Plymouth, Here we come.

It's five o'clock in the morning. Kazza (my other half) and I had sorted out a week in Plymouth. Some bright spark, namely yours truely, had suggested we leave early to get there around lunch time. Seven days is hardly enought to drink Devon dry and I wanted an early start, but perhaps this time of the morning was just a little bit too eager.

I had just got the bike back from the garage after some electrical work. A dicky headlight, my flailing attempts to kick the indicators in to life and use hand signals at the same time, was not entirely dissimilar to a jelly and a firework doing the fandango, so I had to get it all fixed up. As it turned out, the headlight was straight out of a Fiat Strada. It's a sort of weird feeling to find
out that your beloved bike is made out of second hand Italian car parts. I could just imagine some burk strapping two of these bikes together and making a new car called a Brownwing, which reminds me, I must give it a polish at some point. Time to leather up.

I encouraged Kazza, the sleeping dormouse, out of bed by spiriting away the duvet and pulling her feet in the direction of the shower. I had toyed with the idea of a bucket of icy water but had no particular desire to eat the bucket afterwards so I left it at that. She slinked off for the shower with sleepy eyes and a fluffy pink towel. Meanwhile I dragged three and a half tons of bags and paniers down two flights of stairs to the bike. It's a good job we were only
going for a week. My supply of industrial bungees was stretched as tight as a Nun's knicker elastic and the Frog was starting to visibly sag.

A while later we saddled up ready to go. I clicked on the ignition, flicked on the lights, and hit start. The Frog coughed and splutttered like a finalist in a rubber band swallowing competition. With carefull throttle control (and maximum choke) I slowly beat the engine in to life and we finally wobbled off down the road.

We had been cruising for about an hour and the sun was just about coming up. The air was fresh and the traffic non existence. After a while I felt a gentle tapping between my shoulder blades. I tried to ignore it but it persisted and seemed to coincide with the bumps in the road. I took a quick look sideways. On the ground was the shadow of a big bike, with shed loads of luggage and a sleeping pillon, slumped forward using me as a leather pillow.

Not wishing my other half to miss the view I gently reached back and tickled her knee. She gently opened her eyes. She saw the nice green grass and the telephone poles whizz by and the sun just peeking above the horizon. Her brain was puzzled, in her mind she was still at home in bed. I waved over my shoulder, she screamed, so I decided to stopped the bike. This, by some devilish coincidence, was right next to a roadside restaurant.

We parked up and I got her off the bike with the combined help of a crowbar and a can of WD40. The sudden shock of one minute being at home and the next steaming down the road at a gentle seventy something miles per hour was too much and every muscle in her body suddenly gained the sole ambition of clamping her to the seat.

We were shown to a table, and the waitress took our orders. I went for the Big Breakfast with Coffee. All Kazza could say at that moment was "fuzza" so I ordered her the same.

The breakfast was hot and it was certainly big. It also looked like the devils underpants, burnt to a cinder with lashings and lashings of some unameable petroleum product. It tasted alright though. That was one in the eye for asthetics.

Half an hour later I had waded through the best part of the breakfast and five cups of coffee and Kazza had changed from wide eyed frozen terror to a mild, distant hazy stare through half closed eyes.

"How's it going?" I enquired in a jovial happy go lucky sort of way

"fuzza." she replied.

I have no idea what "fuzza" means so I continued to feed her coffee and toast in the hope that one day she will learn how to speak again.

One hour, and one hundred and fifteen trips to the loo later, (coffee can do this to you), we were refreshed and ready to go. The Frog was a bit happier at starting this time and we were shortly roaring down the road. At a seventy something miles an hour, with all the luggage, we looked like a cycling whale in need of a drink.

Plymouth here we come.