SV-Wolf's Bike Blog
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blues2cruise
- Moderator
- Posts: 10184
- Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:28 pm
- Sex: Female
- Years Riding: 16
- My Motorcycle: 2017 Africa Twin 1000cc
- Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
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sv-wolf
- Site Supporter - Platinum
- Posts: 2278
- Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2003 2:06 am
- Real Name: Richard
- Sex: Male
- Years Riding: 12
- My Motorcycle: Honda Fireblade, 2004: Suzuki DR650, 201
- Location: Hertfordshire, UK
I learned something this week. I learned how small a thing it can be that my happiness depends on.
It was the end of the day. I'd left the office by the main entrance and was trotting round to the couryard at the back of the building where I'd parked the SV. As I passed the barrier and saw the bike standing there alone I was filled with a kind of admiration. I began to think happily of the ride home, of supper and of the relaxing evening I had planned for myself. Crossing the courtyard, I unzipped my trouser pocket and felt inside for my bike keys. Bugger! They weren't there. My first though was that I must have left them on my desk.
But back in the office I soon discovered that they weren’t on my desk. Neither were they in it, and they weren't under it either. They weren’t in the meeting room where I'd spent a good part of the afternoon, or in the toilet (where I have a habit of leaving things) or lying in the corridors. In fact, they weren’t anywhere. Bugger! Bugger! Bugger! I started to think that I must have dropped them outside in the street when I came back to the office after lunch. I didn't want to think that but it was beginning to seem rather likely. On my way out of the building, I gave a description of my keys to the security guard, moaned bitterly to a departing colleague, and supressed the desire to kick something. Five minutes later, I had scoured the area round the building. Ten minutes after that and I was rifling through a huge box of lost vehicle keys at the nearby police station. Nothing!
As I walked back towards the town centre (stubbornly refusing to use the underpass and nearly getting mown down by a speeding motorist) I began to admit to myself that the chances of finding them now were not good. I would have to leave the bike in the courtard and catch a train home. Buggeration! I’d been avoiding that thought. A man without a bike, in my view, is like Poor Tom on the stormy Heath in Act 3 of King Lear - a poor forked creature with nothing to define him and barely able to call himself human.
A bike that is ridden every day is an intimate beast. It's engine note works its way into your arms and legs; it gets into your head. It conditions the way you walk and think and how your nerves and muscles act and react. After years of riding on two wheels, alert to every shift and movement of the bike, I am no longer designed to sit calmly on a train, or programmed to travel passively from A to B with my fellow human beings. With those realisations revolving sadly round my head, I tramped towards the station. To tell the truth, I was having difficulty leaving. I couldn't quite give up the idea that I might still find my keys if I looked a little harder. And I was wholly unhappy about abandoning the bike in the courtyard. That felt like a bereavment, a severance. I had to summon up every bit of common sense and willpower to march myself away from the office and towards the station.
As I walked, I thought about the predicament I now found myself in. And the more I thought about it, the worse my situation appeared to be. For one thing, I didn’t have any spare keys. They’d been nicked or lost at a rally a couple of years ago when my rucksack mysteriously disappeared. The key numbers were written down in my Suzuki service record book and that had been in the rucksack too. Attached to the set I'd just lost was my only surviving alarm fob. So the SV was now not only un-startable, but immobilised as well.
And that wasn't all: several years ago, I'd had the ignition barrel, replaced after it had jammed. Since then, I have one key to fire up the SV, and another to open the tank and the tail. Getting all this sorted was going to cost, I realised. Pound signs span dizzily round my head and the resulting dismay thudded down uncomfortably into my gut. I was still recovering from a huge (mostly bike-related) financial shock. Only a few weeks previously I'd had to fork out nearly £2,000. Thoughts of straws and camels went through my head and several other unpleasant things besides.
I also fretted about security. The more I imagined the SV standing in the courtyard overnight in full view of the road, the more I catastrophised. The courtyard is directly opposite and visible from the county court. Customers of Her Majesty's justice system would not be arriving till tomorrow morning, of course, but the mere proximity of the building put ideas into my head and made me feel uneasy.
