Six Pack

I’ve not written anything in ages. Actually, that’s not strictly true – I spent a good few weeks writing an essay on how I feel about Englishness today, how things have changed over the years, and how it’s not always been easy fitting in with a funny name. That took quite a while, but it all ended up incredibly introspective and of no real interest to anyone, so it went in the bin. I might resurrect the idea sometime, but I’m very aware that it’s a subject that merits conversation rather than a monologue. And as well as that, I’ve been making lots of odd noises with the analog synth project. This is still very much ongoing, and there’s definitely more to write about there with the final fixing of the MIDI problems and a few more modules being built and fitted. I’m having a huge amount of fun with this – but I think before I write anything else, I need to invest in phase II of the project, which will involve many more evenings of soldering but should end up with a rhythm section to go alongside the boingy noises.

But I’m not here to talk about things that didn’t happen, or things that may never happen. For ages now I’ve had a bit of a road trip planned with a few mates, taking the Little Scram down to The Alps via a roundabout route, and spending a few nights under canvas. The first attempt at a plan was for me to ride to Calais to meet up with Mike and Ken, then the three of us ride to Geneva to meet Michael, Al and Sylvain, and from there, hit The Alps. And despite my normal planning abilities, this is pretty much exactly what happened. We nearly included a flying visit from Paul on his way to the World Ducati Week, but timings didn’t quite work out there. A shame, but I guess there’s always next year for that one. So we had a plan, we had some dates, and I booked a ticket on the Shuttle to get me to Calais early morning of 19th June. I already had all the camping gear that I needed, but decided at the last minute to replace my sleeping bag with something more suited to the weather forecast, and also a bit smaller to pack down than my current (and 20 year old…) three season bag. I know that I’m turning into a bit of a walking advert for Alpkit every time I go camping, with my tent, sleeping bag, mat, pillow, and stove. And torch. And chopsticks, come to think of it. I also bolted a bidon carrier onto one of my panniers so I could carry a bottle of water out in the breeze. Which in hindsight, was one of the best modifications I’ve ever made to any bike that I own.

And when I said early, I meant it. I left home at 2am, with the plan to get to Folkestone for 04:30, jump on the 06:30 train, and then meet up with Ken and Mike in the Aire de Zutkerque just outside of Calais sometime around 08:45ish local time. I was a little bit unsure of what to wear for the trip, as for sure, the morning ride was chilly – but the forecast was for potential record breaking heat over the coming week. And it’s a nice demonstration of just how effective and adaptable modern riding kit is, as I just picked my lightweight mesh jacket with a few layers underneath that I could strip off and throw in the panniers as we got further South. 40 years ago I wouldn’t have had the choice – I had a leather jacket and that was it. I always like these early morning starts, riding through the mist, watching the sun rise. I’m not sure that my neighbours are quite so keen though, so I’m always exceptionally careful to keep the noise down when I set off! But my clothing choice was good – there was a definite chill through the vents on my lid, which made my senses sing. But I was comfy as the miles slipped by down to Folkestone. The little Scram is very good at night riding. Not so much because of any exceptional lighting, more because it’s so slow that you’ve always got good visibility for the safe braking distance. And while I could have got to Folkestone easily on one tank of fuel, it would have left me a little short in France, so I dropped into the Maidstone services to fill up before the crossing. Which would have been easy, but it soon became obvious that no fuel would be forthcoming – I wandered over to the nightpay kiosk, took off my helmet and removed my earplugs, to be told curtly “pay before you fill up for bikes”. I similarly curtly replied “Fuck off then” and rode to the next services to fill up. The crossing itself was uneventful, which I’ll take as a good sign, and 35 mins or so later I was disgorged into the French road system at rush hour. This was remarkably pleasant, as there are no pot-holes to worry about, driving standards are amazingly good compared to the UK, the motorways seem to be adequately sized for the amount of traffic, and the signage is clear and well-maintained. I can only imagine what French drivers must think when they come to the UK. It’s like a third world country in comparison. I puttered along at 110km/h (I’m using a lovely little app called Digihud to give me a good clear km/h display on my phone) and settled into the Aire de Zutkerque a good 45 mins ahead of schedule. So I did the only sensible thing, and stretched out on the grass to have a snooze in the morning sunshine.

Ken and Mike turned up right on time, and I stripped down to a single layer under my jacket as we carried on. It was only 9am, but the temperature was already getting up into the mid 20s and it was only going to get hotter as we headed South during the day. The plan was simple – ride for 150kms or so, stop for fuel and coffee, and then onto the Reims area on the motorway before heading onto local roads towards the campsite at Châtillon-sur-Seine. And that’s pretty much exactly what happened really – we stopped for fuel and had a pit-stop for coffee and croissants before heading off again, aiming to make the next Aire before midday as that was when Mike was due to take his meds. Only the planned stop was closed, so we had to make a bit of an unscheduled stop on the hardshoulder under a bridge for a bit of shade while he necked his tabs with a swig of water. And as planned, we got to Reims and then headed onto the local roads through the Champagne region. This was a bit of a moment for me, as my mum and dad toured France on an Ariel Leader back in the early 1960s and today would have been my dad’s birthday so I wished him a happy birthday as we sped through the vineyards in the heat. Did I mention that the temperature was now already up in the mid 30s? That bidon of water on the pannier was coming in very useful every time we stopped. Lunch was a quick supermarket raid where I filled up on Orangina, pastries and 3D Bugles. I love a healthy diet. After lunch we headed through a forested area which was glorious as it was a good 2 or 3 degrees cooler than elsewhere, but all too soon that was over and we were into cornfields and some fairly intense heat. We finally rolled into the campsite at about 4pm, put the tents up, and grabbed an icy cold beer from the campsite office to slake the thirst from the hot dusty road. Dinner was a pizza in a brilliant little restaurant where we communicated in CSE grade French, occasionally assisted by Google translate and were served some excellent food and a couple more cold beers. The walk back to the campsite seemed a lot longer than the walk there, but we were all getting tired after the hot day. Thousands of swifts darted excitedly around above us as the heat of the day drained away, and we got back to the campsite at around 9:30 or so. There was no talk of sitting up for “just one more beer” as we all retired to our tents and very quickly, the land of nod arrived.

I slept very well indeed, despite the overnight heat. I just lay on top of the sleeping bag, and that was it really. I woke sometime around 06:30 and although I could hear Mike and Ken rummaging around outside, I stayed put. I don’t often just laze and waste time, but I did here. I wanted to enjoy the moment of listening to a French campsite coming to life, and just spend 20 minutes with my own thoughts. But of course, things needed to happen. First of which was tea. And top marks to the Brew Tea Company teabags. I’m a bit of a snob about tea. I like proper Assam tea, from a pot not a bag. But when camping the options are limited, so to find an acceptable teabag is a proper moment worth noting. Decamping was very quick as the little Alpkit tent just falls apart and into the panniers in ten minutes flat, and we were on the road well before 8am. First stop was a brilliantly French streetside cafe for coffee and pastries, before starting the journey proper and hitting a little petrol station where we were treated to the owner making a massive performance of switching on a coffee machine with theatrical hand gestures and lots of Gallic huffing and puffing. And then I dropped in behind Mike who had the route planned and followed the first couple of hours South. Until, that is, we hit the lower slopes of the Col de la Faucille. I remember this climb. I’ve done it before, and I knew there was good coffee at the top. The day had been long, and I wanted to stretch my legs a bit, so I made a bit of a naughty pass on Mike into a tight left, and just nailed it. And immediately after the corner there were two Gendarmes sitting in a lay-by just waiting to catch the idiot racing his mates… I made the generic Euro peace sign with my fingers as I didn’t back off at all, and was greeted with a wave back. No problem. The next 10kms up the Col were perfect. Every now and then I’d check my mirrors and just roll off a little when I opened a gap, but otherwise it was a properly flat-out thrash to the top, where we stopped, and had the best coffee while the bikes cooled down. And I had another moment where I considered just how lucky I am to have this on my doorstep – a flat out rag to the top of a col where I can stop and get a perfect cup of coffee with a view over Lake Geneva. We stretched the coffee stop out as long as we could, but had to get going again – and the last stretch of the day was pretty short, down to Chancy to meet up with Michael and Jackie once more. But more importantly, Sid and Columbine – the family cats. Columbine is a grand old lady – 19 years old now. And as soon as I threw my jacket into a pile on the floor, she curled up in it and made it her home for the next two days. I’m very flattered by this turn of events. Sid is a huge ginger ball of tomcat weighing in at 7kgs but a massive softie. Who spent the whole night purring like a Deltic locomotive at tickover and licking my ear as I was trying to sleep. Despite the attentions, I slept well. Now here’s a thing worth mentioning. I very rarely dream, that I am aware of. And when I do, it’s normally not pleasant, leading to a bit of the screaming ab-dabs while I try to wake myself up. And when I dream, it’s not visual, it’s just a series of feelings that I struggle to recall. But this evening, as I slipped away, I definitely found myself back in my old teenage bedroom for some reason. I’d love to know what triggered that memory as it’s not something I’ve consciously thought about for decades now. I still couldn’t describe to you what it looked like but I knew exactly where I was and it felt very comforting.

