Hooning homewards...

Usually, I'm a fairly reasonable guy but last night I just had to get it all out of my system. A long day banging my head against walls, back-to-back meetings, "lunch" at 5pm and wanting to get home before my little girl goes to bed. (She's in the UK for a change so I try to make the most of it.)

All was going fine till, just after I went through the Blackwall Tunnel, I heard a tremendous exhaust note up ahead. Now, this was about 18:15 so the traffic was quite heavy but not the bumper-to-bumper, stationary morass that characterises the peak rush-hour in London. I'd already been en route for about 20 minutes by this point and had covered, ooh, easily five miles.

Well, I set off with the intention of catching up the source of the noise and was soon rewarded with sight of the occasional flash of blue flame near the Sun in the Sands roundabout from a twin exhausted bike up ahead. I never quite caught him up when he dived off by the Black Prince (Yes, I navigate by pubs wherever I can) in spite of, er, "making progress" in a serious fashion, filtering and weaving through the traffic.

Then, I saw the guy he'd been following and I really put my riding head on. Reaching speeds of (CENSORED), I am delighted to say I managed to keep pace with the guy in front, coming close enough to see he was on an R1. Now, I'm not saying I can blow off a top of the line sports bike on the Pan, and he certainly pulled away when he opened up the R1 (boy, did he ever) but we both kept it below around (CENSORED) even where the road was clear. I kept pace with him (OK, OK, or her) until we parted ways at the junction of the A2 and the M2.

It was the most fun and exhilarating ride I've had in months. If anyone knows the owner of a W-Reg R1 or some noisy hooligan with flames and no baffles who were on their way out of London last night, please thank them on my behalf. I just hope they had as much fun as I did.

I still have The Grin.