Tag: Honda

Buff envelopes deliver the right to ride – at last!

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In this age of instant communication, the concept of excitement when a letter drops on to the doormat must be alien to many. I still get excited, though, sad old man that I am. And the envelopes that excite me the most are those buff, A5-ish ones with the little plastic address window and the words Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in the top left corner.

The strange attraction started when my driving licence was withdrawn for medical reasons a couple of years ago – as a precautionary measure. “You must stop driving from today,” the doctor said, so I did. The condition that led to this – a tiny tumour that appeared on a scan in a place where it shouldn’t be – was successfully eliminated within four weeks, but it was many months before the wheels of Covid-era bureaucracy reached the stage where my application to get my licence back was being actively reviewed.

I resorted to calling the DVLA in Swansea for updates. I called a couple of times a week, then several times, and finally every day. This may seem obsessive, but my doctor had sorted the problem the previous September and had confirmed the same to the authorities in March. There was no real reason why I couldn’t drive, or ride, apart from the need for that piece of plastic from Swansea. It was July, the sun was shining, and I wanted to ride. I spoke to several very pleasant and helpful Welsh people over the weeks. On one occasion, a gentle-voiced Welshman, clearly looking at my case on his screen, said: “Ah, Mr Rae, I see you spoke to us yesterday. What can we do for you today?”

During all these weeks I would check the post each day in case, just maybe, the licence had dropped into the box. Then, one day, a nice gentleman at the DVLA answered my call and said he had good news – the licence had just been approved! Yay! Hallelujah! I was free to drive from that moment onward, he told me, and the plastic licence duly arrived a few days later.

If you’ve followed the saga of the shipping of my Ducati and Rune from South Africa to the UK, you’ll be aware that this hadn’t exactly been plain sailing, either. Documents I’d supplied to register them here had subsequently been returned along with a request for more information in each case. So when I picked up the post last Friday and found another bulky, buff, A5-ish envelope from the DVLA, I was pretty sure it heralded more problems. The familiar paperwork inside seemed only to confirm this. Then I read the covering letter – and they’d approved the application for the Ducati! It was officially registered, and with the same plate it’d had when I first registered it in Reading back in 2008. The letter said that the V5C registration certificate would follow separately “in the next four weeks”. It actually arrived the next day.

So now, fully six months and one week after the Sport Classic and the Honda Rune were loaded on to a truck in Plettenberg Bay at the start of their long journey, at least the Ducati was legal to ride once again on public roads. Of course, it’s been raining for days now and the forecast suggest more of the same.

Today, however, three weeks on, has dawned bright and sunny. It’s cold but the sky is blue and the roads are dry so I fire up the Ducati and head down the M6 to Stoke to pick up an oil filter from the Ducati dealer. The Termignoni racing exhaust is making sweet music and it feels so good to be back in this particular saddle. It may be only 7 degrees C outside but its 21 degrees in my heart and 31 in my soul as I take in the autumn colours and get in sync with that unique Ducati vibe.

As I pull back on to my driveway 90 minutes later, the postman walks towards me with two buff, A5-ish envelopes bearing the DVLA logo in the top left-hand corner. The first one I open turns out to be confirmation that the Rune has been registered, finally. Oh joy! The second contains the new registration document. A Ducati ride and a road-legal Rune – all my Christmases have come at once, almost seven months to the day after the bikes started their journey. Then I try to move my faithful Valkyrie in the garage and find the front brake is seized and the bike is immobile. Into every life a little rain must fall…

At last – all road-legal in the UK, seven months on. This isn’t the UK, obviously, but Knysna Lagoon in the Western Cape.

Bogged down in a paperwork jungle

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They say that anticipation is the greater part of pleasure. I’ve already written about my long-drawn-out anticipation of the arrival of the Ducati and the Rune in the UK. Would the reality live up to the dream?

I’ve owned the Sport Classic since I bought it new in January 2008, and the Rune since January 2016, so it’s not like we’re strangers. I’ve just spent a small fortune shipping them more than 8,000 miles – so of course they were going to be great to ride again. Even the all-too-short trip to the MOT centre, and the slightly longer trip back again, was an ample reminder of why I like these two very different bikes so much.

