The Longest Kneedown

No, this isn’t a blog about Tulisa getting slapped in the face with a cock in her sex video – this is about the beatiful exhileration that is scraping your knee on a bike.

Normally, all you get is a split second of scraping as you take the corner, and then you’re back up again. If this was your first touchdown at this point you’ll be marvelling at just how LOUD the scraping of plastic on tarmac can be.

Living close to a very unique section of road – The Redditch Cloverleaf – means that bikers in this part of the world get to experience this near-constant radius collection of four left hand bends, which are technically national speed limit (70mph). It’s probably thanks to this that I am far more proficiant at scraping my left knee in corners than my right. Accross the rest of the UK you’ll find most bikers prefer scraping their right knee, mainly due to practise on islands.

I thought I’d upload an example of what is probably my longest kneedown, having spoken about my slowest, fastest, and just doing it in general previously:

Is there anywhere else that can provide longer knee-scraping antics? I thought maybe Gerrards at Mallory Park – but although this corner may be longer, you go a lot faster through it, so probably get through the corner quicker overall.

What’s the longest you’ve done it for?

Did you think Tulisas pink tracksuit was sexy?

Getting Into A Huge Car Crash

This morning on my commute I very nearly totalled my car in a nasty way.

The dual carriageway from Bromsgrove to Redditch is full of braindead, selfish morons on the best of days. When they’re not driving at 50mph on one of the safest 70mph roads in existence, they’re sat in the overtaking lane refusing to move back to the left hand lane – adn sometimes they’re doing both of these together! Either way, they’re too busy doing fuck-knows-what to be aware of anybody around them or to LOOK before doing stupid stuff.

Crashes are frequent, although I’ve never witnessed one so have no idea just how they manage it.

Today I very nearly found out first hand…

At least one other morning this week I passed some big yellow steel heavy plant vehicle thingy, which was crawling along in the left hand lane doing, by my estimation, less than 20mph.

Of course, all the idiots don’t notice this until the last second, and everyone slams on their brakes and pulls quickly out into the overtaking lane without any thought for car travelling at high speed who have the right of way in that lane. I thought it looked very dangerous and wondered if it’s even legal to have something going that much slower without a Police escort or something?

Well this morning I was in that overtaking lane taking a somewhat treacherous left hand bend (past the infamous Cloverleaf junction, funnily enough) doing at least 70mph when brake lights of cars ahead started coming on.

Thanks to the kind of observation skills you only get from years of riding motorbikes, I saw this all nice and early and was already quite hard on the brakes expecting the couple of cars behind The Yellow Thing to swerve around it and cut me up.

The car immediatly behind The Yellow Thing as I approached seemed to have braked down to the same speed of The Yellow Thing (i.e. under 20mph) as I closed on them still on the brakes just in case… and then the retarded motherfucker pulled straight out in front of me, even though I could see he had a good few car-lengths gap to The Yellow Thing.

I slammed on the brakes still mid-corner as hard as I could, locking up as I tried to scrub off around 30-50mph in the very short distance he’d left me with, with the car slewing sideways on the brakes.

I still had control of the car even at this jaunty angle, but I remember thinking “There is absolutely nothing more I can do here” as I had to wait to see if I’d stop in time or I’d plough into the back of the car…

Thankfully, the Cock-Knuckle in the car then pulled back into the left hand lane, as he was blatantly doing less than The Yellow Thing even though he’d pulled out(!!?!), and I got off the brakes and got myself pointing in the right direction again.

Looking over at Cock-Knuckle as I passed, he did that thing where they stare directly ahead and don’t even dare to acknowledge your existence. THAT makes me want to rip their fucking throats out!

It’s the only time so far I’ve come close to crashing a car, and I have to say I’m accrediting that to the advanced driving I did as soon as I passed my test only a year and a half ago. I’m pretty happy sliding a car and getting it out of shape, and if I wasn’t then I think that one would have been me done-for! If you haven’t done it already GET YOURSELF BOOKED ONTO A SKID CONTROL COURSE!!! I can’t say it enough, because it will save your life!

Spending some time in a kart is also excellent practice and you can get it out of shape fairly safely so you get used to controling it.

As ever, it’s Sods Law that this was the one day I didn’t have the bloody camera running in the car – so unfortunately I can’t upload the video of it all. Hopefully I won’t ever get to repeat it, so you never will see it!

Afterwards, I thought about what would have happened had I been on the bike as I’d considered doing? Would I have been going faster? Could I have stopped as quickly without losing the front end (and bouncing over curbs into the oncoming traffic)?

Would I have tried going for the gap between Cock-Knuckle and The Yellow Thing and been taken out as Cock-Knuckle pulled back in?

What if someone had been behind me, if I’d been on either vehicle?

One thing I do know is that The Yellow Thing is going to cause a major accident…

Bassetts Pole & The Council Shutting Down Bike Meets

I saw through a friends Facebook status last night that the Police were stopping all bikers from stopping at Bassetts Pole for the huge Tuesday night bike meet that’s been going on for decades.

There is a pub carpark and a McDonalds where everyone parks, and it seems that the pub is trying to take out an injunction to stop any bikes using their car park.

Whilst I can see their issue with having their car park crammed full with hundreds of bikes for one night a week – are they missing the point that IT’S CRAMMED FULL OF HUNDREDS OF BIKES FOR ONE NIGHT A WEEK?  I bet you anything that even if hardly any of them go into the pub itself it will still be by far their most profitable night of the week!

Bikers like to have a drink when they stop off, and we all know that a few hundred pints of shandy are the best any pub can hope to sell for a profit!  If they’re worried that they’re losing out on selling food (which has a much lower profit margin) someone needs to smack them in the face and point out what they’re GAINING for the drinks they sell!  Plus with a fucking McDonalds literally next door they can hardly blame a drop in food sales on bikers blocking their customers, can they?!

And that’s all assuming none of the thousands of fat-assed bikers are going to eat any of the pubs food at all (about as likely as getting kicked in the head by a quadriplegic dwarf).

And can anyone actually get an injunction in place to ban ‘bikers’?  Surely that shit went out back in the 60s?  What next?  Ban the blacks and jews, you fucking idiots?

Although you have to be pretty retarded to be anti-biker these days (it’s on an even lower level of intelligence than racism), I was once in a group out on our bikes who a pub refused to serve a meal to.  We went back home, got a load more mates and went back there without the leathers and bikes and successfully ordered an ungodly amount of food.  When it arrived, we informed then that we’d just remembered we were bikers, and walked the fuck out without touching a thing.

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the Bassetts Pole meeting, because there is always a huge oppressive Police presence and to be honest the ride to and from there is a bit crap, but if we don’t fight against stuff like this you can bet other bike meets will get killed.

Thousands of people would flock to Stratford-Upon-Avon waterfront every Sunday to have a look at all the bikes parked there.  The local businesses must have been raking it in.

But then the Council stepped in and banned all bike parking there, creating a bike-specific park outside the centre where nobody would go, making the waterfront area for disabled parking only, and in the process completely fucking missing the whole point.  And pissing everyone off.

But then the local council doesn’t have to make a profit, does it?  They get paid either way…

So we all need to fight this one, and show the twats in charge of this idiocy that we’re not going to stand for it – especially if their only ‘reason’ is to discriminate against anyone who might fall under the name of ‘Biker’.

Jamie Oliver: Stop Drizzling Everything In Olive Oil!!!

I noticed it a good while back now, but the spazzy chef seems to be getting even worse as time goes by!

After every single fucking thing this Nobber puts in a dish or on a plate:

“And we’ll just drizzle that in olive oil”

Do you drink bottles of the stuff, you filthy twat?

He’s on his ’30 Minute Meals’ program now cooking vegetable Rogan Josh curry.

He put olive oil on:

• The pan.
• The pickle.
• The salad.
• The chapattis.
• The yoghurt.
• Even on the boiling fucking rice!

I shit you not! This olive oil addicted rubber-head even poured fucking olive oil into the water he was boiling the rice in!  How can it be to keep it moist when the bastard stuff is already in a bowl of smegging WATER?!?

Surely that qualifies you as having a serious problem?

This utter cunt even drinks his cups of tea or glasses of water drizzled in olive oil!

I know some restaurants have a couple of bottles of olive oil on the table, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually use it? Do people drizzle shit in olive oil? Do people even still USE olive oil to cook stuff? I discovered peanut oil a few years ago and haven’t looked back since – not that I put that on my corn flakes, either – unlike that disgusting olive-perve Jamie Oliver.

Fuck off with your olive oil, you filthy drizzling cunt!

The Real Thrill Of Riding A Sportsbike

When you tell people you own a superbike, the main thing they think is that you go really fast.

Inevitably, as a friend asked me the other day, they will ask what speed you’ve done on it.

I answered him saying I’d seen 190mph on the clocks.  The reactions from others listening in ranged from impressed to disgusted to the usual mutterings about killing yourself.

Sure – it’s impressive that I’m in the 300kmph Club, and that puts me in with a select few, but answering the question and thinking about actually doing it, I realised something.

Not only is it pretty damned easy to do 190mph (ok, so maybe it takes some balls but essentially anyone can sit there and crack the throttle open), but there wasn’t much drama involved, and other than the ability to say I’ve done it… meh!  It’s not much fun, to be honest!

The REAL thrill I get from riding bikes is from banking the bugger over to obscene lean angles through the corners, and from the colossal acceleration!

Getting your knee down is part of the cornering experience, and I am a bit of a knee-down junkie who needs a fix every so often!  What most people don’t understand is that you CAN get your knee down at slow speeds!  All you have to do is hang off the bike and tighten your line through the corner, then lean that baby over until the glorious sound of plastic on tarmac sounds over the engine!

It’s a pretty unique view of the world when you’re hanging off the side of a sportsbike.  Your body makes up a third of the total weight of you and the bike, so to do it well and safely you have to gain an intimate and instinctive understanding of body positioning, balance and how bikes go around corners.

A lot of people have heard talk of ‘countersteering’ and see it as the be-all end-all of cornering.  It’s not.  EVERY vehicle that has two inline wheels HAS to use countersteering otherwise it wouldn’t turn at anything over walking pace!  This includes bicycles and Harley Davidsons – whether you realise you’re doing it or not!

Accelerating on a bike also takes more skill than you might think.  If you open the throttle on most sportsbikes you’ll either spin up the back wheel and launch yourself to the moon in a highside, or the front wheel will come up and smack you on the back of the head.

When you get it right, it’s awesome!  I did a video to time what my bike would do from a standing start, and found I can do 0-60mph in 2.5 seconds after only a few attempts!

You simply won’t get that performance from a car. People talk about how fast their car is when it does that speed in 6 seconds – but I’d be getting bored long before then!

Combine the two, like at Rockingham International and I can vividly recall pinning the throttle open whilst scraping my knee on the floor all the way to 120mph+!

Now THAT is a buzz!

Car Drivers Still Piss Me Off

Even though I’ve now had cars for almost 2 years, I still class myself more as a biker.  In fact, I still sometimes walk to the wrong car door to get in, then have to fake a tyre inspection or something before walking around to the correct side.

Being technically a ‘car driver’ myself, there are still things that car drivers do that piss me off.

Is it just me, or does nobody care anymore about hitting your car, or driving into things?

Every time I park outside a supermarket, I seem to come back to some new fucking dent or scrape on my car.  No notes from the culprit, no witnesses, just the sign of yet another selfish cunt who shouldn’t be on the roads in the first place.

People used to stop and admit stuff like that, didn’t they?  I guess that was the days before some minor claim on the insurance would cost hundreds on top of your policy for the next 5 years…

Hence, everyone seems to be driving around in cars with dents adn scrapes all over them, because it’s just not worth repairing anything.  It’s not quite as bad as places like Prague, where every car seems to have lost a fight with a tram, but we’re getting there.

It still sends me fucking apeshit to see drivers approaching islands staring off to the right waiting for gaps in traffic.

WHY?

You can’t fucking go anywhere if there’s a car in front of you!  What if the car doesn’t move?  You will run into the back of it and earn my scorn.

There is NEVER an excuse to do this!  Fucking look where you’re going until yur path is clear, THEN look to see if you can join the island.  It’s not brain surgery, but you dumbass cunts make it seem like it’s impossible!

And speaking of dumbass cunts there are STILL huge numbers of them chatting away on the phone whilst driving!  They KNOW they’ll get points and a fine if they get caught, so WTF are they doing?!

I guess YOU are perfectly ok to talk and drive, are you?  Because you’re in a white van?  No – because you’re a thick cunting great lummox who deserves to be shot in the face.

And just as bad, the Nob-Nuts who do 40mph for miles in a 60mph zone, then carry on doing 40 when the road goes through a 30 zone, then STILL do 40 when it goes back to a 60 again!!!

FFS if its too dangerous to do ‘high’ speeds on a suitable road what the fuck are you doing speeding through the unsuitable bits?!??!?

Loads of 60mph zones have been dropped to 40mph ‘for safety’ (i.e. no fucking reason at all), so I have to admit that cheapens the reason for those limits.  How can we respect that?  But 30mph zones are generally there to stop you killing yourself or school children/puppies/old biddies.  So you have to respect them and slow the fuck down!

And if you can’t reach 60mph in a designated zone then get the fuck back on the bus you twat!

**EDIT**

I’ve just seen this video from a cyclist that captures exactly the blind ignorance of most car drivers.  Especially the cock-nosed cow of a woman crying about “Where were you?!?!” – HE WAS UNDER YOUR FUCKING CAR YOU RETARD!!!