Jez
Junior Member
It was the perfect day for it. After the gales of the previous afternoon, it was a bright morning promising good riding weather, and ideal conditions for the Copdock Bike Show. But there was a chill in the air when I set off shortly before 9am, ambient temperature registering 7 degrees, and it brought a brief foretaste of winter. I love my NYPD leather jacket, but it's not really designed for motorcycling: it's seriously heavy duty with 1.6mm leather, but there's no armour, and the wind has a nasty habit of whistling through the side vents where your New York cop would carry his gun and baton. So I vowed to pick myself up a proper textile jacket if I saw one. I met up with AyB at Blythburgh and we headed south.
Held at the Suffolk Showground near Ipswich, this is one of the biggest meets in the East Anglian motorcycling calender, with riders turning up from all over the region. And in huge numbers, too – I've no idea what the final turn-out was, but the showground was packed. Some came by car, and a subtle hierarchy at the main gate ensured that they were sent off on a detour to park out of sight, while bike after bike streamed through the entrance and parked up in long lines spreading across the field. Anyone concerned about the dwindling number of bikes on the road as the government tighten the licence requirements ought to take heart from the numbers who turn out for an event such as this.
It's also rather nice to be able to wander around relatively incognito, where riding gear is the norm. Back in July we took a trip to Wells in Norfolk on a baking summer's day, and wandered, sweating profusely, up and down the streets clad in our armoured jackets and big boots, while all around us holidaymakers ambled along in shorts and T-shirts eating ice creams. At Copdock it was as if we'd found ourselves in some bizarre virtual reality game, a kind of Second Life where the locale is 'bike shop', everybody dressed from the Hein Gericke catalogue. I've never seen so much leather outside of various 'special interest' websites. People ambled around contentedly, rubbing armour-plated shoulders, with that vaguely simian gait that is accentuated by knee pads and leather trousers. At the Thetford show earlier in the year there appeared to be an alarming number of people on crutches: it was a bit like a biblical parade of the halt and the lame, but Copdock seemed to draw a less accident-prone crowd in general.
The Camrider girls were out and doing their thing, handing out leaflets and bringing a much needed touch of glamour to proceedings. For those unfamiliar with them, they are the East Anglian biking scene equivalent to the F1 Pirelli girls, selected carefully for their decorative qualities, and it's an effective strategy: I've found myself expressing an interest in doing a course with them on no less than three occasions, despite already having a full licence.
There was a large grass arena where some kids were doing some display riding on motocross bikes, led by a tiny lad who couldn't have been more than seven. They seemed to gain confidence as the morning went on, and by the end were doing multiple jumps and that display rider thing where they cross each other's path with a whisker to spare. It was a neat little show, but didn't quite merit the hyperactive yapping of the commentator who loudly exhorted everyone to give a round of applause approximately every 20 seconds, leading to a desultory patter of clapping and a few weary cheers. Great to see kids doing this kind of thing though, in an age of health and safety paranoia.
There were masses of stalls out, selling just about everything you could conceivably need for a motorcycle. There were plastic buckets containing nondescript lumps of metal, assorted footpegs in varying sizes, rusty carburettors, broken mirrors, and tracts of colourful wiring overflowing their bins. Then there were rows of T-shirt stalls, all with profoundly unfunny captions and a vaguely heavy metal theme. Speaking of heavy metal, a sound stage had been set up with what looked a lot like the same DJ from Thetford, booming out the obligatory soft rock hits: Alice Cooper, Def Leppard and the like. I suppose if you wear leather trousers this sort of thing is expected.
I found a BMW tent and was captivated by the wonderful robotic ugliness of the R1200GS, which looks so tall you'd presumably need to carry a stepladder in one of the many panniers just to be able to get on the thing. The bars are extraordinarily wide as well, almost a metre apart, and the semi-shielded headlight combo gives the impression of the bike winking lasciviously at you, as if to say: “Come on then, if you think you're big enough – take me for a ride.” Or perhaps that's just me. Anyway, I was very taken with the BMW, and have added it to my To-Do list (get proper job, buy R1200GS, leave proper job and take off round the world).
I know I said you could find just about anything motorcycle related, but that's not strictly true: I went all over the site trying to find some chain lube with no success. With an abundance of stalls selling automotive stuff you'd have thought it was the obvious thing to find at a bike show, but no. You could get 15 different flavours of Autoglym polish, something called Oil Stabiliser, visor demister, but no chain oil. Odd, that.
