Table of Contents
Editorial
I know it isn’t Autumn yet and we’ve hardly had a Summer, but we have a couple of announcements for SAM members. The Autumn Breakfast will be replaced by the ‘SAM Autumn Celebration’. The breakfast has become very expensive, so the SAM Committee has looked around for an alternative event. As our last sponsor let us down badly at the last minute, we are ensuring our own entertainment and feasting. As we are building up funds to offer more events, activities and speakers, there will be a small charge for the evening. As usual, family, friends, live-in lovers and other strays that you want to bring along are very welcome to join us.
My thanks go to SAM member Kevin Boot for reminding me about members, Ron Dickerson and Les Hadfield, who sadly died 10 years ago. I’ll be writing a separate post to highlight their contribution to the SAM Club. If any SAM members would like to share their thought/memories with me, then I will be happy to look at including them.
We had some wonderful news this week that Associates David Sparks and Richard Wood passed their advanced rider tests. Both are now full members of the SAM Club and IAM RoadSmart. They have expressed their deep appreciation for the guidance, patience and continuing support given by their SAM Observers Andy Frith and Chris Lund.
The National Motorcyclists Council, IAM RoadSmart and the British Motorcyclists Federation, reminded us that the newly elected MPs have very short memories. There was an almost complete absence, in most political manifestos, of almost anything related to UK motorcycling issues. Certainly there was nothing that recognised the very valuable industrial, occupational, charitable, social and cultural roles that motorcycling plays in the UK. There is a long list of motorcycling matters, left by the previous administration, to be resolved. These included:
- Defining light vehicle categories for electric cycles and scooters. Controlling the distribution, selling and owning of these vehicles.
- Licencing requirements. Both for the rider and vehicle. This should cover the knowledge and application of the UK Highway Code and the riding competence of the user.
- Agreeing training and testing regimes, including better regulation of two-wheel delivery vehicles and employees.
- Reviewing the taxation of protective clothing. As a well recognised vulnerable road user group, it make no sense that a government should make helmets VAT-free, but apply a 20% tax levy on protection for the rest of the rider’s body. The excessive cost of treating any additional rider injuries must surely mitigate the tiny loss to the Treasury in tax revenue.
- Improving the UK highway for all road users. The solution has to be beyond temporarily fixing the potholes!
The online SAM newsletter is packed with interesting stories this week. As it’s the middle of the holiday season there are some great riding adventure stories. They ride all kinds of bike to far flung places. Many are looking to make careers as ‘vloggers’ (1). Kevin Williams continues his prodigious out and is looking for support to present a paper at the International Journal of Motorcycling Studies. Donations can be made via his webpage. Until next week, happy reading.
- ‘VLogger’: producer of views, news and educational videos, including motorcycling.
Next SAM Committee Meeting
28th August 2024
Details to be arranged
Next SAM Club Night
2nd September 2024
(No Club Night in August)
7.30pm for an 8pm start
Treeton Miners Welfare Club
Arundel Street, Treeton
Rotherham S60 5PW
SAM Autumn Celebration
Online Motorcycle News
General
People new to biking often consider moped v scooter. They ask “what is a moped?”, “what’s the difference between a moped and a scooter?”, and “is a moped faster than a scooter?”
Here the experts at Bikesure, the specialist motorcycle insurance broker, answer all the questions being asked in the moped vs scooter debate. Bikesure will explain the difference between moped and scooter, and hopefully help you decide which you should learn to ride on, a moped or scooter. Read more
Details about the cut-off date for new non-zero emission bikes are few and far between. There was a government consultation back in 2022 which proposed phasing out smaller-capacity machines by 2030, with bigger stuff meeting the same fate in 2035. Read more
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Summer is finally coming and with it a return to adventure riding. Most of our bikes have spent the colder winter months in storage or undergoing repairs and modifications. As riders we’ve been forced to be content with reading stories and planning trips. If, like me, you are situated in the American southwest, you know how hot it can get even early in the season. Read more
TomTom, the location technology specialist, has announced that it will provide its comprehensive navigation stack to BMW Motorrad’s global lineup. Utilizing TomTom’s maps, navigation, and real-time traffic services, BMW Motorrad’s new models will offer an advanced built-in navigation experience. This system can also be accessed via the BMW Motorrad Connected App, available for both Android and iOS. Read more
Did you ever play the game of Telephone when you were a kid?
I don’t even know if it’s a thing anymore, because I was born in a time before cell phones were a thing. We still had land lines (weird, I know).
In case you’re unfamiliar or need a refresher, roughly the way the game worked was this. One person would make up a short story, or maybe even a sentence, and they’d whisper it into the ear of the next person. And then the second person would try to tell the same story to the next person in the line, and so on. Read more
A wheelie machine for a motorcycle might seem pointless, because most motorcycles literally are wheelie machines, but this one is actually quite useful. Attached to a Honda CRF450R dirt bike, which certainly has enough torque to pick its own front wheel up, the wheelie machine built by the guys at CboysTV is effectively a physical wheelie control. Read more
Adventure & Touring
Molly, now 47, placed her highlighter on the north-eastern portion of a map of Canada to outline the route of a thirty-year-old dream. From her farm in Cornish, Maine, she began drawing a loop to the right through New Brunswick, down through Nova Scotia, across a bridge to Prince Edward Island (PEI), over the Gulf of St. Lawrence by ferry, across Newfoundland to the last ferry to Labrador where she could run the Trans-Labrador Highway, and then back home through Quebec.
“I could leave from my yard, do a big circle, and come home,” she stated simply. But, drawing a circle on a map is a heck of a lot easier than tackling all this terrain without incident… especially when taking it on solo. The trip started quite smoothly—as Nelson puts it, she was “in the Zen zone.”
After a couple days with friends in New Brunswick, she crossed the northern part of the province mostly by gravel roads, plowing through massive puddles across the trail along the way. Read more
Waking up in a hostel room I go check email on my laptop to find a message from my seventy-four year old mother. Like everything about her, the email was direct and somehow managed to seal my fate, “Son, I see on your world tour blog that you’ve arrived in Nepal. You need good pictures of the Himalayas, so I will take them. I’ll be arriving tomorrow.”
As usual, her decision was final. The email left me somewhat baffled and a prisoner of conflicting emotions. On one hand I was excited to see her, since I’d been gone from Spain for eight months, living with only the little comfort that fits on my motorcycle. But, the idea of touring the challenging Asian high mountain roads with my mother as pillion worried me greatly. Read more
“Blimey, no! Surely not. Jeez! Yes, I’ve crapped myself.” We were camped for the night on farmland about 300 kilometers south of Khartoum, Sudan. We’d ridden there from the U.K. on our scooter and sidecar, and we’d had the most incredible time coming through the desert. It’s a great place to ride because the people are so friendly, and you can camp anywhere. Tonight, a farmer said we could use his land. It was a perfect location, empty and about a mile from the main road. After dark, there was no one around and all we could hear was the sound of singing in the distance. The only other entertainment was the crackling campfire and the billions of stars above. Oh, and the fact that I’d crapped my pants in the middle of the bloody Sudanese desert….
I told Reece, but what deserved a full-blown laugh merely got a snicker. He was also a mess. We’d both come down with a horrific case of food poisoning. The next eight hours were spent going in and out of the tent, digging holes around that poor farmer’s land. It was disgusting. Read more
A daring pair of motorcycle travellers have completed the first significant leg of their planned round the world trip, riding two Honda CG125s from the UK to South Africa via Africa’s west coast.
After leaving their UK home in December of last year, Tom Gould and Lauren Board, then aged 31 and 27 respectively, embarked upon what would become a six-month, 16,757-mile journey down the continent through 22 countries.
