An injection of life and freedom

"I love what the bike gives me,”.... “The injection of life, freedom, engagement with the world, and it’s still something that I love: the anonymity I have on the motorcycle. I stop at a diner or at a gas station, I have wonderful encounters with people at rest areas at the side of the road… these moments that are just person to person. Those are the moments, that is how I live best.”

A great quote I read this week from Neil Peart on the 'Louder' website titled 'Neil Peart remembered' and written by Rock Journo', writer and Rush fan Philip Wilding as part of a tribute after Neil's passing. It sums up Motorcycling for me these days, although I don't go out of my way to crave anonymity as Neil did, I do find it such a great stress reliever as a solitary pursuit finding the 'refuge of the roads' (to coin a Joni Mitchell song) after a long few weeks at work. For some reason I hadn't been 'feeling the vibe' since mine and Mark's wonderful Scottish Highland trip last month so with the sun shining I had the opportunity to get out on a solitary ride to find new roads and re-ride some old ones out in to the heart of mid-Wales. It's always fun to meet like-minded people along the way too.

Since owning my GS with the TFT I hadn't really tried using the BMW Connected phone app as a navigation tool instead of my Navigator 6 so decided to give it a go today and see if I could get on with it and get used to using this new tech' addition I have for free from the IOS App store. The first thing I did after installing on my phone was to download the appropriate off-line maps on to my phone as they come in regions and save the phone from using a data connection (3G/4G) and roaming charges relying on the phones built in GPS for navigation to find your location and position you on the off-line maps similar to Google maps.

After connecting the phone up to my bike it's possible to either enter destinations or simply load a predefined GPX file. I chose the former to keep it simple and went for a familiar single destination 'Crossgates' - the small village in Powys and bikers cafe stop. Since I already know the destination, the intention was to ride anywhere in the general direction making it up and see how well the phone app performs at re-calculating every time I moved away from the fastest route.

This strategy was a lot of fun as I enjoy exploring different B roads and anything that takes my fancy en-route and the re-calculating performed flawlessly as I headed out toward Knighton then on in the direction of Llandrindod Wells, my phone in my pocket with on-screen instructions on the TFT and voice instructions being fed to my headset. There isn't a map overview unless you mount the phone to the handlebars as an addition, but I really wanted to see if I could just follow the on-screen navigation instructions instead. I turned the voice prompts off and quickly realised you can leave the instructions on the screen permanently , but even if you flip back to the main TFT screen you can quickly go back and ask for the next instruction to flash up at any time. Another great feature is the speed limit box that suddenly appears when the navigation app is connected too.

Example navigation instructions on the TFT (not mine but you get the idea)

Riding out near Llandrindod Wells I came across a Midlands Riders club ride-out and had a bit of fun riding with this bunch for a while I reckon there were over 20 bikes in a convoy, so decided to ride with them, stopping a bit later for a chat. Great bunch of lads and ladies on a right mixture of bikes all taking it steady and enjoying the day. Eventually I took the road down to Rhayader and had a cracking little run down to the town before fuelling up and heading onto the Cafe at Crossgates.

Crossgates Cafe

The car park as ever on a Sunny Sunday was packed with bikes and I got chatting to a couple who had ridden down from Malvern, then later sat and ate lunch with another crowd with one guy on a Royal Enfield who had a few tales to tell, most notably since they were originally from London how they used to use the Ace Cafe back in the day of the 'ton up' boys. They put me on to a great little road down to Presteigne convinced I knew it already but after looking at my phone realised I didn't, so after our lengthy lunch and laugh I said farewell and headed off to join the B4356 at Llanbister and had a fantastic run over the hills down past the Battle of Pilleth site continuing onto Presteigne and then Mortimers Cross. I'm still really impressed with how versatile this Boxer 1250 engine is and throw in some 'nadgery' B roads the bike soaks up any bumps when in the 'Road 'pre-load setting too.

Not content with heading straight home now, still having fun, I took the road down to Kington and onto Pembridge stopping at the Cafe there for a cool milkshake in the sun next to a 'cycling couple' who were counting their energy bars and gel packs. Nice couple who had quite a few miles to do - rather them I thought (couldn't think of anything worse) before drinking up and heading off on to that wonderful road up to Ludlow.

On my return route home near Button Oak I had a bike loom up behind me in my mirrors and let him pass (I did yes) I realised it was Nick a fellow GS rider out on his Triumph Speed Twin for the afternoon. He looked like he was having a lot of fun down into and through Bewdley and really didn't hang about so I followed along for a bit lifting my helmet up as I announced my identity with a grin at the pedestrian crossing much to his surprise before heading off somewhere down towards Crundalls Lane.

I guess I need to work on my lean angle !

A few ABS activations!

At home I took a look at the BMW Navigation App and some of the additional features were interesting but sadly some of the numbers fell off the speed / altitude chart. I do need to do something about the lean angle - that can't be right either! All in all the App was good. Not sure I could substitute it for the Navigator, but it's a great tool and addition, and free at that, so I will be using it again soon.

Great fun today, definitely put a big grin back on my face at last, a real injection of life and freedom with a few person to person moments thrown in too!