A chance to catch up....

Well despite the Rally season having ended, I've still been engaged in a few bike related things.

First off on 31st October I went along to see Charley Boorman's live show at the Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage.

To be honest i wasn't sure what to expect, you know the sort of thing... "failed actor friend of Ewan McGregor gets to ride round the world on the back of his famous mate" But in fact it turned out to be a very entertaining evening with tales of growing up in Hollywood (if you didn't know his father is film producer John Boorman), his own intermittent acting career, he admitted to actually being a painter and decorator at the time of Long Way Round. He was quite candid about the whole film and book affair coming about because he couldn't afford to to it otherwise. So I suppose if we had a famous mate and the chance to fund a round the world trip, we would jump for it too!

Quite interesting was when he was asked as he often is, will you race the Dakar again? Instead of his usual "maybe" he answered "most probably".

At the end of the same week, I went to the International Dirt Bike Show at Stoneleigh Park. To be honest it was pretty much dominated by motocross and there wasn't a great deal for the Rally Bike rider but an interesting day out. That day did host the awards ceremony for the Big Bike Rally Challenge so it was a great chance to meet up with several of the other competitors in the Challenge.

And on the way home I popped into see a contact from the CCM Riders forum who lives only 20 minutes from Stoneleigh and picked up a new (straight) subframe for the CCM, a new rear rack and a pair of side panels for considerably less than new parts would have cost.

On the Saturday I got to rebuild the bike and it looks pretty good with the new subframe on

OK it's grey instead of black but otherwise fitted perfectly and even better it' straight!

The side panels went on OK and look quite smart, being the opposite of the sub frame as they are black, replacing grey ones! Especially as the old ones were scratched and the exhaust had melted a hole in the right hand panel.

On the Sunday I was officiating at a Mountain Bike race in Thetford Forest so took the bike for a shake down run and even got a couple of laps of the course. The race was pretty neventful as this picture of Rich & Gary from Extreme Know How International shows, they were there to provide medical cover but as you can see, weren't exactly snowed under with casualties!