yen_powell

After Thursday's funeral, word has reached me that someone else I know from my old bike club and many recent rallies has died yesterday. No proper details yet, but as he wasn't ill with anything nasty we are assuming heart attack. Early 60s, just retired, sold his house and was all set to move to Wisbech with his other half apparently. I can still remember him boasting about how his bike insurance cost had plummeted when we celebrated his 25th birthday. I last saw him at Christmas, the same event I last saw Jackie at as well. Here he is whilst dressed as a pirate. Come to think of it, Alan Dunn was nearly always dressed as a pirate. A nice bloke and an excellent musician.

I've been over on my arse/back twice in the last year. Once it was winter and due to slippery footwear and shiny wet york stone paving. The other time I was bare foot and slipped on shiny wet concrete paving after getting out of a swimming pool on a blazing hot day. I seem to manage falling over at both extremes of weather.

Yup, there are more out than in as my mother used to say.

A position has just opened up for Head Writer at a Valentine Card factory.

This is not a mistake, I've landscaped it.

This is on my holiday music memory stick which sits plugged into my garage stereo between trips. It came up today on the random setting whilst cleaning my brakes, best version of an old song I think. I especially like the part near the end where he sings with so much gusto he could be passing a cannon ball.

Plus 'B y Q' for the mesh.

Don't think of it as 5am, think of it as more like 4am, at least that's what your body will be telling you.

Just been out cleaning up my front brakes so I took a few non-working pictures of the pump. Ignore the box it's sitting on, that's from some ramp things I bought to try and get the car up enough to reach the sump plug. The writing is my reminder of my bike's mileage after cleaning the brakes. The little bag it comes in for storage. A blurry picture of how it was wrapped when I first looked inside the bag The pump itself with and without the crocodile clips connected. I have removed the ring terminals which also came as a plug in connector.

I'll bet it's similar to your "Look at the state of that down pipe!" face.

My pump arrived yesterday evening. It came with crocodile clips as well as a set of leads with ring terminals. I fitted the crocodile clips on just now and stuck them on a bike battery that has been sitting in my garage for about 2 years. The pump spun up and air came out of the outlet valve, not tried it on a real tyre yet, will do that another day when I have more time.

The back comes on as well when you just pull the front lever on it's own. Better than my Varadero which was the other way around. On that if you did a feet up u-turn it made you nervous about dragging the rear brake in case the front cut in.

In other news, when I got home this evening (in the pissing rain) I put the bike up on my ramp and changed the rear drive oil. I gave the bike a quick once over and checked out the front brake pads with my little torch and the buggers still haven't worn out. The bike has nearly 29,000 miles on it now and they are the same ones from new. I think I'll take the calipers off tomorrow and give the pistons a clean and coat them in gloop now we are hopefully the right side of winter. Might as well do the back one at the same time, that is on its second set of pads, although they are still relatively new and have only done 14,000 miles. First MOT in September, it's been nice not worrying about sorting that for the last few years.

Just got back from the funeral of my friend Jackie. If anyone is old enough to remember when the Rusty Sprocket rally was on and Cupid I think it was, organised some off roading at the same time, she was the girl who ended up in casualty with broken ribs. I was safely tucked up in my hospital bed on the stroke ward at the time and so missed the rally and the off roading. I've known Jackie since about 1990 when she leapt off the pavement at a set of traffic lights I was sat at on my bike and she handed me a flyer for her bike club's Christmas Party. They did the last ever party this year, the 40th one as well, she'd helped organise nearly every one apart from once when she was on the operating table having a large section of bowel removed. Her bike club went to a lot of the same rallies as my bike club and later she joined the TRF as well and so we went trail riding together many times and she beat me in the Cambrian Rally once. She got breast cancer in 2010, fought it off, got it back again, fought it off, then bowel cancer and we thought she'd fought that off as well, but she was told at Christmas that it had spread and there was no more they could do. In October last year she saw me struggling at the GPO rally with my tent, trying to put it up in a hurricane. She held the middle of the tent up whilst I and a few others frantically tried to put the pegs in and pull it tight. She turned up in the rally tent with her husband Shaun and the rest of her club all wearing bacofoil 1980 style tracksuits, leaping about like a mad thing. When I and two others were being threatened with a lawsuit for trespass in Hertfordshire in about 2000, we didn't know if the TRF would fund our case and we faced having to sell homes if we went to court (50k costs in the end, reduced from 70). She actually offered us her savings to help out. Apart from her crash whilst trail riding in Wales, she also managed to crash a bike in Germany whilst riding at 120mph, came out almost unscathed from that. That was mentioned at the funeral, her parents, who are still alive have never been told how fast she was going. She was only 61 when she passed away.

A nice satisfying noise when he hits it. The speed he was going whilst obviously not paying attention, he's lucky he has broken a few ribs and sternum rather than killing a pensioner or small child who got in his way.

Beige slacks at 11 O'Clock, are you at that age yet where they seem a good idea?

You should form a club. A club tie would be good, no, actually a club truss would be better.

It's a result of all that super tight flared jean wearing in the 70s. Your groins never gained the strength to hold your internal jibbly bits in as previous generations did. When all the pensioners switched to the elasticated tracksuit bottoms something was bound to give. That'll be 20 Euros for my medical diagnosis, you can claim that back on your medical insurance.

My ex father in law had a double hernia and had the mesh treatments, worked a treat for him. They would only do one side at a time, so he had to go in twice. I recall ringing him on his mobile when he was working and was still waiting for a date for the first operation. He sounded a bit breathless and it turned out I had rung him when he was half way up some stairs dragging a cast iron bath tub up them. Tough bugger he is.

I've ordered one after reading this thread. I think I'm going to have to add crocodile clips to it when I get it. Removing battery cables is a pain on the ST12 and the fuse on the electrical socket on my bike will probably blow if I plug something like this in to it. I have been taking a foot pump away with me and it weighs a bit/takes up room, although I have the air cartridges with me, they are a pain to use and if you balls it up you are stuck.

Show some respect........That's his daughter in law you're talking about there.

That's it, cheer me up! My best one was when I was on 10 points and got pulled for 36 in a 30, this would be about 1985. I was due a 6 month ban under the totting rules. Paid my fine sent my licence off. Three months later I got what I thought was a fancy receipt. Turned out it was a Bank of England cheque. It was my fine returned. My licence came back a few weeks after that with a letter saying they'd cocked up and would not be proceeding. I didn't get any more point after that till 2015.

Yes, but only if you are not stopped and cautioned.