And just to the petrol station at that. Mind you, the petrol station is about 3 miles away from here... Starting it is a ritual in itself that is lost to owners of more modern machinery - it has no choke, so you tickle the carbs until your hands get wet, press the button and hope that it fires. If it does, you keep blipping the throttle until it warms up at least slightly. It sounds utterly gorgeous when you do that and you will notice that the engine is lukewarm when your neighbours open their windows to savour the sound and express their appreciation by throwing old shoes, smelly socks and last night's kebabs at you. Time to take off, then. Taking off, however, requires that the rider's boots find their way onto the rear sets. Parking them on the brake and gear levers instead just makes you look like a right plonker. So, with the knees neatly folded away in the vicinity of your ears, the journey can begin. That is, if you have remembered that it is a loooonnnnng stretch to the bars. Once on the move, the lovely noise from the exhausts mixes with the sounds of a thousand dwarfs mining for gold somewhere below the tank. The engine revs willingly once warmed up but feels very, very lazy indeed and the gearing is rather tall, so one really didn't notice how fast one was going. Honest, hofficer. The mirrors are in best Italian fashion, rather useless although this is an improved design that tends to show the kerb instead of the rider's elbow. Anybody trying to overtake would go deaf anyway, so who needs mirrors? Handling is typical seventies Italian - stable, rock hard rear suspension thanks to the efforts of Signore Marzocchi, whose forks fortunately have a little give. In fact, due to the length it is so stable that it ... really ... doesn't ... want ... to ... turn until you get a bit medieval on the steering input. Once that lesson is learned much satisfaction is to be gained, even though the ergonomics have been designed by someone who was kicked out of the Spanish Inquisition for being too nasty to the customers. But none of this matters as the whole package just makes you grin so hard that your face starts to ache. Followed shortly afterwards by your knees, your back and your wrists but who cares if you're on something as beautiful as this?
