Well, as usual, the weekend was busy and I had no chance of getting time to ride up to Martyn's birhtday bash, but I did manage to do some quality riding. I got up early on Saturday to get to a small job in Penarth (about 6 miles away). With that completed I rode over to my brother's house (which is nearby) and picked up his brand new sidecar outfit, It's the ratty old ER5 that he bought for me to ride to the Dragon Rally (thank you Silverfox) and it's hitched to a Squire ST2. This was to be its first long ride.
I took a circuitous route out to the village of Cregiau where a job had to be viewed and measured up for quoting on. The route involved a mixture of fast dual carriageways and twisty A roads. The outfit is near perfect at first try, it steers left and right with equal effort and can be ridden one-handed at 70mph with no problems whatsoever. Two bags of ballast helped the handling, but with a bit of practice I reckon you could carry a minimal load and still ride it safely.
Top speed is limited to 70mph at the moment but that's with a full screen fitted and standard gearing. Having said that it pulls away from a standstill with no problems.
I was running late by then so after viewing the job I belted back into the city to meet up with my wife and boys at the starting point for this year's Whitchurch Carnival parade. Whitchurch is the suburb of Cardiff where I live and my son Dylan was riding on the back of the cubs and scouts float. After agreeing to ferry lots of kids around the carpark in the chair to amuse the little terrors i decided to slap my youngest (Dafydd) in the chair and tag along at the end of the parade. This is how I came to be riding past hundreds of spectators, pulling little sidecar wheelies every now and then (although the ballast was a hindrance with this).
This clip was taken at the end of the parade route, which conveniently went past my front door so at the end of the clip you see me riding into my drive (under the steely gaze of my less than impressed mother-in-law
(The outfit looks great eh? It's amazing that the whole job (including bike purchase) only cost my brother about £800.)
After taking the kids over to the carnival proper we got back just in time to troop three doors down to a neighbour's 40th birthday party, which was fab.
Despite a hangover I got up at 6.30 on Sunday and set off on the sidecar to help my brother at a car boot sale. We sold plenty, but I also bought a pair of good leather rigger boots (£3). some lockwire pliers (£1) and a really neat little camping stool (£1). After packing up I swapped vehicles and got home around 2.
An afternoon of receiving visitors was followed by a visit to the pub and the weekend ended pretty well.
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