Communication Breakdown.

Just a quick trip into Southampton today so we decided to test-run the Android Intercom app we've both downloaded on our phones to see if a degree of 'bike to sidecar communication is possible. We'd already played with the app at home and it worked fine, but as we only have the standard headphones that came with the phones we weren't sure how it would cope with wind, road and engine noise whilst travelling. Soon found out... Lew's side of things worked fine - he could hear me with only a minimal amount of engine noise from time to time. From my point of view things weren't quite so good - any speed above about 10mph and the wind noise from Lew's mic sounded not unlike a Vulcan bomber taking off just behind my head! (and yes, I do know exactly what that would sound like having grown up under the flight path of Woodford Aerodrome, home of Avro, in the 1960s!) Of course this degree of wind noise made it totally impossible to make out what Lew was saying when he tried talking to me so it's back to the drawing board as regards our communication issues.
Never one to be deterred by the small difficulties life seems to throw our way, when I turned the app off and got rid of the deafening wind noise in my ears I thought I'd leave the ear-pigs (that's ear phones to most normal folk) in place to see how well they muted Phoebe's engine noise and all the other related cacophony I suffer in my sidecar. I quickly found that ear-pigs reduce everything to a much more comfortable level and make no difference to my ability, or rather total lack thereof, to hear when Lew tries to talk to me. I then decided to go one step further as said ear-pigs were still plugged into my phone  and turn my music player on. Bowling along in the sunshine with Phoebe's racket now reduced to a much more civilised level and Robert Plant gently singing in my ear, Bliss!