Wind and rain

The Americans have a word for it - mission creep. Actually that's a phrase but lets ignore that for the time being. What am I talking about? The tendency for things to go far beyond what you originally intended because each further step seemed logical at the time. That's how the screen for the bloop evolved. I've never been much of a fan of screens on motorcycles, thinking that they only got in the way and that better clothing or a bit of "man-ing up" to use a recent expression was all that was needed to cope with the conditions. However advancing years and memories of freezing during the last Elephant trip convinced me to take another look and I decided the bloop would have a screen.

I suppose that back in the 70's when hoards of bikes like these were being used to commute to the local station you could buy all sorts of bits for them including screens but there's not much chance of finding anything suitable around these days. Maybe weeks of looking on ebay might turn up something but it would no doubt be a "genuine and rare period accessory" and priced accordingly. I'd hate to ruin a "genuine period accessory" when they are so rare on a trip like this so I turned to a different part of ebay and for a few pounds bought an A3 sheet of 4mm thick clear acrylic. Actually it might have been polycarbonate or perspex or some other clear plastic. The terms seem be used interchangeably by many of the dealers and not being versed in the art I can't tell one from the other. Either way it looked clear enough when it turned up.

I chose an A3 sheet because I guessed that my chest area would present about an A3's worth of frontal area to the wind, so substituting the plastic for me wouldn't make much difference to the bike but might marginally improve my comfort. Also A3 sheets were cheap and I'd use all of it. Buying a bigger sheet would cost substantially more and I'd have to throw a lot of it away when it was cut to shape.

A week or so later, after a lot of trying to decide on this angle or that, should it be bolt upright or at some sort of jaunty angle, around the headlamp or on top, decisions, decisions, I'd got it vaguely mounted. In the end it went right in front of where my chest would be and sloping a little to the rear for no other reason than it looked about right. More B&Q steel tubing, a couple of modified car exhaust clamps and a couple of evenings sparking away with the welder and it was mounted. That was that, on to the next bit.

That's where the mission creep bit started. The "next bit" was fitting a pair of handlebar muffs in an attempt to keep my hands warm and / or dry. I didn't want to buy these as it would mean spending money so I considered alternatives. The really poor mans version of handlebar muffs is a couple of 5L plastic containers with one side cut out and cable tied onto the handlebars. I've used these before so I know how effective they can be but the bloop is a very small bike physically and 5L containers were much too big to fit in the space available. I tried downsizing to a 3L container but the cutout was too small to get my hands inside and still operate the controls. I did find a plastic milk carton that fitted well but the plastic was too flimsy and I didn't think it would survive the battering on the autobahn. Reluctantly I "borrowed" some muffs I had fitted to the CCM and modified them to fit the bloop. Last time I used these muffs in the rain they leaked like a sieve and the interior filled up with a couple of inches of water. Far from protecting my hands they were stuck underwater for hours on end as I plodded back through France, but they were all I had so I started thinking about ways to protect the muffs - defense in depth I suppose!

The obvious way was to extend the screen sideways with a couple of "wings". These were wings in the architectural sense - the east wing and the west wing. Ebay came up with an A4 sheet of perspacrystyracarbonate or whatever it was, which I cut in half and via a couple of metal struts fixed in front of the muffs. That should keep most of the wind and rain off. So that was my chest and my hands sorted but what about my legs? In December a "quick" 10 mile round trip to the MOT station in the rain showed that they were the only bits getting really wet. I needed to come up with some protection for them. A week or so later I was in Maplin's, the electronics store, and they were selling small plastic snow shovels for £5.00 each. Looking at the shape of the shovel part it struck me that they would be perfect for knee protection if I could work out how to mount them - and I could shovel snow with them once at the site. The perfect double function accessory.

Over Christmas I worked out how to mount them, what would need to be modified and what would need to be made. When I went back to buy them we'd had some snow and... they'd sold out! The next day I took another look at the screen and decided that if I extended the wings downward that would give me some knee protection at least. A few days later and a couple more plastic A4 sheets arrived from ebay and fixed were in place. To stop it flexing I   initially just velcroed it to the back of the indicators but after a trial run I had to make up a couple of extra supporting struts. The screen is now over twice the size I originally intended so the bloop's 10bhp is going to have to work for a living. Feeling guilty, I bought some fully synthetic two stroke oil to help it on its way.

This is the "final" version of the screen -