The Bluebird of Happiness...

Our 'Bluebird of Happiness' - Honda cbr1100xx Super Blackbird

This weekend the Bluebird of Happiness came home to roost in our household.

If the people at NASA think they have something special with their rockets & space shuttles, all I can say is Ha! They should talk to the people at Honda!

On Saturday we drove up to a little town called Buncrana in County Donegal, in the Northernmost part of Ireland (next stop: North Pole!). The 250km drive took around 5 hours - about average for that distance in Ireland. Our mission: to take ownership of a Honda CBR1100XX SuperBlackbird motorcycle.
The Blackbird has been described in many ways, by many people over the years since it was first unleashed on the world. My favourite expression to date is "Nuclear Powered".

The thing is a beast. I'm not one for stats such as horsepower and kilowatts etc, but I can tell you it will get to 180mph (around 290kph) and then some... please don't ask me how I know this, just take my word for it ;-)
And it gets there really quickly too!
(Yes, it is insane... but have you tried it???!!!)

Oh dear, the secret is out: Terri is a speed junkie.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't pilot the bike myself - I much prefer to perch up behind my hubby and enjoy being a passenger.

But apart from the obvious thrill of riding on the Blackbird (or in this case, Bluebird is more appropriate - it's pretty, dontcha think?) there is also the status that goes with riding around on one of the fastest machines on the planet. It has the WOW factor. Everywhere we go, people stop and stare, and complete strangers come up to us and talk to us just so they can admire the sheer beauty of it.

When we took it for a short spin just after we picked it up on Saturday, we drove until we reached the sea and couldn't go any further, and then we stopped at the edge of a little fishing pier to take the first photos of our new pet. A couple of minutes later four dodgy-looking lads pulled up in an even dodgier-looking Mitsubishi. They shuffled around the car for a short while, unloading their fishing tackle, and then two of them just couldn't contain themselves any longer and made their way over to us to admire the bike. One of them took a whole bunch of pictures with his phone - not just of the bike, but one of us and the bike, too. All he kept saying, over and over again, was, "That's a really pretty bike!" Tee hee!
They had really thick Northern accents - so thick that at times I wasn't sure if they were even speaking English, hehe - and turned out to be not so dodgy after all. Just awestruck.
Later on when we were mounting up again outside The Rusty Nail, a pub where we stopped for supper, the lads drove past having obviously finished their fishing (or smuggling?), and they hooted and waved like we were long lost friends.
But that's the way it is in these remote country spots in Ireland.

All in all it was a great weekend. We stayed over at a lovely B&B in Buncrana and then yesterday I drove the car back to Dublin, with hubby following me (sometimes behind, sometimes in front) on his new toy.

I see many fun, fast weekends in our future..!
I'm a very happy lady!


And I make a great bike ornament ;-)