An image took hold of coming back to Stevenage with a lock and chain and attaching the SV to the courtyard railings. I groaned audibly. I'd already given up on the idea of a relaxed supper and a pleasant evening watching a couple of videos with a mate. Now I was looking forward to an evening standing on draughty stations and rattling up and down the line in dusty carriages. So miserable an idea was this that I was almost relieved (no, I was relieved) to recall that my lock keys were on the key ring I had just lost. So that was that! The SV would have to take her chances as she was.
If something like this had happened under more normal circumstances, I would have got pissed off for a couple of hours, and then felt stressed and wretched. I would have shouted, wailed inwardly, been rude to someone for trying to be helpful, then calmed down. After that, I would have started - glumly - working out what I was going to do.
As it happened, though, I wasn’t in a ‘normal’ state of mind. I’d had a couple of bad months which had left me permanently stressed. So, instead of sounding off, I ruminated silently and pointlessly. I fretted all throughout that evening and then right on through a sleepless night. The next morning, bleary eyed and not entirely rational, I prepared for work, still chewing up the same old sweaty thoughts. I nagged myself on the train, and began to entertain a hot sensation in my belly which felt like a really bad meal that wouldn’t lie down. As I climbed the office stairs, half unable to believe what had happened, half silently complaining that it had, I became increasingly irritable at the thought of having to work.
As I came through the door to the first floor I saw Ann, seated in front of her PC. I've known Ann for years. She's a lovely person, prone to worry incessantly, usually about others. She looked up as I came in and called out my name.
“Have you lost anything?” she asked, holding up something that looked suspiciously like a bunch of keys. “You left them on my desk, yesterday. I've been trying to ring you.”
***********************************************************
This morning, going into work, the roads were exceptionally clear and I was able to haul the SV right over on several of the roundabouts. Yay! I also had a truly great motorcycling moment on the tight S-bend on the way into town. It was a good ride. Ten minutes later, though, as I parked the SV in the courtyard, and made for the main entrance, my fifteen minutes of exhilaration slumped and I started feeling more than ordinarily flat and low. The problem was this: there were no longer any little dramas in my life to raise the stakes and prevent me getting bored. Funny that!
I’ve just noticed it is two months since my last blog entry. I can’t believe it is that long. I've been having a bad time. One evening after getting home from work, I sat down and cried and realised I was getting seriously depressed. I cried about Dave getting crushed by his bike. I cried about Di dying on me and the fact that it had seriously broken my health. I cried about losing my dog, Loki. I cried because all the medical tests they were doing on me kept going wrong and they couldn’t tell me whether I had prostate cancer or not – or something worse. I cried because I was shaken up by the bike accident I’d had a few weeks before and because it had been partly my fault. I cried because I thought I was going to lose my job and because for the first time in a long time I was struggling financially. I cried, because I was beginning to understand how completely exhausted I'd been when I went to India last year and how far my having to abandon the trip had brought me down. I cried for all sorts of silly, stupid things that had piled up on top of one another over the last few years and had suddenly become all too much. Suddenly, there was a whole herd of camels in my head and a helluva lot of straw.
For several months after that, I went to work, got home, cooked a meal and went to bed. I knuckled down to the depression and tried to ride it out. A step at a time. I lost interest in everything. Nothing seemed to matter any more, even the bikes. I didn’t care whether I rode them or not. I didn't care if I got up in the morning. I slept for hours every day and still felt tired.
Here’s a joke: what does an Ulsterman do when he sees the light at the end of the tunnel? Answer: he orders another tunnel. Ha! Ha! Well, it’s funny if you have a bleakly ironic sense of humour and come form Northern Ireland, I guess. My foster daughter who lives in Belfast told ime this joke years ago, soon after the 'peace process' had begun, and now, years later, here it was going through my head over and over, like a broken record. Well, I'm not an Ulsterman, and I was damn sure I wasn’t going to order another tunnel - I’m not into self-destruction, even when things are looking less than perfectly sunny - but, though I kept looking for it, the light at the end of tunnel was a long while in coming.
I’ve always thought I was pretty resilient emotionally and never thought I would find myself in this state. But you can never tell. When something like this comes along, it comes, and you just have to let the knot untie itself in its own way. I’m feeling a helluva lot perkier now. I didn't lose my job and as it turns out, physically at any rate, I'm a pretty healthy bunny. I still get tired easily and sleep a lot but I don't feel quite so lousy. I hope that means I'm on the way out of it. Maybe it was even necessary - a step on the journey. I tend to think these things often are.