There was a large covered area which had the more sensitive machines on display: Custom Bikes of Troston had a good range of highly customized cruisers there, with blinding chrome, incredible paint jobs and improbable geometry. Then there were the classics, tucked away in a shed: men in plus fours and long socks stood next to venerable British bikes with warning signs on them written with flawless grammar. On an old Vincent there was a notice printed on the tank which said something like: “Ensure that ammeters remain above 120 especially in inclement barometric conditions at sea level”, and another with stated: “Oil must be manually monitored in order to avert adverse combustification.” OK, I made them up, but that's the kind of thing. Whereas nowadays you'd get the bluntly functional “Check Oil”. “Unleaded Only”.
There was an IAM stall, with members standing around looking advanced, and next to them a bike cop under a BikeSafe sign who appeared to be trying to watch everybody in the room at the same time, and was consequently in a state of some alertness. A little further on was the Christian Bikers Association, presumably there as a kind of back-up: if your advanced riding skills fail you with fatal consequences at least you could then find some solace in being prepared for the afterlife. I helpfully pointed this out to AyB a little too loudly, and we decided to go outside again.
Having wandered past countless stalls selling silly-looking race leathers, which I wouldn't be seen dead in, we finally stumbled upon a stall with a decent range of jackets. I wanted something that might be used for touring, preferably with armour included, and one in particular caught my eye. Made by Buffalo, it wasn't quite as garish as many of the others on offer, and seemed to fit quite well, so I bought it for the bargain price of £55. Given that I was looking at a £200 jacket from Hein Gericke I was quite pleased with that, although I have to say that what with the enormous shoulder pads I do bear a distinct resemblance to an American Football player when I put it on. Must remember to go through narrow doorways sideways.
It was a warm afternoon by now, and we'd seen pretty much everything, so we decided to make tracks. Back at the bikes I encountered a slight logistical problem: how to transport my new jacket home. I decided the only way was to wear it, so in temperatures now reaching 18 degrees I was sporting a merino thermal base layer, mid-weight fleece, new textile jacket and finally the heavy duty leather over the top. I could just about do up the zip if I breathed in, but couldn't bend my arms. Feeling like a prawn in a pressure cooker we got out of the gate alright, but as soon as we started back up the A12 I realised that the collar of the textile thing was pressing up against the back of my helmet and tilting it forward. The leather jacket had formed an enormous hump between my shoulderblades, and now my helmet getting nudged forward was making my glasses slip down my nose. The only way I could get them back up was to sort of screw my face around, stick out my jaw and wiggle my cheeks, making eye-poppingly weird expressions to wriggle them back up my nose. So if any passing motorists touring Suffolk on Sunday were disconcerted at being overtaken by a hideously gurning hunchback on a screaming Fazer, I do apologise for that.
Held at the Suffolk Showground near Ipswich, this is one of the biggest meets in the East Anglian motorcycling calender, with riders turning up from all over the region. And in huge numbers, too – I've no idea what the final turn-out was, but the showground was packed. Some came by car, and a subtle hierarchy at the main gate ensured that they were sent off on a detour to park out of sight, while bike after bike streamed through the entrance and parked up in long lines spreading across the field. Anyone concerned about the dwindling number of bikes on the road as the government tighten the licence requirements ought to take heart from the numbers who turn out for an event such as this.
It's also rather nice to be able to wander around relatively incognito, where riding gear is the norm. Back in July we took a trip to Wells in Norfolk on a baking summer's day, and wandered, sweating profusely, up and down the streets clad in our armoured jackets and big boots, while all around us holidaymakers ambled along in shorts and T-shirts eating ice creams. At Copdock it was as if we'd found ourselves in some bizarre virtual reality game, a kind of Second Life where the locale is 'bike shop', everybody dressed from the Hein Gericke catalogue. I've never seen so much leather outside of various 'special interest' websites. People ambled around contentedly, rubbing armour-plated shoulders, with that vaguely simian gait that is accentuated by knee pads and leather trousers. At the Thetford show earlier in the year there appeared to be an alarming number of people on crutches: it was a bit like a biblical parade of the halt and the lame, but Copdock seemed to draw a less accident-prone crowd in general.
The Camrider girls were out and doing their thing, handing out leaflets and bringing a much needed touch of glamour to proceedings. For those unfamiliar with them, they are the East Anglian biking scene equivalent to the F1 Pirelli girls, selected carefully for their decorative qualities, and it's an effective strategy: I've found myself expressing an interest in doing a course with them on no less than three occasions, despite already having a full licence.
