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Maybe someone on here can buy one of each then not take any pictures of them.

Nor a hulking great top case either.. but some of us know when not to assault peoples eyes

Managed to get out on a cycle ride this morning. First one since my op. It wasn't as painful as I was expecting!

No I’m not talking about turning tricks for crack cocaine! Yesterday I popped into Edinburgh Harley for some service parts, namely rocker breathers, gaskets and brake reservoir gasket. The rocker breathers have been replaced with a better design after 2010, as they wear you get a bit of oil showing up in the air filter, mine is starting to get more than I like so a clear indicator that the filter medium in them is worn out, as the part has been upgraded it is not possible to get the older filters and it’s best just to swap for the newer type anyway, total cost for these is about £50 plus gaskets. Works out about £20 for new filters in the future. Anyway, the only thing they had in stock was the rocker cover gaskets, but the parts guy was convinced he had seen some of the rocker breather assemblies somewhere so I went upstairs for (free) coffee while he went on the hunt. When I got back to the parts desk he had found a set, apparently at some point they were getting gasket kits in and these were in with them as they were an upgraded part, very often not required so were put away rather than getting thrown away. But the best bit is that because they were not in the stock system, he just gave them to me for free. So my expected bill for £75 became £25. It’s not the first time they have given me stuff without charging either, in the past just wee bits and pieces but this time it was above and beyond. So a little shout out to Edinburgh Harley Davidson and Rob Moore in the parts department.

And why not …

Yup , just trying to fit in and sample some Spanish food .

Phew, I was getting worried that you'd died or something!

Finally managed to stop the water leak in our front garden. It was leaking from the garden watering system. Switching off the mains water supply didn't seem to have any effect. We found out that it was also supplied from well water pumped from one of our neighbours garden, but we didn't know where it was coming into our garden. I eventually tracked it down to a pipe which appeared from the neighbours garden, under a fence and buried in a hedge on the opposite side of our garden from where the leak was. It was coming through in a 1" black plastic pipe and then splitting off to go to the watering system and a standpipe. I couldn't see any way of isolating it, so I bought an inline plastic tap assy and a pair of plastic pipe shears and cut the pipe close to where it comes into the garden. Wasn't easy, as the water was still being pumped, but I managed to cut the pipe and fit the tap without getting too drowned! Hopefully this will keep our neighbour on the other side quiet now, as she tackled me about the leak every time she saw me, even though the leak was on my garden not hers!

We all stopped developing mentally at age 12. Sorry.

You will remember I had these delivered the other day, I finally tried them out yesterday. When I put them in I immediately noticed that they were not as deep in my ears as the not custom plugs and I thought I would hear a lot more that with my previous ear plugs. Well I was right, I can hear a lot more as these are filtered but they are quieter which seems like an oxymoron. The really high frequencies are filtered out and lower frequencies are “damped” which means I can hear the motor and some of my surroundings but in a way that is entirely comfortable, I was riding with the open face yesterday, there was no wind noise present with these plugs. The triple tree wind deflector has cured the drumming I used to get above 70mph as well which was caused by updraft catching the front of my lid. The other thing I noticed with the plugs was that they didn’t shift while riding, usually one of them shifts at some point with the conventional ear plugs, I took the 70 mile route home from the dealers after taking the six mile route there. The custom plugs are also super comfortable as expected, I should have got some of these years ago.

Fuck em, put a pic up. It's all 2 wheels in the end. I'll add it's what puts a smile on your face, don't matter what we think. Same in the music thread.

It was ok … I’m mainly a porridge ( no sugar of course ) or Alpen type of breakfast eater .

Got to be honest the first thing that came to mind was how would i get caught if i left it there, there were no cameras back then so it was just the name on the ladder, it was a few seconds after i thought what if i was on the bike and came up on that, back then if i was there on the bike i would have been well over 100mph on that stretch of road so the conscience then kicked in.

Not on the street, but I visited a Honda dealership today and they had a couple of the owner's personal classics on display, my favourite one:

The second man/woman rule is what we use trail riding as there are so many direction changes it's easy to get lost but as you said it only works well when everybody does it. We usually have a ride leader and a tail man/woman who is always at the rear both with the planned route and the second man/woman only moves on after they see the tail man/woman arrive. I also stress that everyone ride at their own pace and not try and keep up as we will always wait ahead somewhere. If someone wants to ride faster than the ride leader then they will have to put up with the speed or put a ride on themselves, it all seems to work really well.

Can you point out the rocker cover on your bike?

With all the rain that California has been having (earlier this year), the wild flowers are out in full bloom in a lot of places you rarely see them. Normally, this area is all brown and dry.

