Notes From the Hard Shoulder by James May Read Free Book Online

reproductive process.
    The greatest driving aid in the history of motoring was fitted to the Benz Motorwagen when it was rolled out of its shed for the very first time, and it has been included in the design of every single car built since. It was you.
    And it's still you.
    NAKED MOTORCYCLE PORN SHOWING NOW
    The late and still sadly missedLJK Setright had a rather pessimistic view of bikeshows. He once described them as being 'full of people on crutches looking to buy their next accident'.
    Personally, I rather like a good bike show. For a start, experience in my own garage proves that you can fit three or four bikes into the space occupied by one car, which means you don't have to walk as far as you do at the motor show. The fact that the biggest physical workout the average motoring journalist ever takes is three laps of the NEC while looking at cars strikes me as strangely ironic.
    Secondly, the atmosphere is better at a bike show. Motorcycling is still largely a hobby, and has yet to be infected with much of the glitz and fatuous marketing cant that accompany the latest launch of a sporty lifestyle vehicle for the active-minded urban sophisticate. There's rather less carpet on the stands, rather more tepid lager in cracked plastic glasses.
    And then there are the bikes. I admit that often, when I'm at home alone, I think I should give up motorcycling. I'm getting too old, too cautious, and I'm just not very good at it. I believe that 'waterproof motorcycle clothing' remains an oxymoron, and often, in the middle of a tight, greasy bend, I worry that Newton may have made a mistake, and there's some dark corner of physics where there is no equal and opposite reaction, and I'll fall off. But then I go to a bike show.
    Nothing, and I mean nothing, tugs at the strings of my Neanderthal man-being quite like an array of new

bikes, and especially the type of big-bore naked motorcycles that I like. It's something to do with the way engineering, styling and the dynamic considerations are required to collaborate in the design; their utter interdependence. A motorcycle really is an extension of your being on the road, and your own mass and dimensions are a critical aspect of the way the whole thing works. There is little room for conceit on the part of its maker, and it shows.
    Because, on a naked bike especially, you can see it all. You can see the way the stylist and the mechanic have been forced to collude, to give and take, to work constructively together. Engineering considerations temper the excesses of artistry, artistry dignifies the metalworking. And it all chimes instantly with some need to climb aboard and imagine how the thing might feel, which is why bike shows are full of people sitting astride new machines and gazing blankly into the distance.
    TakeYamaha's MT01 muscle bike. One side of the engine looks like the work of dour technologists with Rotring propelling pencils wedged into spring clips in their breast pockets; the other like the fantasies of some blokes in polo-necks who would be as happy doing fashionable kitchen appliances. It appears to have a fish poacher on that side; actually, I believe it's the cover for a filter. Marvellous.
    This is why motorbikes make a better static statement than cars.Aston Martin boasts of 'power, beauty, soul', and the new V8 has it all. The power is in the superb engine, the beauty is in the sculpture of its bodywork, and the soul comes from the physical

properties – the suspension set-up, the distribution of weight, all that impenetrable stuff – that make it drive the way it does. But on a motorshow stand we sense only the beauty, and feel only a distant longing inspired by some faint carnal promise. Meanwhile, theDucati Monster is flashing its knickers at you like some metal harlot.
    It was Dr Johnson, I believe, who said something to the effect that all men feel slightly inadequate who have not at some time been a soldier. Today, he might say that all men feel cheated who