Can we stop to do some shopping?

If you have a bike, then go to Wales..... unless its a Hardly-Ableson as they have corners and bends in Wales that require you to lean the machine into. Something the Hog was never designed to do.

I've just come back from 3 days of intensive biking (750 miles in total). Five blokes, four of them IAM level and one who's almost there..... and not one whining over sensitive fun bothering female person in sight...

God is a biker, there's no other reason to arrange the hills and valleys of Wales in a way that makes almost every road a technical adventure to negotiate on a bike. The Devil of course drives an underpowered Skoda towing an unfeasibly large caravan, or as I like to call them, moving chicanes.

Luckily for us, the Devil was off shaking chimney stacks in Kent and left the Welsh roads caravan free. Bloody fantastic.

Left hander......possible knee down event.

I quickly and unconsciously skim through "the system".... the bend is visible all the way through, nowt on the road, nothing to hit, my position adjusted, just left of the long white divide. Speed and gear selection needs to be perfect, enough speed to keep the adrenalin flowing and the correct gear to neutralise the suspension bias front and back.

Everything slows down, becomes quiet and I feel a tightness spread across my face as the inevitable grin begins to show.... Arse slips off the seat to the left, right elbow anchors itself into the recess contoured into the tank design, left knee and leg rotate outwards ready to skim the bitumen.
Subconsciously I begin the turn, but thats not enough to do this correctly, I need to apply some science and have heroic amounts of self belief to stop under-steering and meeting an oncoming tree....or worse.
Forcing a 1000 yard stare up the road to where I need to be in just a few short seconds and applying a forward push on the left bar to countersteer the bike and myself around the apex...... Ground rush becomes apparent to peripheral vision as the lean angle increases.....I try not to think of the forces being transmitted through the bike, to the suspension and down to the tires and onto a contact patch with the road the size of a credit card.

I can feel the increase in G's spike then begin to fade, perfectly in unison with the degrees of lean. The throttle is slowly opened making sure I don't over do it and spoil the whole experience by spinning up the rear tire too early and invoking a spleen shattering high-side......

As the bike returns to its perpendicular attitude and my arse finds its usual residence I begin to hear a strange noise in my helmet , sounds like a screaming, giggling, over excited 10 year old at a Beyonce concert....... feck...... that noise belongs to me.

Oh look! another bend up ahead...... possible knee down event.