Following a week of motorcycle practice on Project Gotham Racing 4 on the Xbox360 I was ready for some fast riding this weekend. I just hoped I wouldn’t crash as often in real life as I did on the Xbox 360 game. Don’t worry, I’m old enough to know the driving depicted in a computer game bears no resemblance to what you do in real life, it was safe fun and anyway those crashes looked painful on the Xbox360 how the avatar rider gets back on so quickly amazes me

So it was Saturday morning, just about, when big fat gay Al arrived on his (bum) Bandit, looking a bit hot after the motorway run up to Milton Keynes. A cool drink and a bit of chat, and some Xbox antics and he was refreshed enough to get on the bike again. I phoned a mate of mine in the area to see if he was coming out to play on his Virago, but he had other stuff to do, so it’s just me and Al.

We left my house and went North to the A5 and towards Towcester. Maybe the PGR4 sessions had some affect, as I pulled between the cars at the roundabout then outdragged them from the lights across to the A5 using the torque of the Z750 twins engine and shifting up gears low in the rev range to keep it pulling.

Then we settled for a steady ride to a fuel stop at Potterspury (sorry to the 2 men and a dog in that town if it’s mis-spelt ) I noticed the petrol station now has mortgage applications available for those filling anything bigger than a Mini. I think they will soon give the option of having your wages paid directly to the petrol companies if it goes up any more.

Anyway enough of the social comment and back to the ride out, we trickled through Towcester and turned left towards Silverstone on the A43. Along the A43 I was poodling at a steady 70 on the Kawasaki and Al was hanging back, then catching up on the Suzuki Bandit to keep himself amused, he is easily amused bless him.

Suddenly a Yellow Lotus passed on the outside, and Al was out there behind it. The driver of the Lotus wasn’t the playful type, and pulled out of the way to let Al pass. The chunky one pulled the Bandit back in in front of me, and shrugged his shoulders.

A few miles down the Dual carriageway, and the vibration from the twin was numbing my fingers. It was just under 5000 rpm to hold around 70 and that seems to be a place where the Z750 B1 engine finds most vibrations. At the first Brackley roundabout, I turned off towards Buckingham and some smaller roads. It turned out to be just right, 50mph speed limits, which meant cruising nicely around the bends for the old twin.

For all its quirks the Z750 twin does ride nicely around the smaller roads, although nowhere near the handling of a modern bike it still inspires enough confidence for Al to comment later on how much I was leaning the bike now compared to my earlier riding when I first got the Kawasaki.

Soon we were through Buckingham, and Al hadn’t held up too many tractors on his Bandit through the country lanes . We hit the A422 back towards Milton Keynes and got behind a line of traffic following an old horsebox. As soon as I had enough clear vision to see ahead of the traffic, I shifted down and opened the throttle past several cars, it felt good that a 30 year old bike could nip through as quick as it did. Next clear line of view, and we were past the horsebox.

There was a flash of red, and a lot of exhaust noise and a Bandit carrying what looked like a herd of buffalo but was only one man really (the effect would have been worse had he worn leathers) came past. After all the overtaking to get to the front he led us into the petrol station for a fill up. I watched as horsebox and all the cars passed by us again as we sat in the garage.

Then it was a quick blast home, and time to fire up the barbecue. A pleasant couple of hours spent talking about bikes, the preceding rideout, and eating too much red meat and it was time for Al to leave. I don’t know how he manged to get back on the Bandit after filling the generous tank on the front of his body, but he did and rode off back to Maidenhead.

So ended another fun day of riding, eating and talking crap. Hope to do it all again soon.

Just a P.S. before I go. I recently finished co-writing an e-book on classic motorcycle restoration. Find out more at a new site http://www.classic-motorcycle-restoration.com , and if you know people interested in motorcycle restoration join as an affiliate, give them your link and make 60% of any sales you make.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 8:23 am and is filed under Ride Outs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.