Richard Hobbs

As the title implies, there’s rather a lot to talk about this time around, so I’ll try to keep each subject relatively short!

In summary, Sarah and I have been to several more steam rallies, I have been to a bike show, I queued up at 5:30am for an iPhone 4 on launch day, I was official photographer at a wedding(!), I’ve spent 2 nights sleeping on a punctured air bed, we’ve bought a caravan and “done it up” and I’m now involved with “Ada”!

First of all, Meldreth Manor Bike Show

Held at Meldreth Manor School, this is a charity event organised by the Royston and District Motorcycle Club. It’s actually the “Royston and District Motorcycle Club Annual Show”, but is known as the “Meldreth Manor Bike Show” to most people.

I wasn’t planning on going to this, mainly because it’s held on a Wednesday evening, but decided to at the last minute. I have to say, I’m very glad I did! Over 3,200 bikes turned up for those 4 hours and it was spectacular!

Photos of Meldreth Manor Bike Show 2010

Video of Meldreth Manor Bike Show 2010

Somersham Carnival

Sarah and I travelled to Somersham Carnival again this year on the back of the Matchless. The carnival was as enjoyable as ever, with a Mardi Gras theme, and guess what? I won “Best Motorcycle” again!

Photos of Somersham Carnival

iPhone 4

Some of you are going to think I’m crazy, some of you may not, but I queued up outside Lion Yard Shopping Centre (now called the Grand Arcade, I believe!) in Cambridge at 5:30am on iPhone 4 Launch Day to attempt to swap my perfectly good 32GB iPhone 3GS for a brand new 32GB iPhone 4! I was 8th in line.

Did I get my iPhone 4? Yes!

Was it worth paying out my contract with 1 year remaining? Was it worth getting up at 4:30am? Was it worth spending that day with no mobile phone because I had to activate the new one in iTunes before I could use it?

Yes! Well, I think so anyway.

Many people have spoken of reception issues, dropped calls etc… but although I can successfully make the reception indicator bars drop off by holding the phone in the wrong place, I have never suffered a single reception-based issue with the iPhone 4 whatsoever. I do have a case now because I keep dropping it, but I never had an issue for the 2 months before I got the case!

The “Retina” display is amazing, the LED camera flash is excellent as a torch, the speed increase is gratefully received, the camera is of much better quality and the 720p video recording is very good indeed! In summary, I can definitely recommend the iPhone 4 above all other iPhones! There is *no* reason not to upgrade in my opinion!

Classic & Vintage Bike Day, Cambridge Museum of Technology

Once again, at the Cambridge Museum of Technology, there was a classic and vintage bike day. It unfortunately clashed with the “World Cup” (something to do with a game called “football” apparently), but there was a very good turnout considering!

There were a few people out the back working on the main steam engine too (unrelated to the bike show, of course), trying to find which one of the boiler tubes was leaking. I must admit, I spent most of my time with the steam engine people discussing the best way to find the leaky tube! Every idea I came up with, though, had either already been attempted or was actually useless! I guess we live and learn!

Photos of Classic & Vintage Bike Day, Cambridge Museum of Technology

Video of Classic & Vintage Bike Day, Cambridge Museum of Technology

Hollowell Steam Rally & Heavy Horse Show

The Hollowell rally is always one of the best rallies of the year in my opinion, with a great variety of exhibits, ranging from giant insects, through Titan the Robot, to the “Dancing Digger” (a JCB with a very skilled driver!). Needless to say, we took the motorbike again and had a thoroughly great time for the entire 3 days! If I remember correctly, the temperature outside was very warm indeed (high 20s, anyway) and helped make the weekend great!

Photos of Hollowell Steam Rall & Heavy Horse Show

Video of Hollowell Steam Rally & Heavy Horse Show 2010

Photographing a wedding!

Another thing I’ve done since the last blog post is be official photographer at some good friends’ wedding! Now, there’s a rather large learning curve to go from photographing stationary steam engines to photographing a wedding, but now that I’ve edited all 1,840 or so photos down to the final set (after a number of weeks!) I think I pulled it off! The photos are far from “professional”, but I’ve learned a lot from the experience and, of course, thoroughly enjoyed the day, as did everyone!

And the main thing? The bride and groom like the photos, so in a way, nothing else matters! The lack of professionalism, the overexposed whites, the underexposed blacks and the bad composition mean nothing now because the people that matter like the photos!

