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After all these years of blaming @XTreme

Went for a lovely long hike today on a photo assignment. It was a super nice day for such an adventure.

Not posted in for a while as I have been so busy the house repairs have turned into a complete renovation and I have had a few problems with my feet, Plantar facilthingywhatsit. I have been out and about riding I've managed to rack up nearly 7000km this year only riding on a Wednesday as a rule, This week I went for a trundle around the mountains with some friends we stopped off for a meal after which it had gotten so hot I early didn't make it home. I've also been planning a ride back to England to visit family an race my car for the first time in two and a half years!!

Ignoring The French Fleet for a while, my sweater mate story. As I said before, his hormones often got the better of him, not just through sweat but a constant chase of women. He met a girl at a works do and before you know it, they were living together in Stanford le Hope and planning a wedding. The wife to be's mother had seen a photo of me with long hair, leather jacket and holey jeans and had forbidden me being invited to the wedding. I'd had my hair cut and happened to call on my mate when she was there one day. I was charm itself, so smarmy you'd have been sick, but she seemed to like it. I was waiting and sure enough she asked me if I was coming to the wedding and I was able to tell her I was banned for being a scruff. Anyway, wedding happened, I'm at the reception, barmaid serving me made some comment about that creepy bloke over there keeps pawing the bride, him old enough to be her dad as well. Then the creepy man walked over and I introduced her to the groom! To be fair he thought it was funny when he found out. A few years go by and my mate starts chatting up a mother and daughter pair of cleaners at his work. For some unknown reason he comes home to wifey and announces he loves one of them (daughter at the time I think). She does her raving narna and orders him to ring this woman up and tell her he's not allowed to be with her, then all will be well between them. He does this and his wife then asks him all sweetness and light to get something from the shop for her. He was just going out the door when he remembered 'last number redial' and ran back in. He found wifey threatening death and dismemberment down the phone line, then she turned on him and said she wanted a divorce and to pack his bags and go. So they both moved back home with their parents, they had not long had a baby so she was with the wife. I'd just been given a lease car by work and he asked me if I could take him to pick up some clothes etc. Off we went, me trying not to filter in a car. When we got there he couldn't get the key in the lock. It was full of superglue. He managed to get that out in one piece and open the door. Inside the place was bare. Every item of furniture except one was gone. The light bulbs had gone. The fuses from the fuse box had gone, the handles from the cupboards were gone. He knocked on a neighbour's door and he said a large removal van had been there and he hadn't thought anything of it. My mate got a bit emotional, I was hungry. The one remaining piece of furniture was a display cabinet in the front room. It had some framed family photographs with him cut out of each one and some easter eggs. I asked him if I could have a bit of easter egg as I hadn't had any breakfast. He said fine in a heartbroken voice. I was just chomping on one when he said he hoped she hadn't done anything to the easter eggs. I went and spat it out. He rang the wife up and she denied any knowledge of what had happened. He came off the phone and said as her dad owned a storage company he didn't believe her. I said if she said she wasn't involved he needed to report it to the police. I took him to the local station and he did so. They rang wifey up and she said she had all the goods stored away, no problem officer etc. They told him and he rung her up a few minutes later after coming back outside the police station. But she just repeated that she knew nothing about it to him. Later on he moved back into the Standford le Hope place and moved the mother and daughter cleaner in with him. By now it's the mother he is with, it all got a bit confusing. Eventually he fell behind with his mortgage payments and they all got rehoused by the council. The mother and daughter then forced him to leave.

I got discounted admission to the Haynes Museum a couple of years ago cos I said “Youll have to say that again I’m deaf” she replied oh ok I can give you the disabled discount then, felt a bit wrong but hey a never look a gift horse..

When I was about 22 my sweaty friend encouraged me to have a go at joining the T.A. He said if I joined now, they were about to head for Germany for shooty bangy type stuff and I'd get free time off from my employer. What's the worst that could happen I thought. So a month or so later I present myself at a building near Tilbury and myself and 5 or 6 others boarded a Bedford truck which headed off to Colchester to join a group of about a 100 blokes from various corners of Essex and Suffolk. I was signed in, given a sleeping bag with a busted zip, a pair of overalls 42 times too big for me, a number on a piece of cloth, some safety pins and directed to a bunk in a Victorian cavalry barracks. Stables below, sleeping areas above. This was next to a parade ground that seemed to go to the horizon and lots of other brick and black wooden buildings. Anyone who has watched Blackadder Goes Forth would recognise it as it was used in the opening titles where the band marches playing the theme tune and Baldrick finishes with a tap on his triangle. It's now a Wimpey or similar housing estate. First things first, there was a dim but large bloke in our group. When he wasn't looking I swapped my sleeping bag with his. We then had to put our overalls on and pin our numbers to our chests. I rolled my trouser legs up about 10 times till they only just brushed the floor. The really tall bloke next to me who's overalls were too short refused to swap with me so was left looking like a toddler in a romper shorts combo. As we were called out for a talk by some bloke in a peaked cap I could hear the dim bloke moaning about his broken zipped sleeping bag.

Sweaty friend was in the Territorial Army, a machine gunner in the Royal Anglian Regiment. His dog ate his beret and he needed me to take him to Silvermans to buy a new one. Silvermans, if you don't know, is a famous Jewish surplus store in Stepney, they sell everything. My friend had nodded off in the passenger seat, he's wearing light grey jogging bottoms. He woke up when we parked outside and when he got out he had erm.... developed down below, god know what he was dreaming of. He had no shame though and proceeded to walk into the shop with this thing waving left and right in front of him. When he got inside I swear it made a noise when it hit the glass fronted cabinet.

Gay ...... and he's eating a cat

So this officer is giving a 100 blokes a talk in some sort of a hall. First he gave a history of the regiment which due to cut backs was about 10 regiments all joined together. He said that this battalion was nicknamed The Steel Backs because they never cried out when being flogged around the time of Waterloo. I'm in trouble here I thought, I'd cry like a baby when they took my shirt off if it was chilly. He makes the mistake of going on about team work which was to come back and haunt me later. Next we are all taken outside and they attempt to teach some sort of drill. My version of marching was different to everyone else's. Try moving left leg and left arm at the same time and crouching and you'll probably be as good as I was. I must have looked like the hunchback of Notre Dame after he'd not paid his tailor's bill. Next we were whisked off to an assault course. This thing was mostly made of mud with a few brick walls, ditches and climbing frames mixed in. We were taken to each obstacle and taught the best way to tackle it. I was shagged just walking around them. There was a wall about 10 feet high. This NCO grabbed me and made me stand facing it with arms outstretched. Then he got two other blokes to place their palms on the floor and I had to stand on their hands. Luckily my overalls had unravelled round the ankles which cushioned them a bit. He then told them both to lift at the same time and I would magically go up the wall and be able to grab the top and pull myself up. In theory this is fine, but when the two wankers lifting are of different heights and ability, all it did was tip me over side ways head first into the mud. After I had got up and rubbed the mud in to my hair properly, he then showed us a better way, which was one bloke putting his back against the wall, crouching down and put both hands together whilst I ran at him, slapped a shitty boot into his hands and as he lifted, I jumped and I got to the top of the wall. One miscalculation and he could have had the boot in his balls mind you. Back to the start and we did the whole thing properly. I was not fit, my days of long distance running at school were 6 plus years behind me. I would have to use brains to pass this thing. So whenever any of the NCOs with a clip board was watching I ran like a hero, all arms, legs and determination. When I was out of sight I whimpered and dribbled and crawled slowly. When we got the the 10 foot wall, the dim bloke who had my sleeping bag somehow managed to fall with a leg each side of it. He gave a terrible scream and had to be lowered to the ground and taken away to have his bollocks put in a sling by a medic. We didn't see him for the next few hours. After the assault course we were taken to the mess hall for breakfast. I lined up and found the the tea urns didn't just have plain black tea in them. It was already mixed with the milk and about 400 sugar lumps by the taste of it. My hands were a bit shaky from the assault course so I dropped my first cup of tea all over the floor. After mopping that up I got another one and moved on to the food queue. Some army cook type geezer, all acne and flaky skin asked me if I wanted two bits of bacon. I said yes and he grinned as he cut my single piece into two pieces. I wolfed my breakfast, glugged my tea, glugged another mug of tea and then it was marching off to a gymnasium. In the gym they did all sorts of PT tests. Hanging off bars to see how many pull ups you could do, timed climbing of ropes, flinging yourself over a vaulting horse etc. The worst one was hanging upside down off some wall bars and doing sit ups. My stomach was still hurting from that a week later when they sent me for a medical, more on that later.

Remember Len Vale Onslow......he was still riding at 102 years old!

The thing is Bob i;ve refered to my Woody "a few times" on all of Petes forums even two Ghost ones yet...you havnt seen a pic of my Woody yet? You;ve seen Bruces ass how many times butt never my Woody? I find that hard to believe. Thats a hard one eh LG? Yup.

