Come Visit Scotland. We’ll make sure you can’t leave.

Weekly Update………11…………..It’s December.

Hello all.

It’s been a busy old life as of late. It’s going to be a big update, so if you are looking for a quick read, scroll down to the next post. Grab a coffee/tea, get yourself comfortable and I shall begin.

The last update was November 9th, well the last real update anyway. I was talking about how the train is better than I thought and may be able to stick it out more easily than first anticipated. Well I’ve done the train thing for over a month now and yes, I still agree with that sentiment. So that’s good.

Shortly after putting the bike away for the winter, and realising that I was now bike-less for the next 6 months, I subconsciously must have decided that now would be the good time for a drastic change. What follows doesn’t make for good reading. I’ve sold my MT-01 and YamYam for the first time in 4 years, is Motorcycle-less. Yes. YamYamBiker at present is YamYamNonBiker. It all happened so fast…

Em and I decided to go up to Perth to do some shopping, Em had broke one of the cat’s bowls and wanted to get another one instead of just doing what I said and use one of ours. Whilst she was away getting that I nipped in to halfords for some Zymol. We then met back up and I suggested out of the blue that we go to the MINI garage along the road and check out the MINI Clubmans. I’ve seen relatively little of the Clubmans and wanted to have a closer look, plus I’ve never been in a MINI despite seeing 1,000,000′s of them everyday. You see for ages we had talked about getting a new car. Our Yaris was getting near 100,000 miles and was starting to loose it’s grip on the world a wee bit, and we had spoke about getting a 2 seater sports car because you know, we’re young and have no kids etc etc.

Emma hadn’t really had an opinion on MINI’s or indeed the Clubman’s, so was a bit surprised that the reply to my surprising MINI adventure suggestion was “Ok.”

To cut a very long and probably boring story short (one that I had already written and saved in the drafts but decided against it because it was frankly geeky bullshite) we headed to Grassicks MINI in Perth and luckily enough a Clubman was in the forecourt, and even more lucky was that it was in Black (the colour I had mentioned I would want whilst driving to the MINI garage.)

Emma was unsure upon first visual inspection, a “meh” type reaction. I on the other hand was a bit more enthusiastic. Of course 2 minutes after turning off our car and getting to the MINI’s, one of the chaps came over for the banter. “We only want to know figures to see what we were looking at should we decide that we can afford it.”

And the cut of the story goes here.

We walked out of there with a deal that was pretty amazing, and in the time it took for Steven (the MINI bloke we dealt with) to do all the pitches and figures, I had decided in my mind that if these figures were decent, I would sell the bike, reasons to follow. The MINI gets an average of 60mpg. It’s £20 a YEAR road tax. It’s cheap insurance. It’s the demonstrator so has tonnes of spec. It’s in black. It’s a diesel…etc. It came with 4.5 years of TLC, a service package that covers servicing for that duration. It also came with 2.5 years of warranty left. Because it was a Demo car, the condition of the car was nothing short of mint, brand new.

Having got the figures we headed home to get ready for the Tommy Emmanuel gig that I spoke about in the last post. Whilst Em was making tea, I went over the financial situation we were at, what the bike was costing to run including loan, petrol, insurance, tax, wear and tear etc, same for the Yaris. I then took that figure and subtracted the cost of owning this MINI from it. The saving was around £300 a month! And this was including my train fares. And so from that point it seemed that the decision was a no-brainer. I had decided in my mind at the garage if the figures were good, I would sell the bike and the reasons for that are thus: my MT would sit in the garage 6 months of the year and I would still be paying the loan on it, as well as servicing parts and tyres etc over the 6 months it was garage bound. I had also done the train thing so I knew the cost of getting the train. The £300 saving was just too big an amount to forget about it.

We watched Tommy play his music that night and I was transported away from this situation for a couple of hours, and what a glorious time it was. But come the finish my mind was straight back to the situation at hand. I tried speaking to Em on the way home in the car about it but she was tired so we left it.

I was playing golf the next day so we wouldn’t really have a chance to talk about it, so when we got home I said to Em that she needs to phone Steven and ask what we need to do, should we decide to go for it. And I went away to play golf, all the while knowing that I would probably be going to buy this car in the afternoon. I spoke with Dad on the course and he injected his fatherly concern in to the mix, making me doubt my figure calculations and rational for doing this, but I took it on board and knew that what I had calculated was true and made complete sense. I spoke to Blair on the way home and he balanced Dad’s concern with his own thoughts.

So anyway, this was meant to be a shorter version! That afternoon we went up to the garage and we bought the car. In doing that, I needed to sell the MT. I made the decision fast without really taking the time to think about it. I usually spend weeks agonising over every single decision that has a major impact on our lives, but I also knew that if I took that usual week or so to think about it, I would back out of it. I needed to make the decision quickly so that I didn’t have a choice.

