Tango

I won the meat raffle down the pub once, having to ride home with a frozen leg of lamb and pork joint stuffed down the front my bike jacket wasn't too much fun though!

Although, posting pictures of you actually out on your bike probably didn't help your cause either!

Sounds plausible, Pete!

There's no need to use language like that, Pete!

I went on holiday there a few years back. Had a few days in Santiago de Compostella and then went to the coast. Very few brits there and hardly anyone speaks English, but that's why we chose it. Weather wasn't too bad while we were there.

Probably not, @MooN. Apart from the handling issues I'm finding that it's just a bit underpowered. I think that something like the upcoming Tiger 660 or a Tracer 700 would be more suited to me.

I think you could be right, mate. I think that if I were intending to keep the bike I'd change them, but I guess I'll just have to put up with the tramlining for a bit longer.

@boboneleg mentioning the Rover P6 that I had in the very early 80's reminded me of a strange coincidence. I still lived in northwest Kent when I had that car. Occasionally I used to go to a pub on a Sunday lunchtime with one of my mates and his girlfriend. The car had a full length Webasto sunroof, which my mates girlfriend used to like standing up in the car looking out of it when it was open on a nice day. I eventually sold the car to finance my XS1100 and my mate split up with his girlfriend. My missus and I used to go to the bike night on a Tuesday evening at a pub not too far from where we lived near Cambridge if we got back from work on time. The pub often had a bbq going on the patio doing burgers or hot-dogs and the bike night was pretty popular, with the carpark rammed with bikes on nice evenings. We were there one bike night a couple of years back, having a look around and a chat with some people we knew when I saw a woman that I thought I recognised. She had a very distinctive limp that looked the same as my mates girlfriend from 30 years ago, caused by a bad bike accident. Eventually I had to go up to her and took a chance of looking a complete fool and said to her "do you remember standing up with your head out of the sunroof of my car many years back?" She looked at me as if I was mad and then laughed "Bob?". She introduced me to her husband and we met up a good few times after that. We went over to their place, which was only about 20 minutes from where we lived a number of times. They had a fair sized garage, where her husband had pretty much every bike he'd ever owned in there. Sadly we lost touch with them a couple of years ago when they moved. It was just such a strange coincidence meeting at a pub miles from where we used to live 30+ years later. Has anything like that happened to anyone else?

Yes, Bob. My brief dabble with cars before returning to the fold (until later, when I got a job with a company car).

Hotter there than here! Mid 20's forecast for the next 2 weeks according to AccuWeather, with some potentially heavy rain too.

I've got some Hood motorcycle jeans that I've had for years and use them most days when I'm out on the bike here. I guess that one day I'll have to replace them, but no idea with what.

Cheers MooN, good advice. I'm actually getting better the more I get out on the bike. I guess I'm getting used to the pogo-ing and the tramlining. I think that it's more to do with the bike than me. I went for a short spin on my OH's Bonneville and felt fairly comfortable on it, apart from adjusting to the larger front wheel.

It's not always blue skies and sunshine here!

The first thing YOU'D do!?!?

That's awesome, Bob.

Maybe they were busy or something. I started Lois on the Loose but I must finish it.

I'll look forwards to that. Was Austin Vince at the show? He's normally at these sort of things.

Awesome write-up mate. Yeah, I guessed that Ted Simon must have been knocking along a bit now. I guess I was about 22 when I first read Jupiter's Travels.

Sounds legit!

Fourth time lucky then, Clive?

The Martini racing stickers and the prancing horse may be a bit optimistic, but it looks clean enough. I'm guessing that it runs OK?

Yes, that's some amazing footage there! Brave buggers, all of them!

Thanks for posting this, Bob. Definitely whetted my appetite to go up there and visit the beaches.

When I was in the first year of my apprenticeship we were in the training school, which was an old building in what they called the mill on Trundley's Road in Deptford, south London. At lunchtime we would shoot over to the works canteen in the main factory and bolt our dinner down and then head to a small park nearby to kick a football around. Some of the older guys from the main factory also used to get over the park for a game of footie, so it wasn't long before we were involved in daily matches of the apprentices v the guys from the various other departments. One of the guys, Ken, was the senior shop steward for the site. Everyone called him Hippo, but he was pretty light on his feet for a big guy. He was pretty fearsome too and the management at the factory hated dealing with him, because most were scared of him. Anyway, after one lunchtime footie match, we got back to the training school a little late. Shortly after we got back the training manager stormed into our training room and started ranting about how he'd seen us get back late. So he told us that from then on we would have to clock-out at the clocking station when we went to lunch and clock back in when we got back. We did this for a day or 2, when at one of our lunchtime footie matches we suddenly grabbed our stuff and said we had to get back. Hippo said "come on lads, let's finish the game. There's no rush" But we said that we had to get back to clock-in after lunch. "You fuckin' what?!!!" he said. We then explained what had happened a couple of days earlier. "OK lads, leave that with me" That afternoon we saw Hippo and a couple of the other shop stewards heading towards the training school. A while later we heard shouting from the training manager's office. It eventually went quiet and the door of our training room opened and in walked Hippo. "You don't need to clock- out at lunchtime any more, Lads, and if that cunt tries anything like that again let me know" We didn't see the training manager again for a few days after that, but he was very sheepish when we did see him!