Sunday was a rest day. We motored into Montreux, and had a lovely lunch and just pottered. Again, when I’m doddering around in my bathchair I’ll look back on days like this and remember how great it was to be European. I’m not going to get all Ben Elton about things, but bloody hell we’ve made it very difficult for the UK for the next generation. I’m sorry. I didn’t vote for it. And I’ll leave it there. Dinner was a massive plate of bobotie – a classic South African dish – thanks to Michael. Sylvain and Al had turned up by this time to complete the pack of six riders for the next week, and the evening was spent relaxing in the garden. And while we all kind of knew each other it was lovely to reinforce the connections we had, and share some truly dreadful jokes over a beer.

We set alarms for 06:30 next morning to try to be away by 08:00 to at least get a few hours riding in the cool of the morning. Sid left me largely alone for the evening, although I could still feel him curled up at the foot of the bed. I’m absolutely sure that this is because he knows that I’m allergic to cats. All too soon, the alarm went off and I wandered into the kitchen for a cup of tea to start the day. Myself, Ken and Mike needed a fuel stop quite soon so the decision was made for the three of us to ride to the Chancy petrol station at the top of the hill before we all set off. I was ready a few minutes before anyone else so wandered outside to the bike, and noticed a small puddle of oil underneath it. That’s odd – it’s never ever leaked oil before now. I really would have noticed as it lives in the garage so any oil on the floor there is instantly recognisable. However, I couldn’t rule out that I’d accidentally parked over a patch of oil the day before. I had a good feel around the bottom of the engine and it was all dry so I just popped up the hill to the petrol station and filled up. The early morning chill was lovely through the vented jacket – I’d deliberately dressed lightly underneath as I knew the temperature would be getting up as we went through the day. After only minimal faffing we all set off following Michael out of Chancy pretty much on the dot of 08:00. The first site of any note was Le Plateau des Glières. It was a wonderfully wibbly little road up to the plateau, and then a ride through the most perfect Alpine meadow (even though it’s probably not actually in The Alps, but you get the idea) past the memorial to the Maquis des Glières, and onto a little bit of gravel track. I’d had a chat with Mike about this the day before, as he wasn’t 100% confident of his ability to ride off-road. The plan was that I would follow him, and if he got a bit wobbly, he’d just stop, and I’d ride his bike to the end of the gravel. However, he rode superbly confidently for his first forays into gravel tracks, and there was no drama whatsoever. Secretly I enjoyed this little bit of offroad as my tyres are designed for exactly this kind of territory. So while I was giving away some grip to everyone else in the road sections, I could get to enjoy this little bit knowing that I had a bit of a machine advantage here. Past the plateau we picked up the Route des Grandes Alpes and tucked in with the million BMW GS riders on the same route. Coffee was at the Col des Aravis, and immediately after leaving there we got split up into two groups of three at a set of roadworks. No worries, as we met up again (after a bit of a wait) at the Cormet de Roselend where we had the most delicious food served by the nicest waitress in the world. The sun was high in the sky by now, and I was sitting on a col eating French food in good company. All was very well in my pink and fluffy little world. Next up was the big one – the Col de l’Iseran. The highest paved pass in the alps. And it was getting hot as we rolled into Bourg-Saint-Maurice for fuel. As well as the million BMW GSs on the road, there was an increasing number of Vespas too – I later found out that they were all heading into Italy for the 80th year celebration of the marque. And while the riding standards were generally pretty good, some of the passes that these little bikes were putting on us up the cols in an effort to maintain momentum were questionable to say the least. The absolute worst riding I saw though was from a couple of GS riders. Rider #1 passed me with probably 20cm to spare as we approached a r/h hairpin on one of the cols. I had probably 50cm between my right handlebar and the rockface, and 20cm to the fat idiot on the GS to my left as he tried to run deep into the corner. I braked harder to let him past, and fuck me, if his mate behind didn’t take that as an invitation to do exactly the same thing, even closer. But by this time I was already starting to turn into the hairpin, so couldn’t do anything on the brakes to give him room. I just laid it over even further to ensure that I didn’t run him into the oncoming traffic on the way out of the corner as the colossal fuckwit thrupenny-bitted his way around my the outside of me, still in my lane, on a blind hairpin. Hey ho.

The run down the Iseran was absolutely fantastic. The little Scram was able to make up some ground on the bigger bikes here, at least until I abused the brakes one too many times and they started fading. But I was absolutely in my element, and had images of Tom Pidcock on some of his madder descents in the Tour de France. We rolled into the campsite, threw the tents up and wandered into town for a cold beer and steak frites. The beer really didn’t last long at all – it had been a long hot day on the road and we all spent the evening chatting away before heading back to camp relatively early. Clouds had been building in the afternoon in the mountains, as is typical in the region in hot weather, and a spectacular sunset slowly unveiled itself over the mountain ridge as we wandered back. Not a bad day, as they go.

Tuesday was a big day – the plan was to carry on down the valley from Lanslebourg, then sharp left over the Col du Télégraphe and then the Galibier. After that, turn left, into Italy via the Col de Montgenèvre, and back to Lanslebourg via the Col du Mont Cenis. Yeah, a big day out for sure. And it was my turn to lead up to the left turn towards Italy. And it was brilliant. Another early start to get a few hours in the cool, and easy navigation. Forgive me, for my old memory isn’t great these days and my notes are a bit spare for the first part of the day, so the spin over the Télégraphe is kind of lost in the mists of time now. I guess that nothing untoward happened, else I would have mentioned it – we did stop at the top for coffee and a chat with a bunch of intrepid cyclists from Brighton. The Galibier, however, I do remember. Mostly I remember just how much I want to go back with my bicycle. What a road – I can see why it’s absolutely etched into Tour de France folklore. And again, as at the Col de l’Iseran, at the top we were well above the snowline but the midday sun was beating down on us. And even though I’ve got quite a dark skin, I was slathering on the Factor 50 up there. It’s a hostile environment as evidenced by the sunburn after the whole avalanche incident a few years back. The little parking spot at the top of the Galibier was a bit overcrowded so we didn’t stay long, and again, the descent from the high cols is somewhere that the little Scram absolutely excels. Once we got to the bottom of the valley we stopped for lunch (pizza, which was a bit of a staple this week…) and again, I was in a very happy place indeed. Michael then led us up over the Montgenèvre and into the cool tunnels leading into Italy. One thing that stood out here, and I’m not making any political statement, is the number of refugees that we saw wandering through the tunnel from Italy into France. I counted at least 10, in the space of about three kms. You need to be absolutely at your wits end to attempt to walk through a three km, dark road tunnel with HGVs roaring past 20cm away. But finally, I was riding in Italy – something I’ve looked forward to for, well, since I started riding motorbikes I guess. Obviously I’ve been to Italy many times but this was the first time on two wheels and I revelled in the feeling of an ambition achieved. The stark comparison between the affluent Southen French Alps and the dereliction of Northern Italian Alps was quite apparent as we rode through old villages of abandoned buildings. Italy has not had an easy history, and here it was written plainly to see. We didn’t stop – it was only ever a brief dalliance, as we headed out of Italy and onto the Col de Mont Cenis. It was a very long and leisurely lunch on the col, with a beautiful view over the lake and a constant stream of bikes and supercars blatting past on the road outside. Coolest thing by far was the Triumph Spitfire – I still have a soft spot for those. The ride back into Lanslebourg was pretty straightforward until Michael caught sight of a Porsche GT3RS that was racing with a couple of BMWs, and just had to give chase. And I needed very little provocation indeed. We caught the group easily, but once the GT3 was past the BMWs, we had to let it go – after all, 450bhp against 25 is hardly a fair race. Still, it was fun while it lasted. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again but for the money, the little Scram is such a capable bike. You can fix it by the side of the road with a hammer, ride 500 miles in a day, and then rag it down a col at a non-trivial speed. Yeah, at times on the very fast corners it was all getting a bit weavy but more on that later… The evening was spent by the river eating local sausage. Pretty much a perfect day all round.

Wednesday was a lazy day. We rode up the valley to a massive old fort (the name of which escapes me now) but which is notable for a via ferrata that starts by crawling out of one of the windows. This is very much on my Big List of Things To Do Before I Die now. We decided to head back to the Col do Mont Cenis for lunch, to try one of the other restaurants there. The ride up the other side of what we’d ridden down the day before was good fun, and we stopped at the first restaurant to be met with an an absolute Fawlty Towers display of table service. We were served the wrong meals that were destined for another table, but as a couple of the plates matched, both Al and Michael tucked in before the plates were whipped away and delivered to the correct table, with a few mouthfuls missing. Trying to get the bill was the best bit, as the schoolage waiter just said “I’m not permitted to perform financial transactions” and fucked off. I suspect that they’d had a couple of regular staff phone in sick that morning, and were just scraping by with family and friends. Whatever, the food, when it arrived, was pleasant, and although we didn’t leave a tip, we took some memories away. Notes for today are rather slim, other than “formidable restaurant owner” which I’ll just leave there to remind me in future years when I read this back to myself.

