It seems I’ve been waiting all winter for the late summer nights so I can take my motorcycle out on the country roads of Oxfordshire for some aimless riding. 

An aimless ride is so much more superior to a daily commute.  Although I much prefer commuting on the bike instead of a car, the humdrum of the daily route causes your mind to wander and think about something outside of the here and now–for me, it is usually work.  But an aimless ride– a ride where the route is determined at junctions by looking in all directions and seeing which one look most promising– keeps you in the moment.  You are constantly admiring new scenery and looking for new pot holes.  You don’t have the luxury of mentally wandering off.

Monday night, I was able to watch the sunset from the WWI monument near Wooley.  Here’s a pic.

I’ve been riding the motorcycle for about six weeks now. It finally dawned on me the other day that bikers nod to each other. All this time, I hadn’t noticed. I guess I was too focused on watching the road for occasional dead squirrels, deer, or foxes to even look at bikers going in the opposite direction.

This feels kind of cool. I’m in the club. I can nod to the other bikers and they nod back. Well, it’s not that easy–I can’t just give a big smile and nod like Dopey from the seven dwarfs. I have to give a stony-faced, slow, tough-guy nod as I pass other bikers.

You know who else always nod or wave to each other when they pass? Bus drivers. Whenever I take the bus, I notice the driver always waves at the driver of the bus coming the opposite direction. I always wonder if they know each other. Have they ever attempted a moving high five? I always assumed that these drivers know each other because they see each other around the depot.

Imagine being a bus driver and passing the same bus with the same driver every day several times a day. They must get sick of each other, really. Maybe every time they pass, they get a thought like “I’ll have to remember to tell him I like his new haircut” and then keep having the same thought every time they pass the other driver, then forget all about it when they get to the depot. Anyway, it’s not that way with bikers. Bikers don’t all know each other and we (my new clique) always nod to each other.

The biking community is really very helpful. A few weeks ago when I dropped my bike, a fellow biker stopped to help me out when I had trouble getting the engine started after using the emergency cut-off switch.

The bike is great, by the way. I rode up the A34 this evening and was surprised to see that I had the bike at over 90mph. Scary. I didn’t think I was going so fast. I usually stick to the country roads on my way in to work. It’s always nice to take the bike for a quick tour around Newbury at lunchtime since there are so many places for a bike to park. I’m having a lot of fun.

I’m in a new contract now for a small company about a forty-five minutes away. I’m primarily doing consulting on this one. I’m helping this company set up a distributed development environment with proper source code repositories and collaboration systems. I’m also doing some interface design. It’s a lot of fun, even without the coding.

The best part about the new job is that it gives me the oportunity to ride my motorcycle into work. I’ve had the bike for about a month now and love it. It’s a Honda CBF600. It can do 120mph easy (the guy at the dealership told me). I got it up to about 85 on a very straight and quiet rode and freeked myself out by going too fast. I’m not quite there yet. I’m also not at that “weaving though traffic” stage.

The most embarassing moment I’ve had so far with the new bike was coming up to a roundabout with an uneven road. When I put my foot down, I lost my balance and dropped the bike. I got my leg out from under it before it fell. When I tried to lift it, I grabbed it as if I would grab my bicycle—by the handlebars. I couldn’t lift it no matter how hard I tried. The guy in the car behind me (with a growing queue of traffic behind him) got out of his car and with a big smile on his face put one hand on the rear seat of the bike and one hand on the handlebars and lifted it easy. Now I know– I need to lift it like I’m lifting a heavy box and not like I’m lifting a bicycle. I bent the clutch and the gear shift, but no other damage was done. I was able to bend the gear shift back myself by taking it off and hammering it out and replaced the clutch for about £10. So, a learning experience. That bike is heavy.

Here’s a picture.

When I moved to the UK in 1998, I had been driving for almost ten years. Still, I found getting my UK license to be tremendously difficult. The pass rate is pretty low for the practical exam (somewhere around 50%) and I seemed to have a lot of problems with habits I picked up while driving in the States. It costs about £48 (about $70) to take an exam and it usually involved a lengthy waiting list to get an exam scheduled. I took the test 7 times before I passed. It took me nearly two years to do it. The upside is that my UK license doesn’t expire until I’m 70 years old.

So, with all the trouble I had with the car driving license, I was reluctant to try to get a motorcycle license. The test is similar to driving a car, but with the added worry of controlling the 500cc motorcycle while being alert for traffic. This time, I went with professional instruction and took the motorcycle course offered by Riding In Action in Abingdon. I passed the motorcycle test last Friday on my first try.

I highly recommend Riding in Action if you are considering getting into riding.

I had a 250cc Honda Interceptor back when we lived in Hawaii (about twelve years ago), but was astonished how much I had forgotten about riding a proper motorcycle. I loved being able to ride around Oahu on my bike and it definitely felt a lot freer than sitting in a car. I had one accident where I did considerable damage to the bike and scared myself to death, but really enjoyed all the other riding I was able to do.

I started out the weeklong course worried that I wouldn’t be able to learn quickly enough. Now, I have the license and am looking for a decent (but not flashy) second-hand motorcycle.

I look forward to getting back out on the road.