The faint, but distinctive waft of rebellion is in the air. It's 8am, Niall, Daryll and myself are at James Whitham's house and outside looks cold. Very cold. The thought of the 250-mile ride from Huddersfield to Edinburgh on naked bikes is becoming less and less appealing.
Daryll, who managed to single-handedly demolish most of the Whitham's white wine supply the night before, has already had a traumatic start to the day having been woken up from his bed on the sofa by James' pet dog licking his face. Niall has received a piss-taking text message from Virgin Yamaha team boss, and close mate, Rob Mac informing him that it's very cold and snowing outside. Meanwhile, Whitham is claiming he is 'sensitive' and has poor circulation. The TWO van, and more importantly its heater, is starting to look like a tempting prospect.
A quick check of Teletext reveals that the snow isn't actually falling near our route and the temperature is a virtually tropical (for Scotland in January) 7° above zero. Excuses are running out, it's time to make a decision. "Sod it, let's just go," reckoned Whitham, trying to appear manly in front of wife and child. Decision made, layers of clothing were added and with the thought of a warming whiskey keeping morale up, we headed off.
So why ride naked bikes to Scotland in January? Well, er, why not? Okay, it isn't the best time of the year but Edinburgh is a great city, and more importantly 25 January is famous Scot Robert Burns' birthday. (If you don't know who Burns is check out Niall's Burns night guide on the right). In a nutshell Burns shagged loads, wrote poetry and liked the odd drink or two. Which in my book makes him a top lad. He has also never been played by Mel Gibson, which is also a bonus. Every year the Scots celebrate the life of Burns by getting pissed, eating haggis and listening to some Burns poetry. A celebration that we at TWO couldn't really pass up, especially as Niall is a genuine Scot and could probably help translate for us.
Why the naked retro bikes? To be truthful after about 80 miles of motorway I was asking myself the same question as my neck bent over backwards and my fingers started to lose all feeling. But retros we had.
The welcome warmth of the first fuel stop and with it a decent English breakfast kept our spirits up. "You reach a level of misery and just stay there," reckoned Niall. "It's not too bad, the ZRX is quite easy to ride and comfortable at around 80mph." James wasn't coping too badly either. "The Honda's good on the motorway too," he said. "It hasn't been as bad a journey as I thought."
I was starting to see why racers are always described as hard men, because I was having a nightmare on the XJR. It has absolutely no wind protection and at anything over 80mph you have to hang on hard and brace yourself. Both my forearms were cramping up and my chin felt like it had been punched from straining to keep my lid down. Daryll was equally unhappy.
"The GSX has no protection. The seat is really comfortable and padded but with my tank bag and the lack of fairing I'm struggling," he moaned. To be fair to Suzuki I'm sure most of this problem was Daryll's ridiculous tank bag. Quite what was in there was a mystery, although I suspect copious amounts of hair care products.
Suitably fortified by grease and coffee we hit the road again. Feeling a bit sorry for Daryll I traded the XJR for the GSX, and after a few miles started to feel a bit guilty. The Suzuki is both more comfortable and actually offers slightly more wind protection than the Yamaha. With the GSX you can sit at 90mph without too much strain; on the Yamaha it's a real struggle. The seat is well padded and the whole bike has a general feeling of reassuring largeness.
Passing the 'Welcome to Scotland' sign indicated that we had broken the back of the journey, and another saying 'Edinburgh 80 miles' showed our suffering would shortly be over. Obviously boosted by these signs Whitham, who was leading on the CB1300, started to get his head down, which was a bit of a problem.
Having ridden the XJR to the previous fuel stop I noticed it had the worst tank range of the four, with it's gauge showing one bar remaining after just 80 miles. My odometer was reading 85 miles, so I knew that the Yamaha would be low, but unfortunately James rode straight past the next fuel stop. We all followed.
With the GSX's odometer reading 106 miles Daryll, on the XJR, suddenly started to slow, desperately trying to find the reserve tap. I slowed to make sure he was okay while Niall and James disappeared from sight. But sure enough, just two miles up the road Niall was on the hard shoulder as he too tried to locate the ZRX's reserve. James was long gone. A conserving eight-mile dawdle followed before we met up with James at the next service station.
"The Honda's fuel light just came on so I pulled in," he said. "Where'd you lot get to?"
Niall didn't even know the Kawasaki had a fuel tap. "I can't remember the last time I rode a bike with a fuel tap. I was just wondering who I was going to get a tow from when I noticed it. The gauge went from half-full to empty in about 20 miles."
Continue Highland Fling - 2/2