Thursday was the start of the long haul back. The plan (which had changed about three times in the past 24 hours) was for Sylvain to head back home to Tournus, Al would carry on riding into Austria solo for a bit of an adventure, Mike and Ken would head back towards Châtillon-sur-Seine and find a campsite somewhere around halfway, and Michael and I would head back to Chancy, so the reverse of the ride that we did on Monday. I was up and about early, so just dropped my tent and packed everything into my panniers, and said my goodbyes to Sylvain and Al. I would be meeting Mike and Ken again at Châtillon-sur-Seine. The ride over the Iseran from the South was breathtaking, and bloody cold. I was in my full summer riding gear, and at the top it was something like 10 degrees C at this time of the day. My summer gloves are just not made for this and even when we hit the valley floor we were riding in shade for a good hour. We stopped at Bourg-Saint-Maurice for fuel and I couldn’t take my gloves off, as I just couldn’t feel my fingers any more. It took a good few minutes of resting them on my cylinder before a massive attack of the hot aches heralded the arrival of feeling once more. Riding as a pair rather than six, we made very good progress indeed and made it all the way back to the Col des Aravis for lunch, which was a massive plate of local charcuterie and the best bread I’ve had in ages. That, with the view of Mont Blanc over my left shoulder, made me realise just how much I was going to miss all of this when I got home, but that was effectively where I was headed now.

I also thought once more of my mum and dad, riding over these cols on an Ariel Leader back in the early 1960s, with none of the technical backup that we have these days. I have a lot to live up to – and while they’re both gone now, if I had the chance, I’d like to check that they’d approve of what I was up to. Thanks mum and dad – it’s because of you that I have these adventures. Back over Le Plateau des Glières, and before the offroad bit we stopped for our last coffee on the road – from here on, it would be solo. Again, the service was impeccable, with big smiles from our waitress. I’m sure that travelling with Michael helps here, as he is completely fluent in French (and many other languages) so when two English blokes turn up and are able to order in French, and then hold an easy conversation and make light-hearted jokes, that helps our European friends realise that we’re not all Nigel wannabees, and are happy to fit in together. The ride over the gravel bit, this time with just the two of us, was great. And for once I left Michael behind as I just hooked 2nd, stood up, and let the bike and tyres do what they do best. I could easily have pulled another gear but that would have just left a big cloud of dust and a big noise around the memorial, so I pulled it back a bit. We rolled into Chancy, opened a bottle of fizz, cooked dinner, and just flaked out. Michael and Jackie, I’m not sure you’ll ever read this, but thank you so much for the hospitality and love. My life is a lot richer.

The ride up to Châtillon-sur-Seine on Friday was due to be on little roads taking all day, but the forecast was brutally hot. And once I switched on data roaming on my phone in France, it immediately redirected me onto the autoroute with a three hour reduction in travel time. That was all I needed, so I just hit the major roads, and hung on. And again, the little Scram needs a mention here. It hit the 130km/h limit. Albeit on a long downhill stretch with a draught from a big SUV. But it did it. And then just held 110km/h all day as we rode North and the temperature climbed. And climbed. When I rode into Châtillon the local pharmacy sign said 42 degrees, and Ken later confirmed this when he rode in, as his Guzzi Stelvio read the same temperature. And that’s the hottest I’ve ever ridden in. I’ve experienced higher temperatures in Death Valley, but never on a bike. And it’s fucking terrifying that we’re seeing records broken by two or three degrees a year now. We spent the evening in the same pizza restaurant that we stopped in on Friday, and again, watched a million swifts circling around on the walk back to a very warm campsite and a last cold beer with mates before the final parting of the ways in the morning.

And so the final ride of the Alpine Extravaganza. Again, up and away early to get a few hours respite from the heat, and then just reel off the kilometres to Calais. Of course, there was an hour long queue for French border control, and I don’t blame them at all for that. I rolled back home at about 4pm after the usual M25 stasis and pothole dodging that is any UK motorway trip these days. What a week. All in, it was close on 3000kms. The little Scram needed a service once I got back, so as well as the normal stuff I also fitted a set of YSS cartridge emulators to the forks, to try and dial out that high speed weave without overly compromising low-speed compression damping. Whether these will work or not, we’ll see. First impressions on the Sunday morning sausage run are positive.

MIDI Class Revolt (The Vapourisation Of Reality)

As I’ve previously mentioned, I like electronic stuff. I like messing around with circuits, building simple designs, troubleshooting them when they don’t work, and learning from that. I like the steady hand and concentration that is required when soldering small components. I like the logical methodical approach to reading the schematics and measuring voltages at points until you get to the “that shouldn’t be at that value” moment. I like the smell of the solder flux. I like the fact that my workbench looks like something out of a 1960s sci-fi movie.

Actually, scrap that – let’s go back a few days. That spirit of just making weird stuff to make noises. I had a ticket to go and see Nightingales at The Portland Arms in Cambridge. They are one of my absolute formative bands. My introduction to them was hearing The Crunch [1] at a party, and I was absolutely smitten. I started to devour their songs, and every mix tape I made, every party that I was in charge of music, there would always be something. But I never got to see them first time around. Time moved on, I moved on, and then I rediscovered them sometime around 2014 or so I’d guess. They were as good as I remembered the first time around, I missed a couple of tours, bought tickets last year that were cancelled due to illness, and then finally, got to see them last weekend. It was an absolute blast. They walked onto the stage, didn’t say a word, and played, non-stop, for about 90 mins, just running one song into the next with perfect timing. It was a masterclass. As they walked back to the dressing room after the performance, I just said “thanks for playing, I’ve waited a long time for that” and Fliss, the drummer, spent the next ten minutes indulging a grey haired old bloke in conversation, thanking us for coming, and admitting that she probably wasn’t born when I first heard them. But before Nightingales, the support act was Thomas Truax. I’d heard of him previously for his work with Budgie, but I really wasn’t ready for what happened on stage. Just him, and some properly Heath-Robinson home made instruments, and an obvious love for a hopelessly romantic poetic lyric. I was completely transfixed – at the end of his session I made time just to thank him for the most original performance I’d seen in years, and he couldn’t have been more appreciative – we had a bit of a chat about Cambridge and what was to come next, and then I thanked him again and left him to sell stuff on the merch stand. I later saw him and his wife/girlfriend sneaking a pizza up to the dressing room, which for some reason made me feel very grounded – it’s nice to see that even a genius who operates on a completely different level to the rest of us still likes a pizza. Thomas Truax: https://www.thomastruax.com – if you get the chance, go and see him.

Right. Where were we? Oh, yes – electronic stuff. First thing then – a modification to The Little Scram. When I bought this, it was fitted with a little gizmo called a Tripper. Which is essentially a little LCD unit on the dash, which acts as a simple navigation device. The idea is brilliant – you carry your phone with you, which does all of the heavy maps processing, and then that uses Bluetooth to communicate with the Tripper to give you simple step by step directions. Only it just doesn’t quite work well enough. The directions are vague enough that you kind of need to know where you’re heading anyway. As an example, riding through Derby a while ago, the Tripper helpfully told me to just turn left when I was on a six lane road with about three left turns coming up. I like the idea, but the implementation just never really worked for me. With time and money spent on development, it absolutely could have, but Royal Enfield just never pursued the idea. I wish that they’d open up the API so I could code something myself to use the little display, but I’m 99% sure that’s never going to happen either. Anyway – I was chatting with and old friend, Rog, and he mentioned that he’d picked up a £9 tacho from eBay which just happened to fit into the same size space as the Tripper, and could easily be configured for a single cylinder engine. So of course, I bought one and fitted it:

That looks quite at home sitting there. There’s no need for a tacho on the Scram – it’s a long stroke single, so it’s never chasing revs, it just potters along the way it wants to. But still, for a tenner, it was a nice way to spend an afternoon in the garage. The wiring is dead simple, with the only modification being a 1K resistor in the backlight circuit to bring it down a bit. Other than that it fits, it works, and it’s a new toy. Will I keep it? Not sure really. In the same way the bike doesn’t need a tacho, it doesn’t need the tripper either. And I need something to fill that space. I’m sure I’ll think of something.

Otherwise, there’s been a whole lot of work on the synth project. And of course, this is a project, so while I’d like to say “construction is complete” – that’s of course just an interim phase. The initial set of modules are now built, and calibrated, and I’ve been spending evenings just playing with the possibilities. Being a completely analog instrument, there’s an infinite variation, give or take your own version of infinity. I can trigger the envelope generator with a gate voltage from the sequencer, and then send that output to the amplifier to control volume, the oscillator to control pitch, or the modulate a low-pass filter with it. And all of these devices are adjustable by hand anyway. It really is quite a bewildering array of opportunity to make something completely unlistenable, but every now and then, a noise comes out that sounds exciting and glittery and tuneful. And of course, I can never work out exactly where the filter resonance or amplifier offsets were when I made that noise, and so it never happens again. I love that aspect of the instrument. One thing that it’s not good at though, and something that I’d like to use it for, is ambient droney kind of Tangerine Dreamy sort of background stuff. And for this, I need a Low Frequency Oscillator. Actually, make that two. I want one LFO to drive the audible oscillator to give it a slowly varying pitch, and then another LFO to drive the first LFO to slowly change the rate at which that pitch is changing. And possibly to slowly change the cutoff point of the filter over time as well. Anyway – a pile of bits to build a pair of LFOs is now on order, and should be turning up next week. And before anyone says “you’re going to need a bigger case to put this lot into” – yeah, I know. Plans are afoot there too.