Cambridgeshire Steam Rally

A week or two after Hollowell, the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally at Swavesey happened. This was only the second year for this rally, but with double the number of exhibits from the first year, the event was the best yet! The weather was roasting hot too, which helped bring the crowds in.

Photos of Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, Swavesey

Videos of Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, Swavesey (this year’s video not yet edited, but watch this space!)

Thurlow Steam Rally

The latest rally was the Thurlow rally. This year it clashed with the AJS & Matchless Owners Club Jampot Rally (due to the Jampot rally having been moved forward a few weeks) and although the decision of which one to attend was a difficult one, I’m very glad we decided to go to Thurlow this year! More on that later.

One thing I’d like to say about the Thurlow rally is about the atmosphere. This rally is one of the most relaxing rallies of the entire year and for that reason it is one of my favourites. The larger rallies have to be very organised, with scouts running the car park, army cadets acting as wardens to ensure safe passage of vehicles in and out of the arena, people in yellow jackets everywhere keeping the rally running smoothly, etc… but somehow Thurlow manages to operate pretty much on time, perfectly safely and everything just happens on-site with seemingly no stress whatsoever!

Don’t get me wrong though – i’m sure lots of stress goes into the organisation of the rally each year, but the impression of a lack of stress and panic during the weekend certainly makes for one of my favourite rallies of the year, so thank you for a great rally again Michael!

Photos of Thurlow Steam Rally

Videos of Thurlow Steam Rally (this year’s video not yet edited, but watch this space!)

Caravan

While at the Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, there was a problem. Our air bed developed a slow puncture. On my side. During the first night. On a very rough field.

This wasn’t the end of the world, as I can somehow survive on very little sleep if I have to(!), but I could not find the puncture anywhere! If I pumped up the mattress in the morning, by 10pm it would still be up, but 3 hours after I started laying on it, it’d be out of air completely.

At this same rally we were informed by a couple of fellow rally-goers who we know quite well now, that there was a caravan for sale near them for £200. So, the day after we got back from the rally, we headed up there to pop in for a cup of tea and to take a look at the caravan down the road. Needless to say, we drove home with the caravan in tow!

Since we bought it, we’ve actually spent more money on it than it’s worth, but in doing so we’ve made it our own, and in the 1.5 weeks that followed the initial purchase we have completely re-foamed and re-covered the seats, washed the curtains, cleaned and sterilised the inside, washed the outside, re-carpeted it and put all the hinges and door-stops on that weren’t quite screwed in properly! Our aim was to have it read for the Thurlow rally, and that we did!

I have to say, having spent a year going to rallies in a tent, upgrading to a caravan is an infinitely large step up (not literally). For a start, there’s no risk the air bed will go down leaving you sleeping on the grass! When it’s raining, you can still have a cup of tea. You don’t have to sit on a chair leaning forward cooking or boiling the kettle on a stove on the grass. You don’t have to sit in awkward folding camping chairs. The list goes on and on! In summary, upgrading to a caravan was one of the most sensible things we’ve done in relation to rallies and other multi-day events! The only disadvantage is having to do one trip to take the caravan and another to take the motorbike, but I’ll buy a van one day to solve that problem!

Finally, I’ll mention “Ada” (seen below).

As far as I know (at this early stage) Ada is a 105 year old (built in 1905) 10-ton 7 nominal horse power Fowler general purpose steam traction engine. It is owned by David and family, who were after some help with the engine. David currently looks after the maintenance and running of the engine mostly on his own and while I know very little about the mechanical side of steam engines at this stage, I’ve been wanting to get involved with a full-size steam engine for many, many years. This year, at the Thurlow rally, that opportunity came up and I took it!

My involvement with the engine will begin this winter when I’ll start meeting David at the workshop to begin the winter maintenance cycle and will then hopefully continue on through next year’s rally season and beyond! To be honest, it’s a bit of a dream come true, so thank you David for the opportunity and thank you Hugh for introducing me to David and finding me the opportunity!

Photos of “Ada” on Steam Scenes

The 2010 motorcycle ride and steam rally season has officially begun, and Sarah and I have been going to as much as we can!

AMOC Intersection Meet

The first event was the AJS & Matchless Owners Club East Anglian Intersection Meet on 18 April at the White Horse, Sible Hedingham. The weather was wondeful if I remember correctly, and I rode a total of 113 miles including getting to and from the start and end points.

There was a great turnout of perhaps 60-70 bikes, and it was great to meet so many fellow AJS & Matchless riders all in the same place!