When I lost the keys to the SV last week I felt utterly crap inside – I got instant bike withdrawal symptoms. Big time! I take that as a very good sign that things are returning to normal.
It was the end of the day. I'd left the office by the main entrance and was trotting round to the couryard at the back of the building where I'd parked the SV. As I passed the barrier and saw the bike standing there alone I was filled with a kind of admiration. I began to think happily of the ride home, of supper and of the relaxing evening I had planned for myself. Crossing the courtyard, I unzipped my trouser pocket and felt inside for my bike keys. Bugger! They weren't there. My first though was that I must have left them on my desk.
But back in the office I soon discovered that they weren’t on my desk. Neither were they in it, and they weren't under it either. They weren’t in the meeting room where I'd spent a good part of the afternoon, or in the toilet (where I have a habit of leaving things) or lying in the corridors. In fact, they weren’t anywhere. Bugger! Bugger! Bugger! I started to think that I must have dropped them outside in the street when I came back to the office after lunch. I didn't want to think that but it was beginning to seem rather likely. On my way out of the building, I gave a description of my keys to the security guard, moaned bitterly to a departing colleague, and supressed the desire to kick something. Five minutes later, I had scoured the area round the building. Ten minutes after that and I was rifling through a huge box of lost vehicle keys at the nearby police station. Nothing!
As I walked back towards the town centre (stubbornly refusing to use the underpass and nearly getting mown down by a speeding motorist) I began to admit to myself that the chances of finding them now were not good. I would have to leave the bike in the courtard and catch a train home. Buggeration! I’d been avoiding that thought. A man without a bike, in my view, is like Poor Tom on the stormy Heath in Act 3 of King Lear - a poor forked creature with nothing to define him and barely able to call himself human.
A bike that is ridden every day is an intimate beast. It's engine note works its way into your arms and legs; it gets into your head. It conditions the way you walk and think and how your nerves and muscles act and react. After years of riding on two wheels, alert to every shift and movement of the bike, I am no longer designed to sit calmly on a train, or programmed to travel passively from A to B with my fellow human beings. With those realisations revolving sadly round my head, I tramped towards the station. To tell the truth, I was having difficulty leaving. I couldn't quite give up the idea that I might still find my keys if I looked a little harder. And I was wholly unhappy about abandoning the bike in the courtyard. That felt like a bereavment, a severance. I had to summon up every bit of common sense and willpower to march myself away from the office and towards the station.
As I walked, I thought about the predicament I now found myself in. And the more I thought about it, the worse my situation appeared to be. For one thing, I didn’t have any spare keys. They’d been nicked or lost at a rally a couple of years ago when my rucksack mysteriously disappeared. The key numbers were written down in my Suzuki service record book and that had been in the rucksack too. Attached to the set I'd just lost was my only surviving alarm fob. So the SV was now not only un-startable, but immobilised as well.
And that wasn't all: several years ago, I'd had the ignition barrel, replaced after it had jammed. Since then, I have one key to fire up the SV, and another to open the tank and the tail. Getting all this sorted was going to cost, I realised. Pound signs span dizzily round my head and the resulting dismay thudded down uncomfortably into my gut. I was still recovering from a huge (mostly bike-related) financial shock. Only a few weeks previously I'd had to fork out nearly £2,000. Thoughts of straws and camels went through my head and several other unpleasant things besides.
I also fretted about security. The more I imagined the SV standing in the courtyard overnight in full view of the road, the more I catastrophised. The courtyard is directly opposite and visible from the county court. Customers of Her Majesty's justice system would not be arriving till tomorrow morning, of course, but the mere proximity of the building put ideas into my head and made me feel uneasy.
An image took hold of coming back to Stevenage with a lock and chain and attaching the SV to the courtyard railings. I groaned audibly. I'd already given up on the idea of a relaxed supper and a pleasant evening watching a couple of videos with a mate. Now I was looking forward to an evening standing on draughty stations and rattling up and down the line in dusty carriages. So miserable an idea was this that I was almost relieved (no, I was relieved) to recall that my lock keys were on the key ring I had just lost. So that was that! The SV would have to take her chances as she was.
If something like this had happened under more normal circumstances, I would have got pissed off for a couple of hours, and then felt stressed and wretched. I would have shouted, wailed inwardly, been rude to someone for trying to be helpful, then calmed down. After that, I would have started - glumly - working out what I was going to do.
