The first rules for a game of this type were written down in Scotland in 1849, where it was called "Bowls". In 1894 the French laid out rules for what was called "Boule Lyonnaise".

Since Boule Lyonnaise involved some acrobatics as you had to step out of a drawn circle as far as possible with one foot, a physically disabled man named Jules LeNoir in a Southern French town called La Ciotat laid out the rules for Pétanque in 1910. The main difference between this new game and Boule Lyonnaise was that your feet had to be close together. Joined feet in French is "pieds tanqués", hence the name "Pétanque".

It’s true that pétanque was once a masculine sport, but it's now practiced by all, male and female, young and old, rich and poor. Even little kids can get heavy plastic boules at the grocerie store before going on vacation. A game for everyone.

The game of boules is now considered as truly Provencal. It typifies the easy life in the warm sun with the smell of lavender and the sounds of clanking balls and glasses of pastis and the chatter of friends. In the village of St. Paul de Vence, the famous French movie actors Lino Ventura and the late Yves Montand regularly played pétanque in the main square in front of the café, among tourists and friends.

Teams are basically three playing modes: Tète à Tète( two single players match their skills with three balls each), Doublette (the most frequently played mode, with two teams of two players, each participant using three balls) and Triplette (the original Pétanque mode with two teams of three players, every player having only two steel balls).

In pétanque, you need a little wooden ball (the cochonnet, which means little pig!) with a diameter of about 3cm which will be thrown out as a target, at a distance of 6 to 10 meters. The players will use polished steel boules. Each set of two or three boules is engraved with a pattern of concentric circles or squares for identification. They have a diameter of 70,5/80mm with a weight of 650/800g.

Let’s start playing! A player from one team throws first, and then a player from the second team. After that, a player from the team that does not have the closest boule to the cochonnet throws. When all boules have been thrown, the team with the closest boule gets a point for every one of their boules closer to the cochonnet than the closest of the opposing team. Comparing distances of closely matched boules is done with everything from long broken sticks or a string to a purpose-built measuring tape. When the round is over the boules are picked up, with a strong magnet on the end of a cord for those to infirm or lazy to bend over, and polished clean of dust for the next round. A throwing line is drawn in the dirt and the cochonnet is thrown out again, often back in the opposite direction, for the next round. The team aquiring thirteen points first wins.

You’re now ready guys to have a real great time in the Provence!

A few weeks ago I announced on our blog the AMA/FIM International Women and Motorcycling Conference. It was held in Athens, Georgia, USA from 30 June until 3 July 2006. This conference gathered approx. 900 participants, mostly coming from North America. But there were also representatives coming from South Africa, Australia or European countries like France, Great Britain or Switzerland.

The four conference days allowed participants coming from very different backgrounds to meet, to share experiences and to attend numerous seminars given by top level women in various fields such as competition riders, journalists, writers and managers in motorcycling organisations. During the course of this conference, the motorcyclists had the opportunity to try out motorcycles, to make hosted or self-guided motorcycle rides and to visit the booths proposing articles relating to motorcycles and motorcycle users.

This first international conference was very successful enabling the FIM to become better known and to state the aims of the new FIM Commission for Women in Motorcycling.

Il y a quelques semaines de cela j’écrivais un article sur la Conférence Internationale AMA/FIM Femmes & Motocyclisme. Elle s’est déroulée à Athènes, en Géorgie (Etats-Unis) du 30 juin au 3 juillet dernier. Cette conférence a réuni environ 900 participantes venant en majorité d'Amérique du Nord, ainsi que des représentantes d'Afrique du Sud, Australie ou de pays européens tels que la France, le Royaume-Uni ou la Suisse.

Ces 4 jours de conférence ont permis aux participantes venant d'horizons différents de se rencontrer, de partager leurs expériences et d'assister à de nombreux séminaires donnés par des femmes de haut niveau dans des domaines différents telles que pilotes, journalistes, écrivains et dirigeantes d'organisations motocyclistes. Pendant toute la durée de la conférence, les motocyclistes présentes ont eu l'occasion d'essayer des motos de marques différentes, de faire des balades à moto organisées et de visiter les stands proposant tous les articles liés à la moto et aux usagers motocyclistes.

Cette première conférence internationale a connu un grand succès et a permis de faire mieux connaître la FIM et d'exposer les buts de la nouvelle Commission FIM Femmes et Motocyclisme.

I thought I would never see that! I thought we bikers are strongly against any use of the mobile phone while driving a car as cagers on the phone are a real danger to anyone’s safety, but a biker on the mobile phone!!! Never! Well some do have Bluetooth or some intercom device to connect the mobile phone to the helmet. Not good and still dangerous but at least keeps both hands on the handle bar.

