This article is aimed mostly at motorcyclists/ bikers, (choose your own epithet).   Bottom line; we do not use our bikes.   OK, so there are exceptions to every rule, and there are undoubtedly people out there who clock up vast mileages on bikes every year, but just look at the evidence. Gumtree (https://www.gumtree.com/) is probably the most commonly used for sale site for bikes in the UK.   There are problems with crunching data taken from it, like sellers who record their mileage as 18 rather than 18,000 miles, or the occasional want ads with completely duff data, but I think we can still get some sort of idea about what we do with our bikes from looking at what is for sale on Gumtree.   The following comments are based on bikes for sale on Gumtree on Wednesday 18 th April 2019.   The table below gives the basics. Tot bikes for sale Over 80,000 miles Over 10 years Over 10 years and under 15,000 miles Nor...

This story follows on from a couple of previous posts about my BMW Funduro. https://oldandireland.blogspot.com/2019/01/padock-days-part-4-tales-of-ice-and.html  and https://oldandireland.blogspot.com/2019/02/i-bought-vampire-motorcycle.html If you have read some of the previous rants hereabouts, you will already know that my own personal transport solution is a motorcycle.   It makes sense to me, but I will jot down a few justifications here for a (hopefully) wider audience.  Current transport - a 2003 Suzuki Burgman 400 I’ve used a couple of different bikes between the failure of my BMW Funduro which is documented in a few other posts on this blog.   The first short term solution was to put my old 1974 BMW R75 back into commuting service.   It is not ideal for this purpose.   Many bikers will immediately assume that this unsuitability stems from the cylinders of the horizontally opposed engine sticking out too far, making traffic filteri...