Motorcycle Blues, Part Two

Back in November of 2011 I posted a long whine about how I was trying to get my motorcycles licensed to ride here in the UK.  I ended that post with one import document having been received from the authorities, and the other one having been sent a day later, but not received. I expected anxious readers to be pestering me with questions about how it all turned out.

Alas, I have given up waiting to be prompted for the REST of the story (thanks Paul Harvey) and I’m just going to tell you. If you remember, or more importantly, if you don’t; I was planning to license the Honda Hawk first as, being more than ten years old, it didn’t require a single vehicle inspection to get licensed. The Suzuki GSX-R750 did need such an inspection, another bureaucratic hoop to jump through which I hoped to postpone.

Alas, the Hawk turned out to have two blown fork seals and a broken tail section from the move, problems which have yet to be remedied. So instead I decided to focus on getting the Gixxer on the road. This was all brought to a head when I got a job in May 2012 and needed the bike to ride to work, as they did not have car parking but would let me squeeze the moto into the car park. They are so civilized about that sort of thing here, and I love it.

After waiting on the document from Her Majesty’s Customs and Revenue, I finally got a duplicate sent out to the DVLA licensing office. I then managed to find a lovely bloke to come and load the bike up to take it down for inspection, and of course he knew the bloke at the place who was doing the inspecting, and the whole thing went tickety-boo like that.  Next, I trotted down to the licensing place. From there I had to take the papers in to the moto shop up the road to get my plate made, and then I was shockingly on the road all completely legal (well, except for the tax disc not being mounted on the bike somewhere, but I did have it right there in my tank bag!).

Those first few days in traffic were absolutely hair-raising. If you’ve never driven or ridden in England, you have to realize that the roads here are approximately the width of one lane of a North American freeway. On this road, you have vehicles, including giant lorries (semis to you TransAtlantic-ers), going both ways, cars parked on the verges, bicycles and motorcycles lane-splitting up the middle. Both ways. There are, out here in Hicksville, very few stoplights, but a great many roundabouts, some of which have three lanes of travel or more, and multiple exits.

Anyway, I survived, and am now a happy veteran of more than six months of motorcycle commuting. Unlike the hardcore locals, I have put the Gixxer away for this season of ice and snow, darkness and incessant dampness, and look forward to riding again in the slightly warmer dampness in the spring.

 

Epilogue

That missing document? OK, well, months after I spoke to the fellow and got a new one sent out to the DVLA so I could license the Gixxer, we got a knock on the door of our house on Hempstead Road. It was the lady who had moved into the house we had been renting when we arrived here, up in Tom’s Lane. She had mail for us. You guessed it: the document from HMRC for the Gixxer was in there!   The guy had sent the one for the Hawk to our correct address, and sent the one for the Gixxer ON THE SAME DAY to the old address on Tom’s Lane!