After a sojourn with the VTR Chris has decided that a nice comfy VFR800 is the way to go. He's not getting any younger, you know - the next step has gotta be a Harley ....

What can you say? It's got a lovely V-4 grunty engine, nice single sided swing arm, copious amounts of lustrous red paint, linked brakes (?), a catalyser (??) .... course, that's been a bit of a problem for the past couple of weeks with the petrol shortage ... gotta have unleaded otherwise the cat gets it. So while the rest of us have been barrelling around on 4 star (or LRP as it's called nowadays) Chris has been sitting at home reading his extensive Honda manual.

Although mega-comfy, the VFR struggles to keep up. Nice squashy suspension makes the potholes disappear but gets a bit squirmy when the pace is upped. As the suspension is completely non-adjustable Chris is just going to have to adjust his riding style somewhat. Still, the generous windscreen stops his pipe from getting blown out all the time.

Chris couldn't resist sticking a can on the bike and went for a carbon Remus "Grand Prix" which actually fits rather neatly behind the generous touring passenger footrest.

Suspension-wise adjustment is a bit limited as the bike only has preload on the front and rear units .... no rebound or compression twiddlies, so short of throwing the lot in a skip and sticking on Ohlins or WP kit there's not a lot one can do to improve things.

Time will tell .... or not in fact - Chris sold the thing and went to live in America. So we were probably right about the Harley.