Photos of Intersection Meet at White Horse, Sible Hedingham

Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run

The following weekend was the Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run on 25 April. The day started out wet, but had completely dried out by lunchtime and ended up being quite a nice day! This event is a procession of 400 or so classic and vintage vehicles that travel from Cottenham to various neighbouring villages one-by-one before ending up back at Cottenham in order to raise money for MAGPAS.

Photos of Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run 2010

Video of Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run 2010

Rushden Cavalcade

This was our first steam rally of the year, and being from 1-3 May, it wasn’t particularly warm! There had been some warm days by this point in the year, but none of them chose to show up at Rushden! We mostly had rain, wind and rather cold temperatures for most of the weekend, and even though the rally is for 3 days, Sarah and I got there 2 days early, so suffered the weather for 5 whole days!

Having said that though, it was still a very enjoyable rally overall. Sarah, unfortunately, had a dreadful cold and sore throat for most of it, but still enjoyed the weekend. On two of the three rally days, it was so cold that while I was in the middle of the arena with the other motorcyclists waiting to chat with the commentator/announcer I had to warm my hands up by holding the engine!

Anyway, weather aside, it was a great rally and even if you don’t like motorcycles or steam engines, I strongly suggest you have a look through the photos and watch the video because, like a lot of other rallies, they also had cars, military vehicles, trucks, a beer tent, live bands, model boats, model military scenes, model circuses, tractors, and lots more!

Photos of Rushden Cavalcade 2010

Video of Rushden Cavalcade 2010

AMOC Bike Run to The Chequers Inn, Wrestlingworth

The most recent event was another AJS & Matchless Owners Club bike run, this time to The Chequers Inn at Wrestlingworth. We were going to meet at the pub at 10:30 and along with many other motorcyclists on all sorts of bikes, have a ride around the countryside for an hour or so before ending up back at the pub for a barbeque. The weather was wonderful and the bike ride was enjoyable! The barbeque was also fantastic, so overall another enjoyable day!

British Legion Bike Show

The first event since the AJS & Matchless Owners Club Annual Jampot Rally was the Histon British Legion Bike Show. The day began with a few Fenrunners meeting up in Tesco’s car park for a scenic country ride, ending at the British Legion Club. Other than a really bad sore throat (which became much worse by the time I got home!), the day was great!

Photos of British Legion Bike Show, Histon

Haddenham Steam Rally

Our fourth camping experience was at Haddenham Steam Rally (a rally which my Grandad used to visit with the Matchless regularly). This was another enjoyable and relaxing steam rally!

Photos of Haddenham Steam Rally 2009

Videos of Haddenham Steam Rally 2009

Bedfordshire Steam Rally

This was the largest steam rally I have ever been to, by quite a margin. There were roughly 150 steam engines present on the Sunday, I believe, including almost every single crane engine in the UK!

We didn’t take the Matchless to this one, unfortunately, because I didn’t find out about the rally until it was too late to book in, so we turned up as paying visitors (although camping for 3 days as well). It’s not the cheapest rally in the world (weekend camping tickets being £70 per pitch), but it was money well spent in my opinion. Needless to say, I will try and get the bike booked in for next year though, to save paying and to exhibit it to the world, of course!

Other than the sheer size of the rally, the other reasons it’s worth paying £70 for a weekend camping ticket is that you gain free entry to The Shuttleworth Collection, Birds of Prey Centre and Swiss Garden, all of which are excellent. Well… the swiss garden is actually really quite dull, but then I’m not into plants/green things anyway.

The planes, on the other hand, are great, and if the weather’s nice, a lot of them are regularly flying throughout the weekend!

Photos of Bedfordshire Steam Rally 2009

Videos of Bedfordshire Steam Rally 2009

Kettering Vintage Steam Fayre

Our final camping expedition of the year was at the Kettering Steam Rally at Cranford. The weather was wonderful during the day, but freezing cold at night. We bought a chimenea for use at this, and other, rallies and it was great at (a) keeping us warm at night, and (b) cooking a full-english breakfast each morning!

Photos of Kettering Vintage Steam Rally 2009, Cranford

Videos of Kettering Vintage Steam Rally 2009, Cranford

Great Chesterford Steam-Up

The Great Chesterford Steam-Up is a one-day event at the beginning of October, and it’s another great day, completely free of charge, to relax with the bike and see other old vehicles and chat to lots of people.