Not sure, I first saw it on Monday afternoon but had traffic behind me so didn't stop to take a picture that time. I think it'll be okay, pretty quiet where I live, I'm the scum here, everyone else seems pretty decent.

No it’s on a camel.

One of my work minions (the not too bright one) has gone and got himself a full bike licence and bought a Suzuki Gladius. He was in at the same time as me today. I was parked behind Whitechapel station inside one of our site work fences, he had wedged his bike in with the hospital car park motorbikes. We walked out together, then separated. I spent ages extracting my bike, with a helpful Bulgarian in a hard hat opening the fence for me and helping me pull my bike backwards over a small gravel pile that wasn't there when I went in. I then rode down a small side road over the top of the railway line, fought my way through the never ending peds using the market and turned left out into standing traffic on Whitechapel Road, I ended up pulling around the queue and going down the outside to the signalled pedestrian crossing at the station. There I saw said Minion, easily recognisable with his hard shelled back pack, at 45 degrees across the road and with the surrounding vehicles pulling away to leave him in the middle and him frantically pushing at his starter button. I pulled up behind him, still trying to start it. He finally realised who was behind him, turned and shouted, "I just dropped my bike for the first time ever". Looks like he'd over balanced pulling right out of the hospital entrance into the traffic. I suspect a bit of front brake whilst handlebars on full lock action took place. If that Bulgarian had been a bit quicker I'd have been able to watch him go over!

On my way home from work this afternoon. Top of my road I see this, pulled over and got the camera out.

Maybe, or it might be a marketing thing to make you make up your mind if you think they're not obtainable.

I wouldn't be in a rush, my mate bought a new CB500S a few months ago and delivery time after ordering it was postponed 3 or 4 times to a total of more than 4 months.

I should have deleted them when they couldn’t come but I didn’t and two of them aren’t coming cos they are having a hard time and are enjoying the chat so I don’t feel like I can boot them off now. I’ll definitely bear it in mind next time. WTF am I saying what next time

@Skippy.......sounds like we need a Whatsapp group!

Just checking for future poll's LOL

Some of us start a whats app group when there's a weekend ride coming up in the future and invite people going on the ride to the group if someone drops out they get deleted that way everyone is up to date with whats going on and after the ride the group is deleted You can turn off all notifications if it's that you find invasive if its the app itself i find it far to useful to not have it

You could also start a whats app group for the trip and share your live location in there

I don't think that carrying a pillion is going to be too often, but it needs to be available when the need arises. Given the state of some of our local roads, I think that the Tracer 7 & 9 are probably a little too road focused. I've looked at the v-strom 650 and 800 at the local dealers. The 800 was a bit heavy. The 650 wasn't bad, but is looking a bit dated now, however, the XT version hasn't been discounted completely. I sat on a Tenere 700. It was like sitting on the top of a step ladder! Even I, at 6'1", was on tip toes! No way could Mandy climb on board that! And it's not really meant for pillions, even though it has pillion pegs.

The deep state will be tracking you for nefarious purposes, tell her @zzzak!

organise. I've ridden in groups for years one way or another and 2 stand out in the effective simplicity of the organisation. It only works, however if everybody is aware of how it works. The group I usually ride with here, I rode with for years on my Tralp whilst others wre riding FJR1300's, R1, CBRR thingies, all much faster bikes and some petty capable riders. Not everybody needs to know the route, but when riding, a fster groupe will often break away and leave the slugs ( me) in their dust. I just keep going straight on at my best speed knowing that they will be waiting for me at the next direction change or at the top of the pass or whatever. When we're overnighting we usually plan to get to the overnight spot with enough time left for the speedfreaks to do a short sprint loop or even an out and back, depending on terrain. simple but effective if everybody plays the game. When we have a rider we're not used to, one of the group will always play the trundleslug and let the new rider know that when the nutters right wrist gets too much for them then at least one other bike won't be trying to keep up. The other group whos' system I liked was Aus Touring when I met up with them in the Vercours in 2013 Glitch ( the organiser and experienced tor leader) and his wife Goodie had it sussed and a short explanation from them alloed me to fit almost seamlessly into the group for 2 days with no problems, Glitch leading ( failrly fast most of the time) and goodie bringing up the rear, whenever there was a change of road or direction, the 2nd rider would wait at the junction till Goodie arrived, with 8 or 9 riders, all experienced and capable, this worked brilliantly, progress was good and nobody got lost ( despite a couple of them falling off a some point before I joined them I would still maintain that the price to pay for being a better rider in a group is that you have a responsibility to the less able.

to be fair, that shouldn't be happening. the better, more expeienced riders should be able to adapt their speed to the lowest common denominator and not incite them to ride beyond their abilities. ( yeah, idealistic I know)

I'm on my second C3Pro, which was still lighter and quieter than the C4 and C4Pro when I got it. They are ok and I obviously bought a second one so I like them. I would go straight for the C5 instead of the C4 range, though, they seem so much better built. My next helmet is probably going to be a Shoei, though, and probably this year. Something to do with the sizing as I think I am an L in Shoei but an XL in Schubert, and my Schubert gets a little too big once getting a little older.

