On Monday May 16th, The Flying Crane spent the day at Bristol Motorrad, the BMW motorcycle dealer on Bath Road in Bristol. It went in to have its 24,000-mile service, which was a bit late as the mileage was actually 26,833. It is a bit naughty of us for letting it go over 24,000, but it is now the busy time for motorcyclists — the nice weather brings all the bikes out of their winter garages and the rider's first thoughts are to get their bikes serviced — and this means that we sometimes struggle to get a timely service appointment. The bike was perfectly OK though and is now good for another 6,000 miles.

When The Flying Crane, which was bought new in June 2010, went into service on July 1st, it had around 800 miles on the odometer. We put those first few miles on the bike to train our riders, to run it in and get it through its first 600-mile service. So that means that the bike has done 26,000 miles since going on duty. Doing a bit of maths (I'm sure you are all better at this than we are) that means the odometer mileage on the bike's first birthday will be 30,100 miles. Leave a comment on this blog post with a more accurate estimate, and we will give you one of our badges if you get within 200 miles of the actual figure!