The free parking on offer almost made it mandatory to ride to the London Motorcycle Show today. So I did. Even though it was absolutely freezing. No rain or ice so perfectly safe, but the temperature was -0.5 degrees (C) when I left home around 10:30am. I’d never been on the bike when it has been this cold before. Although very cold it was an otherwise beautiful day with clear blue skies.
I wore plenty of layers under my motorcycle suit today and a balaclava. This combined with my heated seat and heated grips made it a pleasant journey across the top of the City of London. As usual the traffic was average, but hey this is London after all and being on the bike, even when it is freezing cold, is always a good thing.
All the way there (and back also), my ice warning light flashed a reminder of the potential danger of very cold weather and I think the outside temperature finally made it to 1 degrees (C) for my arrival at the ExCel, the location of the show.
While parking my motorcycle (did I mention it was free?) I encountered my first bit of new tech for the day, and I hadn’t even made it inside yet. It wasn’t from an exhibitor though, just a fellow motorcyclist who like me had braved the cold weather. Check this out:
It’s a little hard to make out but it is an iPad inside the clear section of a tank bag, in the bit usually reserved for paper maps or written instructions. Great isn’t it.
The iPad was using a 3G data connection and simply running Google Maps on a web browser. There was a nearby cigarette lighter style socket for power if required, but today the iPad was running on batteries.
I’m not sure how it would go in prolonged heavy rain but this was not an issue today. You could also connect your headphones and listen to directions as you ride I suppose rather than just rely on the visual clues. Great stuff.
This got my day off to a good start but there was plenty more to come.
The good thing about going on a the first day of a show is it is usually the quietest day. And it was very quiet. But it gave me plenty of time to chat more with the exhibitors. And I certainly took advantage of this and learned plenty about some new tech in the process.
I ended up getting impressions taken for custom in-ear monitors (more on this including photos coming soon) and also saw some brand new motorcycle specific tech I hadn’t seen before. In fact the London Motorcycle Show was the Leanometer’s debut. And impressive tech it looks too; for measuring the forces acting on your nike as you ride, including cornering force, lean angle, acceleration and braking force (www.leanometer.com).
If you are going to the show check them out and tell the guys you read about it here.
I was very impressed with the Leanometer and the Essex based team that developed it. So much so that I ended up buying one. I plan to test this thoroughly and will let you know more soon, so stay tuned.
Finally I also managed to pick up a GPS Lap Timer which claims to log up to 5 times a second. Sounds great – I will take it and the Leanometer along to the next track day I attend and see if I can get someone to test them both in a high speed/force environment.
So overall a great show for tech. Plenty of the other usual stuff as well. So get along if you get a chance.
I have plenty more info and some good photos to share with you so keep an eye out for more posts over the next few days.