But what I saw today is called absolute and perfect insanity, stupidity, etc… sorry my parents didn’t teach me enough words in English to go on.

The guy was holding with his left hand the phone to make his call while trying to ride his HD with his right hand! To do so he was of course wearing a prohibited helmet, here over in Europe, and of course only wearing a shirt, light trousers and some light leather shoes.

Where are the cops when they are needed! I am sorry but this guys doesn’t deserve anything else than a huge fine!

What would have happened if a kid ran on the road to catch his ball? Or a car cutting that bikers road? Come on a call can wait!

This guy is unfortunately going to be talked about by all the people who did cross his way and he will be in their view the image of bikers!

Thanks idiot!

While driving today I experienced an interesting moment: trying to overtake at any cost was a supersports motorcycle rider, who of course managed to get through a long line of vehicles, in a blind curve, over the white line, and right behind, strictly following the rules a group of Harley Bikers.

Does that single example demonstrate that all sport bike riders are not behaving on the road and that all HD ones are very good riders? As a former scientist I cannot accept to develop a theory on just one sample. But….

There is for sure an attitude linked to each type of motorcycle, at least I can base this on personal experience and also by analysing what I can see on a daily basis. Without saying that one category is worse than the other one ,wouldn’t make any sense, it appears that some common facts can be highlighted.

Touring bikers will most of the time keep that serious behaviour carried by the look of their bike: big, serious, no joke, made for very long rides, always coming with the proper gear and very often with a passenger dressed the same way, sitting straight and quiet. Luckily they can easily lose it when another type of motorcycle comes to close or tries to overtake them. Then the fight can be on but always with them sitting straight, not even having the eyes blink a little under the helmet no one can see the huge grin!).

A bit of the same attitude can be found in the big Dakar replica bikes like the BMW GS, KTM Adventure, and some Japanese ones. But here the biker has more of an adventurous mind set and is ready to go nuts at any dirty road crossing. They can even get confused and think the three vans they just overtook were camels. In their eyes the empty deserts will always shine even if those deserts are the ride through the square from home to work.

HD or custom bikers are a special specie! All of us know the Hells Angels or Bandidos, quite a serious bunch of guys who always stayed with the HD art of bike. They don’t represent the majority of custom riders. Considering the price of such a bike those bikers are very wealthy people who have a bit of bad guy/girl chromosome in them. Because of that they won’t ride on a touring bike but will work hard on their image, especially the one reflecting in the chrome! On the road they are pretty cool dudes playing with the low revs and the good vibrations! A sort of tribal riding, nearly never alone.

Off road bikers, well those guys aren’t really a set you can analyse on the road as they spend most of their time in the woods and the mud. When you cross them on the road they will act just as if they were in the wilderness: get around the trees (cars, bikes, buses, wheelchairs, grandmas etc…) as fast as possible until you hit the next forest or wash machine.

The roadster riders are the bad boys! Wheeling, Stoppie, burn, donut etc… is their music at the red light or in front of the café! The race is on! Considering that many roadsters are just a sports bike without a fairing and due to that not looking that aggressive to the citizens and the police they allow quite some extreme behaviour (away from the cops)! As much as the first three categories are more grouping over 30 years of age people, this one gets a lot of young guys! Mainly because of the price and the engine you get. Makes sense. And with youth comes less time spent thinking about life, women/men, kids, house, dog, step mom and all that, and thus more risk taking! But on the other side those bikers also demonstrate a lot of wisdom as they created the stunt attitude! Speed, figures are controlled in special places (yes a town square is a special place…or so) and no more on open roads (even though there are many contradictory examples) saving themselves, their license and some of the people around. Smart!

As I want to stick to the major categories I will end here with the supersport bikers. Not the ones we admire on TV during the GP. No! But the ones enjoying a fine R1 or a brutal GSX-R1000 or a ZXR, in fact any or the R bikes. Even though they are expensive and the insurance cost is pure science fiction many are you riders, but the older ones have the same spirit: “I am the fastest” ! Riding with a bunch of them (well if you ride with them you are mainly one of them!) always ends up in a race whatever your mind sanity is! In fact no racing with them will go against your ego, imply listing a very long list of false excuses (the exhaust has a problem, there was a kid on the road, did you see the cops etc…) which gets boring after a while, and anyway you will be called a “pussy” which no one likes. One important set of accessories comes with the superbike: the full racing outfit, including the sliders (which will never get used) and of course the passenger! A brief note about them: aside the fact love for the biker is the only possible explanation for accepting to sit on a 10 cm by 10 cm board, knees under the chin, wind in the face, not seeing the scenery and praying all the long that the hands will hold; there has to be a huge masochistic desire. Or , and that is the most possible explanation, a high need for speed and adrenaline.

The great advantage with the last two categories compared to the other ones is that the transition from one to the other doesn’t need a major mind reset! Very often it comes after crashing the fairing and going on without it!

Of course all the above is my very personal view, which I share with myself, and it can differ quite a lot from yours, but this is what is great about motorcycles and bikers: it will never be a static world and everyone can have her/his point of view about us!

Oh just forgot a last item, working for all categories and which, I am sure, every biker has done: twisting the right handle just once…to see and feel !

A short note to let you know that we have released our quarterish Newsletter (latest news about the Unicorn Adventures Ltd Motorcycle Tours, tips and tricks, cultural information, ladies stuff) - July 2006 Edition -

You can read it by clicking on Unicorn Adventures Ltd Newsletter issue 5.

You can also subscribe to the Newsletter on the www.unicornadventures.com site in the Newsletter section in the main menu.

Recently on a forum I saw people calling their R1150GS an ugly bike. That surprised me quite a bit as I never saw any biker calling his bike “ugly”. Did you notice that the majority of bikers love their bikes, talk to them and will NEVER say they are ugly?

It is like in a love story between a man and a woman. Even though I may shock a bit, you have to agree that some couples are either both very ugly or one is. Which is fine as it gives every one a chance to find love and a partner. And you will notice, as in the movie with Gwyneth Paltrow where she was huge and her lover saw her slim, that once in love you do no more notice that your partner is “qualified” as ugly by the rules (which anyway no one should care about as they are set by ugly people –dress designers, anorexic top models etc… ).

But as this is a motorcycle and motorcycle tours blog lets get back on track. So you have a motorcycle, any kind, and you just think it is a beauty! The best one on the planet! So even though you have a R1150GS, which, when you see it first has definitely a very strange look, you will for sure think she is a beauty after a while, that she has character and not the slim and standard figure of the Japanese sports bikes.

And a guy riding a HD will for sure think that heavy US metal looks way better than anything else while the super sports bikes owner will always thinks they are ugly heavy momas!

This could go on and on and on as we all have one specific type of motorcycle we love and when we change we just get to love the new one even more!

In fact it seems that it works also for the bikes: love makes you blind !

Simplicity, efficiency, the beauty of vintage motorcycles and equipment.

To motorcycle riders meeting will tell…biker stories. But did you notice that each time one cannot avoid telling the most adventurous stories? A bit like male birds blowing up their chest proving they are the best.
In fact this seems to be part of our way to be, I am here talking about men’s attitude, I guess women, due to the fact they are way smarter than us (well not all of them, lets take an easy example…blonde, targeting the simple life even though her name is a famous one…).

Go back a few years, or a bit more, when you were young, at college. Did you notice that you were always proud to tell you friends you didn’t do the required home work? Or that you didn’t prepare for the exam? Sort of a “I am fearless!” macho attitude?

Now come back to your current biker years and think about the last chat you had around a good beer with some fellow bikers. You will for sure have started talking about the latest ride, the nice sections of the road, some sceneries but after a little while here come the latest stories about you worst rides, crashes etc…

I noticed, thanks for some extensive skydiving experience, that in any “extreme” or special sports we do the same. A friend once told me that this is a way to get rid of our demons. Maybe but isn’t it also a way to prove we are made of the right stuff? To prove to ourselves that whatever happens we will survive it and win?

Or is it coming back to our macho attitude and demonstrate that we can blow our chest bigger than the other guy?

Think about it the next time you have a discussion with some friends and let us know!

If I remember well this strange result of a sex party between an egg and a BMW is a swiss one. Big nose isn't it?

That one has the advantage to speak by itself!

I know I am very often writing about this but the fact we are living and starting all our motorcycle tours from the French Riviera where the sun is blasting like hell!

So when the outside temperature is more than 30 degrees Celsius what will YOU do? Jump in your bath suit, a tee shirt and a pair of slippers (I am not kidding I really saw guys riding motorcycles with those things on their feet), and look coooool, but enjoy the road pizza style in case a cage got you down, not talking about the sun burn by the way?

Or would you be more ready to sweat like hell, be a bit smelly but safe in your full gear? Even a vented one stays warm I can tell you!

As we have started a photo section we will make sure we get some “nutcase” photos for you! Should be easy: get a good camera, select a nice bar at the sea front and shoot photos! If you want to share your beloved “nutcase” send us the files.

Lets start a little challenge: try to find the worst motorcycle equipment on the road!