Categories
Riding

Best Motorcycle Roads Essex has for a Ride Out

Best motorcycle roads Essex, Thaxted

Being based in East London, Essex is right on my doorstep and where I head for the majority of my ride outs. Essex may not have epic hills and deep valleys, but it offers many great twisty roads, rolling farmland, postcard villages of thatched cottages and some great coastlines to explore. Here I have rounded up some of the best motorcycle roads Essex has to offer, from the infamous Burnham Bends, the Clacton coast and of course the biker Mecca that is Finchingfield. You will not be disappointed by these routes:

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Riding

5 Tips To Travel Safely During Covid-19 Outbreak

Travel safely covid-19 tipsCovid-19 has drastically changed everyone’s life, putting all of us under two to three months of lockdown. The impact and fear of this virus is mostly decreasing and the global lockdown is finally opening up. Wider travel and international border crossings are starting to resume once again, allowing visits to see family, friends or undertake new adventures. But this doesn’t mean that it’s safe to go out there without any precautions, below are five tips on how to stay safe from the Covid 19 virus when travelling.

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Categories
Riding

Weekend Fair Weather Rider

Like many of you, recent the Covid19 lockdown has completely changed my usual way of life and biking. Thankfully, I’ve still maintained my main job as a software engineer, albeit now all working remote from home. I haven’t commuted into central London since the middle of March and only recently had chance to enjoy time on my bike on a few recent weekends when the weather has been reasonable.

Yep, I seemed to have become a weekend fair weather rider…

London Commuting Tower Bridge
London commuting all weathers

I used to be one to ride all the time, an all weather biker, commuting to into London rain or shine, but now I’m desk bound at home Monday-Friday. If anything, I’m putting in more hours now than I used to as I work the time I would have previously spent commuting. Weekends are now my only chance to get out on the bike, where I’m choosing to ride for enjoyment and thus I want to ride out into the sunny countryside. A weekend blast in the rain just ain’t quite as much fun.

It’s anybody’s guess when we’ll all return to normality and start commuting back into the office. Somehow, I don’t think normality will be quite what it used to be though. Like many forward thinking tech companies, my employer always had options for flexible and remote working. However, like many companies they are now planning for many of its staff to work remote far more, using shared ‘hot’ desks and reducing office space in central London. After the success of remote working these last few months, there’s no argument for not continuing to offer such an option.

Yamaha FZ6 S2
Yamaha FZ6 S2 commuter hack

So what does this mean for biking? With less emphasis on commuting, I’m seriously questioning my current choice of Yamaha FZ6 as a pure commuter hack. Why am I putting my priorities into a basic commuter bike? Why don’t I get a fun weekend bike than can commute upon occasion? Longer term, I also can’t help but question even living in the London suburbs. If I can work remote, why not live remote?! Once the advantage of a short commute is eroded, what else does the East London suburbia have to offer? Why not live rural, escape the crowds, find nicer roads, beautiful scenery and cheaper motorcycle insurance?

These last few months have definitely been a time of questioning, challenging prior assumptions, re-evaluating life choices and priorities. We maybe getting closer to normality, but it’s clear it won’t be the normal we’ve been used to in years past.

How has the Covid19 crisis affected your biking?

Categories
Riding

Ultimate Guide to Route Optimisation in 2020

When your riders have hundreds, if not thousands, of destinations or clients to visit, planning routes manually is a time-intensive and inefficient solution.

In many industries, driver wages and fuel costs alone make up 59.8% of the total operational cost per mile. So even small improvements to your driver’s routes can not only help you deliver packages or serve your clients faster, but can have a significant impact on your profit margin

With proper route optimisation tools, your business could save up to 20% in mileage and improve your order capacity by as much as 100% without increasing your fleet.

In this guide, we’ll give you a complete breakdown of what route optimization is and how it can benefit your business. We’ll examine real-world examples and provide use-cases for your industry.

We have a lot to cover, so let’s get started.

What is Route Optimisation?

Route optimisation is the process of improving routes and schedules for any type of delivery or service call. It helps businesses maximize completed orders while keeping the number of riders and bikes to a minimum.

Route Optimisation Phone AppRoute optimization is relevant to your company, whether you offer direct-to-consumer deliveries, business-to-business despatching or are in a service industry where your technicians visit client homes or businesses.

Routing your riders and technicians can be a costly and frustrating process, but with the right tool it can be automated — saving you time, money, and improving customer satisfaction.

Let’s get into it!