Photos of Great Chesterford Steam-Up 2009

Remembrance Sunday at Imperial War Museum, Duxford

Possibly the last place I will be riding the Matchless to with others this year; Imperial War Museum, Duxford. You get get in free-of-charge at Duxford on a few days each year, one of them being Remembrance Sunday. The main reason for opening up for free, of course, is to allow people in to remember the fallen over the years by having a large ceremony and site-wide 2 minute’s silence.

Photos of Imperial War Museum, Duxford

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…

Before I get onto the situation with the Matchless, I’ll start with Fallout 3 (mentioned in my previous post) and my Xbox’s new blog!

First of all, Fallout 3… I’ve finished it!

In the end, it took just over 75 hours from start to finish and I’m glad to say I kept “good karma” throughout the game and instead of making my companion enter the highly radiated room in the last moments in order to activate the purifier, I went in myself, thereby paying the ultimate price for the greater good.

This is, of course, still a game, so no price was paid at all. I even borrowed the game from a friend, so literally no price has been paid at all!

I also stick with my previous statement that this is a game I strongly suggest you get hold of if you have the equipment necessary to play it!

So… onto the Xbox’s blog!

There is a site called 360voice.com which acts as a way for your Xbox 360 games console to write it’s own blog posts every day about your gaming habits, achievements gained and other aspects of gameplay.

In actual fact, the games console itself has nothing to do with writing the blog posts (as you may have worked out already!). 360voice.com simply looks at your stats each night and generates a blog post based on that information, which looks suspiciously like it was written by the Xbox itself. It’s kinda funny, and a novelty to have, so here’s a link if you want to have a read: http://360voice.gamerdna.com/tag/fishsponge

Right… now it’s time to talk about the Matchless…

After yesterday’s post, you will know that the piston rings were worn out on the motorbike and needed to be replaced, so this morning I took all the parts to Bill’s house where, after cleaning the valves, re-grinding the valve seats, putting the cylinder head back together, finding and manufacturing an alternative solution to the broken sleeve nut, removing the old piston rings and cleaning out the grooves we went to put in the new piston rings!

Upon putting in both parts of the oil control ring, we discovered it wasn’t rotating as freely as we’d like, so Bill took the ring off and we went to examine the groove a little closer.

It was at this point Bill informed me that the piston appeared to be cracked.

Upon hearing this news, I realised that this was something of a disaster. It’s good that we found it because a cracked piston could disintegrate in the cylinder, destroying large chunks of the engine in the process, but it’s bad that it was cracked because original pistons for a 1966 Matchless G3 350cc short stroke are phenominally hard to find.

I coincidentally inquired at the Spares Scheme while I was there the other day to see if they had any, and the answer was, not surprisingly, “no”!

So anyway, Bill phoned a friend of his to see if he could give any leads as to where to obtain one, and believe it or not, he had a brand new one, in a box, never used, with all the rings, the gudgeon pin a the various other bits you need to install a new piston!

This was unbelievable!

So… this kind chap is going to post the piston to me, I’ll post a cheque to him and hopefully, with a bit of luck, I’ll be up and running soon!

The one thing to note, however, is that with a brand new piston etc… it has to be run in, which involves riding 500 miles no faster than 35mph. Given that the first motorbike run of the season is at the end of March, that gives me around 4 weeks to achieve 500 miles at 35mph or slower if i’m going to make that first run!

Providing the weather holds out, the evenings aren’t too dark, and the bike goes back together as well as I hope it does, that is just achievable in my opinion. A relatively tall order, but just about achievable.

I’ll keep you updated!

The good weekend I’m referring to this time is more like “Saturday” actually, as on the Sunday, I did next to nothing! On Saturday, however, I visited the Great Chesterford Steam-Up and had another relaxing but fun day!

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!

We had two events planned for this weekend – Haddenham Steam Rally on Saturday (which I wasn’t taking the Matchless to) and the 3rd Legion Bike Show on Sunday (which I was taking the Matchless to). Both events took place and we attended both of them. However, neither day ended up being quite as we had expected (and hoped)!

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!

Well, after taking the cylinder head off twice, replacing the exhaust valve and valve guide, and by correcting the badly-cut valve seat and face, the bike does now appear to be working… touch-wood!

I managed 50 miles or so yesterday – 20 miles to work in the morning, 20 miles to my parents house in the evening, and 10 miles home after that. It was great

Only thing is… i was gearing up for the Thurlow & Haverhill Steam & Country Show, but it seems there’s a possibility of rain, which means i will have to leave the bike at home and go by car

How disappointing…