“The bikes are the stars, they are so resilient though we’ve snapped the luggage racks a few times and the grab rails they mount too,” Gould told MCN from South Africa. “I also have a Yamaha rear wheel now after the hub casting broke where the sprocket mounts. Read more
If you look around at a custom motorcycle gathering these days, the truth is, that only one major thing has changed since the ’60s. The bikes, the beards, bands and beer are still staples, but the number of women in attendance has boomed. And they’re not just standing around, women are building, racing and riding custom bikes like never before, and some of the biggest events on the custom motorcycle calendar are organised by women too. Now director Gareth Maxwell Roberts is making a documentary feature film to tell this important story, “She Rides” will be an engaging in-depth examination of women in motorcycling, told through the voices of the women who ride. Read more
Custom & Historic
HOT STUFF: A BRUTALIST BMW K100 STREET TRACKER FROM CALIFORNIA
We’ve all heard legends of the classic K-series BMW’s reliability, but the tale of this BMW K100 street tracker takes the cake. After all, how many motorcycles do you know that can set themselves alight, but keep on ticking? The bike’s current owner, Duncan Bonar, found the 1985 BMW K100 at a local shop with…READ MORE
Whiteknights Blood Bikes
South Yorkshire Safer Roads Partnership
Circle of safety:
Kevin Williams
SOBS is being delivered to the 11 International Journal of Motorcycle Studies conference at Nottingham University. As I’m not supported by an institution, I’ve had to pay the registration fee myself. CAN YOU HELP? Read more
[Based on an item in yesterday’s Elevenses live webcast]
Something I’ve talked about quite a few times on my various social media accounts, and in my blog, is the misuse of statistics. The latest person to take numbers and apparently attempt to make them mean something other than they do is Janet Finch-Saunders of the Welsh Parliament. Read more
Information links – far away
Do you remember the ‘Father Ted’ sketch where Dougal where Ted is attempting to explain perspective, and says: “Now concentrate this time, Dougal. These [he points to some plastic cows on the table] are small, but those [pointing at some cows out of the window] are far away… Small, far away.” Read more
Elevenses 442 Wed 3 Jul – motorcycle news, tips & views
in today’s show… oil poured on German road… rider in Dublin collides with tram… Singapore to ban older foreign motorcycles… riders in Liberia burn truck after fatal collision with motorcyclist… raise funds for air ambulance, win a helicopter ride… article in Daily Mirror says motorway signs are green… A20 speed limit signs updated… Tesla has issues with ISA… Apple Carplay comes to bikes… India completes first-ever crash tests for bikes… research team work on hydrogen cell delivery scooter… SYM show off electric scooter with range extender motor… in-depth today… why car doors are not just a hazard for cyclists…Read more
Situational awareness… it’s something I spend a lot of time talking about. Essentially, it’s our ability to identify, understand, and respond effectively to the elements in the environment that affect us. To achieve it, we need to be fully aware of what is happening around us, to be able to interpret that information accurately, and to use it to correctly anticipate events around us in the next few seconds. Read more
Started badly, ended fatally
There’s a morbid fascination in watching people get things wrong, usually because human error doesn’t vary greatly across different fields of activity, and there are frequently takeaways we can transfer across to biking. A YouTube video I watched the other day killed the pilot and seriously injured the experienced pilot passenger – not an instructor but someone along supposedly to ‘keep an eye open’. Read more
It’s summer – overtaking in heavy spray
As we enter the traditional ‘monsoon’ season usually associated with Wimbledon, the sun’s only just over its peak height in the sky, and is heating the land strongly. And that means cumulo-nimbus clouds and thunderstorms. And that means heavy rain, wet roads, and quite likely standing water. Read more
Motorcycling Organisations
IAM RoadSmart
Create unforgettable memories with every journey this summer 
Drive with confidence and enjoy all adventures with one of our Advanced Driver courses. 
Want to improve your on-road skills and become a better rider? Or perhaps you want a fun filled day with like minded bikers?
REACTION: IAM RoadSmart urges new government to prioritise drivers.
IAM RoadSmart Policy and Standards Director Nicholas Lyes said: “IAM RoadSmart welcomes the new government and ministers to their positions. Doubtless to say, there are plenty of issues that need to be addressed: Motorists are dealing with pothole-plagued roads, expensive pump prices, soaring insurance premiums, and worse, progress on reducing serious and fatal road collisions has stalled for many years. Read more
FEMA
The Norwegian national road administration wants to make it easier for heavy traffic on the E6 towards Oslo from the north and south by turning several bus and public transport lanes into heavy traffic lanes for buses and trucks. The same measure is also being considered from the west on the E18. The heavy traffic lane will also be open for taxis, but motorcycles will no longer be allowed to use these specific lanes. Read more
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British Motorcyclists Federation
Thirty-five bikers, most of their machines costing no more than £600 apiece, have ridden from Lands End to John o’ Groats in a single hit, raising over £94,000 for Cancer Research UK. The Longest Day Challenge, now in its twelfth year, runs (the clue’s in the name) on the longest summer day of the year. Read more
