Chapter 14 - It was the first time the TL Road Train had been out thundered

Hunger gnawed at our bellies, time to forage for food. Fruitlessly we searched the locale for some grub, in the end I gave up and returned to the hotel. I couldn't be arsed to be perfectly honest, I just wanted to relax. Phil and Fast were a bit more tenacious and they re-appeared about an hour later with some decidedly dodgy looking chinese food.

The following day brought the next stage of the journey. We were heading for a little suburb of Barcelona called El Masnou to hook up with one of my old school friends who was working in Spain.

This meant traversing the entire breadth of Southern France, nipping across the border at Perpignon and into Spain. One long straight motorway blast, a bit boring but easily done in a day. We set off about 9.00am on yet another awesome day of sunshine and blue skies.

Perhaps half way across the basement of France around Montpelier in steady motorway cruise mode I noticed a phalanx of riders occupying two lanes glinting up ahead. As we closed up to them I noticed they were all wearing colours and riding American steel at about 80mph in perfect formation. These guys were flying the colours of a French Hells Angels chapter. I slowed the pace and gave these guys room and respect, not interfering with their road pace. They rode as one entity, all chrome, open pipes, aped and raked to impress. It was the first time the TL road train had been out thundered.

The thing that puzzled me was their immaculate turn out. The bikes I could understand. A man must have pride in his machine, the cleaner the faster etc. Apart from Phil, Eddie and I would be riding immaculate machines, not mud caked fly spattered missiles. Most motorcyclists unconciously crave that head turning cred. It's a statement of pride. individuality, freedom and passion for life and thrills. (Well for me anyway). We were however on a mileage mission and had no room or time for cleaning products, just spare oil and chain lube.

The Angels themselves were clean and I mean clean, their apparal looked new, boots were polished, cut offs could have been bought that day, their colours shone. As a teenager I had read everything I could find on the 1%ers, the outlaw bikers with names like Terry The Tramp, Mouldy Marvin and Larry the Lamb.

The myth was grubbiness and filthy beards, cruddy originals and hell raising, raping, pillaging, gun running and drug taking like modern day Vikings. This may have been true in the early days (and if you read about the North American policing, Yves Lavigne for instance it's still true today if you choose to believe them), when the Angels gained notoriety via the Rolling Stones gig at Altamont (I think) and through the pages of Gonzo Journalist Hunter S. Thompsons 'Hells Angels' (which I must have read at least half a dozen times by now). However it is said that it takes ten years to gain a reputation and five minutes to lose one. I think in the case of the Angels and to a similar extent similar clubs it took five minutes to gain their rep (fair or not - you decide) and perhaps twenty years to lose it. Sonny Barger dipped into mainstream acceptance for the fast burgeoning global 'brand' when he carried the Olympian eternal flame part of the Journey to the Atlanta Olympics. I remember seeing that on the box and thinking Yes, how cool is that.

We slipped past and gently increased our velocity. It was shortly after that I managed to max the TLR. It was a three laner, perfect visibility, no slip roads and bugger all traffic to speak of. It had to be done at least once. From 100 or so I wound the thing up in top until the dials showed just over 170mph, there was no twist left in the throttle. With no luggage and and revving it through the gears perhaps I might have squeezed a little more out of it but it was exhilerating enough, the bike felt like it was about to take off, the thump of the V-twin heart pounded beneath me. Fixed things started to blur in my personal tunnel of speed.

For me this is what it's all about, it would have been great to sustain this for more than a couple of miles but the wind blast was threatening to snap my neck and it was drinking gas like a stranded man in a desert with a terrible thirst. so it was back down to 130 ish and a weather eye for the next fuel stop.

NEC Show

Well the 2007 NEC international Motorcycle show has swept by for another year and in my opinion was the best for a long time. The list of attractions were almost too much to fit in in just one day.

The main reason for attending was to view the new models and there was a fair few of them.

Honda showed off their new brutish looking streetfighter the CB1000R, a compact muscle bike featuring a single sided swing arm, rakish headlight nacelle fairing assembly, very nice wheels and a functional and not bad looking box section looking angular GP stubby esque exhaust.

The new for 2008 Fireblade didn't look half as hideous as in the pictures also featuring a side slung stubby exhaust 175 horses weighing in at a relatively heavy 199kg. I'd have one!

Most of the rest of the range appeared to be the 'same but different' with updates. Honda hope to grab some of the middle price bracket sensible 600 market with the new CBF600abs.

Other Japanese notables were the all new R6 Yamaha which is a stunning looking sports bike which will no doubt be a bloody misssile and move the class forward just a little more, Yamaha also introduce the equally stunning YZF-R125 this little thing will steal sales from the the Honda CBR125 with ease if priced right, for me the best bike in its class, perfect bike for younger brothers to emulate the sports bike antics of their older siblings. Not quite sure about their new V-Max concept, you can see the lines echoing the previous seminal superbike and it is very Judge Dredd, Yamaha are a bit coy about when or if in terms of release date. Suzuki's B-King is reality of course but debatable in terms of styling cues for me, those exhausts are just hideous and in my opinion outextreme the MT-01 which is also an odd looking animal.

Kawasaki have pulled off a master Stroke I reckon with the release of their new sports 250, styled to turn heads with a 250cc parallel twin engine, cheap and reliable spec and bang on the 33bhp limit for newbies, priced right this could sell in numbers. TheZX10R has always been an awesome bike in terms of performance but the twin pipers were definitely the ugly sister in comparison to the earlier C models and the '08 model has been delivered with a facelift, the mirror/indicators look a bit odd but they showed the bike with the mini slimline accessories kit fitted which was much better. Inevitably the zorst was a bulbous neccesity and the pillion area was ....well not really there. The new Blade or this 10 would be my choice for a litre superbike, based on the assumption that I don't win many thousands of pounds so therefore will not be in a position to buy either the magnificent Desmoseidieci, 1098 or the very svelte KTM 1180 LC8.

