Category: Life

OK, my maturity and delayed gratification ethos may have had a bit of a blip. I was obsessing over that Kwak W650, but delaying buying one until we’d paid our debts. I was doing lots of window shopping though. Lot’s of 1999 or 2000 bikes for sale, about £3,500- £4000. Then I found out in 2003 they upgraded the front brake and put lower handlebars on. Obviously I then wanted the newer version. Less time to rust, better spec. I also realised I had enough credit on my credit card to buy one. Once I’d realised that the die was cast, really. Then someone advertised a 2004 bike, 17,000 miles, lovely condition, for a smidge under £3K. I cracked like an egg. After the kids vandalising my car I’m scared to leave it around the front, but I’ll try and get some better quality pictures soon. I’ve started tinkering a bit. Changed the plugs, ordered a new air filter, adjusted the tickover, adjusted the chain tension. It felt like it was gasping a bit. Then it cut out on me twice. After worrying about that for two days I finally solved the problem. I put petrol in the tank. Who knew? It’s hard to convey what a difference it is. In a car you sit there, bored and frustrated and at best get from A to B without too much hassle. On a bike you enjoy the ride and are gutted to arrive. First ride in the rain today, and even though I was tip-toeing around it was still great. Over the last few days I’ve remembered what biking is about. All that horrible stuff you hate about car driving, queues, arseholes in BMW’s screaming from the lights, it’s all fun on a bike. Nip to the front of the queue grinning the whole time. Beemer boy smokes it from the lights, twist of the wrist and you are monstering him. It’s pure joy. I’m managing to stick to sensible speeds and ride fairly safely. I tried to reassure Wendy, who thinks I’m going to kill myself that it’s such a lovely bike, and I’m so happy with it, I just want to keep it upright and in one piece. I said “I really think this will be the last bike I ever buy.” Wendy replied “That’s what I’m worried about.” Got a new bike jacket as well. Tons of armour. All kevlar and such. Not that I intend to crash, but I want to be fit enough to seriously pound anyone who crashes into me. I’ve got the bike, now I just need lots and lots of work to pay for it. As things wear out and when I’ve paid everything off, I’ll start converting it into a cafe racer. For now though, it a beautiful bike as it is. Oh, I also got a bunch of kit with it. A screen, a back rack and topbox, and engine crash bars. And it has heated grips for winter. So […]

Been a while since I blogged, it’s just been same ol’, same ol’. Things are changing now though. Wendy has been off work for about 9 months with that gall bladder thing. Since the operation, and the post surgery infection, she was getting a lot better but last week she had some bad pains again. Not the agony of the previous condition, but painful enough to force her to go back to the doctors. They suspect that some of the gall stones were missed when they removed the gall bladder. They’ve booked her in for another ultrasound scan to see if that is the case. If so she’ll have to have more surgery down the road. For now though, they have provisionally signed her as fit for work from a week on Monday. She’s itching to get back. The longer it’s dragged on the more she’s been worried they would sack her. This is good news for our bank account as well. Bloody SSP is a pittance. Normally that would not be a concern, my wages, although up and down, have been keeping us going (and actually paying off some of our debts! This job ROCKS!)  but I now have an exciting new obsession; the Kawasaki W650 motorcycle. I need us to get out of debt so I can put us back in to get one. Hence Wendy’s return to work is good all round! I’ve had my sights set on a Harley Davidson Sportser, just the ‘baby’, the 883 CC one. As you can see, very pretty. It was to be a stepping stone then in a few years move up to the Harley I really want, the big Heritage Softail. Obviously the last word in practicality and knee-down performance with that ground clearance. Surprisingly cheap, starting at around £6- 7K. Well, it surprised me, I thought they were over £10K even old. But I digress. I have had my head turned, again, by that Kawasaki W650. A retro bike in the style of it’s 60’s predecessor, the styling of which was in turn ‘influenced’ (stolen wholesale) from the Brit twins of the time. Look at this:   Just zoom in and marvel at it’s beauty. The peashooter exhausts, the kick-start (kick-start! Ha!) The faux pushrod covers (silver tubes up the side of the engine) the fork gaiters, the finned, air cooled engine, the tank knee pads, the drum rear brake, the absence of plastic. It is a work of art. The negative part of reviews can only say that it isn’t a screaming race bike. The engine is ‘soft tuned’. Bah and meh! Missing the point. If you want a plastic fantastic 200mph street screamer go and buy a Hayabusa, they are made for the job: They are not without their own charm, just not what I’m after. They may look as ugly as sin, but ridden right no-one will ever know.   However,the W650 is what I want. ‘Only’ good for 110 mph, looks drop-dead gorgeous, and […]

Wendy is on the mend! Yay! She had her operation but had unrealistic expectations of how minor it was going to be. The operation itself was around 4 hours long, the woman preceding her took 45 minutes, so it mustn’t have been plain sailing. Then they have to fill you full of gas to inflate the guts so they can make room to move about. Her guts were sticking out a bit and she’d put on 8lbs. Devastated. Then her wounds were a bit manky. Started having green puss and puking up and such. I told her I’d had worse and to stop being a mardarse. She went to the doctors and they said it was “infected” and she needed “antibiotics”. Pah, nanny state. Doctors, what do they know? Anyway after that she soon started getting better. She’s on her feet now, did the shopping with me today and went to church. Her stomach was hurting a bit afterwards, but not crippling her like last week. She reckons she should be able to go back to work a week on Monday. This is good as last week I only got two days work. The two weeks prior I had two good weeks, a four day (with the Bank Holiday, 3 days at £17.52 p/h) and a 5 day. £600 a week take home. Then this. This is the exception, but it’s not good.  I am torn. Is it better to try for a regular job that won’t pay as much (even for a 60 hour week) but will be every week, and have holiday pay? I’ve seen two jobs advertising for full time drivers lately. Neither particularly good jobs, with only OK money (compared to my current pay rate) but it’s the guaranteed hours that appeal. And a better start time. Long term, if I could get a full time job where I am, this is the job for me. I’ll have to wait and see how much work I get.   In other news, my masterplan to get my fitness back is working. I bought new boots for work, new supportive trainers for running, ran every third day to give my legs time to recover and ran off road to stop the stress injuries. It’s all worked swimmingly. By which I mean my legs are still working. That was two weeks, now I’m trying to move it to running every other day for a few weeks. After that I’m back on for operation #10milesaday. It’s not all been good. I’ve been wearing a hat to try to heat condition myself. I hate the heat when running, totally kills me. So the sunny weather of late, with a hat, have been tough. Also my fitness is shagged and I’m a porker. The long and short of which being I’ve been struggling on some days just to keep going for 10 miles. Yesterday it was pissing it down, but it was a run day so I just donned a long sleeve […]

