My idea was to update my blogs at least once a month but somehow the last couple of months have just slipped past so dam fast. we have had some really nasty weather here in Spain and my lovely wife has had a knee replacement so I couldn't really go to far, I managed two trips tot he English Shop in Oliva a total distance of around 15 miles and one trip to the Yamaha Dealer at the end of January for the annual service. In total I managed around 25 miles for the whole of January. I stripped the panniers off the bike before taking her in for her service and while she was being done I got a courtesy bike...well scooter loved it.
In February things got better the sun came out and the roads dried so I took a ride over the mountains to Benidorm for lunch it was really good to get and about on two wheels again. Later the next week I hooked up with one of the guys from the motorcycle club and we took a ride over to Lloris and the famous, well famous to ex-pats, Emilio's bar yet another great day out in the mountains.
A week later I went for a Sunday ride out with the Bikers Espana again up and around the mountains of the Northern Costa Blanca these guys don't hang about and know the area well so gave my right wrist and brakes a dam good workout and I managed to get a wasp inside my helmet ..don't ask ..!
Then a bit of a disaster an old friend of mine Angela came to visit she is also a motorcycle nut so I arranged to take her to Guadalest a UNESCO world heritage site up in the mountains not too far from Benidorm. The route I worked out was one I had sued twice before out int he mountains then back the quick way, it was a gorgeous day we set off and after an hour of twisties we came to a small problem the road that I wanted to take had a large chunk missing.
It had just been re-surfaced too and was a very smooth road, so we back-tracked and then I re-set the sat-nav which found us an alternative route, the road was good to start with then slowly deteriorated with more and more potholes I was stuck in either first or second gear it was slow going but with only 2 km to get off this road I rounded a corner to find a very steep downhill section with a 90 degree bend at the bottom this was not a huge problem but the huge amount of gravel was, I tried to slow the bike up but couldn't slow it enough and we went down.
Thankfully we weren't going very fast and we got away with a bruise or two and the bike? well the crash bars and the panniers did their job very well indeed, The hardest part was getting her the right way up again, we managed eventually and continued our journey.
On the 4th March which was the Wednesday the day before Angela returned to the UK I took her to Benidorm again on the bike after I had given her a dam good going over to make sure the only damage was cosmetic, thankfully I didn't find anything more than a loose auxiliary light which took all of 2 minutes to tighten up, this time we went the quick route and spent a really warm day by the beach.
Then this Friday 6th march I rode down to Guardamar for a breakfast meet up with motorcycle group I belong to which turned out to be a 200 mile return trip and it rained but had a good time.
The next thing that I have to do is clean the bike up as it is now filthy and then try and do something with the damage to the panniers and the crash bars, more on that later. So far this year over 800 kms, that's a decent start!
