Category: Life

Buggery and tarnation. I’ve applied 3 times for jobs at Bookers without even getting an interview. I had some time off, thought I’d focus my chi for the big xmas madness. 12-15 hour shifts, 5 shifts/ 6 shifts all the way through until mid January. Nothing. Not an xmas sausage. I got 4 days last week, 39 hours. One of those shifts I did a drive to Blackpool then was sat around for 4 hours until nearly all of my 8 hours was up. They were expecting massive volumes and were going to start 20 temp to perms. They’ve lost a big contract, and the volume hasn’t been there. If it’s like this now, I fear for the Jan/ Feb/ March dearth. Long story slightly shorter, I’ve gone back to thrice damned Herpes. They have upped their game, I think. They’ve certainly upped the money. It’s now £13 p/h until 18.00, £14.50 after, £17.50 weekends. They want afternoon starts and nights (I’ll do afternoons) so even on 45 hour 5 day week, plus, say average 5 hours at weekend rate, that’s £500ish take home a week. This is what we need. More than the amount it’s the consistency of pay we need. Just this week I got bitchslapped off the tax man. My seat and tank have finally been made to order and shipped from Thailand. I got a letter off Parcelforce saying I owed £77 import tax. Grim, but not excessive. The next day I got another bill for the tank, £114, import tax! Two parcels. And, a year of so ago I killed my lovely Nexus 5 ‘phone that was on contract. Luke gave me his old Nexus 4, I swapped over the sim card and all was well. Last week, a month before my contract runs out, and it went on the fritz. Kept opening apps and jumping pages and allsorts. Basically unusable. I need my ‘phone. The previous day I’d been stuck in a poxy one horse town, my trucknav misleading me, blocked in by inaccessible side streets and 7.5 ton limits. I spent over 25 minutes trying to drive 1.8 miles. In the end I went over my legal driving hours looking for somewhere to park. The point is, I then had to use my ‘phone to google the address, then use google maps to work out a route I could use, and work ‘phoned me asking where I was, but that’s a little used function of smart ‘phones. So I had to get a replacement ‘phone ASAP. I looked at 3 mobile, (the only one to offer unlimited data) to upgrade my contract, and they’ve stopped doing Nexus. The other Android ones use the same basic Operating System but then add loads of their own brand stuff to make it crap. It was either get an iPhone on contract (£1,400 over 2 years) of buy a Nexus 6 outright and get a sim only contract (£17 p/m, with ‘phone £900 over 2 years.) I […]

Just thought I’d better clear something up.  We were on about bikes and such the other day, when Wendy said “they think it’s cute, your bike deathwish…” or words to that effect. I don’t have a bike deathwish. I accept that the laws of statistics say that’s probably how I’m going to die and I still give it beans, but that’s not the same thing. I’m not sure I treat death with the same gravity as most, for a start. I remember when we were burning captured enemy weapons and ammo magazines in the Gulf. We were all sat around the fire, suddenly a load of sharp cracks sounded. I said, conversationally, “sounds like there’s live rounds in there, lads.” “Lads?” They’d all ran off and were sheltering behind our gun. It hadn’t occurred to me to be worried about getting shot. Which is not to say I am without fear, I get a bad, bad, feeling in the second or two between realising you’ve lost it, and the impact. But it is a distant thing. Your stomach can knot up, and you can think, “this is going to hurt” but it’s not the same dread and panic as seriously contemplating the personal cessation of being. I’ve been loony on that trip twice. It’s a horrible and nihilistic obsession that renders everything pointless. The bike thing, or other times when you are actually facing death, is less scary. It just is. I either make that gap or I die. That sounds melodramatic, but if I ever get around to getting an onboard cam, and can upload it anonymously, you’d see it’s just a daily occurrence.  Some van driver leaned out of the window the other day to tell me off. “What was that about? You’ll give us all a bad name!” This confused me as I hadn’t done anything dodgy, I’d just overtaken him at a fair clip on the motorway off slip, and he was in a van. It took me a second to realise the ‘us’,  must have been referring to bikers.  It took me by surprise, and it was confusing, so all I managed was “Why not?” My reply, having time to realise what was going on, would have been “Well, duh! Why aren’t you?” I have on the back of my helmet, “It’s this sort of behaviour that will ruin motorcycling for everyone.” If you are going to ride like a car, get a car. You can’t fall off and you don’t get wet and cold. As a lorry driver I practise defensive driving and try to remain patient in the face of myopic, somnambulant car drivers and constant traffic jams. As a biker I am aware of the concept of queuing and treat it with the contempt it deserves. Bikes are more than just a mode of transport. They are thrilling, liberating, somewhat dangerous, fun. I could spend every day chugging back and to to work in the car. 50 minutes of my day lost […]

