinched - I suspect the chain caught it, given it’s previous route up to the battery! The tail light will come later, but given that I’m not riding in the dark again for at least 4 weeks, I have some time to fix that yet.

I have also been out this afternoon for a nice ride from Huntingdon to Ramsey and back, across the fens, totalling around 20 miles, round trip. It was quite a nice route actually - not many cars, lots of corners, excellent visibility - click here for the route on Google Maps!

So, as mentioned earlier, touch-wood, things seem to be ok at the moment! Let’s hope they stay that way…