<\/p>\n
‘Below the thunders of the upper deep; It came to me in the night.<\/p>\n The night is a good time for crazy things to come to you.<\/p>\n It\u2019s dark. And all things are possible for they are hidden from the sight of man. Witnesses, bitches. You just can\u2019t kill them quick enough.<\/p>\n Anyway, the Niken arrived very late one evening on the back of a truck, like a load of super-cocaine, or a cage full of fighting dogs.<\/p>\n My neighbours, who are quickly learning to mind their own worthless business, were minding it. So they did not see the G-man and I wheeling the Niken into my garage.<\/p>\n Then we drank beer on my back porch, as men do when they have finished doing manly things in the darkness.<\/p>\n \u201cYou ridden it yet?\u201d I asked the G-man.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah,\u201d he nodded. \u201cA bit. It\u2019s mad.\u201d<\/p>\n We sat in silent agreement on that observation, sniffed at the clean night air, and sipped our beer.<\/p>\n The Niken is mad, alright. I had come to this conclusion myself when I rode it in all sorts of anger in New Zealand recently. You may read of that HERE<\/span> if you wish. Or you can just hang out in the darkness with me a bit longer.<\/p>\n The press launch of the Niken, for that was why I was in New Zealand, revealed to me an entire new path for my beloved motorcycle. It was a path I had never even imagined before.<\/p>\n How could I?<\/p>\n Three-wheelers are trikes, right? My brother Alice rides one because he only has one leg. A whole bunch of other people, who are not my brothers and never will be, also ride them. Most of them have all their legs.<\/p>\n But the Niken is not like those three-wheelers; those trikes.<\/p>\n You steer trikes in the direction you wish to go.<\/p>\n You steer the Niken into the opposite direction you wish to go.<\/p>\n Yes, my darkness-loving friends. It counter-steers like a motorcycle.<\/p>\n It also leans into corners like a motorcycle.<\/p>\n If a normal trike is leaning into a corner it is crashing. And that is a spectacular sight to see, so if you\u2019re ever in a position to see such a thing, keep your eyes open. It\u2019s altogether remarkable.<\/p>\n If a Niken is leaning into a corner, it is doing it like a motorcycle, but with front-end adhesion that beggars belief.<\/p>\n So in every way that makes a motorcycle a motorcycle, the Niken is a motorcycle.<\/p>\n Except it\u2019s not, is it?<\/p>\n Will it replace the motorcycle?<\/p>\n Don\u2019t be stupid. Never.<\/p>\n The only thing it will do is maybe open the castle door of Schloss Motorcycling a little wider.<\/p>\n Is that a good thing? I do not know. Is it a necessary thing? Oh yes.<\/p>\n Can you see why it\u2019s all made me a bit mental? Paradoxes have mounted upon paradoxes. Things are not as they once were in motorcycling and thus, they are not, in my mind, as they should be.<\/p>\n You see, I love motorcycles. I have no other hobbies. I have no other interests. I ride motorcycles and all my boxes are ticked, all my needs are met and all my planets are aligned. I\u2019m simple like that. And simple people like me do not deal well with being mental. It adds a complexity to our lives.<\/p>\n So at the end of the press launch, as I was trudging onto the plane and leaving one the greatest riding countries on earth, I was mental.<\/p>\n The mental wouldn\u2019t go away even after Border Force sneered at me in Sydney and so I rang Yamaha.<\/p>\n \u201cGive me a Niken,\u201d I said to Sean, who is the man to say these things to.<\/p>\n \u201cLet me see what I can do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, I\u2019m sorry,\u201d I rasped. \u201cDid that come across as a pathetic request?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA bit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSean,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m a bit mental about the thing. I rode it and rode it and rode it. And each time I stopped and looked at it I could see it was not a motorcycle. But when I rode it, it was a motorcycle. A really good one. It doesn\u2019t compute, Sean. I need to make it compute.\u201d<\/p>\n Sean was persuaded he needed me to make it compute too. So he sent the G-man to my house in the night with a Niken.<\/p>\n Now I don\u2019t know what the other people who were on the press launch will write about the Niken. But it is of no moment.<\/p>\n Only three of us really rode the thing at over 200km\/h and over goodly distances \u2013 which is when you see things and know things about the stuff you\u2019re riding. Half the motorcycle press corps went back to the hotel after lunch on the first day. They were apparently\u2026um, done, as it were. Too many corners perhaps. I do not know. Maybe they will write about it.<\/p>\n But a few of us rode on. And on. And on some more \u2013 and then we rode back as darkness fell.<\/p>\n The same nonsense occurred the following day. Half the press corps permitted itself a brief morning jaunt to a coffee shop, then returned to the hotel, while the same crew of mental patients went to carve corners and look at waterfalls gushing from cliffs.<\/p>\n I would have ridden the damn thing to Norway if it was offered.<\/p>\n And as I squeezed into my airplane seat, and made my peace with Ptah and Summanus in case we jetted into the cold Tasman, I was still trying to work out why the Niken had pushed my buttons the way it did. And made me mental.<\/p>\n Which is why I\u2019d called Sean and which is why Sean sent the G-man.<\/p>\n So a Niken is now in my possession.<\/p>\n And I will ride it and use it and take it places \u2013 and treat it in every way as if it is a motorcycle, because it acts like a motorcycle.<\/p>\n But it isn\u2019t a motorcycle.<\/p>\n And so I\u2019m a bit mental.<\/p>\n I trust you will be tolerant enough of my mental illness to join me on this strange journey.<\/p>\n Who knows what wonders we will encounter?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" TALES OF THE NIKEN \u2013 EPISODE 1 In which our hero acquires a three-wheeled thing which has made him a little mental, and attempts to reconcile his inner anguish at operating this non-motorcycle like a motorcycle, while also maintaining his manly dignity. And he will get a neck-tattoo if he has to. ‘Below [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1414723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[219,67,352,24,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414702"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1414702"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1414797,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414702\/revisions\/1414797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1414723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1414702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1414702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1414702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFar far beneath in the abysmal sea,
\nHis ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
\nThe Kraken sleepth….’<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/bikeme.tv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/182212_Yamaha_Niken_3661-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n