What a disaster!
Well… yesterday was the day of the first classic motorcycle run of the year for the Fenrunners section of the AJS & Matchless Owners Club and I, of course, attended!
The weather was pretty awful, the forecast was even worse and it wasn’t very warm either, but nevertheless a few dedicated club members turned up for the run at the Tesco store just north of Cambridge.
The run was basically from the Tesco store to Mildenhall, for a warm pub lunch and then home (obviously via some convoluted route that actually makes the run worth doing!), but sadly, I didn’t quite make it that far…
In total, including the journey from my house to Tesco, 46 miles were planned there, and probably another 46 miles or so home again, totalling 92 miles for the entire day. However, all in all, I rode a grand total of only 39 miles!
As you will know from reading the rest of my blog (assuming you actually do, of course!), my own bike is still being put through the 35mph run-in period having had a new piston and rings, so I’m currently attending club runs on a fellow club member’s (Peter’s) bike which he has very kindly lent me – a 1955 AJS… not sure of the model, but it’s also a 350cc heavyweight like my own bike, just 11 years older. Very good condition too, I might add!
Anyway, as you can see from the map below (click to enlarge), the plan was to meet up with a couple of local club members in Sainsbury’s car park in Huntingdon (at point A), to then ride to the starting point of the run (at point B), and then to ride the route shown to Mildenhall (at point D). However, frustratingly, I couldn’t go any further once I reached point C! So close, and yet so far…
Point C (the layby where I stopped) can be seen below:
As you can see, it’s in the middle of nowhere!
As we were riding along this long straight road (from bottom to top as you look at the above photo), there was a horrendous sidewind which was gusting a lot. It wasn’t gusting to the point where it was dangerous, and we were nowhere near being blown into the oncoming lane, but it was certainly significant. It was also raining. It was roughly at this point I started to look forward to the warm pub, the hot pub lunch and the opportunity to dry off slightly! Maybe that was my mistake…
With a sidewind, as any motorcyclist will know, it can feel a bit like you are riding on jelly, you are gently swept from side to side as the wind comes and goes and as soon as any gust disappears, you find you are still steering into it slightly, so suddenly move the into the gust and have to compensate again by steering in the other direction. It’s pretty much the same as in a car, but you feel it a lot more on a bike!
Anyway, with all this happening, and the rain coming down, albeit lightly, I noticed that even when the gusts stopped, it still felt a little like I was being blown around. It wasn’t until I noticed this happening a couple of times (in the space of 15 seconds or so) that I realised that if I really was being blown around, it was only happening at the back of the bike!
It was at this point I decided I ought to pull over and see what was going on – was the wheel coming loose? Was something else wrong? Was it really just the wind?
Well, it turns out I had a puncture in the rear tyre, caused by a metal fencing staple!
So, that was it – the run was over! 3 or 4 other club members pulled over too, to see if everything was OK, and I must thank those people again for doing so! 
Now, canisters of compressed air mixed with liquid rubber-like stuff exist which can be squirted into the valve to both pump up the tyre and seal the puncture, but (a) they don’t always work, and (b) nobody had one anyway, so that clearly wasn’t an option!
I decided, at that point, I ought to find out if Peter’s insurance (on which I am a named driver) had breakdown cover. I spent 30 minutes or so phoning 118118 and all the numbers they gave me, to no avail, and eventually phoned up a work colleague who looked up the number online for me! So much for 118118! It turns out that Peter’s insurance does have breakdown cover, and so 45 minutes later, the truck arrived and took me and the bike home!
By the time the breakdown truck arrived though, I had then been stood in the windy layby for 1hr, 15 mins, 45 minutes of that was spent with Neville and Mark from the club, so a big thank you to them! During that time, we had even stronger wind, more rain, hailstones twice and countless cars zooming past spraying us all with dirt and water! The photo of this location, at that time, can be seen here:
I must admit, I’ve brightened up that photo a bit… it almost looks bright in the above photo, but believe me – it wasn’t!
And here is the bike being loaded up onto the truck having been carefully strapped to the loading device:
Once I got home, there had been half a warm turkey delivered from Sarah’s parents (Sarah had been at home during this short trip), which Sarah kindly made into a sandwich (as I never made it to the pub and really was getting kinda hungry by this point!) and later on that afternoon Peter phoned me to say he was more than happy to sort out the puncture, as it’s his bike and therefore his problem, and as much as I disputed the latter, he wouldn’t back down, so he later turned up with his trailer and picked up the bike. So, thank you to Peter too, not only for lending me his 54 year old bike, but for also offering to repair the puncture before letting me have the bike back yet again!
Hopefully I’ll have beter luck on the next run…
