Green is good?

 The past couple of days seem to have been mostly consumed by my BMW R nineT. 

It's a convoluted tale, but I will try to be as concise as possible. TP has an A2 motorcycle license* which he has held for many years. He now wants to upgrade to an unlimited A class bike license. This involves repeating the Mod 1 (off road) and Mod 2 (on road) tests on a higher powered machine.

He took a training course earlier in the year, passed the Mod 1 but, unfortunately, did not pass the Mod 2 test. He therefore needed to repeat the Mod 2 test but did not have access to a training school fleet of bikes for the test.

He had already arranged to borrow his mate's Kawasaki Versys 650, which is a little on the tall side, so I asked if he wanted to try my BMW for size. He agreed that this was a good idea, so Monday saw me wander out to the garage and attempt to start the bike. 

None of my bikes had been ridden for at least 18 months as I spent 8 months of 2023 virtually housebound with a spinal condition. The condition is currently in remission, so one of the post-retirement priorities was to get some miles ridden on two wheels.**

Apologies! I digressed. After 18+ months the BMW had a flat battery, despite connection to a trickle charger. There followed an hour of messing around and reading instructions before I simply removed the seat and got an alternative charger connected up.  I also rang my favourite local Motorcycle Dealer/Workshop and got an MOT provisionally booked for the following day, subject to me getting the damned Teutonic beast to start.

The rest of the day was punctuated with visits to the garage to check on the battery charging progress, as indicated by the plentiful, but unintuitive, indicator lights.

Tuesday dawned and I wandered out to the garage to check on progress. I saw multiple green lights on the charger and hoped that this was positive news. A little before nine o'clock I grabbed my helmet, jacket and gloves and wandered out to urge her in to life.

It now gets a bit anticlimactic from here on. The bike started easily and the ride over to the workshop was a delight. Within 40 minutes the test was passed and I returned home to "throw a bucket of water at her" as she was pretty grimy after more than a year in a dusty garage.

TP appeared later in the day, the bike was taxed and we took a ride out to see what he thought. After much consideration he decided that, despite the lower seat height, he would use his friend's Versys.  He said he loved riding it, but found it way too powerful for riding during the test.***

We later realised that the BMW has almost twice the power of the Kawasaki and getting on for three times the grunt of TP's Honda CBR 500. It's no wonder he found it a bit of a handful.

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* Machines of 47 bhp, or less

** I had already got my Moto Guzzi Stornello back on the road at the beginning of April for a three day, retirement celebratory bike tour of Wales with TP and his chums. Unfortunately the Guzzi falls in to the A2 power category and was of no use for TP's test

*** I'm glad I made him endure the hell-hole that is Evesham at the point that Prince Henry's High School releases its students in to the community. The normal chaotic traffic was now at a standstill and low speed crawling was needed to manoeuvre through town. This carefully selected route was certainly using the bike under test conditions.