I’ve now spent a week in the 2.0-litre petrol turbocharged Vauxhall Insignia and I think I agree with its Car of the Year accolade. Thank goodness it’s got such a great chassis, considering how many GM cars it’s going to underpin. The 2.0 turbo petrol engine is also a great unit.
The Vauxhall Insignia is a tad bland
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My commute goes like this: “roundabout, dual carriageway, motorway, dual carriageway, roundabout.” It might make for a soothing mantra but it offers little in the way of blogfruit.
So I shall do what all good students do, and copy off my colleagues. With a nod to Rio and Velouria, I offer you the lexicon of winter riding:-
1. Arctic
I was so busy looking at a glorious yellow Triumph Daytona last night on my way home in my Vauxhall Insignia – Car of the Year 2009 as of this week, and I can see why - that I nearly squished a G-Wiz.
The G-Wiz: It’s not big and it’s not clever
Deary me, careless driving on my part, you might think. Only the G-wiz had sneaked up on my inside, sco…
Week two of full-time bike commuting, and no crashes (so far). I’ve always thought of myself as someone who rides to work, and I tick the boxes in surveys accordingly, because I believe it’s important that bikes are used as everyday transport as well as recreation – but this week has made me realise that I was something of a part-timer, riding maybe two days a week – three at the most.
When I was riding to Oxford my excuse was that I was a wuss – it was a long way for an inexperienced rider and the first time I tried it I crashed (hmm – bit of a pattern here!) so that made me quite nervous. My bad weather gear wasn’t very good and the speedo cable kept falling out of the front wheel. On the plus side, I became quite good at recognising 30mph by ear. Working in London my decision to take the bike or not usually swung on whether I had any social commitments in the evening – I could say that I didn’t want to have to carry a helmet and boots, but actually my concern was more lowly and tended to revolve around the freedom to have a pint (or two). So riding every day to the new office has been quite a discipline.
Although for complex logistical reasons I have been riding the Triumph in bodged-together winter kit – snowboarding trousers look very cool but aren’t quite long enough or warm enough for the M42 in November, while in a 50/50 call I’d picked up the jacket without the thermal lining so had to wear all three of my jumpers underneath it – incipient frostbite has been a risk worth taking, for I hate queuing almost as much as I hate tomatoes, and it was proper joy to swop sitting in the traffic for filtering past it. Riding home has been more of a challenge: whoever said “better to light a candle than curse the darkness” presumably didn’t realise he was setting the design parameters for Triumph headlights – I have been spoilt by the Trinity House-style illumination which is provided by Ruby and at one point had to ride up behind the van in front to reassure myself that the headlamp was actually on.
Interested in Young Dai’s heated vest… does that plug into the bike or what?! I did ride last winter and the winter before, with heated grips – the BMW F800 ST was great in that respect because, up until then, I’d had aftermarket heated grips fitted, but the BMW’s were factory fitted so they were nice and slim with a three-setting switch – perfecto.
No, the reason I’m ceasing biking for a while is more fundamental: lack of bike. Can’t decide what to ride next, and whether to buy now or keep trying bikes out that are similar to the Kwak ER-6f… dunno, I have this idea that if I don’t keep trying different bikes, I’ll never find that ideal one. You know, it’s just around the corner…
Anyway, don’t know if any of you have seen it on the Telegraph motoring website this week, but I posted a story (Ban bikers from “protection zones say police) written by our Motorcycling Correspondent, Kevin Ash, on evidence about motorbikes submitted by ACPO to the Transport Select Committee for their recent report.