I've got in to a few shows for discounted price when I was in my wheelchair, may mate was even more chuffed . Because he was pushing me around he was classed as my carer ans got in for free. You could be my carer if you like Bucky , mind you i'm not sure what sort of 'care' I might receive

We should probably start one for all you ancient fuckers, William can be your patriarch and you can swap stories about pissing yourselves and other common occurrences in your day to day lives, assuming you can remember anything recent.

After the gymnasium we were led into another room to be shown various big bangy guns and allowed to play about removing some of the parts. Back then the T.A. were still using the self loading rifle which I'd only seen my action man using in the 1970s. The real army had moved on and were regretting it I recall, their new gun had a habit of falling in half at critical moments. This SLR was placed in my hands and I don't know how my Action Man coped, no wonder his realistic hands fell apart. It weighed a ton. Sod running about with that. We were also shown the general purpose machine gun we would be using if we passed and were accepted. I say we, it was a three man team on a machine gun they said, someone to load, someone to pull the trigger and someone to say, "Shoot at him Geoffrey, he looks a bit foreign to me". You've probably seen them before, big thing, tripod or bipod, belt feed and a load of spare barrels. I hadn't realised till then that you had to change barrels if firing for a long time, at least that was what I was told. I had never seen John Wayne have to do this, must be inferior equipment. We also got handed some sort of hand held rocket launcher thing and what we all excitedly called a sten gun, but apparently was actually a Sterling. After this it was lunch time, more ready made super sweet mugs of tea, some not too bad food and me wolfing as much of their sticky syrup fruit salad afters as possible for energy, because the basic fitness test was coming up later on that day. We were driven in lorries to another part of Colchester, a large green, some M.O.D housing and a rectangle of roads. A week after the events I'm writing about took place, a military policeman was badly injured in the same place when his car exploded. The car bomb had been set by the IRA, the MP lost both legs and some fingers. We sort of forget about the IRA nowadays with all that's happening in the world, but terrorist bombs were quite common on the UK mainland when I was growing up. The last one I remember was the one in Canary Wharf which put our jerry built office in docklands into a permanent tilt despite it being about 200 metres away from the explosion. Anyway, with freshly rolled trouser legs I listened as a large red faced man in a track suit explained that it was a 2km run which had to be completed in 11 minutes to pass. You started by walking quickly and as you passed a certain point you started running and were timed from that point. Well off I went, legs in all directions, my boiler suite billowing. 2 minutes later I was ready to bring my dinner back up. 8 minutes later I am looking for a hole to put my foot in so I can twist my ankle and cry off. That's when the twats who had paid attention in the morning chat grabbed me, team work you see. Despite me crying and telling them all to fuck off, they dragged me along. I think I came in 30 seconds over the 11 minutes. I was doubled over ready to honk, but this NCO started screaming at me not to bend forward, to stand up straight and to definitely not besmirch his nice clean grass. After my head had stopped throbbing, we all piled back on to the lorries and then waited for the man with the ball bag slings to walk in, he was still waddling along it seemed. I say piled back on, I think it took me a few attempts to get in. It was back to the hall which was now filled with desks. It was intelligence test time!

funnily enough, most of it was abandoned shortly after he arrived Bob.

I told you I was innocent all these years! That bird fitted me up!

Remind me, is euthanasia legal yet?

Buck doesn't look like that.....he looks like this!

@Tym, make it a nice Jeep to go jeeping on, forget about that pikey caravan stuff.

If this clue isnt good enough let me know! btw, i have a swamp too...lol Hold my three plants!

This is what you want boys/girls, look at this quality build and boy what a bargain price https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114925154898?hash=item1ac212b252:g:M4MAAOSwOhNhDkIi

What a car!.....er it's a shed on wheels.

You do get to know a kick start bike's own individuality. When I had my first stent in, I was trying to stay in and not move about too much, but my friend, who should have known better decided he was going to start enduro racing. He was not the fittest of people or in the first flush of youth. He'd bought a nearly new Gas Gas 4 stroke, a 400 or 450 I think. This thing self destructed at least twice in a very short ownership and had an engine rebuild each time. It would also have a few break downs on the road in that same period. So I made my way over to Kent to a place called Canada Heights and watched my mate leave the starting line and disappear down a wooded hill and that was the last we saw of him for a very long time. Eventually he appeared over the crest of the hill on foot drenched in sweat. He'd drained the battery trying to restart the bike on the button after repeated stalls and begged for someone else to have a go at getting it back up the hill if he could get it started. As I walked gingerly down the hill I found a man frantically trying to kick start and early DR350 with the manual decompressor thing on the handlebar, exactly the same model I had fallen off a zillion times whilst green laning. I asked if I could have a go and started it first or second kick, a few years of anger and frustration had taught me the technique for that one bike. Anyway, we got to the Gas Gas and that was when he gave me his helmet to put on to ride the short distance up the slope. Jesus, I think the entire fluid content of his whole body (and he was a big bloke) was in the lining. It positively squelched as I put it on.