A week later we picked up the MINI and I have to say right now, Steven and the Grassicks folks were top. We’ve done a lot of dealings with garages of Bikes and Cars, and I know it’s a bit clichéd but it really does make a difference when the folks that are selling you something care about what happens after the deal is signed. Anyway.

A week after that I sold the MT to a guy from England. I went up to Mum’s a few hours before hand, got it all sorted, turned it on and listened to the deep twin tick over. I didn’t feel anything, no regret or loss, no sadness. This was a good sign. The deal went well, the bloke gave me a lot of cash, about 4 inches worth and off he went. I got in my new MINI and went to the bank. I went home and made a cup of tea.

I love our new car. It’s brilliant. The saving on fuel is tremendous. The efficiency features like stop/start are just face slappingly obvious. It’s amazing how quickly you realise how much fuel everyone else is wasting whilst sitting in queues. Why doesn’t every car have this? I’ve read somewhere that the MINI Diesel is as close to the Honda Hybrid cars you can get without being a hybrid. And it’s a 1.6 turbo so it shifts!

So there you have it, for the near future I am without possession of a bike. I wasn’t going to be riding the MT for the next 6 months anyway, but it feels weirdly uplifting to have no bike sitting depreciating in the garage. It also feels a bit refreshing to have something new to look forward to.

To be honest the bike was just another means to get from A-B for me, after 4 years and 60,000 + miles of riding it certainly tested my enthusiasm for it. I’ve been there, I’ve done every single weather imaginable. I’ve done the tours, I’ve done the abroads. I’ve done the knee downs and slow downs and you know it seemed like a good time to sever the ties for the time being. I wouldn’t be riding anyway so why not have a complete break, rather than a short breather.

I also gave away 90% of my gear with the sale except my AGV GP-Tech (too many memories to get rid of it), my Wolf gear (too good) and my daily leather gloves and boots. The rest of the gear; winter gloves, other summer gloves, kevlar jeans, older gear/leather jackets etc all went. My old Shark S800 and Em’s old AGV went too. Emma kept her Shark helmet and her Halvarssons jacket for the same reasons I kept mine. That in itself felt good. A cleanse of motorcycle gear, an act that when it comes to starting again, I can start totally afresh!

Everyone I have told has said the same thing, it’s usually pre and postly punctuated with sweary words but it’s usually “you did what!?…” Everyone that knows me or knew of me knew that I was Mr. Motorcycle. So it must be a bit of a shock to learn that I am now Mr. Walkie. But I am still happily unaware of the impact that it has had. I am absolutely certain that I will be on 2 wheels again, but for the time being I am happy not being on 2 wheels. Blair has sold his bike so there really was no reason to hang on to it. I know one thing though, when I do get another bike, I won’t be riding it as much. It just kills the enjoyment and feeling of something special, when you ride it day in-day out.

In other news, the weather over the past 2 weeks has been positively ABSURD. The snow has fallen so quickly, and so “unexpectedly” that within a day the roads were impassable. Within a few days borderline life-threatening. Folk were trapped in cars on motorways with 9 month old babies and no food. Oldies were caught walking down the motorway for some warmth and food. Police were having a hard time and throughout it all, not a gritter or plough to be seen.

We are lucky enough to have a neighbour with access to a tractor and he did the best job imaginable with the circumstances presented. But for everyone else it was just a shitmare of epic proportions. The weather has started to calm down the past 2 days and the snow has started to melt, but a lot has turned to ice…something I found out this morning when I faceplanted after bouncing off two cars with a kettle in my hand. It was sore but I wasn’t hurt. I had also been asleep in bed 4 minutes prior to this tumble, but because Emma is a total grump in the morning, I had to help her fill the washers up before she went to work. I did that, then decided to use the rest of the water in the kettle to pour over the frosty windows. I got in between our car and the one beside it but lost my footing on the stack of ice on the ground and went bouncing around whilst trying to find traction, only to finally lose and slide face first down the path. Emma was out like shot, thinking I had snapped my neck but I was ok. It was like an ice rink. Totally insane.

So anyway. Now I have to find a new hobby as I have nothing to do with myself. Blair and I have decided to start climbing Munro’s next year, and I am going to start drinking….hurrah!

Some photos of the weather over the past few weeks. Enjoy!

Cheers

Gordon

Sunday, December 12, 2010 | Categories: General Biking stuff, My Bike, Updates | Tags: BMW, Change, Clubman, Life, Mini, MINI Clubman, Moving On, Scotland, Snow, Tommy Emmanuel, Update, Winter | 5 Comments »