continued progress … I think


It’s just a day short of seven weeks since I banged my knee and fractured it – which meant the first four weeks I did almost absolutely nothing and then the last couple of weeks doing a little bit more but  a long long way off anything like normal activity.

The bikes remain in the garage and although the engines have been turned over a few times in the last few weeks the wheels certainly haven’t and just at the moment I’m not quite so sure when I’ll be able to get back on one of them or get behind the wheel of the car.

The knee brace that I moved to after four weeks of the straight leg brace was initially set an angle of 30 degrees, last week it went to 80 degrees and yesterday it moved up to 90 degrees, I’m looking forward to the Consultant’s views and opinions at my next hospital visit later today.

To keep a bit of a focus on progress, and if I’m honest to relieve some of the boredom of sitting around doing next to nothing I drew a bit of a diagram that shows the knee angles I need to get to, and if you look carefully along the bottom arc you can see some already marked off with a red tick.

We also took short a drive out to a local bike dealers – as much as for something to do as anything else really, and it was a decent enough way to pass a bit of time, wandering around the new and used bike stock at the Manchester branch of CMC Motorbikes.

We had been there on one previous occasion back in March, not so long after the store had opened  – click this link for the Blog post following that visit.

It’s a very decent store with a good range of clean, well prepared used bikes on display, the seating area is OK and although the coffee comes from a machine it’s quite acceptable and reasonably priced at £1.50.

It also provided me with the opportunity to sit on a couple of bikes for the first time in weeks – one of them that both my wife and I liked was a Triumph Bonneville T120 which looked lovely and felt pretty comfortable for both of us. There were two T120s along with the smaller displacement  T100, it was the one in the first picture below that we tried out for size (clicking on any of the pictures will open a scrollable gallery). The last picture in the group below is the Moto Guzzi V9 Roamer, and although I am a fan of the Guzzi marque I’m not wholly sold on the aesthetics of the V9 – it sort of all looks pretty nice but I’m always left a little unsure about the angles on the fuel tank, and think I would have preferred a more rounded finish on the tank at the point nearest the seat.

To be honest I’ve never really looked at Triumph machines with any great interest before but I was struck by the quality and finish of the Bonnevilles . Just in front and to our left (when we sat down for a coffee) was a very clean 2014 model of the Triumph Speedmaster and I couldn’t resist having a sit on it.

The low seat height and forward controls certainly felt easy on my knee in its current condition – what I did notice and hadn’t expected when I was getting off both the Bonneville and Speedmaster was that the simple act of putting weight onto my left leg whilst lifting my right leg over the bike wasn’t great and caused some discomfort, although I’m guessing that is just a temporary thing on the road to recovery.

I thnk maybe the last time that I looked a Triumph was about three or so years ago when my wife and I briefly flirted with the idea of getting a Triumph America (after having seen one at the Llan Fest show in Llangollen) but when we went to look at one it didn’t quite float our boat enough to pursue an interest in buying one. On returning home from CMC I spent some time reading up on the Bonneville Speedmaster and there is no doubt that the latest incarnation of the T120 is a heck of a bike – the 2014 Speedmaster in the showroom has been completely superseded by the revised model that is built up from the superseded ultra-successful Bobber platform, and the model that provided Triumph with their fastest selling model in history when it was introduced in 2017.

The Speedmaster certainly looks superb and it’s possible that we could be tempted by ether the T120 or the Speedmaster. However being tempted is one thing, being able to afford it is another and that’s quite apart from just being able to get back on a bike!

With that in mind todays hospital appointment should give me a clue about whether this years planned bike trip is likely to happen, its already been pushed back a few months but the next decision point about whether to go ahead is already fast approaching.

Links to recently published posts:

Small Steps Forward

Doctors Orders

Sometimes you just want to swear

She’s a beauty