Honestly not sure I have it in me to keep everything as organised as that Wheelie. I might give it a go for the valve clearances

Yeah I saw the valve clearances are at 16k and was wondering how much I actually needed to do it. This 16k mile service is a real slog!

I'll get some iridium plugs next time, thanks for the top tips! Sounds like this will be more manageable going forwards.

I'd never heard of Nick Sanders but that is some pace to go around the world! Hoping to go a little steadier

Yeah the projection on EV usage is interesting. I think I agree there's still a long way to go before it's really a thing. Wouldn't mind being an early adopter though if I can be patient enough with the charge times.

Definitely agree on the disposable world. It's pretty insane right now. Definitely we need to collectively do something about that

Every biker should read the book" Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".

Not so much about motorcycle maintenance as Zen Buddhism, but there are some great parts in the book that leaves you with a very distinct perception of two main different personality types when it comes to motorcycle maintenance. It may very well help you get a far more healthy and enjoyable relationship with your bike - even when it acts up (and become zen with a lot of other matters as well). And, with you being all zen with the bike, it will help you keep the bike serving you as you serve it.

One archetype just expects their brand new BMW that they paid a super premium for, and which they always leave the service to be undertaken by renown professionals that work for renown authorized dealers - expecting their bikes to simply always work to perfection - getting frustrated, angry, depressed, shocked, feeling let down, afraid, etc - when their machines don't deliver as advertised. They never bother to learn, they don't understand, and they don't even try to. To them bikes are as incomprehensible as magic, so no point in even trying - just leave it to the pros. To them, the world is unjust. To them the world cheated them when the bike doesn't deliver.

The other archetype coexists with their bike. They take it for granted that their bikes will act up, that it will need tender loving care - that hickups is just part of the deal, not something to be frustrated about - but rather something that one might as well try to enjoy since you can't have one without the other - namely, you can't enjoy riding bikes without dealing with unexpected issues occurring at inconvenient times (sometimes big ones). They understand that only getting to know and understand your bike, and to care for it (and know how to do just that) - is the only remedy for both your bike and your soul. They look deeper than the glistening wax and see that everything underneath isn't something which can't be grasped, nor something which is to be feared - nor something which can't be undertaken. They understand that for every problem - time and patience will reveal the solution to them. To them, things just "are".

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Blog: www.bamakobyvespa.no
My Youtube Channel

I grew up as the second type more out of necessity than anything, but I look forward to the day when I have enough money to become the first type.

Wheelie: - Every biker should read the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
Yes, definitely agree with that, or at least have a go.


I recently happened across this:
"Chrome and Black and Dusty: Robert Pirsig’s Motorcycle Heritage, Paul F. Johnston"

https://motorcyclestudies.org/volume...ul-f-johnston/


Makes interesting reading for anyone who's read, or tried to read, Zen and the Art.

eg.
Fig 5 - photo taken by Robert Pirsig's dad near Kenilworth Castle, 1933, a young Robert Pirsig in the sidecar...
Lots more photos and historical Pirsig anecdotes.


Special interest for me as I rode a CB77 for a couple of years around 1968.

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TTR250 - London to Cape Town

You and me both with the CB77 back in that era -



Not the best of pictures but that's it on the right under the towel in a campsite in Athens.

There's still half a 77 engine under the bench in my 'workshop'. One day I'll try to get the rest of it 'one piece at a time', Johnny Cash style.

I found a book in Oxfam a couple of years back called Zen and Now - a journalist retraced the ZAMM trip about 10yrs ago and met up (or tried to) with a load of the people mentioned in the book. Worth a read to put some of the original trip in perspective.

Here's a link to it on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zen-Now-Rob...ps%2C50&sr=8-1


I'm currently reading (slowly) the sequel to ZAMM - Lila. It's set on a boat rather than a bike but it's much the same introspective pondering as the original. Not quite as dense as the later parts of ZAMM but there's time yet.

God no. Life is too short for the ramblings of a hippy they eventually lobotomized.

There are way more than two sorts of people. Some for example are engineers and understand why the service work is required. They realise one size does not fit all and fixed intervals are simply the lowest common denominator, usually set by people who sell oil and oil changing services.

If you have the oil analysed (very common in commercial use) you will typically find those sellers of oil were very very conservative in their guess. If you open the bike up as directed for 100,000 miles you will typically find you actually measure a valve that's out every fourth visit. These are facts, measured using measurement tools, not the arty farty ramblings of a mad literature professor whose OCD and other issues caused him to take a subject he learnt by rote with no real understanding and variously decide to go mad and do too much, or just hope the demons went away.

Honda set a service interval based on commuting through Bangkok. Oil analysis shows a typical US pleasure rider can safely double this. Pick a number that suits you that's in between.

Andy

Thanks all for your help and encouragement. I have been riding my bike again and yeah just planning the next steps in the service, doing small bits at a time. Long process! Bit of a nightmare having oil and soon antifreeze to dispose of sat around my tiny one bedroom flat; think I also need a driver's license!