However, remember what I was saying earlier about enjoying the troubleshooting area of electronics? I’ve been getting a lot of practice… One of the things that I’d like to be able to do is use a keyboard to control things. The idea would be to take a keyboard, and then generate control voltages and gate signals to be able to trigger the synth to send an envelope to the amplifier, while also controlling the output pitch of the oscillator. And if anyone is thinking “that’s easy! That’s what MIDI does” – well, yes, I had the same thought. And this is where my catastrophic lack of knowledge became immediately apparent. Of course, you can simply buy a eurorack MIDI module to convert MIDI into control voltages. But where’s the fun in that? Rather, I looked for something DIY, and after a bit of searching, found the brilliantly customisable and configurable CV-12 unit, from Midimuso. This was clearly just what I needed. I had a spare keyboard up in the loft, a Yamaha PSS-780, complete with MIDI output, so I could just plug it and and would have Phil Oakey knocking at my door within 20 minutes to ask me to join the next Human League tour as engineer and beguilingly charismatic keyboard genius.

The build went well – it’s quite a small board, but everything is laid out well, and there were no struggles there. And as always, like any module, it needs calibrating – you get to choose the output voltage and the eurorack standard is simple – 1v per octave. So this is was was measured and set using the little trimmer pot.

Those little multimeter probes are brilliant for Dupont style connectors – I can just pop them onto the headers that I want to measure, and that leaves both hands free to twiddle the trimmer to get the required voltage. And then, I realised I needed a MIDI cable to go from the keyboard to the interface. This should have been as simple as just clicking ‘buy it now’ in eBay, but instead, I jumped on a train to Norwich and spent a day drinking gin, so I could pick up a cable. My £10 cable cost something like £100 in the end after paying for trains and gin and snacks. Money well spent, I think you’ll agree. Finally, I could plug everything together and see how close I was to the 1V per octave mark… With hindsight, I probably should have measured the output voltage before plugging it into the control voltage for the oscillator. That’s designed to vary from 0 to 5V. I got a few odd squeaks when I pressed a key, but nothing repeatable or in anyway even recognisable. So rather than carry on, I measured that voltage, and was alarmed to see it reading 10.25V. No matter what key I pressed. Just 10.25V. Unless I pressed the same key quickly a few times in succession and held it down, in which case, the voltage changed to something equally odd, but at least, in the right kind of area.

I put the kettle on, and had a think. There were any number of problems. Firstly, the interface. However, this is a simple circuit, and when I calibrated it, everything measured perfectly. Perhaps the keyboard? It’s an old unit, and I know it’s had at least one cup of coffee thrown over it in the past. So there’s every chance that it’s not outputting expected signals. But more than likely, it’s a lack of knowledge on my part. So I did a bit more reading, and noticed one area where I could at least look for a pattern. The interface is designed so that on any A note, it outputs an integer voltage. A1 is 1v, A2 is 2v etc. So 1v per octave, based on the A note. Which makes perfect sense. And yes, if I plug things in, and continually bash an A note, eventually, I get an integer voltage out of things. It’s not always the voltage that I expect, and as soon as I release the key, it ramps back up to 10.25 (or sometimes 8.92) volts, which I’m not really sure where that comes from. But there’s obviously something going on in there where the interface correctly works out that I’ve got an A key pressed, even if it can’t determine which octave. And this, currently, leads me to think that the keyboard is *probably* the problem. What I might do is find a USB to MIDI interface so I can manufacture a few notes using something like Audacity and then see what figures I get with that.

But before that – I’m off to Manchester in a couple of days to see The Wave Pictures.

Music and motorbikes. I’d probably best put the kettle on to complete the trifecta.

[1] https://youtu.be/mM999EL6eFo

Scopes [1]

One of the cool things about building my own synthesiser is the requirement for calibration. The various modules all have to play nicely with each other, and like any other instrument, it needs to be set up, and then constantly kept in tune. The difference here is that rather than using, say, a key to wind a string, I’m measuring voltages. That’s all that’s really going on inside the box – just voltages varying over time. Whether these voltages are used as oscillations to feed into headphones, or control voltages to say, change the amplitude of an amplifier, or gate voltages to fire an envelope, it’s all just voltages and time.

So while the soldering is ongoing with the various modules, I thought I might have a quick run through setting up what I had, just to firstly check that it’s operating within specified parameters, but also to give me a good grounding [2] in the operation and troubleshooting of each module. First on the bench was the sequencer. There’s actually not much to calibrate here – just the output control voltage. Each step has a potentiometer that will set the control voltage that is output when that step is reached, and I can set it on a scale of 0-2.5V or 0-5V. There are a pair of trimmers to set these voltages, so the idea is to start the sequencer with the pots all down at zero, and check the output voltage is zero. This was easy enough, and indeed, a bit fat zero was recorded on all five steps. I’m calling that a win. To measure the maximum output, you just wang the pots up to maximum, and again record the voltage on the CV Out. On the 2.5V range this was reading 2.44V, so pretty close, but a quick twiddle with the trimmer soon got this up to exactly 2.5V. However, on the 5V range, the maximum available was 4.93V no matter how much I twiddled the trimmer. I had a quick poke around, and realised that the voltage divider on the output was setup to have an input of 12V exactly, and somewhere else in the circuit I was seeing a voltage drop down to about 11.2 or so before the output stage. There are a couple of of ways to deal with this. Either I can start tracing every component in the device to see where that drop is, or I can just replace one of the resistors in the voltage divider. You can see where this is going… I did a quick bit of scribbling on my notepad, and worked out that if I put a 4.7K resistor in series with the 51K already there, it would get me out of jail. There’s a good reason that 4.7K figure is so exact – I’ve got about 50 of them in my spares pile. I used circuitjs to mock this up, and sure enough, the output should now be within the range of the trimmer to hit 5V. The board around the 51K resistor was quite crowded, so making the adjustment was fiddly, but easily doable. I hooked up the multimeter, and adjusted the trimmer:

Job done for the sequencer then. Next up was the wavefolder. This is a little gizmo that I didn’t even know existed up until about a month ago, and it’s very simple indeed – you just set a threshold with a knob, and the input wave gets inflected at that point. For square waves this is a bit pointless as you just get a reduction in volume. But for triangle waves, this adds some harsh metallic sounding harmonics. Problem one is that I don’t have a triangle wave output from my VCO. But that’s not the end of the world, as the folder can take a sawtooth wave (which I do have) and convert it to a triangle for further processing. And that’s the bit that needs calibrating – the sawtooth to triangle conversion. Now, I’d already set this up by ear – again, there’s a trimmer pot that you twiddle and in this case you can get a feel for when the triangle is nicely formed as the tone becomes purer, with no harsh overtones. But given how poor my hearing is I always knew that this was going to be miles out. So, I hooked up the oscilloscope:

Blimey. That was first go. I’m taking that as a win, as that’s as close as I’m going to see to a well formed triangle wave. I should have got a photo with the folder working as well, so you can see the effect on the waveform. And finally, for now, the VCA (voltage controlled amplifier). This one is dead simple – just input a tone from the VCO, and check that the peaks and troughs are equally centred above and below zero. If not, again, twiddle a trimmer until they are. And one quick bit of twiddling later:

Close enough for me. I still need to tune the VCO properly – it’s designed so that for every volt on the input control voltage, it raises an octave. So the calibration really sounds quite straightforward – set it up to that it outputs, say, C0 with no voltage on the input control, then apply +5V (the maximum allowable – and now you know why the sequencer is tuned output exactly +5V) and check that the resulting note is C5. Again, theoretically, this is easy. But it’s just a bit of a pain as you either need an audio tuner (or smartphone app and a very quiet room) or pitch perfect hearing. And over time (and in different temperatures) it’s liable to drift again, so this is something that needs to be checked every now and then. Or, I can just invest in one of these – https://www.davidhaillant.com/category/electronic-projects/utility-modules/tuner/ – pop it in the rack, and then I get a perfectly accurate readout of the frequency of the VCO any time I want it. I think that’s going on the Christmas list then.

So there you have it – a crash course in starting to calibrate a modular synth. The rest of the build has so far gone pretty well – I’ve had to modify the design of the envelope generators (either I’ve made the same mistake twice, or there’s a defect in the design that means I had to remove the same resistor in both of them) but that was good fun chasing through the schematics trying to work out what was going wrong. And there have been squelchy boingy noises forthcoming at times. Now that the build phase is coming to an end, it’s time to complete the tuning and start learning how to use it.

[1] Bit of an obscure one that, even for me. Bauhaus, in case you want to go and look for it.

[2] No, that wasn’t intentional.

