lproven | The Weekend, part II (Reply)

Up at 8:30. This is pretty unprecedented, actually, but for new improved caffeine-free Liam it is not an epic struggle, though it's still an effort.

Have Rooibosch tea. Eat toast. Read comics and LJ. Feel vaguely alive. Find and print out directions to airshow and party.

Go to fix anti roll bar on trike.

Saturday, two hours later

Anti-roll-bar on trike more or less fixed. New bracket didn't fit, no mounting bolts supplied, bolts from local bike shop wrong size. Discover lower bolt holes will accept overlength bolts; upper will not. Use old bolts in upper holes, too-long new bolts in lower holes. Swap new bracket (for right hand side) for old bracket (on left). Old bracket fits on right. New one fits on left when it didn't on right. Feel warm glow of mechanical triumph and faint ethereal air of competency.

Check trike chain. Bone dry. Search for chain lube. Lubricate chain. Discover have accidentally rolled trike into next door's garden. Oh well, they've said they don't mind. Good job it wasn't a gatepost, though.

Check oil level. Zero. Oh joy.

Search for oil. No oil. Even better!

Decide to stop early for petrol and buy oil at the same time.

Pack bags.

Saturday, 1½ hours later

How can a tent, sleeping bag, bedroll and a few essentials take up a BikePac, rack, tankbag - and nearly two hours?

*Sigh* Natural talent.

Get leathered up. Break into sweat instantly.

Start trike.

Trike will not start.

Try again. Still nothing. Turns over, no life.

Apply Holts ColdStart.

Try again. Vrooom!

Feel faint additional glow of mechanical competence. Owning a custom is educational.

Leave, finally. On arrival at the large queue at the end of the road, recall that the nearby roundabout on my route is being dug up. Swear. Perform inept U-turn and try other route. End up in excitingly different bit of same queue. Sit it out.

By 1pm, I'm on the A3 heading out of London. Only about 3 or 4 hours behind schedule then.

The trike is running really roughly but at least it's going, and that feels good. Great, in fact. So good that oil status notwithstanding, my first stop is at Reading, where I put another £6 of petrol in the tank - there's no fuel gauge on a ZZR1100-C1 and I have no real idea how much is left after the trip back from the TT.

Arrive at turnoff for Jct 15 about 2pm. Leave for local roads, which wiggle, and realise how close I am to both [a] the upcoming CIX Barbie and indeed to chez

landsmand. After a while, I'm getting close and
I can see the Red Arrows doing a display in the distance. I'm tempted to stop and watch, but I saw them just last month at the TT, so I press on.

The approach roads are stunningly long and winding and it takes well over 10min to get close. There are more peace protestors than staff around but eventually I find somewhere to park. I decide to take a chance and leave my luggage on the bike - I've got too much to carry as it is and in black leathers on a hoty sunny day I'm sweltering already.

As I trudge wearily towards the nearest entrace, a bizarre black shape like a fat V flies almost overhead, on its side. It's like a low-level UFO in broad daylight. Good grief, that was a Stealth Fighter! It didn't look like a plane at all! With a chill, suddenly it feels like it is the 21st Century after all...

I make my way in and over the many huge parked military aircraft I see a sleek fighter jet rear into the air like a poorly-done special effect, and then, in an awesome display of callous disregard for gravity, just turn its nose up and hurtle towards the stratosphere on a pillar of flame. The noise was almost painful from a kilometre away. Such power! Such...

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

It may be a weapon of death, as the hippies at the gate with their misspelt banner told me, but there is beauty here too.

The next three hours were a dazzle of technoporn.

The Italian aerobatics team seem to specialise in flying around in formation not doing much except leaving a trail of tri-coloured smoke while one member does barrel rolls repeatedly.

The French team, however, almost outdo the Red Arrows. Four and six planes doing simultaneous close cross-overs! Formation victory rolls! Amazing stuff. The Mirage is impressive, the Tornado more so and the Typhoon awesome. A formation of F16s is pretty damn unignorable, too.

Then the announcer says the Stealth Bomber will be with us soon.

We scan the skies. Far in the distance behind us, there's a thin black shape hurtling our way. It's huge, silent and very eerie.

Escorting it are two F16s. I joke that this is so civilian air traffic control knows where it is. "We can't see it, but it's right between those two dots there!"

Roger and Sean are amused, but the former observes it's also possibly because those are damned noisy planes and so we can't hear what noise the B2 is making - or isn't.

It swoops towards us. Flat, lumpy, black, a giant flying wing straight out of some classic '50s pulp SF. It has no vertical flight control surfaces at all, no straight lines - its front, upper and lower surfaces are all curves, the back is a bizarre zigzag as if trimmed with pinking shears. It resembles a flying wing, a flying saucer, a bat, a manta ray or stringray - anything but a giant, lethal plane.

We are told it has flown directly here from Carolina. The Americans will not let it land anywhere else than at home. As well they might: each aircraft is worth its weight in platinum.

It has refuelled 3 times to get here and after one pass over RAF Fairford and the agog crowd, it heads straight for home. It has cramped accomodation for a crew of 2, who will have been in there for 20 hours when they get home, flying non-stop.

That, alone, was worth the £30, the 4h+ ride.

We think we heard a strange low howl over the noise of the escort jets, but it's hard to tell. But it's on my side, allegedly, and it scares the hell out of me. It's not beautiful, it's not ugly, but it looks unnatural. It's only kept in the air by batteries of powerful computers correcting its constant effort to spin and fall out of the sky.

By comparison, the B1B which takes off after it - a huge bomber that looks more like a swing-wing jet fighter, with the most amazing roar from its vast engines - was almost mundane.

Roger and Sean left for home early, to beat the rush. I stayed on for a last look around the static displays, but there were too many to see. Footsore and weary, I risked a cup of coffee, plotted a route to Horsham, and got back on the trike - its luggage intact.