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Categories
Clothing/Protection Gear Reviews

Bull-it SR6 Motorcycle Jeans Review

Bull-It SR6 motorcycle jeansAs great as leathers are, once the hot summer arrives they get awfully toasty and sweaty. In days gone by a good pair of Levis was considered perfectly adequate for a casual summer ride, but you really don’t want to come off your bike just wearing a pair of fashion jeans. I also doubt today’s Levis are as robust as pairs made in days gone by. Today we have on the market many motorbike jeans with Kevlar or other branded variants of this super strong abrasion-resistant aramid fabric, like the Covec used on these Bull-It SR6 jeans I picked up last summer.

The Bull-It SR6 set me back £60 in a sale, which included both knee and hip armour inserts (they’re sometimes optional extras) – bargain. But are they actually any good? Read on to find out more.

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Categories
Motorcycles

Famous Motorcycles in Films

Over the past few months of lockdown, I’ve been watching many motorcycle films to while away the time until I could get back out on my bike. Of course, we all love movies with bikes, and so here I have rounded up a number of iconic motorbikes on film. Some are films portraying motorcycle (counter) culture, and some are just excellent stylistic choices supporting other narratives. All highly memorable and movie motorcycles I’m sure we’d all like to ride.

Easy Rider (1969)

Movie motorcycles - Easy Rider 1969No list of bike films would be complete without Easy Rider and the story of Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) checking out of mainstream society and undertaking a journey from LA to New Orleans Mardi Gras to discover America and themselves. They pick up Jack Nicholson en route for a drug-addled and tragic ride across middle America.

The custom choppers were built by Cliff Vaughs and Ben Hardy, from 1949, 1950 and 1952 Harley-Davidson Hydra-Glide ex-police bikes. Four bikes were built to provide backup in case some broke down or got trashed to avoid filming delays.

Find Easy Rider on Amazon

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Videos

May 2020 Update and Post Lockdown Finchingfield Ride

Been a bit quiet on the biking front lately due to all the Covid shenanigans. So here’s a quick video update on what we’ve been up to and a cheeky post lockdown ride out to Finchingfield.

YouTube player

Regarding the route I took, it’s the first chunk of this Essex Loop I have blogged about previously.

Categories
News

Killing in the Name

You justify those that died
By wearing the badge, they’re the chosen whites
Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses

#BlackLivesMatter #BlackoutTuesday

Categories
Hardware

My Video Blogging Computer Setup

With not a lot of riding occurring at the moment, I thought I’d give you a glimpse behind the scenes here, to peek at the kind of computer kit I use to run this blog and produce my videos. It may not be the best video editing rig you can buy, but it will hopefully give you an insight into something that can produce good results without breaking the bank. Be warned, this gets a bit geeky!

MacBook Pro

I have a preference for Macs, simply because they’re generally well-designed, last well and have good migration and recovery features. I’m currently running a Mid-2014 15″ MacBook Pro Retina, with 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD drive and 2.2Ghz Intel Quad-Core i7 processor. Now before you cry ‘But boy they’re super expensive!’, I picked MacBook up refurbished from Music Magpie in November 2019 for £650 (but did have to buy a power supply at £80 on top). At the time of writing a similar spec brand, a new Windows laptop will set you back over a grand.

I’d recommend the Retina display, as its high resolution is perfect for inspecting video in a small preview pane. But note, RAM is not upgradeable on recent Retina Macs, so do get one with 16GB already in it. I also went for the fast Intel Core i7 chip, to help blitz through video rendering and processing. Overall, it’s plenty fast enough to work on a long 1080p video, and possibly 4k video at a push.

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Gear Reviews

New Lid Time – AGV K5 S Helmet Review

I returned to the AGV helmets brand for this K5-S helmet after having many fond memories of my first helmet – an AGV K4. I had grown somewhat disappointed with the robustness of the more expensive Shuberth S2 I currently wear. So, I decided to go for a middle-of-the-road helmet suitable for daily commuting and touring. For me, the key requirements were safety, good fit, a sun visor, good ventilation, quietness and of course price.

I picked up this AGV K5 S helmet in an end-of-line sale for a very reasonable £200 from Infinity Motorcycles, so can’t complain about the price. The K5-S comes in many colour styles, some plain and some patterns, I opted for the ‘Typhoon’ design, as I preferred a little fluorescence to help stay visible. It’s a 4-star Sharp rating, granted this test scheme isn’t the be-all and end-all, but hopefully gives some indication of the potential protection it can offer.

AGV K5 S Helmet Review

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