12 August 2005

Waiting for the ferry in Dover after a hurried race from London down the M20 to get to Dover in time for the ferry. I was late leaving work and so arrived back at my flat just as Tom was pulling in on his motorbike, ready for the off. Being an organised and, some may say, fairly anal type of chap I had tried to get myself as ready as possible the previous night. The panniers were ready and waiting in my hallway together with my riding clothes and the few other things I needed. This did in no way stop me racing around like a man possessed while Tom ambled around the car park setting up his video camera to shoot some film of us leaving. It would be wrong to say that I'm unfit, but I'm a larger than average sort of bloke and with my flat being on the first floor and the temperature being fairly warm, I was working up a nice sweat by the time I had eventually finished. Oddly enough the twenty-five minutes I had been running between my flat and my bike (note to self: those short distance sprints between the bike and flat could be the basis of superb personal training regime) did still not seem to be enough time for Tom to take the camera out of its bag, erect a tripod and mount the camera on the tripod. In what could be a scene from a silent movie of the early twenties a casual observer would have been presented with the sight of me, bathed in sweat and with an increasingly wild and dishevelled appearance, dashing intermittently into the foreground of their landscape and carrying a range of objects of varying sizes and shapes while in a slow and methodically manner in the centre of the panorama a puzzled Tom assembles a tripod and camera.

We leave and I take the time to relax as we battle to get free of London. Getting to the M20 it was a straight and simple ride to Dover and the ferry. Time was starting to get a little tight, but we were making good progress and and traffic was good. Tom was about a half mile ahead of me when I glanced at the petrol gauge and remembered what it was I had been meaning to do before leaving London., Depite being the main road to Dover the M20 has remarkable few service stations and it was as I was looking at the petrol gauge that I passed a service station. When Tom disappeared from sight and the orange "low on fuel light" appeared I did start to fret a touch. The sign for the next fuel station came into sight and I impatiently hugged the hard shoulder trying to get the last ounce of fuel out of the tank, while vainly trying to not think of pushing the bike up the exit slip road t the garage. I made it to the station, but was I pulled up to the tank the bike cut out. Maintaining an air of utter calm I re-set the trip gauge, filled the bike with fuel and sauntered up to pay. Upon my arrival at Dover it was disconcerting to see a seemingly unconcerned Tom standing next to his bike at the front of the aisle reserved for motorbikes.