It was made simpler by finding a better photo that showed the engine was a Honda. that was easy using google image search. You upload a photo and google finds similar. Finding the actual bike then became much easier as, fortunately that bike has a very distinctive engine, with the plate at the engines rear with its 3 cut-slots. And so it didn't take long at all,, probably a couple of minutes for a match to turn up. Seems that particular model is extremely popular for this kind of treatment.. there are hundreds of them. A lot of them seem to have had the 'scrambler' look/treatment, which is very trendy these days. with all or most of the big brands producing one, or more. I quite liked this one. produced by Brickhouse Builds in Missouri.

That’s indeed correct

I once went on holiday and left my XR400 caked in mud on my parent’s garage. Every time they would brush against it walking past they’de get dirty and a little bit of dirt would drop to the nice floor, so dad called the local mechanic who owns a washing station to come and take it away for washing, the poor guy kicked and kicked for ages. Eventually gave up convinced I had a hidden switch installed. Eventually I came back, and hearing about this proceeded to start it on the third kick. Dad still thinks there’s a switch under the tank, where I fidget with the tickover speed before kicking it from cold.

The result of taking a short cut, the Italian Alps circa 2007

Time to start planning ya know, and this is on my to do list for Woody, shes in my name now for the first time since new in 1978, big things planned.

Don’t know about that mate as it’s a couple of years since I’ve been up there but I wouldn’t be surprised. Not only that but they’ve closed some parts of the Sierra Espuna park as it’s a fire risk.

No unfortunately.

That reminded me of this

your dealers here Dym....

He'll be doing bird soon.

I can say from experience that rear brake reservoir won't work i had the reservoir off the XR on mine and when the pads got low the brake stopped working from lack of fluid there's far less in that bit of pipe

Topic, Jeep, Sux is out after her first post on the subject, stardate, dumbass.

His Mrs scared me a bit if I'm honest.

That story has got to be true, you couldn't possibly make up shit like that

the Original carter one barrel

Absolutely so Yen, my first DR350 was a peach to start but you had to have that decompresor set correctly. The worst bike for me was my mates WR400 (first model) , it was an absolute bastard to start when it was hot. It even had a 'hot' button which I think the Japs had put on there for a laugh.

Exactly so, if I make it to 84 (let alone ride a bike) I'll be well chuffed.

@William The first bunch of pics on this ride report are from the route I posted above. See:

Try taking 40 west out of Denver to Just north of Kremmling. then west on 134 to Toponas and Route 131 North to Phippsburg. In Phippsburg, take Route 8 West to Meeker and Route 64 West towards Dinosaur and regain Route 40 West. You'll miss a lot of the traffic that way. I did a ride report of this route last year, will see if I can find a link to it.

Hi William......good to see you! I think the best man to advise you on this would be @Earache......he's the resident Colorado specialist!

You'll be OK then Michelle.......no bumming for you!

So, all eyes turned to N, who seemed quite sober for a man out on the piss all day. He said he just had to have a quick shower before speaking to us and legged it back to the bathroom. We waited impatiently and he finally came back out, sat down in his bath robe and proceeded to tell us his tale of woe. So, he was drinking away in some pub that has its toilets in a block outside in the car park. He's super pissed and having a lovely time with his mates on a blisteringly hot day. Then he decided he needed to have a dump, he really really needed to have a dump and he's headed off to the carpark in somewhat of a hurry. He's almost made it...... but at the last minute he has trouble undoing his trousers and suddenly his weekend has taken a downward turn. He's shat his trousers. Being a bit woozy and the worse for wear he decides it would be a good idea to take his trousers off, throw his underpants away and wash the trousers under the hand basin tap. He's just doing this when he hears someone coming, so he rushes back into the cubicle and locks the door. Then a long stream of blokes are coming in and out and he's stuck in this cubicle with his shitty trousers and no pants. He decides to try using the water in the cistern to give them another rinse. He realises he now just has wet shitty trousers. Too ashamed to go back into the pub he puts the wet trousers back on, ties his jumper round his waist to hide the back of them and decides to walk home without telling anyone where he is going. Now it is about 30 miles home, he's wearing new shoes, but the drink says he can do it (Google says that is about 9 hours to walk 30 miles). He reckons he had walked about 5 miles when a car pulled alongside him and the man and child mentioned earlier are in the car. They ask if he is okay. Not wanting to say what happened he tells them that his car has broken down and he is walking home to Hainault. The man offers to drive him back to his fictional car and see if he can get it going. N panics and says no, there's no point the engine has blown up. N then ask where they are heading. 'Romford', comes the reply. This is only a short distance from Hainault. N says if they can drop him there he will give them a tenner and he can get home from there. They agree. N climbs carefully into the back seat of the car in his trousers of shame and quickly winds down the window. As they pull into the Romford area, N says if they can take him all the way home he will give them £20. No problem says the man and takes him all the way home. By now N says the car is a bit hummy, but he's hoping the man thinks it is his kid and not him. Now! Back in Maldon there is a man hunt going on. The pub has been searched, the toilet block has been searched, nothing there but a pair of shitty pants in the bin. Next, men are checking all the caravans, then it is ditches and other places N might have fallen over in. Finally they realise they are going to have to ring his family and tell them he is missing. But when they ring, instead of a fretful wife they get the missing N himself who tells them he just got bored so decided he would hitch hike home, he would see them down the pub on Monday night!!

