Leaderboard

France has, until this year, avoided having an MOT equivalent for motorcycles. they have now invented one, and have somehow managed to take all the stupid bits of everybody elses MOT or equivqlentand roll them into one pointless surperfluous and inefficacious bi-annual visual inspection. The statistics ( these are generated by the French "Sécurité routiere" organisation who are rabid anti speed, anti motorcycle road safety advocates and remain incontested by the govt. and ratified by the majour insurance companies) - the road infrastructure is directly implicated in 25% of all road traffic acidents. - in road traffic accidents involving motorcycles, The fault is imputed to the motorcylist in less than 40% of cases. -the number of motorcycles on the road has increased by 30% in the last 5 years. -over that same period the number of mortorcycle deaths has decreased by 20%. - Mechanical failure or defect is implicated in less than 0.5% of accidents involving motorcycles. Now I have nothing, as such, against a regular MOT type test if it can be shown to be beneficial. it can't. the govt has just announced how the test is oing to work ( bearing in mind that this is supposed to be in place for january 2024) and it appears that the test centres will not be required to have anyone on their staff with a motorcycle licence! The staff will be required to undrego a 1 day raining course on how to carry out the check, and this will include instruction on how to move a motorcycle around the workshop and " instruction on how tp pick up a motorcycle should you drop it". Needless to say, this raises some eyebrows, not least those of the insurance companies who maintain that if you do not possess a motorcycle licence, and you damage it whilst in charge of it then any insurance would be void... Is it only me that can see some charges of GBH on the horizon here...? anyway, yesterday afternoon, despite temperatures around 0 c we went and made some noise and fucked up some christmas shoppers saturday afternoon, to display our discontent. we stopped in front of each of the main MOT centres in town. They were closed of course but it was easy enough to set their alems off with a couple of bikes up against the building and half a dozen backfires... this fucked up their day as they then have to get someone out to shut the alrm down. It should be mentioned that the police ;otorcycle escort managed very successfully to be busy at the other end of the convoy whilst this went on... as that last pic was taken, the camera battery succombed to the cold, which was a shame cos as we started to move on one of the dozen of BMW GS's refused to start and had to be assisted by a guy on a 1990 Honda transalp... of course i laughed like a drain suggesting they were using the Honda to carry out a " reliability graft". 30 seconds later, Karma struck and the tiger refused to start. Victim, I suspect, of an hour at idle speed with heated grips on full power. The convoy dissapeard down the road and I started to ring Mrs Moon to bring me some jump leads ( i've never tried to push start the tiger and wasn't about to start in the middle of town in saturday afternoon traffic... Then an angel came to rescue me, one of the FFMC outriders ( either a girl or a guy with very pretty eyes...) had seen me pull off to the side, guesse what had happened, ridden forward to a colleague she knew had a booster in his top box, and bought it back to me. Luckily the battery on the tiger is easily accessible under the seat so we started it from the booster and I followed her to catch up with the main group. The battery seems fine now so ai can only think that it was the heated grips drawing more power the the constant idle was providing charge to the battery. the battery is at least 6 years old so it may well be on it's last legs as well. After the group dispersed I rode into town with a mate and we found a bar in the centre square that was doing christmas ale and mulled wine. On top of that, the landlord announced that he give a 10% discount to motorcyclists at the weekends. Result! got home well after dark and with temps down beloz freezing. Lukily the ride home was nly about 5 km so no real challenge. I don't expect the demo will have the slightest effect on the installation of the new technical inspections set up, but at least no one an acuse us of not have protested from the beginning.

Yes it can be fun but i don't think you work in it like i have to work in it the fun tends to go quite quickly especially when your beard freezes LOL

we wanted to visit my parents for Christmas, Mum's 92 now and Alzheimers is getting steadily worse, but there is just no way we can afford accomodation in the area for 5 of us at that time of year (last year at nearly 2000€ for 5 days nearly killed us) so we're not doing anything for Christmas but are saving for a uk visit in feb when we can have the same accomodation for five days for just over 800€...

