So with the bike pretty much together, it was nearly time to set it up for the first meeting and then fate stepped in and kicked me squarely in the shins. I’d had to get the bracing altered on the swinging arm so that it would clear the frame and this meant getting it welded. What I didn’t know until then was what heat did to metal. When I came to fit the rear wheel, the spindle wouldn’t reach all the way through. I sat there for about twenty minutes wondering what the hell was going on and then it sank in. The arms had sprung outwards with the heat and the spindle was no longer long enough. Devastated is the polite version of how I felt at that particular moment. A quick trip to Talon (again) saw another spindle being made but unfortunately not in time for what was supposed to be the Ducks first outing. That honour then fell to my road bike.
So, after what turned out to be two years of build time, the Duck was finally ready to race and we loaded up the hired van and off we went to Westonzoyland to lay down some rubber and show everyone how fast a VFR should be. This is where reality kicked me in the shins, right above where fate had left the bruises earlier. The bike was slow. I mean really slow. As in really bloody slow. The Duck wasn’t any faster than my road bike despite being about forty kilograms lighter. I felt cheated. After all the work put in, there was no way this bike should have been so slow but here we were.