I have a rather embarassing confession to make, and it involves a little bit of chomping my way through some humble pie.

For many years, I publicly declared that people who had heated grips on their motorcycle were big girl cissies who wore womens underwear at weekends, and liked having their hair put into pigtails. Whilst this may well be true of the ladies who like their heated grips, they are the fairer sex and are allowed to indulge themselves in such comforts.

My heated grips were fixed today. Riding a motorcycle with heated grips is one of life's little luxuries that simply has to be experienced. It was bliss. Quite how I have managed to cope riding a bike in all weathers without them escapes me. I have arrived at work on days when there is frost all around, and spent 15 minutes hugging a radiator sobbing quietly to myself whilst I got the feeling back in my fingers. This was the way that "real" bikers did it.

Which reminds me of a story that I was once told by a maths teacher I had many years ago. Yes, a maths teacher. It was about two bulls - an old bull and a young bull - and they were standing at the top of a hill, looking down into a field of cows. The young bull turned to the old bull, and got all excited:

"Wow! Look at all those cows! Let's run down the hill and have sex with one of them!"

The old bull considered this, and sighed heavily, before replying:

"No. Let's just walk down the hill and have sex with all of them".

There's a lesson in there somewhere about expending your efforts on the important things, not the unimportant things. A friend of mine, who happens to have turned to the dark side and done an MBA, puts it slightly differently and he talks about "if you do the wrong things, and do them very well, then you're going to have problems".

Yes, I know. A maths teacher. He didn't teach me a thing about maths, mostly because I wasn't that interested, but taught me an awful lot about life. He even went so far as to buy me a book on gambling, just to make me interested enough in probability so that I would be bothered to turn up and sit the O-level exam. He once described me as "someone who, depending on mood, will either get 100% right, or won't even try to answer a single question". I had an IQ of 163, and I'd get report cards that said "Zero marks for effort", yet all my grades were 'A'. At that time, we all just thought that I was a bit temperamental. What none of us knew was that I had a bipolar cycle.

So I've been expending energy on riding a bike with cold hands. Why exactly? What was the point? Isn't this the equivalent of running down the hill like the young bull? The old bull wold have recommended heated grips.

When I came home after a hard days riding, The Missus wold give me grief about having cold hands. There are various ways in which she would discover that my hands were cold, not all of them printable. So now, with my heated grips, there will be no more complaints about cold hands - assuming that she still lets me near her now that I am officially a big girl cissy.

I rode to work this morning - 50 miles. Did a day's work, and then rode 200 miles to the Channel Tunnel. Crossed into France and did another 100 miles before calling it a day there. Not quite a Dakar day, but certainly a good effort. I am currently esconced just outside of Arras (about 50 miles north of Paris), and have about 1,200 miles to go to Ibiza.

Rosie was superb. Steady as a rock, even fully laden with about 30 kilos of panniers and top box. Sits on the motorway at, ahem, 70mph (since that is the speed limit) and delivers a tremendous 250 miles on a single tank of fuel. When you figure that that tank of fuel costs £15 to fill, this is pretty good.

I should get to Millau by late tomorrow afternoon. I am really looking forward to seeing Millau - the largest suspension bridge in Europe. Building it was a major feat of engineering - I'll say a little more about it tomorrow.

I also seem to have picked up a passenger. A little Bratz doll by the name of Sacha. She belongs to the Wee Yin, and she is travelling with me so she can have a little adventure. She is securely fastened to the bike (cable ties, but I told the Wee Yin that they were seatbelts) and - get this - she also has her own crash helmet. I'll post some pictures tomorrow.

So not only am I raving about heated grips, I also play with dolls. The humiliation is complete.

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