It’s been taking ages and loads of faffing about, but I’m getting there. I finally got my mudguard from Australia, after a week’s delay as they bitchslapped me for import tax then wouldn’t deliver on Wednesday, (when Wendy’s off) and wanted an extra £12 to deliver Saturday. Anyway, I got it. The small back light and number plate holder arrived on the same day, after taking 13 days to travel from Germany! By tortoise, presumably. Then the was the small matter of getting the old lot off and rewiring. It turns out, after much fannying around and endless combinations and experiments, that the new back light had one of the cables loose. The solder was crap and had snapped off. Super. All the better as I’d started the change over after work one night, and was still struggling with it the next morning. I had to leave for work by 11.35 latest, I I got it working at 11.26. Loads of time. While I was at it I thought I’d do a proper job on the electrics and ordered a cheap bag of male and female connectors (as opposed to the twisting wires together and taping it up approach). The ballast (thing that soaks up excess charge so LED indicators flash at proper rate instead of going like the clappers) on one of the indicators had come undone, I thought, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to do it right. When I took the mudguard off to expose the electrics (run under the mudguard on standard bike) I found out one of the ballasts had been ripped off. The new mudguard as well as being shorter is slimmer. This means I can run the wiring invisibly up the side of the mudguard under the seat and have them all safe and sound, as well as readily accessible, sitting on top of the mudguard. The ballasts arrived yesterday so I got cracking on doing a proper job on my lights and indicators, with proper connections, today. After a bit of messing I realised on end of the ballast is wired into the power circuit, the other has to be earthed. I got it all sorted then realised the back light dimmed in time with indicators. An MOT fail. I thought it was probably a bad earth as it wasn’t on the power circuit. Quick google confirmed it. I moved the earth and Bob is indeed your uncle. A few weeks back I did a partial baffle-erectomy. I managed to extract the heavily muffled standard baffles from the exhaust and replace them with a bit fruitier cheap Chinese ones. Here’s the before and after: Before (Incidentally that’s before the shocks upgrade as well. A small point, but if you look at where the back light is attached by that arm to the mudguard you can see a black bundle underneath. Looks like shadow in the picture. That was a big, ugly bunch of wires. Couldn’t notice it until you looked, then […]

