Can you ride a motorcycle while wearing night vision goggles?

I’m sure we have all heard the urban myth about the squaddies wearing night vision goggles while driving a sports car with the lights off to avoid detection. The story goes that a lone policeman is watching the road with a radar gun and the gun goes off and reads some silly speed but the policeman can’t see a car. It happens a few times until they finally catch the person and find out that they are using night vision equipment (if you still aren’t sure what I’m rambling on about read this).

Well I’ve been thinking about this myth a bit and I think it might be possible to do on a motorbike, so in the name of science and quality investigative journalism I’m going to give it a go. Of course I’m not going to ride about on public roads with the lights out. That would be illegal and wrong but luckily I’m on a farm which means I’ve got a bit of land to scream around on where I won’t endanger members of the public.

The next problem would be getting hold of some night vision goggles to wear. Not so, I picked some up on Ebay a couple of years ago for more than I care to mention (lets just say that the Daytona fund would be looking a bit more healthy if I hadn’t) and so I have some military-grade night vision goggles.

The Night vision goggles and a cup of tea, what could possibly go wrong?

I’ll need to wear a helmet when riding the bike and I’ve got an old one knocking about that was my dad’s and has seen better days. It will provide the mounting for the goggles, or at least will be modified a bit so the goggles fit properly.

A slightly knackered old helmet

So there you have it, everything is in place for some real scientific testing.

The goggles give you slight tunnel vision so I think that is something to overcome, but I don’t think it will be too hard once I have them focused. I should point out that I will be practicing first on a bicycle before I go anywhere near a motorbike and even then it will be low speeds only

Oh and don’t try this at home.

Moving Bikes around in the rain

We (my little brother and I) moved the Suzuki TS 185 ER into the workshop today battling fierce weather and curious ducks.

The first bike in the workshop for years

It seemed like the right thing to do as we had cleaned the workshop so that you could reasonably expect to be able to work on something in there. Yesterday I even found the bolt cutters after only a moments searching (instead of several days )and then used them to rescue a friend who had locked something up with a padlock and then rather cunningly lost the key. For future reference using bolt cutters is excellent fun and makes you feel like MacGyver.

Once the bike was in the workshop we had a better look at it.

A lovely dusty bike

It’s in surprisingly good condition really, I mean almost every bit of plastic or rubber is shot through the but serious metal parts seem to be fine once you get past the rust, but that’s all part of the fun of restoring bikes.

'I'm sorry officer I have no idea how fast I was going'

It really is mostly dirt, although there are a few more parts that will need replacing than I originally thought.

The starter switch is going to, erm need some work. Or to be exact, finding.

I’m not sure where to begin, I suppose a good clean to start things off. Of course, you can’t rush something like this so perhaps the first step should be have a cup of tea and then think about any future steps. Actually with that amount of forward planning it should probably be a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Yes, that’s what this project needs, a tea break.