The recreational motorcyclist, explained.

    Snow everywhere, not much to do at work, far too much to do when I'm not at work. Between trying to sleep and trudging round town in my wellies I've not had much time to participate in this sphere of late.
    I'd much rather be riding my motorcycle than sitting in a near-empty office, but to do so today would be nothing short of insane. So I spent a while early this morning watching YouTube videos to exorcise my motorcycling bug.
    I appreciate not all my readers will be familiar with motorcycling, so here are three instructional videos: a quick guide to help you understand the recreational motorcyclist.


How recreational motorcyclists see themselves

How the rest of the public see us


How my motorcycling friends see me

Busy in a good way

    It feels strange to be sitting down in front of the Blogger writing screen after such a gap. Only a few days in reality, it seems like forever. It's not that I've had nothing to say, it's just that I've not had the time to say it. It's been a busy week.
    The job's turning out well. A lot of my colleagues are female so the contrast could not be greater with my previous employer. And without the stress from an annoying commute and the office atmosphere I'm feeling a lot better too. I looked in the mirror the other day and saw the whites of my eyes. Not bloodshot, for the first time in nearly a year.
     Last weekend brought little opportunity to sit down either. The support group meeting on Saturday was followed by a motorcycle rideout on Sunday. Saturday evening saw a new frontier for me, I drove home in girl mode with my wife. Though I got changed at my friend Dawn's house, her comfort zone has not previously been relaxed enough for us to do this. In reality driving a car for an hour in the dark is just as unexciting in girl mode as it is in bloke mode, but that's not the point, it was a step removed from our usual safe space. If anyone noticed the extra-large girl who parked up in Dawn's road that evening I hope they'd have seen her confidently making her way, I certainly felt natural and in control rather than nervous.
    Then on Sunday, a rideout with a difference. By coincidence on the same weekend as the support group, five t-girls on bikes, two genetic girl pillions and one t-girl in an insanely fast car thrashing their way round the Berkshire and Wiltshire Downs. At the end of a perfect day we spent an hour just sitting in the sun near the Uffington White Horse gazing out across the Vale of the White Horse, perfect atmospheric conditions meaning we could see five counties.
    As all's going so well it seems unfortunate that I report I'm still feeling the pangs of GD. In fact I'm feeling more of the girl about me than ever just as I write this, even though without the extra stress I've had in previous months it's a lot more bearable than it has been. I can handle being girl-brained just at the moment if the rest of my life is in order. A surprising conclusion is that there is a positive side to not being able to shake the GD, it helps lay to rest that lingering fear that all this might be some kind of delusion. A crazy thing to worry about, but everything's crazy in this game isn't it.

Speed and the girl

    Name the fastest motorcycle on the planet. Go on!

I'm guessing the list of replies to that question will include the usual contenders from Japan, superbikes named after mythical Japanese birds of prey or weapons. Or perhaps an Italian handcrafted masterpiece in red with a name that sounds a beautiful as it looks but terrifying reliability and spares prices.

    Tasty machinery all, but not the answer I'm looking for.

    The fastest bike on the planet is your first bike. No other machine you will ever ride will come close to it for that first experience of speed. The 16-year-old on a 50cc scoot may look slow, but sitting on that patched-up Honda Melody is someone who's just taken the biggest step in their life from the snails pace of pedestrianism to the freedom of motorised transport and will never experience the same liberation again.

    I remember the first time I pointed my first bike at an open A road and opened it up. My little 400cc Honda felt as if it had jumped to warp and I was being scraped from the seat by the sheer force of the acceleration. In reality I made it from 30 to 60mph a few seconds faster than my car at the time and I wasn't expecting it. Exactly the same experience now feels so glacial, as though all 39 of the geriatric Japanese horses have just exhausted themselves trying to pull the skin from a rice pudding and have little left for me.