I just hope I can organise my life enough to make this all possible! Got the idea of moving to N. Ireland for a bit as soon as I feasibly can. A LOT to organise first. My life is a mess!

Thanks for this - very interesting read!

As for the nay-sayers, I scizzored this from the article above and think it makes for quite a good endorsement for the book:

...well over six million copies of ZAMM in several editions and 27 languages are in circulation worldwide,[iv] and the book remains in print today. It is read in college philosophy, literature and religion courses, and it serves as the tip of the spear for academic studies in the history of technology under the multiple topics of maintenance, tinkering and DIY. “Pirsig’s Pilgrims” continue to ride along what they know of Pirsig’s 1968 route and document their inspirational experiences in one way or another.[v] Several entire books have been devoted to ZAMM,[vi] with more to come.

The fact that the book was written by a rambling hippie lunatic that had been struggling with mental illness for years - just makes for a more interesting read. But, yes - it is a philosophical read that needs quite a bit of digestion to be seriously enjoyed - but also one that can leave a lasting impact if you do. Personally I think I have read it three times - the first time about 25 years ago. I am seriously considering reading it again this summer - this time through the eyes of a matured middle aged motorcycle traveler.

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Blog: www.bamakobyvespa.no
My Youtube Channel

Nope, not my thing at all.

I started it two or three times and each time it seemed worse than the time before. I have expunged it from my memory. When I want to read books about philosophy I can reach for Jonathan Livingstone Seagull - shorter, easier to read, and, in my opinion at least, not so far up it own backside - and much, much less annoying - I found ZAMM to be one of those books that the reader either throws it in the bin as it winds them up so much or they reread time and again and profess that it has changed their life. The only reason I started reading two or three times was that my bin spat it out at me.

Aside from that, a good read.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

It does seem to have that effect on people, you either love it or hate it. Like Wheelie I've read it a few times over the years - usually when something else has prompted me to go back and have another look at it. I wasn't really prepared for it the first time I read it in the mid 70's, expecting that it was going to be a simple bike trip book, so found the route it took into the depths of his philosophy somewhat unexpected. It was only later when I went back to it knowing what I was in for that I was able to take it seriously. I came out of that 'journey' wondering more than anything how someone like that could function in the real world, and it turns out of course that he couldn't; not to the depth that his insights would suggest anyway. So ultimately it turns out to be a book about him rather than any treatise on Quality.

That's what got me reading the sequel, Lila. It purports to be a book about morals - a human construct - and how someone like him deals with a moving target like moral values is what's drawn me in. It's a pity about ZAMM in some respects because the ideas in the early part of the book are useful. It's just unfortunate that when it wanders off into the philosophical stratosphere it leaves a lot of readers behind, and they dismiss the lot of it, the good as well as the bad.

The 50th anniversary of its publication is coming up in a couple of years (April 2024). That we're still talking about it has to say something.

I happen to have just finished re-reading both Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in service to my goal of getting rid of books I'll never read again. The latter remains interesting, if impenetrable at times; the former is (IMHO) pure schlock nonsense which ignores socio-political, economic, cultural, and gender contexts in order to tell a cute story cutely.

I remember Lila as more accessible, but that might be a function of imprecise memory more than anything else.

Back into my grumpy old man cave, now....

All of those books (and a few more that thankfully have been consigned to the pulping plant) come from an era that managed to raise navel gazing to high art, a time when mystic gurus still seemed to have something to offer. A combination of metaphysics and 'metapharmaceuticals' seemed to be the way forward - in some circles anyway.

Having been brought up in that era (and lived to tell the tale) there's probably some truth in the old adage that you can take the boy out of the hippy era but you can't take the hippy era out of the boy. I'm typing this as my 1970 250 Yamaha is warming up in the background. Peace Man.

Philosophy seems to be the art of talking *****ks around a subject no one in the group really understands, hence iron age Greeks on Chemistry, Romans on Astronomy, 1950's creative writers on psychology and the factors effecting the performance of an internal combustion engine etc.

This is why no one ever reports on the telly that X happened and "Philosophers are looking into it". No one even in a Hollywood film ever shouted "OMG, quick, call a Philosopher".

For motorcycle maintenance go for Haynes/Clymer
For Quality go for W. Edwards Deming
For Infernal combustion try Harry Ricardo
For entertainment go for a ride (or Terry Pratchett)

Why did the dreary hippy sell so copies? It's the only book on many academic reading lists with the word motorcycle in the title? With the right cover looks like a travel/help book? It's probably more useful to stop the desk rocking than all those unread copies of Tolstoy?

My own book BTW will be titled "Sex, Motorcycles and how to win the lottery". There will be a picture of an inappropriately dressed young woman riding a Ducati on the cover.

Andy

Sorry Andy, I've got that one coming out in print shortly

Philosophy seemed to be the best we could do before we had actual science - basically someone would have a guess at it. It still hangs around in academic titles - PhD is Doctor of Philosophy (in Latin I presume)