The Path of Most Resistance

There are times in life when you question your own choices. This is entirely natural, and part of the learning process. As a child, these choices are normally things like how big a ramp can you jump your bike off to impress your mates? And so some of the lessons are reflected upon in the relative peace of the fracture clinic while the doctor explains to your worried parents that the cast will be on for six weeks, while you’re already looking forward to going to school the next day with a cast to show off. As an adult, it’s either the sensible choices that turn out to be a bit, well, dull – why did I buy an Amstrad E-mailer? Or the stupid ones – why on earth did I order the phall rather than the korma? And then there are the considered choices that you know will lead to frustration and excessive use of fluent Anglo-Saxon language, but it’s all part of the learning process.

And this is very much the thinking behind the modular synth project. As mentioned last time out, rather than just going out and buying a nice pre-packaged gizmo capable of making improbable noises, I decided to learn about circuit design, and make one. Cards on the table, I’m not making it from scratch – rather I invested in a kit from https://www.ericasynths.lv/ – but it’s far more than just a pile of bits to nail together and put in a case. Rather, each module is accompanied by a full description of what the individual components do, how the circuits perform the required function, and a lot of background information into the thought process that went into the design. As well, each kit contains thorough descriptions of how to prototype each circuit on a breadboard, and which component values are worth experimenting with, to understand exactly what is going on. Now, I’m pretty experienced with a soldering iron, but I knew that this project would stretch that limit. At the same time, there would be circuits that didn’t work first time, and needed troubleshooting from reading the schematics and fundamentally understanding why things either weren’t working at all, or doing something odd. I’m no Mend-It-Mark (I’m more of a Knacker-It-Neil) so this part of the project would always be the steepest part of the learning curve.

The box that turned up from Latvia was reassuringly heavy when it arrived, and very well packaged and protected from the attentions of the courier. I opened it up, expecting to find a thick manual, but I’m very 20th Century in that regard. Of course, all documentation is supplied as .pdf files and it’s up to me to print them out – which is OK by me as it saves trees. The choice of which bit to build first was easy really – the case and power supply, of course. No point in building the various oscillators, amplifiers and filters if I don’t have any way to contain them or fill them up with angry pixies. And while the circuitry was very easy to follow (basically simple power supply giving +12V and -12V, and a couple of LEDs to demonstrate that it was doing so) construction was quite longwinded due to soldering 14 connectors, each with 16 pins into the board.

The two LEDs are my modification. The standard design has them on the board, but that’s a bit pointless as once the modules are bolted in place, you can’t see them anyway. So it was simple enough to buy some 5mm LEDs and bezels and move them to the outside of the case. And rather than soldering them straight to the board, I soldered a couple of headers and then used socketed connectors, so I can take the board out without unsoldering them if I need to. The first power-on was rewarded with a steady green and red LED indicating +12 and -12V respectively, and a prod around with the multimeter showed that the right voltages were available on the right pins. That all looked good. The eagle-eyed among you will note the unpopulated bits of the board to the left of the ground for the LEDs. This is a +5V supply. Nothing that I’m building needs +5V, so I didn’t bother with this.

And this left me with a bit of a conundrum. Which modules should I build first? The obvious starting point would be the wavefolder, as it’s very simple with few components. But I wouldn’t be able to do anything with it, as at this point, I didn’t have a wave to fold. So, the Voltage Controlled Oscillator should be first on the list, clearly. But then if I had an oscillation, I couldn’t tell as I didn’t have an oscilloscope or an output stage to plug my headphones into. Output stage first then… This was really quite straightforward to build – I didn’t build this on the breadboard first, as I kind of understand how a headphone amplifier works anyway, and until I had something to push through the amplifier, I couldn’t tell if it was working anyway. It still took a good couple of days to get everything neat and tidy on the board, as it’s quite densely packed and while you don’t need to worry about heatsinks in such a low powered application, you still need to think about airflow around the transistors. But soon enough, everything was in place, so I powered it up, fully expecting to hear a small fizzle noise and smell expensive smoke. But no, the power supply remained stable, and while I didn’t have a signal to amplify yet, I poked around the test points and found all voltages to be as expected. Chuffed with success, I put the kettle on and opened the box for the VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator) components. This looked a lot more daunting, with a more densely packed board, and a requirement for calibration if I ever got a squeak out of it. The next three evenings or so were spent hunched over my bench with soldering iron in hand (for reference, I’m using a simple TS-101 clone, nothing fancy. After years of rebuilding exotic Italian motorbikes it’s refreshing to be doing something that just uses a few cheap handtools. Um, did I mention the oscilloscope?) and a furrowed brow. Construction seemed to go well, and again, I plugged it in, and held my breath… Again, no smoke, so I made my first patch – from the sawtooth output on the VCO to the input on the amplifier, and then my headphones into the output of the amp. And I was rewarded with a noise like a whale farting in a vat of custard, as I had the frequency all the way down. But a quick twiddle with the Big Knob soon had more pleasurable noises forthcoming.

As you can see from the photo, I’ve also played with feeding a control voltage from my little Rakit sequencer into the VCO, which worked exactly as expected, giving me a wonderfully tuneless set of frequencies depending on where I twiddled the output voltage to.

And that’s kind of where we are so far. Well, that’s all I’ve got photos of anyway. I’ve also been playing with the VCA and envelope generators, and things haven’t gone quite so smoothly so far – but as previously mentioned, all part of the learning process. I now know a lot more about resistor tolerances and voltage dividers than I did before. I also know a lot more about de-soldering techniques and the cat has learned some new swear words.

Oscillate Wildly

If you know me at all, or if you’ve been reading this for any length of time, you’ll know that other than my family, I have three real passions in my life. Tea, music, and motorbikes. And probably in that order too, which may come as a surprise given how much I write about motorbikes. Then again, writing “I’m having a cup of tea” every so often doesn’t make for brilliant reading. As well, I do have a bit of of an interest with simple electronics – I know one end of a soldering iron from the other and will happily put together simple circuits for fun. And given my passion for tea, I did once throw together a simple bit of measuring and processing to do exactly that. It was the one and only time I had a Twitter account, and even then, the only thing that was ever really posted there by the API was “I’m having a cup of tea!” when the temperature spiked in my drink mat. I did write about that, here – https://www.ronketti.org.uk/temp.html – the shed where the measurements were taken is no longer there, but the Raspberry Pi lives on, suitably purposed as my media server. And the whole Twitter thing did lead to one brilliant comedy moment when The Lovely Faye was trying to sort out our home insurance. After spelling the surname for the third time, the chap on the other end of the phone exclaimed “Ronketti! You’re not the tea sensor on the internet person are you?!”

And there is a definite crossover there – electronic music and instruments have always fascinated me. I can pin down exactly when this started, seeing Tubeway army performing Are Friends Electric? on Top Of The Pops, when I was about 11 or so. I’d never heard anything like it – and really, neither had anyone else. Here were noises that I didn’t understand. I didn’t know where they came from, but I knew they excited me a whole lot more than another Abba or Brotherhood Of Man track. And having such a charismatic frontman for the band just made things seem even more mysterious. For sure, there was electronic music around before then (picking an easy target, I Feel Love, by Donna Summer with Georgio Moroder would be another milestone) but watching Gary Numan and Tubeway Army was my entry point. And then we hurtled into the 80s. Human League. The Normal. Japan. Depeche Mode. Cabaret Voltaire. I was like a child in a sweetshop, with everything I wanted, right in front of me, waiting to be experienced and enjoyed. And then when I wanted to dance, there was always Heaven 17, Erasure, New Order. Everything was bright, sparkling, ambitious and even when the music itself was more introspective, it was still new and exhiliarating. Gary Numan went on to reinvent himself and the musical landscape of the time, and Vince Clarke sprinkled neon genius over everything. It was such an exciting time to be young.

This of course, as a teenager led me down a rabbit-hole. If I saw, say, Phil Oakey on the cover of Sounds I would immediately buy it. I consumed art in a way that I never had done before. I saved my pocket money for a year to buy a secondhand Roland SH-101. I would spend every Saturday in the local music shop running my hands over the Jupiter-8 that they had there, painfully aware that I’d never be able to even switch it on, never mind own it. I learned the basics of oscillators, sequencers, amplifiers, so I could understand what the SH-101 was doing when I changed the settings. My parents would have been despairing of me at this time, I’m sure, as I spent yet another evening making odd crunchy-shoopy-boingy noises for six hours straight, rather than completing my English and Geography homework. And I learned more about the history of electronic music – of Kraftwerk, and Neu!, and what happened in Düsseldorf in the late 1960s. Of David Bowie and Iggy Pop, of Tangerine Dream and Delia Derbyshire. My musical horizons expanded like never before. In short, I was laying down the foundations for who I am now.

So where am I going with all this? Well it’s time for a new project. I have no room in the garage for another motorcycle, and making tea isn’t a project at the best of times. It’s enjoyable for sure. But as previously mentioned, there are only so many “I’m making tea!” blogposts that I’d be willing to write, and that number is less than one. And so I’ve just invested a less than trivial amount of money in a crash course in audio circuit design and a pile of components. Which should, hopefully, end up with a proper Eurorack modular synth that I can noodle with. Now, I do have a little bit of experience of this courtesy of the chaps at https://www.rakits.co.uk/ – I’ve built sequencers and basic oscillators already, so everyone else in the house already has a feeling for the kind of noises that I’ll be making. I think the cat is looking for a new home. And of course, there is the question about whether a modular synth is even an instrument – after all, at it’s fundamental level, it’s just a series of circuits that you plug together to generate a varying voltage over time to shove into a speaker. But, my thinking of this, is that it’s no different to, say, a trumpet – you’re just moving air over a series of valves in that case, in the same way that I’m just moving volts over capacitors and using that to drive a loudspeaker. The end result is the same.