There was a large grass arena where some kids were doing some display riding on motocross bikes, led by a tiny lad who couldn't have been more than seven. They seemed to gain confidence as the morning went on, and by the end were doing multiple jumps and that display rider thing where they cross each other's path with a whisker to spare. It was a neat little show, but didn't quite merit the hyperactive yapping of the commentator who loudly exhorted everyone to give a round of applause approximately every 20 seconds, leading to a desultory patter of clapping and a few weary cheers. Great to see kids doing this kind of thing though, in an age of health and safety paranoia.
There were masses of stalls out, selling just about everything you could conceivably need for a motorcycle. There were plastic buckets containing nondescript lumps of metal, assorted footpegs in varying sizes, rusty carburettors, broken mirrors, and tracts of colourful wiring overflowing their bins. Then there were rows of T-shirt stalls, all with profoundly unfunny captions and a vaguely heavy metal theme. Speaking of heavy metal, a sound stage had been set up with what looked a lot like the same DJ from Thetford, booming out the obligatory soft rock hits: Alice Cooper, Def Leppard and the like. I suppose if you wear leather trousers this sort of thing is expected.
I found a BMW tent and was captivated by the wonderful robotic ugliness of the R1200GS, which looks so tall you'd presumably need to carry a stepladder in one of the many panniers just to be able to get on the thing. The bars are extraordinarily wide as well, almost a metre apart, and the semi-shielded headlight combo gives the impression of the bike winking lasciviously at you, as if to say: “Come on then, if you think you're big enough – take me for a ride.” Or perhaps that's just me. Anyway, I was very taken with the BMW, and have added it to my To-Do list (get proper job, buy R1200GS, leave proper job and take off round the world).
I know I said you could find just about anything motorcycle related, but that's not strictly true: I went all over the site trying to find some chain lube with no success. With an abundance of stalls selling automotive stuff you'd have thought it was the obvious thing to find at a bike show, but no. You could get 15 different flavours of Autoglym polish, something called Oil Stabiliser, visor demister, but no chain oil. Odd, that.
There was a large covered area which had the more sensitive machines on display: Custom Bikes of Troston had a good range of highly customized cruisers there, with blinding chrome, incredible paint jobs and improbable geometry. Then there were the classics, tucked away in a shed: men in plus fours and long socks stood next to venerable British bikes with warning signs on them written with flawless grammar. On an old Vincent there was a notice printed on the tank which said something like: “Ensure that ammeters remain above 120 especially in inclement barometric conditions at sea level”, and another with stated: “Oil must be manually monitored in order to avert adverse combustification.” OK, I made them up, but that's the kind of thing. Whereas nowadays you'd get the bluntly functional “Check Oil”. “Unleaded Only”.
There was an IAM stall, with members standing around looking advanced, and next to them a bike cop under a BikeSafe sign who appeared to be trying to watch everybody in the room at the same time, and was consequently in a state of some alertness. A little further on was the Christian Bikers Association, presumably there as a kind of back-up: if your advanced riding skills fail you with fatal consequences at least you could then find some solace in being prepared for the afterlife. I helpfully pointed this out to AyB a little too loudly, and we decided to go outside again.
Having wandered past countless stalls selling silly-looking race leathers, which I wouldn't be seen dead in, we finally stumbled upon a stall with a decent range of jackets. I wanted something that might be used for touring, preferably with armour included, and one in particular caught my eye. Made by Buffalo, it wasn't quite as garish as many of the others on offer, and seemed to fit quite well, so I bought it for the bargain price of £55. Given that I was looking at a £200 jacket from Hein Gericke I was quite pleased with that, although I have to say that what with the enormous shoulder pads I do bear a distinct resemblance to an American Football player when I put it on. Must remember to go through narrow doorways sideways.
It was a warm afternoon by now, and we'd seen pretty much everything, so we decided to make tracks. Back at the bikes I encountered a slight logistical problem: how to transport my new jacket home. I decided the only way was to wear it, so in temperatures now reaching 18 degrees I was sporting a merino thermal base layer, mid-weight fleece, new textile jacket and finally the heavy duty leather over the top. I could just about do up the zip if I breathed in, but couldn't bend my arms. Feeling like a prawn in a pressure cooker we got out of the gate alright, but as soon as we started back up the A12 I realised that the collar of the textile thing was pressing up against the back of my helmet and tilting it forward. The leather jacket had formed an enormous hump between my shoulderblades, and now my helmet getting nudged forward was making my glasses slip down my nose. The only way I could get them back up was to sort of screw my face around, stick out my jaw and wiggle my cheeks, making eye-poppingly weird expressions to wriggle them back up my nose. So if any passing motorists touring Suffolk on Sunday were disconcerted at being overtaken by a hideously gurning hunchback on a screaming Fazer, I do apologise for that.
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