It’s been a hell of a week. Operation #10milesaday has been a killer. It’s shocking how quickly you can go from ‘can I run a fast 20 miles?’ to ‘can I complete 10?’ My first ‘run’ was painful and slow, the second with my GPS watch merely quantified *how* slow by the third I’d buggered my tendon, it was stiff and painful, took me the first mile to loosen it up. It wasn’t enough to stop me so I did a third, while on my diet. I only had 300 calories then set out to expend 1,240. I crashed and burned like the Hindenburg. That was dreadful. Approaching 7 miles I was dying, by 8 I had to stop for a few minutes. I shuffled home in a very sorry state. Since then I’ve been having 500+ calories before I start. So far, so not too bad. My tendon has been getting worse, yesterday it was stiff as soon as I got out of bed and took me most of the day to loosen up. I did another run, my fifth, but the injury was worse afterwards so I’m resting it for a day or two. I went online to work out how many calories I need to eat to lose weight, I worked out my Base Metabolic Rate, timesed it by 1.55 (for regular exercise 4 times a week) which gave me 2,460 calories a day to maintain, therefore I’m trying to eat less than 2,000. So far I’ve lost 4 pounds in 5 days. I had actually lost that in 2 days, but then inexplicably put a pound back on. Still, as long as it’s moving and I’m not actually starving to death. The runs have improved in just 5 days. At first every step was torture, now, once my tendon is working, there are miles that are OK, where I can get into the rhythm and more or less forget about it. I was even pushing on a bit on my last run. In 4 (timed) runs I went from 1.27:47 to 1.23:46, but more importantly in the first run I had two miles over 9 m/m, and 5 others over 8:45 m/m, on the last run only one mile was over 8:30 (an 8:31, dammit!). I would normally be horrified to be posting 8:30’s, but this is now, that was then. Now I have to regroup, accept where I am, and build on it. I used to consider 8 m/m my all day plodding pace. The default pace I dropped to if I didn’t keep the pressure on or if I was too knackered to push on. *sigh* The other thing is, as always, my heartbeat. My watch records it and splits the results into zones; 1: Watching Corrie (minor), 2: Bit of an effort (maintaining), 3: Getting a sweat on (improving), 4: Grafting (highly improving) and 5: Taking the piss (overreaching) All of my training is in zone 5. I have no idea what I’m […]

The times they are a changing. Had Wendy’s parents over for 10 days, stopping with us, for Wendy’s niece’s wedding. While I was working nights. And they are deaf. You can imagine how much fun that was. Added to the usual quotient of their god-squad bigotry. *in with calm* Anyway, got to grin and bear it. They are cake fiends though. I ended up making 2 fruitcakes (8” circumference x 2” deep) a cheesecake (same) and two lots of flapjacks. They were away from our house for 3½ days! Wendy says I should take it as a compliment to my baking, but I reckon they’d have eaten a rat if I’d have sprinkled it with hundreds and thousands. Anywho, the reason I can bake all the above is because I have a sweet tooth. So I was tucking in. I’ve not baked anything for ages before their visit as Wendy can’t eat it/ was dieting. They went back, I saw a rather natty summer coat on ebay, tailor made, height, chest, weight… OMFG! 11 stone, 12 pounds! Crash diet. Waddle my lard arse around a 10 mile run every day. I’m currently filling up on humble pie. Last year I had the attitude “If  you can put one foot in front of the other you can run a mile, if you can run a mile you can run a marathon. Just do it.”  I started on project #10milesaday yesterday. Luckily my GPS watch was flat and my other watch needs a new clasp, so I just let my legs set the pace. I was satisfied just to waddle the full 10 miles. The last time I saw a finish as a goal was that 50 mile run last year, it’s been years since I was happy just to finish a shit-slow 10 miler. I went out today with the my GPS watch but the same strategy. Turns out I’m averaging 8.46 m/m. *hangs head in shame* Woe unto the house of Bucky. My plan is just to grit my teeth and do 6 x 10 miles runs a week (they say you should factor recovery into training) until I feel I can push on again, then up the pace and distance.   Due to the nights gig I’ve given up on the tready. I never got to train because of the noise. I’ve sold it on ebay. Collection only. A geezer from Ireland bought it. “Can you post it?” He wanted to send a parcel company around to pick it up. I said it was nearly 6 foot tall and 120 kilos, it wasn’t going to go in an envelope. Eventually he arranged for 2 men and van to pick it up. At 0800 hrs. I stated repeatedly ‘any afternoon’ and ‘selling because I work nights and can’t train’. Dick. So, a week later two Polish lads turned up with a van and took it. Huzzah! Wendy is ecstatic now she’s got her roomy kitchen back. Now we’ve got to […]