Big day for the tractor today: I drove it to work, about 26 miles each way. This is the first biggish run I've done on it. I wimped out on taking it first thing, because the weather was just miserable. The forecast had said it would clear up through the day, and it did, so I nipped home at lunchtime. Topping up the tank was different - I'm used to bikes with fairly narrow filler holes, but the Dnepr has a huge aperture. You could fill it from a bucket. I headed up the A38 from Thornbury. Once I was out of the 40 limit, I trundled along at wholly legal speeds. I eased off for the hill down into Falfield, fearful of a throttle-induced lane change, and realised I was doing about 30 in a 40. Better get a move on... It's like a Model T with a wheel missing. Slow, wobbly, directionally uncertain, sways about on the suspension, mechanical whining noises like it's got straight-cut gears. Lovely. After Falfield, the limit is mostly 60, 50, 60, 50 etc. This translated to 45, 45, 45, 45... Not a lot held me up until I caught up with an ancient Landy soldiering on at 40 after Cambridge. Overtaking mostly wasn't an option, so I had to just sit behind him at 40. This wasn't a terrible hardship, all things considered. At one point, I had the opportunity to have a go at getting by him, but I couldn't get enough speed up to pass him in time before I had to start braking for a roundabout. He took me up the inside, outbraked me, whipped round the roundabout and away, leaving me for dead. The Gatsoes are back in Cambridge and Whitminster. I took to the motorway at junction 12 for the last stretch to Barnwood. It was balls out all the way down the ramp, and I was doing about 50 when I joined the motorway. I managed to get it up to 55, growling and vibrating and keeping pace with the artics. The handling didn't get any worse at this extreme velocity. I came off at junction 11a, and into a long, fast left-hand curve. Eek. Fortunately, it stayed flat on the deck all the way round, with no hint of chair aviation. I braked down to the roundabout, changing down, readying myself for an aggressive transit, and stalled. Bugger. I had enough speed that I could have kept rolling and tried to bump it, but I really wasn't sure what sort of behaviour this might provoke, so I decided I had to kick it. The kickstart is sideways-acting, between the bike and the chair, and you have to be in neutral to use it. It was a bit of a non-event, actually, because I was in second anyway, so I got into neutral, stood up, kicked, and it started first prod. I sat down, poked it into first, and /savaged/ the roundabout. A word about brakes: poo. The front is vaguely okay if you're not expecting too much of it. The rear is a devastatingly effective, non-prisoner-taking, hair-trigger wheel-locking device. I'm sure they'll improve with use and adjustment, and I'll get used to them, and there'll be some sort of compromise or self-delusion where I start to think they're fine... The return journey took place after dark, enabling me to determine that the sidelight on the chair was actually brighter than the headlight. I decided to stay on the motorway all the way to junction 14 (about 20 miles), as I'd be more easily able to see what was going on around me, and the road surface was more predictable. The on-ramp, another long, fast left-hander, was good practice for doing limpet impressions with my arse. Entry onto the motorway was routine, and, at a steady 50, I stayed mostly in the inside lane. At the other end, I made the mistake of cutting down one of the back roads into Thornbury. It was narrow, wet, rutted, I couldn't see a thing and there were two cars up my arse. The chair wheel was bouncing through the rough and upsetting the steering, so the whole plot felt like it was determined to plunge into one hedge or the other. You would not have known if the engine was turned off, because there was a background drone of "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck" that would have provided a convincing facsimile. I was quite pleased at its ability to cope with motorway work. A constant 50 - and 45 on A roads - is in the Frankfurt ballpark. It'll have to do a few more miles to get me confident of its reliability, but the BOSM and Chimay are starting to look doable.
