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| notes & pictures - story 4 |
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The R1 has a mode-mapping switch which
acts like three different throttle cams on the twist grip.
This effectively means you can select a different power
delivery for a given amount of throttle. 'B' mode provides
a lazy slow gathering of speed whilst standard for me
is below par for a bike of this class. 'A' mode pushes
your eyes to the back of your head while your testicles
disappear to God knows where. As you approach the speed
of light, the colour spectrum alters, the bike starts
to shorten and there is true fear in your stomach as you
meet yourself on the way back from a place you haven't
yet reached. As I slow down with a 'squishshsh' from the
brakes, I notice over the hedgerows how flat fields lead
to a very big sky.
In 1951 The People newspaper did a survey of its readers
and several tenets and beliefs proved common among the
11,000 respondents; these included 'a love of freedom,
a low interest in sexual activity, a strong belief in
education, consideration for the feelings of other people…and
a strong attachment to marriage and the institution of
the family'. As the paper's statistical analyst, Geoffrey
Gorer concluded, 'the English are a truly unified people,
more unified, I would hazard, than at any other period
in their history. When I was reading, I found I was constantly
making the same notes: 'What dull lives most of these
people appear to lead!'
Perhaps this no longer applies. Then, the population
had just emerged from a war, were used to discipline
and had little experience of mass migration, so societies
were in a real sense insular, and the media had not
yet created the global village. So unworldly; Englishness
(or Britishness) in that very different era was clearly
a lot different from Englishness now.
North of the Broads and this is a landscape of flatness
and my view of the day. Cattle graze on meadows reclaimed
from the sea, and protected by a defensive barrier of
sand and shingle, marsh grasses lead to the road across
from which lush meadows appear to move like the arms
of a Mexican Wave. Beyond the wall, sand spits are toyed-with
by high tides, re-forming the coastline twice every
24 hours leaving behind salt flats that form estates
of waders, avocets and marsh harriers. For the most
part it is a land of flatness and big skies. It is a
space bounded by fences and gate posts that look as
if they've been there for hundreds of years.
The Norfolk coast is a sanctuary for small lanes that
shoot off towards the sea. Every few minutes, yet another
track, like a capillary, tempts you to follow. A short
way from Wells, I ride into Morston Quay, a National
Trust property. There is a bylaw that insists you sit
here on benches with binoculars and a packed lunch,
after which you follow on with a puff on a bent pot
pipe. With the benign expression of church-goers, small
groups of badge-wearers relax beatifically, as voluminous
skies threaten to envelope us all.
By Blakeley I am riding gently. I crossed the Nubian Desert
in a different way but in truth, there was considerably
less to look at. The way this bike expresses itself through
the gears to a quick speed is the way you might use a
sharp knife. The scalpel-like precision, with its throaty
sound, is, if you get to know this bike really well, like
dressing a wolf in lamb's clothing and for once I have
time to listen. Pegging down a gear while shifting the
mapping to the 'quick' setting is what this bike is all
about. Whoever made this bike fathered a genius. |
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