So there will be music. As well as the modular synth project, I have a pile of gigs lined up already which will be brilliant – Wave Pictures, Nightingales, Kavus Torabi, and a few others that I’ve forgotten now. There will be tea. Actually, there will be lots and lots of tea as one of my Christmas presents was a kilo of proper strong Assam tealeaves – the girls know me so well. And what of motorbikes? So far, there’s an offroad coast to coast trip in May, a week in The Alps in June, and two weeks riding to Corsica and back with Michael and Jackie in September. Sadly I think this leaves little time (or money!) for another Isle of Skye trip this year, but if I can somehow squeeze it in, I’ll definitely do so. And I’ve promised a couple of mates that I’ll get over to the Isle of Man this year, so there’s that to look forward to as well.

Tea, music and motorbikes. It’s going to be a good year.

Into The Light

Anybody that knows me, knows that I struggle at this time of year. I’m yearning for daylight. The days that we get are short, and as often as not, overcast and dull. There are times when I wake, and am unable to tell whether it is day or night. But today is a milestone. It is one of the days I look forward to more than any other. The sun has set on the shortest day, and from now for the next six months there will only be increasing daylight.

The change will be almost unnoticeable at first, but it is there. And from now until the equinox, that rate of change will only accelerate, whereupon the rate of change will decrease again, until the summer solstice. And I was going to write “the change is almost unnoticeable at first, but I have faith it is there” but what I have is the polar opposite of faith. I have my own experience of the turning of the seasons, and we have thousands of years of recorded observations to back this up. The mechanisms and reasons behind this changing of the seasons has been studied, and written about by people far cleverer than me, and I accept their findings to be a true and accurate representation of why the days are getting longer from now. I no more have faith in this than I have faith in any given deity. Rather, I understand it to be true from reason and observation.

And in a way, I wish I did have faith in something, rather than always relying on logic. I’ve been reading a lot of Nick Cave this year, and his writing can be calming, consoling, perceptive, witty, scathing, but it is always considerate and deeply human. And at the heart of a lot of his writing is a belief in his God, it obviously gives him great peace to have something to hold onto in dark times. He has been through grief that most of us can never wish to comprehend. But at a wider level, I think that we are on the cusp of a more widespread period of dark times, and in some ways this is linked to my understanding of the way the seasons work. What I am basing my point of view on is, as mentioned, my own observation, the recording of data over thousands of years, and the logical reasoning by centuries of learned scientists to explain this phenomena. I do not need to have faith that the sun will rise in the morning – it is a natural feature of the structure of the solar system. That we are here to observe and understand it is another question entirely. My own view view is pretty much the weak anthropic principle – if the universe were any other way we couldn’t be here to observe it, and so we’re really just along for the ride. And yet we still have communities who earnestly believe that the earth is flat, and will happily propagate this view. Carl Sagan, in his book The Demon Haunted World, wrote a very prescient warning of where this could lead us.

And now I’ve completely forgotten where I was going with all this, but I’m glad to have written it down anyway. If nothing else it gives me an excuse to listen to a great song, and think forward to long hot summer evenings, days on the beach, barbecues, rides through Europe, and not having to wear 12 layers of ill fitting clothing just to go out to the garage.

I Can See Clearly Now

Blimey, things have progressed rather more quickly than I thought over the past few days. Remember last time out, I posted a photo of my BMW 635CSi, and lamented that I’d probably lost the diary of the restoration attempt? That sparked my curiosity somewhat. Not so much because of the diary, although that would be interesting to read, for sure. Rather, for a single image that I had pinned up on the wall in my shed, which I thought I’d like to look for again. You see, I still think the 635CSi is one of the very best looking cars ever made (I know, I’m showing my 1980s roots here. And that’s fine – it’s a part of who I am and where I came from) and I’d love another print of it. And I dug up a few old backups, couldn’t find it, and was just about to give up on the whole affair. At which point, I had one of those really odd flashbacks, and had a sudden jolt of a memory that I’d named the file ‘clearview’ or somesuch. I have no idea where this came from – I’ve not looked at this image in a decade, maybe more. I’ve not looked at the filename for longer, and even when I did, I would have just registered it vaguely when I sent it to the printer. So I mounted up a few old disc images, and found it:

And on the same disc image was the 635 restoration diary. And a small pile of other diaries that I’ve written over the years outside of this blog.

My first thought was to publish the lot of them here. After all, it’s history, right? But as I started to read through them, my mind changed. A lot of this was written when I was a young man. I held views, and said things that I am not proud of. And by all means if we ever go out for a pint I’m more than happy to talk about those times. But what I’m not willing to do is publish them. I’ve moved on. They will stay as memories, rather than as published history.

Now, that said, I *did* recover the 635CSi rebuild diary, and for sure, over the coming months, that’s going to be reproduced here. And maybe I’ll dive into some of the other diaries and see if there are any that I’ll publish – but I think the rule will be that I won’t redact information and publish the rest of a diary. I think that’s fair.

It’s good to revisit those times. I never really took photos (I just don’t really work with images, whether physical or mental) so those words are all I have of some formative moments. But equally, it’s very good to understand that I’m not the same person any more, and that I’ve moved on in some aspects. A lot is still the same (tea, music, motorbikes) but a lot has changed (these diaries go back before I met Faye – indeed, one of them records the moment where I first realised that I’d like to spend the rest of my life with her). I’ve got to keep some mysteries, right? Either way, over the next few weeks there’s likely to be a few old memories posted here – please bear with me with this self indulgence – I’m sure that normal service will be restored as soon as there’s another plan.

Did I mention that I’m heading to The Alps in June?

Do The Evolution

Somewhere around 40 years ago or so, I was sitting in a dentist waiting room. For whatever reason, I remember the room quite vividly – it was on Northgate St., in Bury St. Edmunds – a lovely Georgian building, with beautiful views from the sash windows. But I wasn’t looking at the ornate gardens or the thousand year old abbey ruins. My heart was elsewhere. As an impressionable 18yr old, I’d just started driving (at the time I had a beige Escort 1300 Mk. II, which I ended up crashing into a snooker club) and so I picked up a copy of AutoCar that was on the table in front of me. And I saw this advert:

It’s all very 1980s, with the obvious relish that BMW used in the description that the 635 was outrageously expensive. And it was. And still is. But, that image stayed with me. I didn’t really want the trophies, but I wanted just to feel what it was like to use them. If you will, I just wanted to borrow someone else’s success to see what I was missing by being a useless spod.

“Mr. Ronketti please?”

I put the magazine down, and submitted myself to the attentions of the dentist. But the images stayed with me. I wanted to ride a K100RS and drive a 635CSi. The advertising machine of BMW had worked.

And over the years, I’ve done both. I’ve owned a K100RS, a K100RS-SE, and a 635CSi. So let’s start with a photo. This was taken probably 20 years ago now:

The BMW worriers among you will be frothing at the mouth at this point, as clearly that’s not a 635CSi. No, it’s an E30 318is. But in front of it are the two K100s that I had. And I’ll get to those in a minute, but what of the 635? Well, I bought an E24 635CSi from a thunderous bullshitter in Mildenhall who absolutely guaranteed that it would pass an MOT. I live about 20kms away, and it was a miracle that the thing made it back home. It was my first foray into car restoration, and I need to see if I kept the diary that I wrote about it. And while I coaxed the big engine back into life, I didn’t have the skills or tools to handle the horrible rot in the chassis, so I had to pass it on. Still, I’d driven a 635, albeit only the once. As for the 318is? I’m not a car person. At all. But bloody hell, that was an absolute joy to drive. The K100s saw many tens of thousands of miles of service between them – at the time I was commuting two or three days a week with a 400km round trip to Reading. I couldn’t have asked for a better bike whether it was filtering through a gridlocked M25 on a dark rainy December evening, or taking the country roads home on a high summer day. Neither of them ever missed a beat, and they were brilliantly engaging to ride. I also took the SE on a couple of trackdays where it surprised a few late model litrebikes. BMW did a very good job with that one.

So where am I going with all this? Well, here’s the view on my drive currently:

It’s still 12 cylinders of BMW. Just contained in fewer vehicles. I guess that advert is still working on me, 40 years on.

I’ve just done a lot of digging around old hard drives, and I don’t think that I kept the diary of the restoration. But I did find this – please don’t be fooled by the looks like I was.