In the late 80s early 90s I went out with a girl for about 5 years who's dad was called N*gger. It took me a long time to find out what his real name was as everyone called him that including his wife. The story I was told was that he was from a family that had lived on Nanny Goat Common before it was turned into Europe's largest council house estate. I got the impression that the family had only transferred to a little cottage there after many years living in horse drawn caravans. His mother had so many children over a long period that when he was born, his brother who was home on leave from the army during the second world war looked down at this small brown baby and gave him the nickname that everyone knew him by. Now my girlfriend's dad, who shall henceforth be referred to as N, worked for himself, a one man band skip hire company. When I knew him he had bought a small bungalow in Hainault forest with enough room to have a vehicle drive in and a vehicle drive out, a yard behind for his lorry and some garages that he would rent out and behind that a bit of grazing land where he had a small double stable, two cows, two horses and a collection of chickens and ducks. 2 large female alsations lived in a brick built kennel by the side of the house, 2 small jack russells lived in the the house. N liked a drink, he was very good at drinking. He would go out 6 nights a week and then on the seventh day (Sunday) he would go out lunch time and drink till early evening. He would get very drunk, but in a funny way, never aggressive, and quite a few times me and my girlfriend would collect him from the pub on our way home. If it was me who had to go in and get him, I learnt early on not to shout his name across a Romford pub full of black males, oh no, it was tip toe across and ask him quietly to come along home. No matter how blotto he got, he would be up early next morning for work, full of life and annoying energy. He was a small skinny man so I don't know how he did it. Anyway, one weekend I was sitting in their house with my girlfriend and her mum watching a bit of telly. N was away with his drinking friends at their caravans near Maldon for the weekend, he'd only been gone for about 24 hours. Suddenly the side door opened and in walked N, he muttered a quick hello, then walked straight past us and disappeared into the bath room. Then a stranger, a large man, walked in through the door behind him with a small child trailing him. N's wife stared at him, not quite sure what was going on. N did not have a car, he had been taken to Maldon by his friends so how he had got home was a mystery and no one knew who this strange man was. The man then asked if it was okay to use the phone, he got a confused yes and then rang someone up to tell them he was going to be a bit late. N reappeared, this time he is only wearing a bath robe, his skinny legs sticking out the bottom. He handed the man a £20 note and the man and the child left. Rest of the story after my zoom meeting.

I've told this many times, but for the few who haven't heard it:- I'm laid up in a 4 bed bay of a hospital ward. From the next bay of 4 beds I can hear a man with a really beautiful speaking voice suddenly pipe up with a question. Man, "Hello, hello, is anybody there, hello, can anyone tell me where I am?" Nurse, "Hello John, don't panic. You're in hospital." Man, "Oh, I see. thank you. What's happened to me? Nurse, " You've had a stroke and you were brought in unconscious." Man, "Oh dear, I see, do my family know?" Nurse, "Yes, don't worry, your wife has been informed and she's been in to see you and knows you're okay." Man, "Oh Thank you nurse." 20 minutes go by of silence from him....then. Man, "Hello, hello, is anybody there, hello, can anyone tell me where I am?" Nurse, "Hello John, don't panic. You're in hospital." And so on, he just went round in this continuous loop for a day or so. Then near the end of my stay I hear him again, this time he's more himself. Nurse, "What are you doing John?" Man, "I'm rolling a cigarette nurse." Nurse, "You can't smoke in here, it's a hospital." Man, "But I'm not smoking I'm just rolling a cigarette." Nurse, "If you're doing that, then you're obviously going to smoke it aren't you." Man, " Well I've got a pair of slippers under my bed, but I'm not going for a fucking walk am I......"