The Ducati for me always held the promise of my old 1974 GT750. It was, after all, designed specifically to be a 21st century version of that bike’s 750 Sport sibling, but with all the (many) glitches ironed out. It weighs only 181 kg and puts out about 95 bhp with its Termignoni racing exhaust system. It’s a basic bike – a great engine, two wheels, a seat, a tank and that’s pretty much it – and I see it rather as a latter-day Vincent. It gathers speed in what feels like a very traditional way, giving a visceral push towards the horizon without the exponential feel of a modern four. You either like the glorious feel of a sporty V-twin, or you don’t, and this bike does it for me. I plan to add new Pirelli Phantoms when I get the cambelts replaced soon and it’ll be ready to carve its way through the twisties once more.

Parenthetically, I think it’s nuts in this day and age to design an engine that needs new cambelts every two years, regardless of mileage, at a cost of almost £300 a time including labour and VAT. My old 1997 Suzuki TL1000S, still residing in South Africa in readiness for our next visit, was designed as a Ducati 916-slayer in its day, and it’s never needed that kind of expensive maintenance.

The Rune couldn’t be more different. Take the unburstable (and low-maintenance, by contrast) 1800 Gold Wing engine, tweak it a little, and dress it in one of the funkiest outfits ever to grace a production motorcycle, and you have a unique bike. It weighs 368 kg dry, 398 kg wet, and is fully eight feet long. It has presence. I was reminded of its considerable heft when I had to manoeuvre it into our newly prepared garage, which is approached by a short and slightly downward sloping driveway. Riding it in nose-first was not an option: no way was I ever going to reverse it out again. The trick is to ride it down the drive, turn hard right on to our neighbour’s drive, and perform a four-point turn to reverse it the last few metres into the garage. It takes all the strength in my shoulders and legs to keep the beast upright in those manoeuvres.

Out on the road, it’s wheeled emollient (a phrase I borrow with due credit from Car magazine’s description of the V12 Jaguar Series III XJ6 back in the late ‘80s, and eminently appropriate for both vehicles). The exhaust emits a pleasant burble that becomes a growl on acceleration but never gets raucous. The engine is about as smooth as they come. It develops 118 horsepower at 5500 rpm and 167 Nm of torque at 4000 rpm (or 123 ft lb in old money). That’s enough to move the machine down the road with impressive urgency, with a 12-second standing quarter time, made all the more satisfying by the total absence of vibration. It’s said to be capable of 123 mph or so, but the riding position means it hits a real sweet spot at about 60. That means you can chill out, savour the moment, and overtake pretty much any normal traffic with a flick of the wrist, all safe in the knowledge that you’re not likely to fall foul of speed cameras outside built-up areas. Its slightly outrageous appearance turns heads, for sure, but that’s not why I bought it – it just needs to turn my head, and it does that every time.

Sadly, turning my head is all either bike will be doing for a while yet. My attempts to register them as UK bikes have failed so far. Both applications have been rejected by the DVLA. In the case of the Rune, the issue was lack of proof of year of manufacture; with the Ducati, it was the absence of the original certificate of first registration in South Africa.

This Ducati rejection was a bit galling, because I had sent the original UK registration certificate from 2008 with my application. The same bike had merely travelled to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and South Africa before coming home again. However, the DVLA gave me the option of explaining by letter why I didn’t have the certificate of first registration from South Africa (it’s lying in a filing drawer in our house down there, still inaccessible due to Covid travel rules), so I’ve done that and sent everything  back to Swansea. The year of manufacture thing with the Rune was a bit galling too, because the Rune was made only in one year, 2004, although I believe some were made in 2005. If I said it was 2004, that should be good enough, in my book! If it were a 2005 bike, why would I claim it as 2004? The VIN plate on the headstock even proclaims 2004 in large numbers. The DVLA helpfully said they would accept a letter from Honda confirming the year of manufacture. A call to Honda’s UK HQ quickly confirmed that such a letter was indeed possible, for a fee of £30, but it would take up to six weeks. Five weeks later, I’ve just received a note to say the letter is ready and will arrive shortly. Then I can send off all the paperwork to Swansea again. First World problems…

When the Rune arrived on my driveway, straight off the boat, I changed the settings from kilometres to miles and was greeted by this number

Dream bikes arrive – just don’t plan on riding them anytime soon!