I decided to buy my gorgeous bike after debating retro Triumph Bonneville, Harley Davidson Sportster and Kawasaki W650. The Bonny: (referred to as a Hinckley Bonneville) Plus: has the general look of the bike. You get the ‘authentic’ badge. Negative: look at those not-very-convincing engine fins, ugly. No kickstart.   Then the Sporty: Plus: pretty, nice sound, authentic. Negative: mag wheels (not spoked), no kickstart, not very weather resistant, thief magnet.   And the W650: Plus: looks great, kickstart, Japanese build quality and reliability, same pull and sound as Brit. Negative: Not authentic, handling (shocks) underwhelming.   What swung me, you’ll recall, is seeing how simply someone had cafe racer-ed one. Hump seat, acer handlebars, smaller indicators and a slip on exhaust end can.   So that was why I bought it. Looks great, sounds great, gets you home at night, and has the potential to make a beautiful cafe racer. I have ironed out the flat spot on the revs (simple fix), put on acer bars after I pranged it, and upgraded the shocks front and back. Now I have a sweet handling, pretty bike. I have been looking for the last 14 months for a decent cafe racer seat. The trouble is, the frame under the seat is sort of diamond shaped so you either have to find a seat made for this exact model of bike, (few, and mostly crap) make one yourself (tried and failed) or have someone cut out the rear frame and weld in a U shaped arse end (a bit extreme). Then last week I stumbled across this site in Thailand. (I thought it was the States as they take US dollars for payment.) Omega Racer. Amazing kit, made from scratch, to order. I saw this seat and new that it was *the* seat! Then it was just a matter of saving up for it. I looked at it all night. And all the next day. By the night time I broke and ordered it. £291. Not cheap but a one-time purchase and basically perfect. Then I took to looking at the rest of the site. The only tank to go with the standard seat size (the one I’d ordered) was this: Note the lugs on the side of the tank for knee pads. Or smooth like this: Nice, but not soul stirringly beautiful. Then I saw the Norton style tank. Just look at it! The contours are on both sides, can’t see that from these pictures. I realised this was the tank I wanted. But it was longer than standard, therefore requiring a shorter seat to be made. In a panic last night I emailed the guy, asked him if he’d not started making my seat could I change it. I literally lost sleep over it last night. I was worried sick I’d bought the wrong seat and would have to make do with second best. It would have ruined my chi, resenting my bike every time I saw it. He got […]

Still not dead. Although I keep coming close. Just thought I’d confirm I’m still here.   The source of my ongoing near death experiences, my bike, is a joy, as ever. I’ve replaced the front brake pads, clutch cable, upgraded the front shock absorber springs, upgraded the rear shocks, and, as it was rusty, took the swinging arm off, de-rusted it and resprayed it. Worrying when it’s at this stage: And the before and after of the new shocks: Now, although I think they look prettier, that isn’t the main thing. The thing is now I have stiffer suspension, front and back. I can ride over, say, the white lines and cats eyes between lane 2 and 3 without setting up a speed wobble. And throw it into fast corners without weaving. Neither phenomena being conducive to bowel control.   Also I’ve had the cunning idea of waking car drivers up. On a course I recently attended the guy was saying we are conditioned to look for cars, we don’t even notice we aren’t noticing bikes, and that one biker dies every single day. Yesterday, dead biker. Today, dead biker. Tomorrow, dead biker. So my theory is this: no one notices bikes, but we are all conditioned to notice blues lights. The more dangerous your driving the more you are looking out for them. So: As you can see that was daylight and the tiny little spots were outshining my headlight. The idea is not to fool people into thinking I’m a bike copper, just so that they notice I’m there. Still on my shopping list are louder pipes, a short rear mudguard and ‘plate holder, still want a seat hump if I can see one that I like, and possibly clip on handlebars. The clip ons are cheap enough, but then you have to buy mounting brackets for your headlight and a new (£200+) bit for on top of the forks, or you are left with the handlebar clamps with nothing in them, looking ugly. Possibly all new cables as well. Oh and new air filter to get rid of that big black bit of plastic under the seat. So, plenty to go at. And if you’re not into bikes, well shame on you.   Work is still groovy. I really want to hang in at this one and get taken on full time. It’s long and unpredictable hours, but it’s so easy and you are under no stress whatsoever. Here’s your job, see you whenever.   I’m having to ditch that 50 miler. I just don’t get the time to train. I’ve entered the Warrington half marathon again, which is on the same day, instead. Starting just outside my sister’s cafe this year.   Karate is progressing in fits and starts. The last two weeks I’ve been twice a week, but for a few weeks before that I only made it once a week. They have caught on to my Tae Kwon Do tricks now. Sparring today I […]