New Year and Reflections

Another year over.  Another load of memories stored away.

Thank goodness for blogging and Flickr. One day when memory starts to fade and faculties begin to fail, we'll have somewhere and something to remind us, or kickstart a memory.

Someone asked me about my earliest bike touring photograph.  I discount the one of me as a four year old on Dad's Thunderbird....

But back in the 70's and 80's before digital I tended to use Kodachrome slide film and not Kodacolor negative film both in 126 and 35mm sizes.  

When I moved down here in 1999 I had to take boxes of slides to the tip as they had been in the garage too long. Most were wet and at very least damp and useless. The cardboard mounts rotted and the film itself ruined.

Sadly this would write off a good photographic proportion of my life.

I do have some prints though.  I need to locate them. Currently the oldest picture I have in digital format was scanned from my first ever box of slides that I do have still.

I only scanned it a few a couple of weeks ago.

I am one of the four Surrey Scooter adonis'. Four 17yo lads on a first adventure on our scooters. Away from home as a group. It was only about 250 miles from home but with some unreliable Italians under us it was an adventure. 

Today it seems you need to have a big German or Austrian twin cylinder panzer bike to have an adventure.  Bollocks.