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I’m 67 years old but I’ve been feeling a bit like a child counting the days to Christmas. For me, the long-awaited presents are my Honda Rune and Ducati Sport Classic, due to arrive in Middlewich after a journey that began 11 weeks ago on the Garden Route of South Africa’s Western Cape.

Regular readers will be aware of the ups and downs of the process, but my concerns over the arrival of the bikes didn’t end when the ship finally docked at London Gateway, the port on the Thames Estuary in Essex. Oh no.

First comes the tracker confirmation that the ship has actually berthed alongside the quay. Yay! I wait patiently for about 24 hours to give the shipper time to get the cargo off. The ship sets sail again about 10 hours later. The shipper confirms that the container is off the ship and that the bikes have been cleared through Customs. Double yay!

I’m thinking, ports are super-efficient, and the constant throughput of containers means they can’t have my bikes laying around there for long, so they’ll probably be on the road tomorrow – or, worst case, the day after. Hah! Not so fast. It seems that someone else’s cargo inside the same container hasn’t yet cleared Customs, so unloading the container has to wait until that has cleared, too. That takes eight days. Then the shipper says they can’t get a haulier to move the bikes the 200-odd miles from Essex to Cheshire until 5 July – which is a further 10 days away!

Look, freight isn’t really my field, although I did a stint in that industry as a PR adviser about 20 years ago, but I would have thought a shipper would know what was coming through and when, and have the requisite vehicles on hand to move the goods onward. A friend tells me there’s a shortage of HGV drivers in the UK right now, so maybe there’s a shortage of large van drivers too – thanks, Amazon, for creaming off the talent!

A driver and van is eventually found and booked, and now he’s delivered the bikes to our driveway. He specialises in motorcycle transport, which is a relief, and it takes him no time to unload the machines. I’m delighted, of course – I haven’t even seen these bikes since the start of the Covid lockdown in March 2020, when we had to cut short a trip to South Africa and high-tail it back to Blighty. And I haven’t ridden them since June 2019, due to such diverse factors as my health and the unrideable state of the dirt road to our house down there.

Anyway, here they are. I scrutinise every inch to check for shipping damage. The Ducati looks flawless but the battery is flat, so I connect a charger. The Honda actually fires up at the touch of the button, and the mellifluous sound of the 1,832cc flat six bellows out of those two massive exhaust pipes – awesome! There’s a very small new scratch on the rear mudguard, and the brushed aluminium pivot cover down near the right footrest has scratches that weren’t there before. Apart from these, though, it too looks unaffected by its long journey. Tyre pressure are low all round, but that’s easily put right.

I spend many hours washing and then polishing both bikes. The Ducati is easy, having little in the way of bodywork; the Rune takes the bulk of the time, because the weeks sitting on docks or in the container have made all that chrome look a bit dull – but that’s why God invented Autosol! That Honda gets polished better than I’ve ever cleaned a bike before, hard-to-reach spots and all, and ends up looking truly magnificent. The Autosol tube ends up almost empty.

There’s a bizarre-looking piece of bright orange webbed strap hanging between the header pipes on the right-hand side. The only possible explanation for its presence is that it had been used to tie down the bike at some point in its travels, although there’s no logic to its placement. Tying down the bike through that area makes no sense at all. Someone clearly couldn’t get the strap off again and so has cut it with a knife just below the pipes. Closer investigation shows that the material has in fact melted into the headers, and it takes some careful poking and scraping to detach it completely. Fortunately the point of melting is behind the headers, and they’re hidden in turn behind bolt-on chrome covers.

I’ve managed to get the two bikes insured on my Valkyrie policy using just the VIN numbers, thanks to a really helpful agent named Nathan at Carole Nash. However, they would be insured only for a trip to and from a pre-booked MOT test. It’s very tempting and totally legal to book them in for the tests some 50 miles away and enjoy the ride there and back, but the weather forecast is for rain showers and I don’t want to spoil all that gleaming chrome and paintwork, so I wuss out and book them into a great MOT centre, DC Lomas, just two miles from my house. They both pass with flying colours – the tester described them as perfect – and they make it home without catching a speck of dirt or water.

