At the weekend, Ricardo Rocco got in touch, we'd last met on a five day off-road rally in Ecuador a few years ago, he is in town for a week and we met up at the Long Beach International Motorcycle Show in Long Beach. At the Show I was lucky enough to be introduced to (amongst others) Bill "Rocky" Mayer who creates state of the art, hand crafted motorcycle seats. Hearing my Princess and the Pea story about my bony backside and the KLR and noting the fact that Thelma is almost 18 years old (three weeks until her birthday) he has very generously offered to custom-make a new seat for me.

I'm very excited about this and I'm heading off to his workshop in Ojai to have my riding gait and posture photographed and examined and errr, have my bum measured. Rumours that I may also need to have a mould taken of my backside, are, I hope unfounded.