Author: Buck

My exciting plan to buy a cool car has suffered a set-back. Or three. The Midget is still cool. In a dinky sort of way. I mean, look: I started doing some research and narrowing down the options and discovered the model I wanted was a MKIII, (1275cc, 1966-1974) really good nick, under £4k. Then I hit the snags. Even the bigging-it-up adverts were talking about ‘rolling restoration’. ie, never out of the garage and a money pit. Also they were saying that really they need to be kept in a garage. Whether that’s to prevent the rain getting in through the old canvas soft top or to stop them dissolving into dust (or both) wasn’t specified. The thing is, when you start bringing that sort of thing to the equation I begin to reconsider. I think it’s a cool car, but I want a car I can use. And I don’t have a garage. If it’s just going to be a posing, second car, (with a surprise garage attachment) it leads me to ask a more central question; “What am I thinking?” When did I start considering a cool/ fun CAR? If it’s not practical, is a money pit, and a symptom of my ongoing midlife crisis then it has to be a motorbike. No-brainer. So it’s back to the Kawasaki Bonnie clone. Just feast your eyes on this: As someone said of an earlier Japanese clone; “as near as you can get to a Triumph without pushing it home at night.” This is no longer true, as the rebooted, modern, reliable Triumph do their own Bonneville. Ironically the new Triumph is accepted as a reliable brand because they took a Kawasaki Ninja engine apart and used it as a blueprint. So I’ve read, anyway. The thing is, if you are buying a retro bike it is obviously for the looks. The performance is going to be tepid, the aerodynamics are tits, the riding position  is unsheltered and, at any speed for any time bloody uncomfortable. This means you are buying a bike on the aesthetic alone, if you take reliability as a given. Why then, Triumph, are you fielding this:   To the untrained eye the bikes might look similar so let me list the woes; observe the mag (magnesium alloy) wheels. Ughh. Cast a disdainful eye at the forks and notice the lack of gaiters (the rubber ‘Nora Batty stockings’ things). Where also are the rubber tank pads? What the very heck is that travesty of an exhaust end-pipe? Finally, and most importantly, what is that lump of crap you are passing off as an engine? It is an ugly, radiator cooled (as opposed to proper air cooled) offence to the eye. *pass the mind-bleach!* They (Triumph) have done a nice stylistic makeover with the cafe-racer Thruxton; It ticks the cafe-racer aesthetic boxes; dropped handlebars, rear-set footrests/ foot controls and seat hump. All of this was so that your working class Johnny could change his motorbike from […]

The training has started. My first week commuting to work. I’ve found a bit of a short cut to avoid the big, busy island approaching town. It’s still about 10½ miles each way. That’s my first 100+ miles in the bag, then. I  realized after my last post that the day-sack (small rucksack) just wouldn’t hold all my stuff so I bought a proper rucksack. I started the week with that backpack. Seriously not good. All good and well, it fits all my stuff in, but then it’s huge and painful to ride with (in a crouched over triathlon style). When used in anger the bag is bulging, in that shot it was half empty. By halfway to work all that weight on your spine gets really painful. I sat upright in my cab after one ride in and my spine cracked like my neck does. So less than ideal.   I mentioned that I ordered a proper modern version of a saddle bag. It looked an ideal product, but as always you pay for what your get. All the websites stocking it wanted £70, including direct from the manufacturer. I found one site (Wiggle) that were advertising it for £56, but not in stock until (expected) early July. Being a tight arse (and the big ride not being until next year) I chanced an arm and ordered it. With free delivery, not the £4 upgrade (see above). Then I got a automated email saying ” ‘cos you’ve not chosen the £4 delivery option everyone else gets first dibs, screw you.” Or words to that effect. Did I want the upgrade? No! See above, you robbing bastards. I’d fallen out with them a bit, then a week or so early I got an email saying your kit’s in we’re shipping it. Huzzah! I win! It’s cool. It attaches, and quick releases, cunningly. And even though it is 16 litre capacity and the rucksack is 65L I can get most everything in it. The rest fits in the ‘Head’ day-sack in the picture above. I separate them by weight so I’m carrying bugger all. I rode in on Friday and knocked 6 minutes off my time for the rest of the week. I thought it might be wind assisted as it was blowing up a bit, but I managed the same time on the way home. Go me! (That was a pitiful 45 minutes and 39 minutes respectively btw.) Also, riding flat out 21 miles a day, whilst on this diet, has dropped 3 pounds off me in four days. Hehehe. Which is a stone I’ve lost. FTW!  (For The Win!) (Wow that looks odd written out. My mam and dad read this –not by choice, I send it to them- and I don’t think they know the abbreviations.)   Today I have cleaned all the accumulated WD40 and road grit off my bike, let it dry, degreased it again, dried again, then applied GT80 (a fancy-pants, clear, oil spray) allowed […]