Big Love

You’ve all read these posts before. You know that whenever I wheel a bike into the garage, as often as not it isn’t wheeled at all, rather bits of it are carried and thrown into a rusty pile in the corner awaiting a period of scrutiny and a lengthy rebuild process. But with the K1600, it’s all a bit different. When I agreed to buy it I went through a couple of loose ends that needed tidying up, asked for a full service, a new battery, and also a new set of Continental tyres. I deliberately specified Continental, as I’ve used them for years now and they are marvellous, and also because I knew that only one set came in the recommended fitment, the Road Attack 4GT. I’ve used Road Attacks almost exclusively for the past few years on larger bikes and they are absolutely perfect for what I need. They’re not cheap, but worth every penny. And all of this was agreed for the asking price, so I felt confident that there wasn’t much wiggle room left for the dealership to make a few quid out of my inattention to detail.

So when I picked the bike up, the only question I actually asked was “did you do the air filter?” as I forgot to ask that when agreeing to the service package. “No, there wasn’t any reason to do so” was the answer I got. What I now understand that to mean is “No, it’s a two hour job and we don’t want to do it”. However, I wasn’t to know any better, so I just accepted it, and made a mental note to check the air filter. I mean, how difficult can it be? So I rode the bike home, and had a think about things that I’d like to take a look at. There were definitely a couple of bits that I wanted to sort out. Firstly, one of the previous owners had drilled a hole in the screen to mount a camera. And as previously mentioned the hole was horribly off-centre so it just couldn’t remain. I tried covering it up with a couple of stickers, but this just looked cheap and nasty. I then noticed a very good condition screen on eBay for £40. That was an easy buy, and easy to fit. And immediately makes the bike look loved, rather than a bit scrappy. Otherwise, the list was reasonably straightforward – check the air filter, replace the final drive oil, reset the time and date, and just sort out the Bluetooth pairing with my helmet. Let’s start with the most troublesome, the air filter… I read the maintenance guide, and realised that it was a non-trivial job, and a new filter was only £20 anyway and so I ordered one just in case the one that I found in there wasn’t in the best shape. Here’s what I found…

Something has been if not actively living in the airbox, at least using it to scavenge nesting material. No matter, it all came apart easily, I cleaned everything up, and then just popped the tank covers back on. Yes, it took a couple of hours and I can see why the dealer really didn’t want to dive in there in case they broke one of the panels taking it off, but really, I’d rather they’d just said “no, we didn’t do it as it’s a long job”. But that’s OK, they were up front and told me that it wasn’t changed, and I’m happy with that. Next up then, the final drive oil. This is a very easy job indeed. The biggest challenge is getting the behemoth onto the centre stand – once there, just pop the number plate and wheel off, remove the fill and drain plugs, and refill the oil. And the oil that came out looked in very good condition anyway but it’s nice to know that it’s done.

Right, so where are we? Screen, air filter, drive oil. Ah, yes – tyres. Of course, when I picked the bike up I checked that it had new tyres, and indeed, it does. But not Conti Road Attacks. Rather, it has ContiMotions fitted – which aren’t a recommended fitment for the K1600 according to BMW or Continental as the rear should be 190/55 and the ContiMotion is 190/50. OK – I’m not delighted with this turn of events as the ContiMotion is a cheap tyre (£200 a pair, rather than £350 for the Road Attacks) but then again, this is where the dealer will make that £100 that I always knew they would anyway.

Navigation… the bike comes with a BMW Nav-4 as standard, and this works. Certainly well enough to get me home from the dealer anyway! One one of the things I did when I got home was to hook the unit up to my laptop to download the latest maps and software – it’s essentially a Garmin Zumo 660 unit so while not modern, it’s very well integrated into the dash of the bike and it works. And that’s where things probably should have stayed, but I was having a chat with my friend Marcel, and the subject of new purchases came up. He’d just bought a new bench power load unit for testing batteries, so I posted him a picture of the K16. “Does that come with a Nav-6 unit?” was his immediate response. Well, no, it comes with a Nav-4. But the mounting is the same, and he has 12 spare Nav-6 units at home (he repairs Garmin kit for a sideline) so before I could say no, he’d arranged to send me a ‘spare’ Nav-6 that he had. And wouldn’t you know it, eBay were listing a spare Nav-6 dash unit (the aperture is slightly bigger from the 6 to the 4) so that was another cheap eBay order. I really don’t get why bits for the K16 are so cheap – the screen was £40, the whole dash unit was £35. I’ve spent more than that on a Ducati gasket before now. Anyhow, I now have a Nav-6 on the way and a dash ready to accept it and continue to use a fully integrated navigation system. I mentioned this to another old friend, Rog (ex GP250 rider, BMW owner, and now owner of my old Beta 200RR – no, we’re not related) who just said “you can fit a Carpuride W502 unit, in fact, I’ve got one for you to try” and again, before I could argue, it was in the post. Now, therein lies a story. A week later, Rog dropped me a line to ask how it was going with the W502 unit? I had no idea, as it hadn’t arrived, and after a bit of investigation it transpired that it was being held at my local delivery office for payment of a surcharge as Rog’s local delivery office had incorrectly accepted it as a large letter. No problem. Well, it shouldn’t be a problem, as the Royal Mail should pop a card through my door that I can use to pay the excess postage and they’ll deliver the item. Only they never have. And there’s no way to pay the postage without the card. And there’s no way to talk to anyone on the phone. And the RM website is a massive steaming turd the size of Belgium that is of no help whatsoever. So I drove up to my local sorting office this afternoon with proof of address and the tracking number, only to find that the opening hours of my local sorting office are 08:00-10:00 daily. That’s it. So when most of us need to go to work, which I suspect is their mode of operation as after 18 days the package gets returned to sender – which probably means it gets chucked in the skip out the back unless it’s of any value in which case it gets stolen. Either way, it’s reported as lost in the system thanks to technology and automation removing the human element from the process. Forgive me – I’m getting slightly cynical as I get old.

Where are we then? The K16 is lovely, no question. It’s been very well looked after, and other than the air filter, I’ve not *needed* to do anything at all. I just can’t help myself, I like to take things apart and clean them and put them back together. The tyres, I’m sure, will be absolutely fine and I’ve no reason to complain. Oh, actually, there was one other thing – I wanted to reset the date and time for no reason other than I’m an engineer and I like things to be right. So I did, and immediately, the service light came on telling me that the last service was due in 2019. I’m not worried by this as I already have the necessary bits to reset the service indicator and do other diagnostics, so that’s exactly what I did. I know what happened – the dealer reset the service light but not the date, and so as soon as I set the date correctly the indicator came on again. No problem. But a bit sloppy.

And I realise that I’ve just spent a couple of thousand words on what it’s like to maintain, rather than what it’s like to ride. Yes, I’ve ridden it a few times since bringing it home. And I can sum the riding experience up in one word.

Kowabunga.

Gigantic

Back in early Spring, The Lovely Faye and I went to a gin festival in Cambridge. It was brilliant. We got tipsy together, got giggly, had a raving attack of the munchies, got cake, and generally spent the day like two 16yr olds bunking off school and drinking cheap cider. Unsurprisingly, I don’t remember huge amounts of the day. That said, one topic of conversation has grown, and led to quite a lot of activity in the garage (and the bank balance…) and exciting plans are now very much afoot.

At some point in proceedings, we got talking about how we used to go out and ride together, when I was riding my ZXR750s. And while this may not seem like the ideal two-up bike for touring on, that’s exactly what we did. Either pottering around the UK at weekends, or longer trips with a tent and sleeping bags down through France. And while we both admitted that a ZXR750 may no longer be a viable way of repeating this, it would be lovely to try and get back on a bike again. After another gin or two, this fledgling idea had grown wings into a full on tour of Corsica, and I had carte blanche to go out and buy a (reasonably priced…) bike to make this happen. I think this stage of the conversation coincided with the onset of the munchies, so we decamped to the cake shop and I made a mental note to start looking for possible bikes.

A few days later, I started on a shortlist. It’s been a while since I’ve ridden a litre bike, and right now, Honda CBR1100XXs are criminally cheap. So that’s where the search started, as they are perfectly capable of continent crossing and luggage is available. Luckily, time was on my side and I didn’t rush into any impulse buys (I must be getting old…) despite a couple of decent looking candidates going for auction. No, before I could buy another bike, I needed to clear some space in the garage first. That was the deal I made with myself. It’s nice, finally, to be back down to two bikes, the Scram and the KLR650, and I had no intention of making life more complicated for myself again. Spring turned into summer, and plans had actually started to firm up a little bit with a proposed date of September 2026 for Corsica and to be joined by Michael and Jackie on the ride. But there were holidays to be had, and then I could sell a bike to make space for the CBR1100. And so Faye and I were walking through Barcelona (or it could have been Valencia I guess) when Faye pointed at a bike parked up by the side of the road, and said “Can we take one of those? That looks really comfy…”

It was a BMW K1600GTL.

I could not have been more happy with this turn of events. I’ve owned many BMWs over the years, indeed my current car is an E85 Z4. I have a massive soft spot for BMW six-cylinder engines, and I’ve never ridden a six. Moreover, if you’re going to cross continents on a bike, the K1600 is right up there in a rarefied collection of bikes that are the best tools for the job. So I nodded to Faye, said “Yes, of course!” and made a mental note never to discuss the cost, and to start leg strengthening classes when I got back home.

