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Photos from the day

Learning to ride a motorbike on one wheel. That seems like a good idea. So when James posted 'does anyone want to' I volunteered. The fact that it was just up the road had nothing to do with it at all. A couple of weeks before the event we discovered that, because of foot and mouth, it had been moved to Bruntingthorpe (of infamous speed testing) in Leicestershire, but with a couple of days to go it moved back to Wiltshire.

Paul R (who had stayed at mine) and I wheeled the bikes out of the garage at 8 am and headed for Ramsbury to meet up with James, Jase, Jase's mate Nick, Tim, David, David's mate Alan and the other 4 wanabe unicyclists.

Andy, the trainer, turned up and shepherded us into the pub for coffee and to sign the wavers, then off to the top of a nearby hill where there is a disused airstrip set in the middle of farmland.

Andy firstly told us to forget all the stuff we'd read in 'Really Cool Motorcycle Journalists' and that they would start us from scratch. He told us that there are a number of types of wheelie that can be split into two main groups. Good ones and crap ones and the ones that we would be taught were 'ones that'll get you nicked' He then demonstrated his patented 'wheelie cut out if it gets too high but is adjustable' device (I'm sure he has a sexier name for it). The idea is that if you get too high this thing will cut the ignition and the bike will drop back down.

Click the photos for detail - they will open in new windows
Photo with them not touching down :- Photo with them doing their job :-

We were split up into 3 groups of four and Paul R, James, myself and Pete headed off to one end of the runway with Simon, our instructor.

What they do is tell you that there are a number of things you need to do for a good wheelie and take you through them one by one.

Step one - get the speed right, so first off, taking turns on the modified 1200 Bandit, we rode up and down the runway at 25 mph.
This might seem a bit odd, if you can't ride at 25mph you shouldn't be there, but it gives you a chance to get a feel for the bike, and as you find out later, getting the take off speed right is important (high enough to be in the power band but low enough to have some revs to play with).

Next up is how to hang on, or 'how not to crush your nuts'.
Simon had a student one time who had thrown up with the pain - it wouldn't have been so bad if he'd managed to get his lid off first.

Next - how to hoist the front wheel (including the secret word). I'm not going to go into further details of 'how to get it up' or 'how to keep it up' for a couple of reasons.
1) you might read them and say 'That sounds easy, I'll go and try it' and make a mess of it and I ain't taking any of that karma (or repair bills).
2) Andy & Simon are good guys - so give them some dosh and go learn.

Suffice to say that after our second turns on the bikes none of us were virgins.
This was within the first 30 minutes.

The routine was :-
Next time I want you to try this - All have twenty odd runs - Now add this - twenty runs - move the device to allow more height - twenty runs.
If we started to get bad habits or stop doing one of the required things or just needed a bit of encouragement Simon would stop the rider and have a quick word and off again.

Different people progressed at different speeds.
Paul and James started getting height pretty quickly where Pete & I took a bit longer to get started, but by lunch time we were all getting up nicely 4 out of 5 times.

Down to the pub for some excellent scoff and back to the top of the hill.
Paul and Jase swapped bikes for the run back up the hill. Paul described the SP1 as 'raw'. Jase wondered why anyone would want a blackbird.

After lunch we worked on keeping it up. Pete managed to hurt his wrist by coming down too hard too often and shortened his time on the bike to rest. Could have been worse, for the first time ever, Mark (a pupil in one of the other groups) managed to flip one of the Bandit's !
He was OK and rode his own bike home having decided that that was as much as he wanted to learn.

Both Paul and James were regularly managing to get decent height and distance (After resetting the device on one occasion, Paul managed to scare everyone but himself and Simon put the sensor back nearer the ground). Time to dig out the camera.
I knew that the presence of the camera would probably put people off so I hid behind Simon's van and managed to snap a cracking shot of Paul with the front well up. Unfortunately after that, every time I had the camera, people wheelied before or after where I was aiming or couldn't get it up, so rather than spoiling peoples runs, I put it down.

All in all a cracking day. By the end of it I was pulling the front up to the height I expected 9 out of 10 times. The landings weren't always pretty but they were in a straight line. I didn't manage to hold them as well as Paul or James but what the hell.

The prize for the best run of the day must go to Paul who managed to pull 3 consecutive high, long, gently landed mingers before dumping the Bandit at 2 mph while U-turning in the gravel.

Thanks again to James for organizing this one.

For contact information see :- http://www.stuntwheelieschool.com/

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