I did it! I finally got the bike onto the road! It was terrifying but I did it!

I tried on Monday lunchtime but I was too scared to get out onto the road once I got to the end of the lane so I just did some more driving up and down the lanes. My new plan was to go out at night when there are fewer people around but as I have been working split shifts with early starts and late finishes I had to wait til my 3 day working week was over. I planned to go for a ride on Wednesday evening but instead I ended up going to the usual haunt for a drink or two after work. It was the birthday of one of the owners of Derry's and they'd laid on a big spread of BBQ food so when Alison called me afer work and informed me of this I couldn;t resist going along for some BBQ grub. I got sucked into staying late as we met some cool people there so it seemed rude to bail early to go and drive my motorbike! There were some butch guys working for the American military, involved in the team that is over here searching for missing military men from the war, and also a couple of Malaysian/Indian guys (Prakesh 1 and 2!) who were interesting guys so I stayed at Derry's til late. I couldn't be bothered to take to the roads when I finally got home so I saved that treat for yesterday night. It wasn't too bad once I got going. I got a bit lost as I was so busy focusing on riding the bike and avoiding the retards on the road that I didn't pay much attention to where I was. I did manage to get some good driving time tho, and I was even going fast enough to overtake people at one stage! I'm not sure exactly HOW fast I was going as my spedometer doesn't work, but it was definitely faster than I've been riding in the lanes.

I went out again this lunch time when there were a lot more people on the roads and I survived it. Other people still scare me but now I feel more confident in my ability to control the bike its slightly less frightening. There will be more riding at the weekend then maybe on Monday morning I can ride to work - it all depends on how confident I am about tacking the horrific junction on the way to work.

I'm off out for some awesome Japanese food now and I briefly considered riding there but the traffic is horrible at this time of day - I got caught up in it yesterday on the back of a xe om. There are so many people all doing dumb stuff, plus my road becomes gridlocked in rush hour with all the retarded car and taxi drivers who park up at the side the road and make it even narrower than ususal. No one is willing to wait on their bike briefly and then pass the car in single file so it all becomes such a mess. I don't think I'm as skilled as my xe om driver yet so I'll give the bike a miss tonight!