Tango

Not much has changed then. Still large amount of money missing from the donations made to the Grenfell appeal I think as well!

Back in my youth I had a mate that told me and the others that he was going to give up drinking beer when it got to 50p a pint! How we all laughed! Well, I think that after a budget beer did hit 50p a pint, so he stopped drinking...........for a whole week! Obviously we ripped the piss out of him when he came back to the pub! But, unleaded has hit €1.63/litre at our local supermarket and I'd not be surprised to see it hit €2/litre by Christmas. My bike seems to have settled at 3.1L/100km, so I'm not too worried, but I'm guessing that some will be starting to feel the pinch. The government is even talking about issuing fuel vouchers for people on low incomes! Car engine sizes seem to be getting smaller, so I expect that there will be a move from the bike manufacturers to reduce the number of higher capacity bikes?

With gas prices going up the way they are at the moment do you not notice the difference between your fill-ups? If 1000cc+ bikes disappeared from the market, would that have a big effect on you?

Is that what attracted you to the bike in the first place, Pete?

Watching fuel prices rising almost daily got me wondering about the future of high capacity/High powered bikes. The new Honda NT1100 "only" puts out 100bhp, which is being met with disgust from the motorcycle press from what I've seen so far. But is this a move by Honda to start really working on managing their range of bikes for the future. Focusing more on fuel consumption and stepping away from the BHP "arms race"? I also saw that Kawasaki's business plan is to go all electric by 2035. What's your thoughts and is there a cut-off point with fuel prices where you'd seriously think about getting a bike based on its consumption figures rather than any other aspect?

Why the font used is so important!

We had been out for a bike ride and stopped off at our usual burger van for a coffee and the lady in there told us that she'd just heard that Marco Simoncelli had been killed. Couldn't believe it.

Possibly.

A lot of people that I know in the UK, including my mum and eldest son, have had real stinking colds. It seems to be doing the rounds at the moment. Seems like the winter norovirus is starting to appear in significant numbers here now.

Yeah, his stuff is iconic.

We still have to mask up when going into shops or cafés, etc. I do it automatically now, don't even think about it anymore.

The Shuttle Challenger disaster. I heard it on the car radio as I was driving round the M25 near Lakeside. It was odd too, because I very rarely listened to the radio in the car as I mainly listened to cassettes back then. I just decided that I'd put the radio on that day.

Exactly!

Obviously 9/11. I was doing a job in the main hospital in Jersey and one of the staff came into the lab to tell us what he'd just heard on the news. I was staying in the town and went to a pub in the evening for my tea and a few beers. They had a TV in the corner of the bar and everyone was watching it in silence, just shaking their heads.

Getting their herd immunity plan after all! And it's all the general publics fault for not following the guidelines!

Gary Larson, one of my favourite cartoonists.

A few years back we went up to Squires cafe in early March for a meet up in remembrance of a young lad we knew who'd been killed in an accident on his bike. The run up there was cold, but ok. On the way back, on the A1 just north of Grantham it sleeted really hard and it was like marbles all over the road. I was in front and Mandy was following on her Bonneville. The temperature drop was really sudden. My visor steamed up and it was literally like riding on marbles. Visibility dropped to nearly nothing too. I really couldn't see much either in front or behind. It was like that for about 10 miles. Once I'd got through it I realised that Mandy wasn't behind me any more. I stopped and checked my phone and had a missed call from her. I called her back and she said that her bike had stopped and she had to try to push it off the road, which wasn't easy because it was up a slight gradient and the road was covered with these beads of sleet/snow. Fortunately she wasn't too far from an exit off the A1 and a guy in a car had stopped and helped her push the bike to safety. I said that the best bet was for me to carry on for home and then pick up some tools and head back up in the car to sort her bike out. On my way back up she called to say that she had managed to get the bike started and was heading back. I'm guessing that the carbs had iced up due to the sudden temperature drop and whilst the bike was stationary the heat from the engine had thawed them out. But, riding on that busy road on what felt like riding on marbles, with near zero visibility and then losing Mandy wasn't the most pleasant experience on the bike!

Unfortunately it's a 2 day drive each way and it was thick snow crossing the Massif Centrale when we came back last Christmas. We can get flights from Montpellier to Gatwick for less than €100 each return at the moment! But with the risk of getting pinged attached.

We were weighing up heading back to the UK to visit for Christmas, but it seems like even though we are fully vaccinated, if we get pinged by the app we'd have to isolate for 10 days, but if we'd been vaccinated in the UK we wouldn't have to. Seems like quite a few people are getting pinged after flying into the UK because someone on their flight has tested positive. This is likely to get worse if/when they drop the PCR test before travel. So, we don't want to arrange and pay to travel over to then have to spend the whole time isolating in a hotel room! Hmmmmm!