Events

Last blog I was tentatively hopeful that I was over the long covid symptoms. I was free from weakness for about 5 days then in hit me again. For a whole week. I’ve been free of it for 10 days now. I don’t know if it will come back, I hope not, but I’m certainly not getting my hopes up just yet. I’ve been running scared from it. I’ve just been working and resting. Even these last 10 days of being OK, because I’m scared of triggering it again. Today, as it’s my day off, I went for a 10K. So far, touch wood, I’m not weak. Run again tomorrow.

Work has been limiting my desire and ability to run. Working 5 days, mostly over 11 hours, and it’s extra stressful at this time of year. I’ve got one more hectic week of long shifts then I’m off for 5 days, which takes me past boxing day, 2 days in, then 3 off. Then it’s January and hopefully work will drop off. I’m knackered.

I’m going to work back from Blackpool marathon and set my start date for training. As easy to do as say, it’s January the 8th. That gives me 16 weeks to train. That gives me 3 weeks to get up to speed before I start (not including this week as it’s too hectic).

I also said in my last blog about changing the starter motor on the VFR750. The operation was a success, but it was doing the odd whirr on start up still. I ordered a repair kit (and a new gasket) for the starter clutch which I was going to replace on my next day off. Then on the Saturday before I was off the bike refused to start at all. I had to take Wendy’s car to work. Obviously, the job immediately moved up from desirable to essential. I fitted it on Monday as we had a storm on Sunday. The worst part was spending ages trying to scrape off the old gasket from the engine casing. No oil leaks, so I must have cleaned it up sufficiently, and since then it’s been starting fine. Irritating that I fitted a new starter motor for nothing, but at least it’s fixed, hopefully good for another 30 years. And I have a spare starter motor now.

The Harley is not so good. The bit finally arrived for the engine, I threw it back together and tried to fit the exhaust. I’m not so sure. It seem to have no clearance. Even tilted over to the other side on side stand there was only about 4 inches. I’m going to have to improvise a bent pipe to push the pipes up at the back. I decided that was a cosmetic thing, to be fixed when the bike is running. It’s still not. So I refitted the original exhaust system. The last two problems remain. I thought adjusting the enrichment would have cured the inability to run without choke but it’s not. And the refusal to go from neutral to first has now turned into a refusal to go from neutral to first or second. I was miffed, but thinking about it, that might be negative progress. If it’s just a matter of adjustment, then I just need to keep trying until I get second back, then take it further and I should have first. In theory. If it’s just a matter of adjustment. I’ll get my run then do a bunch of trials tomorrow. The thing with it is, it’s a ‘by feel’ setting. Fine if you’ve set one once and know the feeling is, guesswork for me.

The only other thing is I took a snap of the floof because he’d jumped in a basket to sleep. Because it was only lit by the telly and the corner lamp the picture was pretty poor.

I immediately rabbit holed the best ‘phone cameras and ended up talking myself into the current Samsung bells and whistles S24 Ultra. To be fair, it is better in every way.

I still had buyer’s remorse when I woke up in the middle of the night and realised I’d talked myself into spending £800 on a ‘phone just so I can take better snaps of not even our cat.

Here’s the original of the second snap, with our cat.

Look at the rug, compared to the original picture. Literally night and day.

Right, caught up.

Later,

Buck.