As it happened, though, I wasn’t in a ‘normal’ state of mind. I’d had a couple of bad months which had left me permanently stressed. So, instead of sounding off, I ruminated silently and pointlessly. I fretted all throughout that evening and then right on through a sleepless night. The next morning, bleary eyed and not entirely rational, I prepared for work, still chewing up the same old sweaty thoughts. I nagged myself on the train, and began to entertain a hot sensation in my belly which felt like a really bad meal that wouldn’t lie down. As I climbed the office stairs, half unable to believe what had happened, half silently complaining that it had, I became increasingly irritable at the thought of having to work.
As I came through the door to the first floor I saw Ann, seated in front of her PC. I've known Ann for years. She's a lovely person, prone to worry incessantly, usually about others. She looked up as I came in and called out my name.
“Have you lost anything?” she asked, holding up something that looked suspiciously like a bunch of keys. “You left them on my desk, yesterday. I've been trying to ring you.”
***********************************************************
This morning, going into work, the roads were exceptionally clear and I was able to haul the SV right over on several of the roundabouts. Yay! I also had a truly great motorcycling moment on the tight S-bend on the way into town. It was a good ride. Ten minutes later, though, as I parked the SV in the courtyard, and made for the main entrance, my fifteen minutes of exhilaration slumped and I started feeling more than ordinarily flat and low. The problem was this: there were no longer any little dramas in my life to raise the stakes and prevent me getting bored. Funny that!
I’ve just noticed it is two months since my last blog entry. I can’t believe it is that long. I've been having a bad time. One evening after getting home from work, I sat down and cried and realised I was getting seriously depressed. I cried about Dave getting crushed by his bike. I cried about Di dying on me and the fact that it had seriously broken my health. I cried about losing my dog, Loki. I cried because all the medical tests they were doing on me kept going wrong and they couldn’t tell me whether I had prostate cancer or not – or something worse. I cried because I was shaken up by the bike accident I’d had a few weeks before and because it had been partly my fault. I cried because I thought I was going to lose my job and because for the first time in a long time I was struggling financially. I cried, because I was beginning to understand how completely exhausted I'd been when I went to India last year and how far my having to abandon the trip had brought me down. I cried for all sorts of silly, stupid things that had piled up on top of one another over the last few years and had suddenly become all too much. Suddenly, there was a whole herd of camels in my head and a helluva lot of straw.
For several months after that, I went to work, got home, cooked a meal and went to bed. I knuckled down to the depression and tried to ride it out. A step at a time. I lost interest in everything. Nothing seemed to matter any more, even the bikes. I didn’t care whether I rode them or not. I didn't care if I got up in the morning. I slept for hours every day and still felt tired.
Here’s a joke: what does an Ulsterman do when he sees the light at the end of the tunnel? Answer: he orders another tunnel. Ha! Ha! Well, it’s funny if you have a bleakly ironic sense of humour and come form Northern Ireland, I guess. My foster daughter who lives in Belfast told ime this joke years ago, soon after the 'peace process' had begun, and now, years later, here it was going through my head over and over, like a broken record. Well, I'm not an Ulsterman, and I was damn sure I wasn’t going to order another tunnel - I’m not into self-destruction, even when things are looking less than perfectly sunny - but, though I kept looking for it, the light at the end of tunnel was a long while in coming.
I’ve always thought I was pretty resilient emotionally and never thought I would find myself in this state. But you can never tell. When something like this comes along, it comes, and you just have to let the knot untie itself in its own way. I’m feeling a helluva lot perkier now. I didn't lose my job and as it turns out, physically at any rate, I'm a pretty healthy bunny. I still get tired easily and sleep a lot but I don't feel quite so lousy. I hope that means I'm on the way out of it. Maybe it was even necessary - a step on the journey. I tend to think these things often are.
When I lost the keys to the SV last week I felt utterly crap inside – I got instant bike withdrawal symptoms. Big time! I take that as a very good sign that things are returning to normal.
Last edited by sv-wolf on Wed Oct 21, 2009 3:31 am, edited 2 times in total.
Hud
“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
SV-Wolf's Bike Blog
“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
SV-Wolf's Bike Blog
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blues2cruise
- Moderator
- Posts: 10184
- Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:28 pm
- