May 29th, 2023 – London, England to…London, England.
Did you miss Day 1? I say goodbye to Vy and get a lucky bump up to business class.
The day begins with me asleep on a plane, but we’re soon in Heathrow and hopping off the giant Boeing 777 and into a shuttle bus while some folks are about to head to their destination on a FinnAir jet.
One of the first things I noticed was the new London Cab, which was introduced shortly after Vy and I were last here. They are built by the LEVC (London Electric Vehicle Company) and they seem to be a nice update, though I’m still more charmed by the previous generation. I guess that’s what every old-at-heart person says though.
While waiting for our Uber, I noticed a Ford Ranger Raptor in the airport parking lot. I took a quick (and bad) photo as a note to myself because I couldn’t remember having seen one in the flesh. After I looked it up I realized I had not seen one before because other markets got it first and the US is getting it for the 2024 model year so now I’m annoyed about how lazy and bad my photo was. But as someone who thinks that most trucks are way too big nowadays, I vote that the Ranger Raptor is cool as hell.
Our Uber was a vehicle I don’t see in the US – a SEAT Alhambra minivan. It whisks us through the city to our hotel and I try to soak up as many visuals as possible. One of them was an amusingly bad beaver logo for a pest management company:
We ended up going by an Indian Motorcycle dealer, which makes me think two things:
1. I haven’t seen an Indian motorcycle on the streets yet, though I’m not expecting to see any during this trip.
2. I’ve barely seen any motorcycles at all. There’s a few scooters here and there but the last time I was the in the UK I saw motorcycles all over the place. I’ll give it a couple of days before I start panicking. =)
There’s a British food store near where Vy and I live in Los Angeles, and she always appreciates treats like Ribena or Tayto crisps. It was interesting to see the flip side of things – an “American Food Store” in London. We didn’t go in but I checked out the website later and it was amusing to me to see what gets prioritized here by the locals.
Our home for the next couple of days will be the Nobu Hotel. I’ve yet to eat in a Nobu restaurant and I didn’t even know they had hotels. While looking that fact up, I found out that Robert De Niro is one of the owners and at the age of 79 he’s just fathered his 7th kid. His oldest kid (adopted) is 58 years old, which is 13 years older than his current partner who just gave birth. Crazy.
We asked for a recommendation for a lunch that was walkable and we were told to go to the Grazing Goat. I got a local beer (Fuller’s London Pride) on cask, which was great.
I also ordered some fish and chips, which was pretty underwhelming. The batter was just way too thick. The chips were great, so I gorged on those and only ate about a quarter of the fish to save some room for dinner.
I still hadn’t seen any cool motorcycles parked around, but I had to do a double take on this gorgeous Mercedes 280SL. I much prefer the Euro-style headlights over the sealed-beam lights which we got in the US.
I normally associate Repsol-liveried Hondas with much sportier bikes, but this NSC50R is all dolled up from Honda to presumably make it more attractive to youngster who want more aggressive styling. The 50cc four-stroke engine produces roughly 3.5 horsepower – Marc Marquez won’t be grabbing the keys to this one any time soon. On the flip side, this gets a claimed 140 mpg!
The main reason Adam and I were spending some time in London before going to the UK was that we wanted to meet up with our new business partners – we’ve recently teamed up with a gentleman named Simon who has offices in the UK and Japan and our plan is to work with him to give Iconic more of an international presence to help with our abilities to transport and source cool bikes.
James is on the left, Simon is on the right.
We took an Uber from our hotel to meet up with Simon and his associate James in Chinatown. I realize this is a horrible photo but it was the best I could – I couldn’t believe I saw an Ariel Atom in the wild!
This Honda CB125 was the first proper motorcycle I had seen on my trip. With the speed cameras, low speed limits, cost of petrol, and other charges designed to encourage people to use public transportation instead of their own vehicles, most Londoners who are on two wheels are riding scooters and very small motorbikes. I don’t blame them at all, but I wasn’t seeing many things that got me excited. I’ll just have to wait for the Isle of Man for that.
It’s been almost a month since King Charles III was coronated. I couldn’t care less about the royals but there were still plenty of signs marking the date all around the city.
Saw my first big bike, a Kawasaki Ninja 1000SX. I reviewed this generation a couple of years ago and it’s such a great bike for the money.
After dinner, we decided to do a little bit of a pub crawl. Stop #1 was The John Snow, and it’s cool for two reasons. Number 1? It’s beautiful, carved wood and etched glass outside leading to more wood and oddly small openings you have to crouch under to get to the next room.
I don’t understand why the top part of the “door” is closed.
Number 2 is the gentleman who the bar is named for. John Snow was a local doctor who figured out that cholera spreads through water (his peers thought it was airbone). The year he figured that out, 127 people had died of cholera just on Broad Street alone. He was able to convince the city to disable the local water pump and the disease stopped spreading. Despite that, it took a few years before the medical community agreed with Dr. Snow but the end result was that his discovery saved a lot of lives. Here’s an amusing anecdote from a website detailing the history that happened around London’s pubs: “Snow’s theory was also backed up by the fact that local brewery workers were untouched by the epidemic, even when the rest of the population were dying like flies. It turned out that the brewers had no need to drink the local water because they were given a daily allowance of beer.”
I did my part to stave off cholera by having a beer of my own. The John Snow exclusively serves Samuel Smith products here, and once I heard that I knew I had to get a Nut Brown Ale (one of the beers they export to the US which I happen to enjoy quite a bit).
When I’m in other countries I like to do a “Bikes of ______” type post (like this one from Cuba). I’m starting to get the feeling I won’t be doing one for this England trip, but I know I’ll have plenty of bikes to share from the Isle of Man! Here’s a KTM Duke 125 next to a BMW F800GT.
From a distance I thought this was a Yamaha R3, but it’s actually something we don’t get in the US: a Lexmoto LXR 125. It’s made in China and due to the low price it was officially Britain’s best selling “sportbike” in 2021. Reviews seem to be what you’d expect.
My favorite stop on our small tour of bars was Cahoots, a 1940s themed speakeasy in Soho that’s built to look like you’re in an old London subway station. We walked down this staircase and then sat down inside of a subway car.
I ordered a Mechanic’s Midnight Oil (Santa Teresa 1796 rum, Martini Riserva Speciale Rubino vermouth, Madeira wine, fig and tamarind soda), but I had to get a photo of the “Winston Churchill” that Adam ordered because it came in a mug styled after the former prime minister. His drink was comprised of Bombay Sapphire gin, Evangelista Ratafia cherry liqueur, guava, citrus essence, tropical fassionola syrup and was topped with Truly Wild Berry hard seltzer.
We made our way back to Chinatown and the group split up to go to get cabs back to our respective hotels.
I wanted to see a bit more of the city so I skipped out on the cab and decided to walk back to the hotel instead. I liked seeing the moon in the background as I navigated the streets (and many Union Jacks) of London.
These messages were helpful reminders to an American who’s used to traffic being in the right lane.
I walked by a Microsoft store – normally not worth mentioning, but I was surprised to see a large Warthog (a vehicle from the Halo video game series) that was being used as a simulator to play Forza Horizon 5.
I also couldn’t help but notice this giant jumper. It’s hand made from 357 pounds of merino wool and it took 21,360 stitches to create. The shop says that it will be turned into blankets after the display is taken down.
I got back to the hotel around 2:45am – tomorrow, we’re either going to head north to see a couple of dealer-based collections or stay local and catch up with our friends at the Bike Shed. Either way, I’m excited!