    My riding career never made it as far as owning a superbike. Perhaps that's as well really, they're a little uncomfortable to ride. Like many motorcyclists I became a serial bike-borrower in my early riding days, as born-again 1990s bikers wanted to resample their lost youth on my ancient Honda I had a go in return on their various pieces of garage jewelery. Particularly sticking in my mind is the experience of doing [Smashing the barrier into lose-your-licence territory]mph on somebody's RF900 on a twisty B road somewhere towards Coventry, the point at which I scared myself enough to inject a little realism into my motorcycling. In the end I settled into a comfortable existence riding a monster trailie, able to do slightly crazy speeds if my throttle hand takes the fancy but mostly bimbling along at a more hello-birds, hello-trees pace to the annoyance of reps in their flash German tin cans.
     The first experience of going out into the world presenting as female can be likened to that first moment of significant acceleration on a 400cc Honda. I'll never get the same feeling again from just going to a restaurant in girl mode. The trouble is, just like riding the Honda back in the day, having been there a few times I now want more. Pretty much everyone said it would happen this way, and of course they were right. I want to go faster, if there's a direct analogy between motorcycling and this whole girl thing.
     Like a stunt motorcyclist about to ride a screaming little two-stroke trailie down a ramp into a ring of fire over a pool full of sharks I'm now standing at the top of a very steep slope. I could rush headlong down it as my love of speed and the power of the screaming little engine is willing me to do, but I need to hold it on the front brake because I have promised my wife that I'll stay within her comfort zone.  Not an unreasonable thing to do, I'm damned lucky to have a wife with a comfort zone.
     Pushing the motorcycling analogy to its ultimate limit I can find some inspiration from my Honda. I still have that bike and I still consider it to be one of the the most entertaining bikes I've ridden even though the allure of its speed dimmed well over a decade ago. I can say this because I've found other ways to ride it. Fine, it's hopelessly weedy in a straight line, but on the twisties it comes alive as a bike that requires skill to deliver the results that more modern machines deliver through technology. If like the rider of a 400cc Honda I have little option to move faster and can only experience a slower expansion of my female expression then I have to find more to interest me in the scope I have. Finish some of those dressmaking projects perhaps, or perfect the use of cosmetics without looking like a pantomime dame with a hand tremor.
      I have to remember, it's not as though I haven't got lots of time for all this.

Bloke down the pub

     Picture if you will, two people in the queue to be served at a pub. Talking about motorcycles. The acceleration characteristics of a large trailbike versus those of a sportsbike, the result of the Dutch TT in the absence of Valentino Rossi and the annoyance of having to pass a scooter rally - several hundred Vespas and Lambrettas all at 45 mph - on the A5. Yes, Stace and I do "Bloke down the pub" conversations with aplomb.
    It was a flying visit and since my wife was working I was alone. As they're over from the Netherlands with a tight schedule we were meeting at one of those cheap-and-cheerful food pubs somewhere not far from the M1. Maybe the best place for delicate gender-variant conversations is a large and crowded beer garden, after all everyone else is only paying attention to the World Cup or to their errant children. I hope Mrs. Stace did not glaze over with boredom too much when our conversation turned to the geekier aspects of maintaining a 1960s car. At least in my scruffy motorcyclist guise I should have gone some way towards putting her mind at ease, past encounters with the more "out there" among our community have heightened her apprehension level, something she shares with my wife. It is certainly good for those of us who have to find a way through this mess to engage with others in the same hole, I hope it is similarly of use for our partners.
    As we parted and went our separate ways, Stace having tried a monster trailie for size, I was thinking about our conversation as I rode through the Northamptonshire countryside. We were talking about bikes not to present a male impersonation but simply because we're both motorcycle enthusiasts. I couldn't help raising a chuckle at the thought of the effect on those around us had we had a "girl" conversation instead. I've got a barbecue coming up to go to, I should have sought Stace's opinion on what outfit to wear.

