{"id":1418915,"date":"2018-12-12T10:31:20","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T00:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bikeme.tv\/?p=1418915"},"modified":"2018-12-12T10:35:57","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T00:35:57","slug":"tales-of-the-niken-episode-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/tales-of-the-niken-episode-2\/","title":{"rendered":"TALES OF THE NIKEN \u2013 EPISODE 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

In which our hero considers the existential aspects of the Niken while belting it up a shitweasel of a road, parking it front of a small country pub and awaiting the judgement of large, tattooed men who have been drinking beer and possibly riding motorcycles in their youth, and who might want to kiss him.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhere the road is dark and the seed is sowed
\nWhere the gun is cocked and the bullet’s cold
\nWhere the miles are marked in the blood and gold
\nI’ll meet you further on up the road\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

That’s a kangaroo corral behind the Niken.<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

There has been a quite a lot of carry-on with the advent of the Niken. Social media, as always a cage full of twitching monkeys smearing themselves with their own outraged excrement, has excelled itself.<\/p>\n

The Niken has been called \u201cgay\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Niken has been accused of having \u201ctoo many wheels\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Niken has been accused of \u201cnot being a motorcycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

I have been accused of \u201cselling out\u201d.<\/p>\n

So allow me to grab the monkey-stick and run it clanging along the bars of the monkey-cage for sec.<\/p>\n

Calling something \u201cgay\u201d is only insult if you\u2019re missing parts of your brain because your parents were closely related when they conceived you.<\/p>\n

Secondly, a machine cannot have a sexual orientation, so I assume the insult is meant for the person riding it, yes? In this case, me. I like the Niken and therefore it logically follows (in the inbred\u2019s part-brain) that I prefer to have sex with men. This is the kind of monkey-thought that causes the smarter monkeys to beat that monkey with rocks until it dies and cleanses the gene pool.<\/p>\n

The Niken having \u201ctoo many wheels\u201d insult is an interesting one. Being designed as a Leaning Multi-Wheeler, I\u2019m of the view it has the correct amount of wheels for its design brief. It has one more wheel than a motorcycle. It has two more wheels than a unicycle. And it has three more wheels than a surfboard. But does it have \u201ctoo many wheels\u201d? Um\u2026no.<\/p>\n

Observers who have observed it to be \u201cnot a motorcycle\u201d are correct. It is not a motorcycle in the same way I am not a journalist.<\/p>\n

Have I \u201csold out\u201d? To who and for what, I ask?<\/p>\n

To Yamaha and for money, I presume, betraying the whole monkey-plagued brotherhood of the handlebars because I like the Niken, yes?<\/p>\n

I like the Harley FXDR, the Suzuki Hayabusa and the KTM Superduke R too \u2013 a good deal more than I probably should, and certainly more than I like the Niken. Have I sold out to Harley, Suzuki and KTM? Does someone in the monkey-cage think these companies transfer funds to my horrified bank account each time I say something positive about their bikes? Lord Jesus, I wish they would. Hell, make me an offer bitches. I\u2019ll dance.<\/p>\n

But that ain\u2019t how it works in my world.<\/p>\n

I asked for a long-term loan of the Niken because I wanted to live with it a bit and ride it where and how I would ride a normal motorcycle. I am endlessly curious, and the Niken piqued my curiosity. It goes around corners and generally acts like a really well-sorted motorcycle \u2013 every single reviewer of any worth has come to the same conclusion. I\u2019m not an island here.<\/p>\n

But what\u2019s it like to live with? Will I have to get a neck tattoo? Will I be forced to defend my sexuality? Will I have to defend the Niken\u2019s sexuality? Will I have to wipe the despair-flavoured tears of some sportsbike-riding muppet?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what I wanted to know and that\u2019s what I\u2019m in the process of finding out.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s why, with the late afternoon sun baking my restless humours, I took the Niken for a fast lash to the Gresford pub. I needed to be there and back before the kangaroos started their sunset ritual of \u201cLet\u2019s kill the fool by sacrificing our lives so we may end his\u201d.<\/p>\n

So I set to with a will.<\/p>\n

The roads around where I live are mostly rubbish. The surfaces are, with some wonderful exceptions, deteriorating nightmares. The bitumen has flowed and lumped like new lava, vanished altogether, or is busily turning into a rocky goulash.<\/p>\n

\"\"

“Come at me, goulash!”<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

On a normal bike these roads are challenging. They force your front-end to work hard, you to work harder, and keeping a good Christian pace is down to local knowledge and a belief in voodoo. And at any time, Skippy might leap into your face, or a depressed miner may decide he\u2019s taking the express train outta Dodge and you\u2019re collateral damage.<\/p>\n

It reminds of the brutal, atavistic glory of the Hume Highway before it was turned into a soulless freeway.<\/p>\n

And it is precisely the kind of road-surface the Niken is eminently suited to. It\u2019s like the designers came to Gresford and said: \u201cLook what these poor Orokamono have to put up with! Let us build them something that will stop them weeping and riding like toshioita josei.\u201d And they did just that.<\/p>\n

Once again, I was fighting my two-wheeled programming. But the realisation you can push two-front wheels much harder than you can push one wheel on a crappy, variable surface is revelatory.<\/p>\n

So I pushed. I went around the outside of cars with confidence, braked very late into terrible corners, and generally drove several nails into the coffin of motorcycling respectability.<\/p>\n

I arrived at Gresford pub en-fizzed and bright-eyed.<\/p>\n

The locals pretended to ignore the bizarre vehicle I had parked in front of their pub.<\/p>\n

But the Niken is impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n

And slowly they wandered down to look at it and take pictures of it. And, as most of them had ridden bikes at some stage of their lives, they would ask me questions as we sipped our beers in the warm gloaming.<\/p>\n

\"\"

“I wonder if he will dance with me if I ask?”<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

\"\"

“Straight to the Grindr app then…”<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIs it unstable?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually more stable than a normal bike.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course it\u2019s more stable, you dickhead! Two front wheels\u2026Jeez, look at that technology under there\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it leans?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes it does.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow far?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pegs touch at forty-five degrees and there\u2019s a bit left after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re shitting me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI promise you I\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a bike built by alien ants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then I asked them a question.
\n\u201cDo any of you think I\u2019m gay?\u201d<\/p>\n

They look nonplussed.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you feel gay?\u201d one of them eventually asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot at all. But there are people who reckon this thing is gay and only gay people ride them.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a silence.<\/p>\n

Then one of them grinned.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never kissed a poof, but I kissed a bloke who has.\u201d<\/p>\n

I rode home after another beer with these good-natured blokes. We did not kiss each other goodbye, even though maybe we should have. Just to keep the monkeys happy, you understand.<\/p>\n

EPISODE ONE OF TALES OF THE NIKEN IS HERE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

THE COMPLETE NIKEN REVIEW IS HERE<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which our hero considers the existential aspects of the Niken while belting it up a shitweasel of a road, parking it front of a small country pub and awaiting the judgement of large, tattooed men who have been drinking beer and possibly riding motorcycles in their youth, and who might want to kiss him. [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1418928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[219,67,352,103],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418915"}],"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=1418915"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1419005,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418915\/revisions\/1419005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1418928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1418915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1418915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1418915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}