First decent day... Red Pepé gets out

Yesterday was the first decent weather day for weeks and weeks.  The last time I had Pepé out of the garage was over a month ago and then for a ride to the January Meldrew's Monthly meeting at the Blue and White. That day it was cold.  Very cold in fact.

Since then, although we haven't had any decent snowfall nor any appreciable rain we have those horrible damp days where the air seems to consist of water just waiting to make itself into rain.  The roads are damp.  Occasional overnight frosts have the local gritters out coating the "major routes" with a mixture and gritty sand and salt.

It's the salt that plays havoc with bikes.  Over the years car manufacturers have got wise to this and use galvanised metal. Even the traditional rust-buckets from southern Europe are made of it.  Hence no more rusty two year old FIAT cars on the road...

But. Motorcycle manufacturers may have caught up with this for the frames and stuff like petrol/gas tanks but not wheels!  Triumph in particular are coming in for some criticism over the treatment of wheels, or lack of it.  

Pepé was two years old a few weeks ago and try as I may, the bike looks almost new except for the wheels. No amount of elbow grease and hard work can keep them looking good.

Don't talk to me about chrome! 

Anyway, the second run out of the year was to the Meldrew's!  I took a bit of back road to get out of Hythe as we had a weekend of road works on the main road in!  Then to make up time a quick dash up the M20 to Ashford to blow out the cobwebs, in me and in Pepé.

The big surprise was that despite residing in a an unheated powerless garage, Pepé started first touch of the button.

I was out a couple of hours, mostly chatting and eating a bacon and egg sandwich, and managed t