Big price drop on the way to clear the 650's! Some dealers in Madrid have started, with the basic model down to €7400.

Under the tank! Somewhere!

He's gone to get his wife/ Tony the Tools or even Dylan the donkey to help him out ..............

Right then @Slowlycatchymonkey now i'm home i got time to tell you about my little incident which made me know exactly how you felt retrieving your stuff of the motorway. Back in my mid 20's i was working on my own that week in Maidstone, it was about mid day on Friday and time to pack up for the trip home, i loaded everything on the van drove to our site container and off loaded it there for the weekend and off i went, i battled through the traffic to the M20 and then put my foot down to get a move on. I accelerate to the outside lane when i heard a chu chunk sound from the roof, i looked in the rear-view mirror and could see the large aluminium step ladder flying through the air i had forgotten to take it off the roof rack and put in the site container for the weekend. First thing that came to mind was shall i keep going then remembered our company name was written all over it and then the thought of someone hitting it on a bike came into my mind so i pulled over, I was about half a mile away by the time i negotiated the traffic to get to the hard shoulder and had to sprint back to where the ladder was which was easy to spot by all the smoke in the distance. when i got there it was in the slow lane and quite close but cars were skidding sideways trying to stop and swerving around it (the smoke i could see) then one car didn't see it in time and drove straight over it this was an industrial step ladder and was pretty heavily constructed but after the car went over it it jumped about 6ft in the air and landed in the middle lane fucking great i thought . There was no let up in the traffic and the thought of me witnessing someone dying soon started growing in my head then i see a gap, there was no traffic in the middle lane for as far as i could see but the inside and outside lane had traffic approaching i thought this was my chance i ran to the middle lane and grabbed the ladder by the time i picked it up and turned around the traffic i seen was passing me and i was stuck there with cars passing in front and behind me at 70mph i thought this was scary as fuck until i saw the car approaching me in the middle lane he had locked all four wheels and was heading for me in the split second of this happening i saw a gap in the traffic to the hard shoulder i just shut my eyes and ran for it my heart was pounding out my chest and i almost collapsed on the hard shoulder but i just legged it back to the van slung the steps in the back and fucked off before the police arrived, Even although it was scary as fuck and i almost died i found telling my boss i fucked his step ladders up even worse in fact i asked the foreman to break it to him first I still cant believe the steps stayed on the van from the site to the M20 as it was over 20 miles probably the slow rush hour traffic helped

touché

Au Contraire, it's not open when you appear

Oh the swept out to sea thing scares me!

One of my first bikes was a Bantam (it was in bits most of the time) , it was truly awful . When I got my Honda XL185 I couldn't believe the those two vehicles could be more different.

Hmm yes. It’s never full proof is it Second man drop is something I’ve experienced twice and both times the second man forgot to drop and the group was split up for what felt like an eternity. On one occasion leaving me and one other up a mountain in the foggy dark in a foreign clime But it’s France not some remote spot so I’ve asked everyone to sort out some type of sat nav be it phone or otherwise. We will stop every hour or so for a ten min leg stretch (one of the group is well into her 60’s and aches a bit), those stops will be given as sat nav co ords so faster members who don’t want to spare the horses can scratch that itch, the slower will have someone to lead and someone bringing up the rear (that’s what she said ). If anyone gets split up they can then easily continue on route to the next stopping point. Everyone is using a locator app for a group I’ll create before we board the ferry (just for the trip) so should anything untoward happen it’s easy to find them or them us. They work really well for group trips, although not so well to prevent on the last Colts rugby tour 4 of them shaving off all their hair just before their uni interviews and one losing their virginity to a lady of the night

in my misspent youth... swept out to sea in an 8 foot wooden sailing dinghy when I was about 13. The fact I didn't drown that day was pure luck.

This is rather putting me off my upcoming group ride I’ll have to stick to the speed limit, slow down to accommodate the lowest common denominator and it’s going to be painful isn’t it I know for sure two of the women are race level fast but the others Heyho.

And die of boredom along the way