You’d think I could now apply to have them registered, but no. Again, not so fast! I have to wait until Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) issue a thing called a NOVA certificate for each bike. The bikes were landed and processed on 15 June; the NOVA certificates were issued on 15 July. You wouldn’t want to be in a hurry! Anyhow, with all the paperwork now to hand, I send everything off to the DVLA in Swansea. Not being able to ride the machines again until the DVLA issues their registration numbers is a pain: I’ve already paid in full for their insurance, MOTs, registration fees and 12 months’ road tax. It’s not like anybody is missing out financially, and the MOT engineer says the bikes are in perfect shape. Oh, and we have a mini heatwave… I’ll just have to be good and ride the Valkyrie!

Anticipation is everything

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As I write, my cherished Honda Rune and Ducati Sport Classic are just over six hours away from arriving on British soil. Maybe. I know they left Cape Town on 31 May, about five days late and on a different ship. But I know from a helpful note from my shipper that they were due to arrive on MSC Argos at London Gateway port at 01:45 – two days ago.

An update last week from the UK shipping agent told me they were now due to arrive yesterday and would be transported by road to our house in Stockport (near Manchester). No! Wait! Did I not tell the South African shipper weeks ago that I’d be moving to Middlewich? Of course I did. I gave the new address to the UK agent and was assured that the bikes would be brought to my door. As you can see above, the garage is freshly painted, ready and waiting (a story in itself).

I’d been tracking the bikes on their journey, after a fashion. There are tracking apps out there that can pinpoint any ship anywhere on the planet, so I dipped into that world a few times. (This may come as a shock to a certain gentleman’s barber in Middlewich, into whose emporium I stuck my masked face a few days ago. “Do you take walk-ins?” I asked, the haircut being a spur-of-the-moment thing. “No, bookings only,” came the reply from the barber, an aging hipster with a full grey beard. “Can you use an app?” he asked, pointing at a sticker on his door advertising a service called Booksy. I assured him politely that I could, and left. Can I use an app?!!! Cheek! What age did he think I was? I found a friendly Middle Eastern barber shop a bit farther down the street and had an excellent haircut for a tenner, without having to declare my IT prowess. But I digress.)

It seems as though there are indeed services that can track ships in real time if you register and, I imagine, pay. I didn’t fancy the payment bit – this shipping process was already costing enough. One site suggested the MSC Argos was cruising around the Caribbean, which didn’t sound right, somehow. More detailed digging found that there was indeed a sailboat called Argos hanging around the sunkissed islands, but it was not my Argos. Another site told me that my Argos was heading for Las Palmas but was currently off the west coast of South Africa, steaming North at 18.2 knots. Given that it had supposedly left Cape Town a couple of days earlier, it certainly hadn’t got very far. Then I spotted a little note saying that data may be up to five days old.

Not being a total luddite (aging hipsters take note), I looked up London Gateway’s website and found a detailed schedule of all arrivals and departures. And there, on the list, was my ship! It was due to dock on the morning of 15 June at 02:00 from Rotterdam – a day later than the agent had most recently suggested, but close enough. Almost time to pop the champagne cork. A subsequent check yesterday told of a further delay; it was now not arriving till 14:45. Sounded like they’d missed the tide, or something technical like that. Thought I’d see whether Rotterdam has a similar schedule and, naturally, it does. This morning it shows 101 ships in residence and 168 recently departed. Bizarrely, the MSC Argos is not on either list. Hmmm.

When I worked in Hong Kong back in 2000, I had a client called LINE that specialised in optimising global cargo transport. I know from those happy days that container ships don’t alter their schedules or ports of call on a whim. It’s a hugely precise business. LINE even had software to optimise loading, telling crane operators where to plonk (a technical term) each container to ensure its ready accessibility for speedy removal at its destination. Clever stuff. So, knowing that businesses all over the UK and Europe are awaiting eagerly their just-in-time deliveries of rooibos tea, biltong, Stellenbosch wines and BMW 3-Series parts, I shall assume that the good ship Argos will indeed be berthing at London Gateway at 14:45 this afternoon. Then it’s a simple matter of the shipping agent processing the paperwork with HM Customs, a forklift driver loading the bikes very carefully on to a truck, and the Rune and Ducati should be here sometime tomorrow-ish. Oh, the joy of anticipation!