Comes with air conditioning

    We're sweltering in the high twenties Celsius here in the southern half of the UK. As a country completely unable to deal with any slight variation in the weather, we've all collapsed into perspiring heaps of pink En-ger-land clad flesh and are loudly bemoaning climate change.
    Well, some of us are, anyway. Not me, yesterday I decided to partake of some of the finest air conditioning available and wheeled out the larger of my motorcycles to run an errand in a nearby town. A quick blat down the main roads, deal with my task for the morning and then off I went into the maze of minor roads that connects the dots in the British countryside.
     There was a time when I was an all-weather commuting motorcyclist and this machine was my main transport. Now I'm that most derided of riders, the weekend biker. The shame! On summer weekends you can't move for weekend bikers on British A roads, they're the ones in brightly-coloured skin-tight leather race suits (And they say transvestites look ridiculous!) on sportsbikes taking insane risks and riding like nutters. Fortunately they balk at the challenging corners, potholes and rural detritus of the minor roads so aside from a short detour to rev the tits off my machine as I passed the home of a well-known and annoying television motoring presenter I was able to leave them behind.
    Aimless riding on minor roads in the heat of summer is a true delight. Fast enough to keep cool but not fast enough to miss anything, you experience the sensations of the countryside in a way that car drivers never can. I have yet to pass through a sun-drenched village in a car and be assaulted by the smell of the climbing roses that adorn the houses, for instance.
     I parked the bike in a field entrance next to a linseed crop in full flower and just sat for a while against a stone wall. I thought I saw a bit of grease leaking round the rear hub where I'd had the wheel off last year and leaned in to investigate, managing to burn my arm on the hot silencer. Damn.
    I'm off on the bike again today, heading off for lunch with friends. Might as well make the best of another fine day. Enjoy your Sunday, whatever it is you're doing!

Those chickens are a bit pointy!

    The most memorable incident on Sunday's rideout is worth relating here: it owes nothing to motorcycling but everything to nature. Riding along a stretch of road near the Chiltern escarpment I saw what appeared from a distance to be a group of chickens. Large glossy red-brown birds pecking in the road. Closer still they were revealed not as chickens but three red kites tearing at a piece of roadkill. These birds of prey were the subject of a successful re-introduction programme a few years ago in these parts. As I approached and slowed down they took to the air and for about a hundred yards I had my own Fly Away Home moment with a red kite flying at eye level about six feet in front of me. A beautiful - no, Stunning - bird, not having seen one this close before I'd never realised just how big they are. Why am I never in a position to take a picture when these things happen? Never mind - somebody else has.

Motorcycling therapy

   Exercise is something you'll often see put forward as helping deal with gender dysphoria. The idea goes that the endorphins released by a good workout give your brain something to keep it occupied so it stops bothering you with girl thoughts for a while. Having started to give this a try with a daily morning workout I can vouch for there being something in this, post-workout I'm on a high and can better focus on my tasks in hand.
    I'd like to advance another self-administered therapy for those suffering from GD. Motorcycling. Stace beat me to it earlier today with a first ride of the season post, but one of the phrases she used said it all: "riding is just a fantastic rush".  If you're looking for an easy way to fill your brain up with endorphins, trigger a fight-or-flight response by taking a motorcycle close to the edge of its performance envelope. I've always experienced a high from motorcycling, a joy to be alive, and without realising I was self-medicating my gender issues I've used a rideout as a way to clear my mind when the weather allows for the best part of two decades now.
    This morning held one such rideout, I blew away the cobwebs with my trusty Honda. This was my first bike and I like it so much I've held on to it through all life has thrown at me. It's old enough for middle aged men to approach it with tears in their eyes recounting how they had one when it was new, it's far too small for me, under powered and its brakes and handling belong to an age with far more facial hair. I'm so attached to it because its combination of a mere 39 geriatric Japanese horses and skinny tyres mean that unlike more recent machines a rider of my meagre ability can touch the edge of what it can do without attracting the attention of PC Plod. Riding that bike as fast as it will go along a twisty rural back road in the English Home Counties is for me as perfect an experience as can be achieved through motorcycling.
    I took it out into the countryside and headed roughly east towards the hills. There are loads of tiny roads that way featuring corners and gradients aplenty. Perfect country for a Honda SOHC four. My front wheel may have stayed firmly on the ground and the knee of my armoured trousers may have remained unabraded by the road, but my brain was taking in all those lovely endorphins and I returned home on one of those highs during which the world is viewed in more vivid colour than ever.
   Now, having established motorcycling as a therapy for GD, all I have to do is convince my doctor that the NHS needs to pay for my tyres.