You know how you set yourself a goal (my first of note was to run a half marathon) then when you’ve done it you see that far from being impossible it’s common-place? So you raise your game ( full marathon, Ironman) but that’s not good enough because it’s not the brand name Ironman, just the distance. The Rola-Cola of endurance triathlons. Drunks shun you when they realize it wasn’t a branded event. Well, as I mentioned last time I’m going to put that to rights next year. So how’s about this for training for it;  a Lands End to John O’Groats ride! I’m going to do it the other way around (apparently we happy few call it an ‘end to end’, anyway) as Scotland’s up North so it should be all downhill to Cornwall. Genius. You can tell I’ve been studiously researching it. I’m looking at 120 – 140 miles a day at the minute, so I can do it in a week. The chap who’s very witty book on the subject I’ve been reading did 150 m/d to do it in six days. It would appear the record is something like one day, seventeen hours! I’ll not be going for that. I’ll see how the training goes. I did 112 miles in a bit under seven hours for the Outlaw, perhaps 150 miles a day is not too much of an ask. We’ll see.   My thinking is that cycling is the longest discipline in the tri so if I batter the training with an end to end I’ll blitz that part of it, bringing my time right down. I am also going to take swimming lessons as soon as I get the new job (after the hols) and I have the odd evening free. My time for the 2.4 miles was one hour forty minutes, I could probably get that down to an hour (and suffer a lot less) with proper training.   The other reason is; because it’s there. Lands End to John O’Groats. To cycle the length of this scepter’d isle. It’s one of those things. Like swimming with dolphins or goosing the Queen. I’m thinking I’m going to die soon and my body will probably give out before then, if I’m going to do anything extraordinary then it had better be now. The trouble with that statement is; it’s not extraordinary. As soon as you decide to do something you see some arse has done it in in a day and a half. As the chap who’s online book I’ve been reading so wittily yet accurately says: “You’ve worked hard, endured exhaustion, battled lactic acid burn and probably have a boil or two in uncomfortable places. What’s kept you going for the last two days is getting back to your loved ones, friends and colleagues. More specifically basking a little in the awe and admiration everyone is bound to hold you in. If you’ve made your effort for charity (even if only as an excuse) […]

You know how I’ve said before that the parking space for trailers at work used to fit eleven trailers and now they’ve decided we have to squeeze fourteen in the same space? I moaned that it was a tight fit, but because of the time I was getting back it was always too dark dark to take a decent picture on my ‘phone. Now I have the snaps. It would have been bad enough if it had been a straight reverse, but there was a car parked in the way that I had to swing around and then try and straighten it up. Anywho, here’s the view from the cab. Drivers side: (Look at the gap in the mirror! You’ll note it’s that tight the unit next to me had to have it’s mirror tucked in) Look (in the mirror) at the view I have of the amount of space on the blind side: That sliver between red and blue is the totality of the gap. Try doing that at night when your job depends on it. And finally the view from outside the cab, not quite as tight, but look between those trailers. I couldn’t squeeze between them, and like I said the wing mirror had to be tucked in or I’d have hit it. To put it in perspective, I couldn’t open the drivers door, I had to climb out of the passenger side. Anyway, that is what I have to look forward to on a nightly basis. I took these photo’s because I’d got back early and it was broad daylight. Almost too easy when you can actually see where you’re going. Feels like cheating.   I have totally mastered the blind side reverse now. Not just on that one specific bay, but I’ve had to apply the same technique in other situations and it works as well. Sorted.   Which leads me to my next announcement; as soon as we get back from our week at Craggy Island I’m re-applying for that Igloo-Hermes job. I can do the driving well enough, I’ve learned the value of slowing down for junctions due to the crap stacking of my loads and now know to turn the cab to the left on blind junctions so I can see both sets of traffic. Also I’ve had quite a few shifts driving units with manual gearboxes. The only other things he picked me up was being nervous (I was a wreck! I’m fairly confident now. I’d still be a bit nervous on an assessment, but only normal nerves.) and not knowing where anywhere is. That hasn’t changed, unfortunately. I have maps, a satnav, and navigation and googlemaps on my ‘phone. I can get there. They have been advertising for drivers but I don’t want to apply until after our week away. Partly because I’m a big girl’s blouse and am scared, but also because it seems daft just before holidays. And they said they’d start me at three days a week […]

That has been our situation with debt. Achilles is a faster runner than the tortoise, but, if time is divisible, by the time he gets to where the tortoise was it will have moved. He moves forward, the tortoise moves forward. Achilles can never catch the slow but indefatigable tortoise.  Unlike philosophers we put a rock on the tortoise and watch it flail helplessly in the sun. Hmm, tortoise soup. Where was I? Obviously still dieting, if a philosophical paradox/ debt metaphor can be turned into a soup reverie. Anyway, the debt thing. We are finally getting on top! Huzzah! Wendy used to save, then she met me and we drank our way into constant debt. It’s only since we gave up that it started to come down. I mean, I put £5K on a credit card to do all my truck licenses. The thing is, like that over-used tortoise metaphor, as soon as we raced toward it the wily bugger would move away. Before xmas we’d got it down from about £10K to a grand or so, then there was the clarinet (fail) and the piano. (There was a solid reason for buying them, not just ‘cos we could. Mostly not just ‘cos we could.) We started to pay that back then I had no work for two months. I get work again and the car dies. Had to get a different car. Then the cooker kiffed it. You know how it is. Also there’s my laissez faire attitude to cash. That doesn’t help. (My soprano sax was a steal at the price. It more or less paid for itself. Somehow. Don’t look at me like that!) As I was saying, before all the accusations, we are getting there. Last month, seeing as we won’t be lending Luke his bond money on flat any time soon, we stuck £666 (I just liked the number) on the card. This means we have finally broken the grand barrier! Were it not for the fact we have a week’s holiday booked at sunny Craggy Island next month we could conceivably have been debt free this month. Oh wily tortoise, you tease us with your slow sprint. Of course, this is never the case. I have a year’s worth of tax to pay yet. I don’t get a bill for that until next March or April, but it’s still out there, undefined but ominous.   In diet news: a pox on the house of Oliver! Yes, you, Jamie, you mockney scamp. That veggie curry I made, and the equally delicious veggie chilli the day after, put a pound on me that didn’t move for three days. Gutted. DAMN YOU OLIVER! *shakes fist*   Luke and I (OK, mainly Luke) have spent the weekend ‘rooting’ my ‘phone. Which is to say, breaking into the locked base code for the ‘phone to gain control. Once you have control you can install a fancy-pants new software package and delete all the crap. Done. Yeah, I’m so […]