Back in the saddle

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I’d be a 365-days-a-year rider if I could. I used to be, back in the days when a bike was my sole means of transport, in British rain, hail, snow or occasional sunshine.

Things changed. I let it happen. First came the company car, which was so warm, dry and convenient. Then came the crazy work schedule that made bike riding a luxury. You can get into a maelstrom of frenetic work in your 30s, 40s and even 50s that becomes the norm. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. Finding time to ride can get a little tricky.

But wait! Like a swimmer caught up in a rip-tide, you can break out of the cycle – eventually. I did, about five years ago, and it was truly great. I had amassed a small collection of bikes over the years and now I could make time to ride them.

Fate, however, can be cruel. Four of those bikes resided with me in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, an oasis of calm and relative civility in the Middle East. However, instead of rain, hail, snow and occasional sunshine came endless sunshine. Be careful what you wish for, they say – you may get it. In summer, the bikes gathered dust in a shaded car port as temperatures hovered in the mid-40s Centigrade with occasional forays into the low 50s.

That gets into the danger zone. I had to ride for an hour at midday in 47-degree heat from Dubai to Abu Dhabi for an urgent and unexpected business meeting. I could feel the blood get hot inside my head; my legs actually burned through my black jeans. When I eventually stopped, I felt faint and had to consume several bottles of chilled water before I felt even vaguely human – dizzy, but human.

Desert summers may be the polar opposites of British winters, but for motorcyclists the two have too much in common; they can be miserable. The solution came from spreading my humble stable of bikes between the UK and South Africa, where I also have a home, and forgetting about the Middle East as a biking base. The roads are generally too straight, too boring and too dangerous, anyway.

But life and work still keep me on the move between all three places, and this year that meant that my last spell of motorcycling was in Europe in July on my cherished Valkyrie. So, when I made it down to South Africa last week, my garage promised a feast of biking pleasure: the Honda Rune, Ducati Sport Classic 1000, Suzuki TL1000S and Suzuki V-Strom 1000 all sat there, batteries fully charged and raring to go.

Some unseasonably wet weather and the state of my local dirt road meant they stayed in the garage, sadly. The road is used by heavy logging trucks and becomes like a motocross track unless it is regularly graded. The surface is so rough that it has already fractured the rear light unit of my Ducati, created a couple of small stone chips on the Rune, and caused various bits of my Nissan bakkie (pick-up truck) to get loose or fall off.

When it rains, the red dirt conspires to latch on to every crevice, nook and cranny of your bike, compounding your misery. So, I had to wait five days until the graders appeared, the weather dried out and I could get back in the saddle – at last!

First up was the Rune, because it never fails to instil in me a wonderful sense of occasion. It growls in a civilised way; it oozes power, even though there are many more powerful bikes out there; and the riding position is nigh-on perfect if you are into the cruiser thing. It never fails to put a smile on my face.

Next up was the Ducati, now fully restored to pristine glory after its tank-slapping hissy-fit 18 months ago. The replica Termignoni silencer did its usual Ducati thing, sounding for all the world like a ‘70s racing machine. The contrast between the two machines couldn’t be more pronounced – one laid back and relaxing, the other bent forward and intense – but on this warm, sunny November day they both spelled fun.

The TL was next in line, but its Chinese battery – newly installed 18 just months ago – was devoid of life, despite being on trickle charge like all the others. So, it was on to the V-Strom, an excellent bike that somehow seems to exist in the shadow of its more glamorous siblings. It started instantly, as always, and felt like an old pair of boots as I sailed down the dirt road: smooth, comfortable and agile.

With its tall seat and totally upright riding position, it felt completely different to the low, laid-back stance of the Rune or the forward-leaning placement of the two sports bikes. Its 1,000cc V-twin doesn’t lack useful grunt, and it handles well on the road. Off-road, apart from over smooth-ish dirt, its weight hampers its ability.

Different bikes, different styles, but after a gap of almost four months, it felt great to be back in the saddle. Now I just need to find a decent battery for the TL…