Tue, 12 May 1998 17:18:02 +0100 - Message No. 2979
From: Chris Longhurst

Subject: RE: Winter finally seems to have gone. The plastic crotch-


> I commute to London (80 miles) each and every day of the year unless
> there are blizzards. I have to because I cannot afford the train fare
> to
> come to work to London. 3,500 pounds for a train ticket for the year.
> 
...not to mention the fact that on a UK train it's dirty, noisy, smelly
and generally unpleasant. And that's if the train is actually running.
You pay 3500 quid to enter a rail-lottery basically. Plus, it takes
forever. For my daily commute (Reading - Horsham - 55miles each way):

Transport	Time each way		Daily cost
Train		2hrs 30mins		£14
Car		1hr 40mins		about £10 in petrol
AfricaTwin	1hr 10mins		about £6 in petrol

Of course there's road tax and insurance on the car and the bike which
don't happen with the train, but the road tax for the bike is a third of
that for the car, and the insurance is actually about the same for me
this year. I know where my choice of transport is :-)

> Best of luck to the people who can afford to have their bikes as fair
> weather toys. I don't mind. The more bikes on the road the better it
> is
> for all of us. Lets not make ourselves too exclusive eh. Heaven knows,
> people might start to think we're a bunch of stuck up bikers...
> 
My original point wasn't to say that the only good bikers are those who
ride year-round, more to point out that the seasonal increases in bike
fatalities coincide directly with the weather changes. I was informed
that two weekends ago (when the weather got really good for the first
time) there was a dramatic increase in biker accidents.



"Aaalrighty then" - Ace Ventura.

Chris Longhurst, Flight Simulator Graphics Modeller.
http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/2195/
Work:clonghur@es.com
Home:chrisl@audicoupe.demon.co.uk



dipper@normans.isd.uni-stuttgart.de