Valheru Rides!

For the vast majority of you here, you will no doubt be aware my bright blue Meteor was sadly written off following an RTA at the start of May. Following the general annoyance/insurmountable rage of the loss I had to sit down and evaluate what motorcycle to replace him with.

Whatever I bought needed to be:

• Fairly small.
• Good fuel efficiency.
• Comfortable.
• Affordable.
• Tripper
• Options for all weather conditions.
• Look good.
• In blue?

Royal Enfield basically fitted the bill straight away there, so I immediately looked over the J platform with a slightly different bike in mind. Having had the Meteor for just over 3 years I was naturally thinking about getting a different model just to have something different, the Classic immediately sprung to mind as it’s the bike I’d love to own, but frankly I don’t like spoked wheels.

The gun grey scheme absolutely fitted the bill, but it’s not available in the UK…. 😬😬. Bloody typical eh? So many of the other models also had rather a lot of chrome, I love a chrome exhaust but it has some very real practical restrictions in that they are a pain to clean well, and when dirty can just look pants.

Or those of you not familiar with Norfolk, it’s basically a big field with the north sea on 2 sides that looks like the council tried to make flat (but rushed the whole job despite being told they couldn’t, and subsequently lost billions…. probably) but gave up part of the way through. I got muddy riding roughly 8 miles yesterday, frankly I’d rather be messing around with the kids or actually riding the bike vs spending hours after every ride trying to meticulously polish it back to perfection. The UK can get the Classic in ‘stealth black’ so that was a potential option despite the potential for escalating costs, we also have the windscreen issue that it just looks a tad meh on the Classic, and I’d have to get Tripper added on for the Classic vs it being standard on the Meteor. The potential price here is escalating…..

What actually put me off completely was when I sat on one briefly in town and remembered exactly why I hadn’t taken the plunge last time, the balance and general seating. The Meteor essentially has you sitting in the bike vs the Classic & Hunter where you sit on it, not only does it give you a bit of that “big bike” feel, but combined with the lower weight distribution and lower seat height, it just makes it feel more agile, better balanced and I can easily imagine it’s probably better when moving through traffic because of these. The Classic kinda felt a bit stiffer, and tbh it was a bit of a turn off on both occasions I’ve been able to sit on one.

The final nail in the coffin was my daughter insisting the next bike had to be blue, so off I went to see what I could do at the dealers. As luck would have it they had a Meteor fireball arriving shortly they could put aside, the downside was it was in all black.

As luck would have it another customer had recently done their own tank swap and so they the Stellar blue tank sitting around gathering dust on the random off chance someone wanted one, I can only imagine their surprise! Fast forward a few weeks and the insurance money touched my account for a mere moment before I threw it down for my second Meteor.

And here he is!

I’ve added the ridiculously comfy touring pegs as they’re essential for those of us with yeti feet, the engine bars for that bit of added protection after the collision last month, and finally there will be a tour screen installed later this month for that extra comfort when commuting in the winter. It’s not really an issue at this time of the year, in fact I ride home Thursday in the middle of a summer downpour and, while I was pretty wet, it wasn’t exactly the horizontal rain and high winds we get in December.

Now from the few hours of riding so far I have noted quite a few differences, but I’ve rambled on long enough, that’s for another post!

Thanks for reading.