Issue 130 : August - September 2003
Farmyard 03
Magna Carta
Road Star Warrior
India by Enfield
H-D 100th in Spain
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Farmyard 03
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España
'Are you not uncomfortable in that gear ?' I asked Dave French, who, curiously, is Irish. 'No no I'm fine just fine,' he replied in that calm Celtic brogue with the characteristic half smile that recognises he is being got at. We set off, yours truly in paper thin cotton cargo pants with the zippered vents undone and a lumberjack shirt secured with two buttons. I don't hold with this dress to crash philosophy and I like to horrify serious motorcyclists like Dave by the neglect of contemporary advice. Five miles out of town and the sky, which had turned ominously black, emptied on us. Dave and the Brigadier pulled over beneath a bridge as the rain bounced on the road. 'Oi taught you'd be after stopping' commented Dave, that same smile creasing his smug face. I pulled on some nylon waterproofs as he stood there in his thermal, abrasion resistant waterproof, nuclear- free CE approved armour, while the Brigadier rolled a ciggie. An hour later we were in sunshine on a dry road heading into the most glorious mountain scenery. Waterproofs and jacket were history as we chicaned around tight hairpins through forested inclines below which sparkling rivers rollocked along their rocky courses. This wasn't high speed stuff, mostly 30-40mph in third gear, no braking for bends, just rolling on and off the throttle and feeling the 1450cc motor casually dismiss steep inclines as it lunged forward with a beefy unhurried confidence. The sense of total control and pure pleasure was unparallelled in my experience; I don't think I had ever enjoyed motorcycling so much in my life. The number from the Easy Rider soundtrack 'Wasn't Born To Follow' danced through my brain as we rumbled along the river bank of the Rio Elbe through the Picos mountains. Twisting the throttle I lurched forward ahead of the Brigadier and pulled over into a dusty layby. 'Time to go swimming' I announced. The shock of diving into the foaming pool of a mountain river when you are sticky with sweat is something everyone should experience. I'd always wanted to do just that and you should always do the things you promise yourself you'd do even if you think it is the last thing you'll ever do.
Now I have never been able to understand how it is that people drown in small rivers when the banks are never more than a dozen yards away - until now. Once your feet are off the bottom and the current has you, there's really not much you can do, you just go bobbing along in the flow rather like Redford and Newman in the memorable 'I can't swim!' incident from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I fetched up against a large rock with a fair wallop and clung to it like a limpet as the torrent foamed over me. This is being alive! Ten minutes later, back at the bikes I notice that Dave is actually ditching his cordura strides beneath which he is wearing thick leather jeans! 'Steady on Dave, the temperature hasn't even hit 100 yet,' I cautioned.
Out of the mountains now we passed through a series of small dusty towns. Old people had gathered on benches and crumbling stone walls to welcome us. Lined faces studied the posse of gringos as knarled hands gripped walking sticks and deep set eyes tracked our progress like swivelling lasers. The Brigadier, who was leading, pulled over onto level ground before a derelict church and cut his engine. We dismounted wordlessly as he sat down to roll a cigarette beneath the shade of an Acacia tree while we dusted ourselves down. A commotion at the top of the bell tower betrayed the habitation of cranes perched aboard an untidy nest of sticks impossibly balanced on the sandy brickwork and I took out my new toy, a Cannon digital SLR, to record the scene. With a zoom lens fitted I homed in on a huge bird just as it spread its wings and studied the results in the screen on the back of the camera.  'I wonder if anyone lives here' ventured the Brigadier, scanning the jumble of dilapidated dwellings with collapsing roofs and bleached timber doors. Across the empty square of the town a curtain twitched shut and we all waited anxiously for the emergence of a rifle barrel between the shutters and the solitary shot that would prune our group by a third. The Brigadier wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of a hand and rolled another cigarette. 'I see no need for all this smoking,' I said self righteously. The reply was a long time coming, all energetic effort was discouraged by the heat that seemed more onerous now we were stopped. Dave interrupted the silence by scratching at the dust with a stick as the cranes settled themselves on their throne and a heavy bell shifted minutely on its rotten timbers under the influence of a light breeze. 'Shut your face.' muttered the Brigadier, blowing smoke into the baking afternoon air and pocketing his lighter. Dave grinned wordlessly. Out on the road the silence was broken by the passage of truck that wound around the bend, shifted gear and disappeared into the heat haze like a rolling phantom.
A couple of hours later we were filling up at a petrol station, for about half the cost of fuel at UK pumps incidentally, when the Brigadier noticed a hotel standing alone by the roadside.
It was late afternoon and we
didn't want to be hunting around after dark for somewhere to stay.