You mean this one @Clive .............

oh what a pile of shyte! I thought they enlu had those in France... 45km/h max and no licence... 38tonne semis obliged to overtake the bloody things on the narrow N roads causing all sorts of mayhem, drivers usually completely pissed or so moronic as to be incapable of passing a driving test. I HATE them!

Was going to meet up with Dani for lunch, but it’s foggy and wet and seems like it’s not clearing up except for a little rain later on. We’re driving instead Now sitting outside my local rural supermarket waiting for him, and check out this puck up. Aixam, no license required, engine sounds like something from a well’s water pump.

Nothing wrong with Fiat engines, either

Who does this remind you of?

I think both...

rude

I thought we would be listening to the sound of the bike with the new camera or is the music to overwrite your screaming every time you see a wet patch

I expect that I'll return to honda when this one dies, but won't be for a few years yet I hope. Goodness knows what piles of semi electric poo wil be available in 5 or ten years from now though.

Unlike you wankers I was out! And did a GoPro test at 1080p,

I did this one at 1080.....4k file sizes are insane. Seems pretty decent to me.....make sure YouTube is displaying it to you at 1080 though.

It's the way of the world nowadays. My Nissan has a Nissan engine and was built in Japan, you want a nice Nissan Cube you do

Pain in the arse aren't they. Fiat 500 with a ford badge so it's going to be more complicated.

That’s as bad as Pete’s mange.

Closing the shop down for a week during the holidays....one of my boys will be coming to my place on the 24 th with his girlfriend...one has finally moved out...the house is a little more empty now and cleaner..lol...he was the messy one and my milk supply was cut down in half..the other one ...well I think I might have a bachelor on my hands..mom will probably spend a few days here...

when it snows i want it more than a foot deep or none at at all, because less than a foot means i might still be able to get into work LOL

I like to see snow. On Christmas cards.

Bugger.

Changed the lower suspension arm on the daughters car this morning. When i said i'd do it for her it was after watching a YouTube video, it looked an easy job, jack car up take wheel off undo 3 bolts remove suspension arm fit new arm do up 3 bolts fit wheel on and lower jack easy but no my daughters KA is different to the one in the video i watched as there was a big lump of metal bolted to where the one bolt i had to take out was so it had to come off as well took me 3 hours and it was fucking freezing I had to unbolt the front bumper to remove that lump of metal luckily every bolt came undone without any problems. Saved the daughter £108 in labour oh wait it saved her £178 because i paid for the part as well

Do you think we might have a bullshitter on are hands...?

I left the mic on and you can hear the bike (though it's very quiet anyway) up to about 40kph.......anything more than that is wind noise.

Eating, drinking, watching shite on TV, out with the dogs, out on the bike, play a bit of golf……….just like normal but with turkey and cranberry sauce.

Was going through my cedar chest cabinet....want to see something fancy? Gold plated wrench .

would you be out in this?

Don't bother, like driving a four poster bed.

When i read that i thought you were talking about this forum and Aixams was some new gender i was going to dread hearing about lol

They may as has well just put a old Renault Clio badge on my Dacia......same with the Renault Captur......it is just a just a upgraded Sandero.

I don't know if you can tell...but those cheeks are rock solid...probably can open up a twist off beer bottle with those cheeks....not like this guy..

I have a real tractor you twat...

We've be lucky so far...nothing on the ground yet...kinda hitching to play with the tractor soon.

I don't think I would even get away with that, the fuckers would come and get me if it's that problematic. To be honest for me working in the bad weather just adds to the fun, slows things down a bit that's all. .

Yes ....Quebec city just got something like 50 cm Friday through sat....and it's about 600 km to the south of us.

I could have been nasty and said something about your 🏍, but I know what you mean.... I think.

She could just drive your car

I would clear the I would rather have a metre of the white stuff, gonna do it, do it right

Looks lovely from behind my computer Clive LOL just rain here

-1 here but due to rise to 11.

Fair play to you Fred. With the mafia staff car I failed at the first hurdle, couldn't get the fecker started, battery has died a complete death .

Better than living with a selfish, grasping simpleton I'll wager!

would of thought she would of needed one daily living with a twat like you

And coming back home: