Spent the day bobbin round the Norwegian sector of the north sea!!!! on a seismic survey vessel...........home wednesday for a play on the 1198 though .-)
Today I have mostly been watching MotoGP, picking 2lb of blackcurrants (takes an age - blackcurrants are very small), bicycling 10 miles each way over hill and down dale in 30° heat (tiring) to local Olympic-sized pool for a swim, wasting my time posting inane rubbish on this forum. Now to make the wood BBQ and have a drink. A pretty good day. If I got my guitar out to learn "Israel" by Siouxie and the Banshees, it would be a truly excellent day. It's not over yet!
Epic ride this morning to Cherhill to meet some friends - then back to the garage, carbs out for new emulsion tubes... Old ones were thankfully oval... should stop the bike shaking like a shitting dog accelerating below 3k.
Festival of Speed at Goodwood, fantastic day out, managed to see all the bikes going up the hill and walked up to the rally section at the top, lovely day.
For some reason I never really listened to Bauhaus. Don't know why - probably because I didn't know anyone who did at the time. Big Joy Division and Cure fan, and then I spent a few years mainly listening to Talking Heads. And then it was all reggae for about a decade. Israel is proving fun to play.
My nephew took another big scalp in kickboxing today, beating a bigger, established lad convincingly. Still baffles me though; I had him for a week of work experience and I had to virtually carry him onto site, he's that lazy, but when he gets in the ring he lets rip like you wouldn't believe. We've never had anyone in the family with big sporting aspirations, so it's hard to tell whether to keep him grounded or push him further. But he seems to be doing fine all by himself. I guess all the time he wants it we'll keep cheering him on.
Spent the morning learning to slip the clutch on slow mini roundabouts and right turns. Excellent time, really felt that I learnt something, I was definitely riding better by the end of the lesson.
well today I parted company with my 848, A new job meant it was just gathering dust so I would rather it went to a new home and get used.Im probably going to go get a jap bike as a run around for going to work as not having any bike would kill me. I will get another Duke I am sure but it will have to wait for now.
A friend of mine told me today that he had an off on Saturday riding in t-shirt and shorts. He is now a very scraped and sorry bunny. You expect that aged 20. He is 43. I just knew he was an accident waiting to happen. Fortunately his Monster is less scraped than he is. I'm sorry for him, but really hope he's learned his lesson now. The guy needs to get that out of his system on a track but there aren't any here. Not that that is really an excuse. He needs to save for a weekend then he can throw his Monster away big time. I don't think they should be ridden (the smaller ones) quite as he is trying to ride it. Mind you, throw any bike at a kerb in a built up area and it would suffer much the same fate. I learned what he has now learnt in 1986 so I can afford to be wise after the event - though I've always drawn the line at t-shirt and shorts. Don't do it folks! You never know where that patch of diesel might by hiding! (not that my friend has that mitigating circumstance. He was just riding like a dick, from what I can gather.)
having lost considerable amounts of skin on bicycles, I would never think about riding a motorbike in anything less than full kit. Anyway, today I have been talking to the most excellent Mark Hill, creator of exhaust goodness and purveyor of quiet. He has my zorst and has discovered that one of the reasons why it's so f'kin' loud is that it has no packing. So, with the wadding put back in and some nice little db killers, it's possible that I will be able to ride my bike on track! Mark made some db killers for another bike that took the noise down 6 or 7 db with a loss of 1.5 bhp. An artist! BTW, DesmoDave - aka BenelliDave from theoldplacethatshouldnotbenamed had Mark make some db killers for his Panigale. He was using them at Spa yesterday and no reports of being kicked off the track for failing noise testing.
I too have lost much skin to roads on a push bike. I was fortunate to meet a girl who had come off a scooter on holiday whilst in t-shirt and shorts, she would show anyone the scars and tell them to cover up, her lesson, my learn.