The truth is you can go a long way in Spain and find nowhere to stay. A fifty mile stretch without a single hotel is not uncommon. I was outnumbered but obstinate and we carried on for a bit before settling on a place with large clean cheap rooms (£15 a night) but a deeply unsavoury bar. I had a shower and joined the Brig and Dave French who was still Irish and drinking beer. High volume was erupting from a large TV screen while unpleasant children squawked and threw toys around on a floor dense with food wrappers, while a moron played the world's loudest fruit machine paying out jackpots in castanets every five minutes.
Barcelona
With the Stones playing the Olympic stadium it was easy to see why H-D picked this venue for their big do of the year though holding giant rallies in the middle of big cities does have its drawbacks. The grid streetplan should have made navigation simple which invites the question, why did it take me 3 whole hours to get from the stadium to my hotel near the airport, when it had only taken 15 minutes to ride down the same morning? Why was every single person I asked directions of doing a Faulty Towers Manuel impersonation ? These questions can join the catalogue of imponderables to which we may add, why did the bike with paint job inspired by a classical musician not take an award at the ride in show. I may be able to answer this one however. It was because there is not a specific paint category and the standard of some of the bikes was staggering. Take this insane machine here with its slightly dangerous looking jocky. Charlie took a First in the pro build class while his mate David Lothian took second and who could argue with the judge's choice. I had a chat with them afterward and learned that they'd ridden these bikes from their home near Glasgow and were later going to Faro on them where they no doubt collected more awards. Do you sometimes get the feeling that some people's lives are devoted to the purpose of astonishing the rest of the mortal world? In tune with this principle is Craig Jones whose antics were described in the last issue under the noooo natural heading. For Barcelona he added a V Rod burnout to his repertoire and set fire unintentionally to a Buell. All good harmless fun though the antics make the rest of us feel a bit inadequate in the bike handling department. There was also a brief sprint from a top fuel drag bike that made a lot of noise for the few seconds in which it burnt enough fuel to heat Kew's greenhouses for a winter. All good stuff. The exhibition of company memorabilia reflected a good deal of effort with huge hoardings depicting characters from the past together with clothing and models through the ages. It was no bad thing getting in to the huge air conditioned hall where this was held as outside on the main concourse the heat was stifling. I heard 40c which I reckon is around 100 degrees in English and with a humidity level that had shirts soaked in minutes.
I reduced the nation's ice cream stocks by a fair factor but steered clear of the beer which was premium priced to quote the contemporary euphemism. Food, with the exception of on-site snacks, was largely left to the city of Barcelona to provide, hence the high patronage of pavement restaurants that I encountered during my early morning search for the lost hotel. I didn't get to see the Stones sadly which was a shame as it's reassuring to encounter rockstars older than oneself and they are my all time favourite band but I couldn't swing it to take pictures from the pit and I don't do crowds. Never mind. Quill turned out a slightly altered set of soft Celtic flavoured rock classics with their usual wild enthusiasm that always goes down well. All said and done, leaving aside the avant garde music snobs most people want to hear familiar numbers with strong melodies and Quill . deliver, launching with a rip roarin' God's gonna buy you a satellite and carrying on in similar vein. I was impressed with the Stranglers too, much more melody than I had remembered, Golden Brown, Always the Sun etc in fact I preferred them to headline band The Pretenders . Chrissie Hind seemed to think that since she was performing for bikers a string of completely unnecessary 'F' words would enhance her cred as a cool chic. If she'd looked at the crowd more closely she'd have noticed that there weren't many faces sporting acne, and not too many people in the single figure IQ bracket. This might have explained the muted expression of enthusiasm for taking her up on her explicit invitation to share carnal knowledge with her that was largely met with bemusement. She seemed to think she was performing for oafs but never mind she plays a mean guitar. The 100th Anniversary bashes have been a little different from the regular HOG rallies, some elements have been added to the usual recipe and some extracted and comments have reflected that. I liked the historical stuff but missed the variety of food, and the fashion show as I'm a bit sad that way. Thinking back to my early days of riding Harleys which began in 81, the transformation is something quite astonishing. If there has ever been a turn around in company fortunes like this I haven't heard of it. Critics think it's all hype but hype can't convince people to keep riding something that shakes their spine to pieces and leaves them stranded half way across Europe. The fact is that the bikes these days are almost unrecognisable from the days of the Shovelhead engine and Willie G and team really do have something to celebrate. On our way back in convoy with two Harleys and a Vstrom. I asked Dave when he was going to buy a Milwaukee Vee.
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The Editor heads South to record the Harley-Davidson 100th bash in Europe - a bitchin' good time
I've no idea how many people were at Harley-Davidson's 100th birthday bash in Barcelona but if you'd ridden down th main drag full of pavement restaurants at 2 in the morning you could have been forgiven for thinking it was every second person.