Tuesday 27 October 2009 at 6:36 pm
The bikes in this photo belong to Tom and Al, a pair of thoroughly disreputable characters I know through the
Performance Bikes magazine forum. The photo was taken by
Tom on their way to the 2009 Dragon Rally in North Wales last February.
Why am I mentioning this now?
(more)
Saturday 24 October 2009 at 4:39 pm
I bought this jacket some time around the start of 2002, shortly before swinging a leg over a motorcycle for the first time to do my
Compulsory Basic Training course. Over the intervening seven years and nine months I've probably worn it on at least 50% of days. I've worn it on every bike I've owned, and almost every bike I've ridden. I've sweated in it in the summer heat, been stranded in snow on the M1 in it, and slid down the road in it.
And twenty minutes ago, after taking this photo, I dropped it into the wheelie bin outside
wildchild.org.uk HQ.
Of course nostalgia is often misguided - in reality it was worn out several years ago - it's not been waterproof since before I left Uni in 2005, and I've replaced the velcro on the cuffs only to wear it out again - and it's only my stubbornness/laziness/tight-fistedness that has seen it in use for this long. But it's done pretty well for a £100 jacket.
I bought it's replacement yesterday from
Hein Gericke in Birmingham - in a neat closing twist within half a mile of the place I did my CBT all those years ago.