Triumph had no real new models but their Rocket 111 in touring kit looked awesome, more purposeful looking than the equivalent Harley and less complicated in the bristling with gizmo's Goldwing which features a sat nav and a billion other buttons, it's a gizmo geek bike whereas the Triumph is a bikers bike which has soul. God knows what mind bending drugs the Victory designers were on when they created the 'Victory 'Vision' which has been introduced to this huge litre super tourer class. Marketed as the New American V - twin, on this occasion I'd rather have the old one and swap quids for a Harley if American metal was my penchant. It's a truly weird, admittedly brave and futuristic design, but I think more people were just amazed at it rather than genuinely interested.

On the American side of things, the Harley stand was naturally flash but most of the bikes just looked like tweaked former models which is really what Harley are all about, they have the essential sales ingredientsand just dress them up in different clothes it seems to me. I have to be honest at this point I have never slung a leg over one so I should reserve judgement until I have. And the day cometh. second week in January I will hopefully be riding an XL1200 Nightster so will post my thoughts when its been handed back to it's rightful owners and I've thawed out. I'm actually really looking forward to it.

The new Buells are quirky looking things and the new water cooled offering was no different, the top fairing was wider than a south London market Trader. I'm sure it is very efficient but not sure if it would fit through the garage door it seemed that wide.

I had a pew on the HP megamoto and again very quirky and highly efficient without a doubt but those sticky out pots just don't feel right to me, give me a Hypermotard Duke or preferably a KTM Supermotard R please. Their GS800 promises to further roll out the appeal of the range created almost single handedly by Boorman and McGregor. Benelli showed their entire range. I'm undecided with these beasts, the Tornado looks good but you rarely see one on the road and the rest of the range look well finished but not quite italian. I reckon you can see a Chinese influence in there somewhere especially with reference to the Tre's radiator set up, they were hideous looking, the brand has a modular approach to their very slowly expanding model range. I'm sure they are all great bikes but the proof of the pudding is the buying public.

A little gem amongst the diadem of mainstream manufacturers was the new Megelli range of chinese manufactured machines overseen by a new British engineering concern, Priced at under 2K I'm convinced you'll be seeing some of these on the road next year as they crowd the Gilera DNA sector.

Carole Nash's stand is a must most years but I was left a little disappointed, for sure all the machines displayed were lavished by pride and joy but some how I was a little disappointed, the winner of the Carole Nash award was a most bizarre, It was almost a mechanical animal rather than a bike, the oddest lowrider I have ever seen and not something I would ever want to ride.

The stalls looked busy and the crowd contained noticeably more women than previous years which reflects the touted figures of increasing amounts of female license holders.

Well done to the organizers I reckon. loads to see and plenty to do. Visitor figures I believe are up on last year and loads of new kit to ride.

Chapter 13 - From Mugello to Florence to Pisa to Monaco to Nice

The roads were crap, spiralling down to city level and the harbour basin, broken up, crossbanded, dusty, gravelly and bumpy (must have played havoc with the herds of supercars garaged in the city). There is a lot of money floating about in this tax haven, you'd think they'd spend some on the roads. perhaps they just wanted to put off auslanders entering their sheltered kingdom, (or they all travelled by helicopter)!

We parked up on the sea front/harbour section, stretched our limbs and grinned at each other. What the fuck were we going to do now that we were here? Late afternoon was starting to diffuse into early evening. We grabbed a beer to wash the dust from our parched throats, had a quick mooch and then decided to split and find a bed for net.

The city-state/province/taxhaven, whatever its official title was as big as the eye could see looking up from sea level, but that was it , no bigger, most of it piled higgledy piggledy strewn across the hillside.We had arrived just 10 days or so after the F1 Grand prix. The superstructure of the stands were still in the process of being dismantled and the road itself had a skirt of fine rubber beads on it's perimeter, scrubbed off the tyres of the F1 guys cars. Those F1 guys know how to lay a bit of rubber alright, though usually at Monace they play follow the leader all race.

We checked the boats out in the harbour, all posh stuff with posh people on board wearing posh jumpers draped over their posh shoulders wearing posh looking shoes. I felt like a hobo.It didn't really exude a 'kicking' atmos, we smoked and then we left, proceeding out of the city via a massive underpass, heading for Nice, the nearest place likely to have a cheap hotel to crash at. We would hole up before heading for Barcelona in the morning.

It gradually got darker until full night was upon us, brightened by Nice's urban lampware. We hit the city and drove around aimlessly trying to find an elusive Novotel or similar.In the end we waylaid a moped wielding pizza delivery boy and asked for directions, he promptly said follow him and away he buzzed up the street with us in hot pursuit, he knew where he was going, we didn't, he didn't stop, drove flat out and had no indicators, naturally at 15 or so he was invincible, paying little or no heed, impervious to the urban traffic, we were hard pressed to keep with him. Suddenly he stopped (no brakelights either), gestured and Lo before us a suitable hotel. Thank fuck for that it was getting late, we were tired and hungry and had ridden from Mugello to Florence to Pisa up the bay of Genoa to here in about 8 hours.

We thanked moped street urchin and went for it. It was a fully automated rest site, even the girl behind the counter did a good impression of an automaton, taking our credit card details with robotic indifference, dishing out the relevant keys and info with none of the Gallic charm expected. Still Bollox! We were in and had a bed for the night, just the food scenario to sort. This was France, part of Europe there must be millions of restaurants open 24/7