Thumper Club Forum
Club House => Chatter => Topic started by: Andy M on June 09, 2008, 07:22:18 AM
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I finally did something bike related!
Friday we headed south to Sibson, a village near Nuneaton I know from my vehicle testing days at MIRA. The ride down was interesting in that there must have been a Harley thing on somewhere. The lads riding their shiney new factory customs down lane 2 at 57 mph were probably not amused at having an outfit with a teddy bear on the bars and someone in the chair wearing stick on blond braids tagging on the end of their "posse". Their ride seemed way too serious, always in lane 2, always spot on 60 mph by the clock, everyone switching lanes when the leader did regardless of anything else on the road, no one daring take a hand off the bars etc. A bored sidecarist riding on the studs to stop his passenger going to sleep was never going to fit in! Still, we were drinking hand pull by 4.00, to be followed by some seriously nice roast duck at the Cock Inn.
Saturday we drove down to Bletchley park at Milton Keynes. Now there is somewhere well worth a visit. They are still really working on the exhibits (only opened in 2006) but they are really keen to tell you all about the place. Seeing three real Enigma machines, the Lorenz version, the Bombe mechanical sequence tester and reading about all the donkey work of turning teleprinter signals into punched cards was great. The main attraction though has to be Collosus, the first computer. The size of a garage, with enough heat off the valves to make it uncomfortable and only the power of a fairly rubbish lap top, it still feels like you are seeing a living dinosaur.
Sunday we did Twycross Zoo and I was honoured to be only a foot from a silverback Gorilla with only a sheet of glass between us. He seemed to want my dragon rally cap, kept putting his hand to the glass near the badge.
So, all in all 400 odd miles of sidecaring, two really good visits and a lot of top notch grub and beer.
It also proved my point in wanting to put wider bars on the Triumph. 100 miles of leaning forwards pushing on the short Triumph bars was the only real downside.
Andy
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and isn't the manor house at Bletchley Park so much nicer looing than the one in the film?
None of the film was made at Bletchley and anoraks would have spotted this blindfold! - Neatly tying two threads together...
R