Summer turned into autumn, and by now, I’d made a massive effort to clear out the garage as much as possible. Over the years I’d accumulated a vast amount of crap in there on the grounds that “it may be useful later”. Obsolete SCSI cables, a bewildering array of old plumbing fixings, myriad pots of half-empty dried up paint, nubbins of wood offcuts. All of it went to the tip, and I was able to finally make a space big enough for a tourer and one other bike. But which one? The Scram or the KLR? I sat down and thought about this, as I’ve come to love my green lane riding. However, I love the Scram more. It gets me everywhere I want to go, and is pretty handy offroad itself. Another option would be to sell both the Scram and KLR and replace them both with a Himalayan 450. This idea was put quietly to sleep when Henry and Jeremy turned up one Saturday afternoon, riding a Scram and Himalayan 450 respectively. Both of them said the same thing – keep the Scram – so that was another decision made then. There were still adventures to be had on the KLR however so for now, that has been rehomed up at Sol’s in the Peak District as that’s where I do most of my riding on it anyway. It is very much for sale though – if you fancy a KLR that has so far proven to be marvellously resistant to blowing up, let me know.

While all this had been going on, other plans were also coming together. One of the things we decided early on was that we needed to be able to talk to each other, and Faye would need a new helmet anyway. A Schuberth C5 seemed to be just the ticket, as Faye really liked the flip front, it was comfy, has an easy intercom fitment, and is German engineered. But that left me – did I really want to cut into the lining of my Shoei to fit an intercom? No, of course not – so I bought a C5 as well. Yes, this is an exorbitant amount of money, but I thought it worthwhile to keep the Shoei in good shape. And before anyone mentions it, yes I know the old joke…
“How do you know when a BMW rider is having an affair?”
“The pillion lid doesn’t match”
…but in this case the lids don’t match as really we just went for whatever was a good price in the sizes we needed. As for gear, I’m pretty well set up after riding in all weathers for the past 40 years. Faye would need gloves, boots, and armoured trousers – this is still an ongoing quest, but we’ve got plenty of time yet.

And so I started looking for a K1600GTL. And was initially quite surprised that it’s still a currently listed bike from BMW, for £25K. That gives it something like a 15yr lifespan, and the core of the bike really hasn’t changed much in that time. After a couple of false starts, a 2011 model with very low mileage (12K, give or take) turned up reasonably locally so Faye and I popped over to see it, and to make sure that Faye could get on and off easily enough. The bike was mainly pretty clean, but desperately needed a new rear tyre, and the front didn’t have a huge amount left in it either. We spent a comedy 15 minutes trying to open the panniers, culminating in me saying “shall we read the instructions then?” whereupon it immediately became apparent that I needed to disengage the central locking. An agreement was made to replace the tyres and tidy up a few loose ends and give it a service for the asking price, and a deposit was paid.

I went to collect it today – which is a very simple statement for what turned into a very long and involved day out. The plan was ever so simple. A couple of hours off work, take the 10:50 from Soham to Ely, then the 11:15 from Ely to Melton Mowbray, pick the bike up, and home in time for tea and medals. I’d had a chat with my boss and he was happy for me to take a half day, and I’d easily be back by 16:00, right? And I was nervous about this, for some reason. I don’t really know why, as I’m a naturally confident rider. I’ve spent years riding all sorts, borrowing everything up to Champ’s H2SX for a whizz around Cadwell Park. The only bike to scare me was Sol’s mental ZX10R, and that wasn’t the engine, it just wouldn’t go in a straight line. So why was I worried about being cossetted home on a soft touring bike? I don’t really know – I suspect it was the worry that half way home I’d have a dawning of realisation that I’d just made a very expensive mistake.

Anyhow, I got to the station in good time. And waited. And waited. Things didn’t look good when the train that was meant to be before mine was suddenly announced as “delayed” with no expected time. And then my train just vanished from the timetable. No announcement. It just wasn’t there any more. I later heard that someone had been hit by a train on the line, and now I feel a massive arse for getting grumpy about the 1% dint that it made in my day out. Anyhow, I wandered back home (I live about 200 metres from the station) and The Lovely Faye gave me a lift to Ely, where I was due to change trains anyway. And as we pulled into the car park, I could see the train I was meant to be on, sitting on the platform, obviously delayed. Could I make it? I sprinted (as much as a waddly balding middle aged bloke wearing motorcycle boots can) through the barriers, and pressed the button on the train door, only to be told to step back as the train then sat there for another 30 seconds before serenely gliding out of the station.

I kicked the air for no reason at all, and swore. A lot.

And then looked at the platform signage, and realised that wasn’t my train at all. My train was delayed even further, and was coming in three minutes time. And of course, I jumped on with no drama, and sat in the corner safe in the knowledge that I was only about 15 mins behind schedule now, but very much back in the game.

“Ladies and gentlemen, sorry for the delay. There are animals on the line ahead. We think it’s a cow. But it’s a bit far away to be sure. No idea how long we’ll be waiting, as there are two trains in front that need to get through first.”

Every now and then in life, things are sent to try your patience. Today was one of those days. I was warm and safe, I have food on the table, my children are doing very well, I live a very contented and stable environment. That puts me in the luckiest 1% of people on the planet straight away, and I try never to lose sight of that. But bloody hell, I was getting tetchy by now. Eventually we pulled into Peterborough, about 90 minutes late, and took on the load of three trains worth of passengers that had been waiting on the platform for that time. Tempers were frayed, people were grumpy, and the train was brutally overcrowded. I did the best that I could in the situation, and gazed out of the window at the gathering storm clouds ahead.

The walk through Melton Mowbray was lovely. I really need to go back there for a day out, as the food stalls on the marketplace looked ever so inviting. But no time to dither today – I needed to get to the shop to pick up the bike, hopefully before the heavens opened. I don’t mind riding in the rain, but I really didn’t want to be walking in it. At about 14:00, I wandered into the dealers, a good 2 hours behind schedule, and a bit dishevelled. And a bit hungry. We went through the formalities of sorting out the registration and handing over a pile of money, and before I knew it, the bike was being wheeled out of the showroom for me. Oh, we’ve not had a photo yet, have we? Here:

I think that looks flippin’ lovely in that dark spangly metallic blue. Most of the K1600s that I looked at were a kind of dull grey. And while this one wasn’t the cheapest of the bunch that I could go for, well, just look at it. Cor! It comes with an inbuilt Garmin satellite navigation unit, and I punched in my postcode, held my breath, and set off. Now, “setting off” on a 340kg bike isn’t something to be undertaken lightly. But the BMW hides the weight well, once it’s rolling. And while it took me a few gearchanges to get the feel of the clutch, heck, it’s a motorbike. I’ve ridden a thousand of them. I know the score. There was a quick stop for a splash of fuel (whereupon the first irritation arose. For whatever reason, the fuel filler cap pivots towards, rather than away from the rider. This is stupid, as it just makes it a lot more difficult to get the fuel nozzle into the tank. I have no idea what Mr. BMW was thinking of when he designed this, but just in case he ever gets to read it, please can we have the fuel filler cap the other way around in future? Ta.) but otherwise, it was straight home. After the stressful morning, I really fancied a magic carpet rather than a motorcycle to get me home. And the K1600 was as close as I could get. With the screen fully up, I could sit at 70mph on the A1 with my visor open, in a perfectly still, calm, quiet bubble of my own little world. And even though I was only pulling about 3000rpm at that speed, the engine easily felt like it would pull a higher gear if asked. And I spent a bit of time fiddling with the cruise control and dynamic suspension settings, as well as wanging the screen up and down at every opportunity just because it’s a new toy that I’ve never had before.

I pulled off the A14 at Quy, to take the last twisty bits home through Burwell. And through traffic, there’s a definite clunk from the shaft drive coming off and on the throttle at low RPM around town – I think I can probably dial this out just with a bit of clutch, but it was there, and noteworthy. So I’m telling you lot about it.

The other reason for taking this road was so I could hang back from the traffic, and gas it on the straight bit out of Burwell. I left it in 3rd as we came out of the 30 limit into the national speed limit, and just wound it on to let the fuel injection take care of the hamfisted idiot. My mind was instantly flooded with a single image.

It felt for all the world like there was a huge bulk just rearing up, and surging forward, unstoppably. I wasn’t really looking at the clocks any more, I just snicked into 4th at about 7K RPM, and rolled off. There was no point going any faster. Actually, when I say “snicked” – the gearchange is a very sturdy affair indeed. No chance of a missed gear, but a solid thumping of metal spinny bits. I suspect that the gearbox will outlast the human race. It’s a quite remarkable machine to ride – yes, it’s heavy. But once moving the weight is easily forgotten. I suspect that two-up, on a cobbled switchback in Belgium it would be a bit of a handful for sure. But for 95% of the riding that I want to do, it’s very capable. The controls are easy to use and feel solid, and the whizzy handlebar wheel controlling the onboard systems is very easy to use indeed. Only one fly in the ointment is that when the bike was serviced the battery was replaced, and the mechanic didn’t reset the onboard date before resetting the service light. One of the first things that I did when I got home was to set the time and date, and now I have the service indicator on telling me that I missed the last service which was due in 2019. Hey ho. If that’s the biggest complaint after a day like today, I reckon things have gone alright. I’m looking forward to the next adventures.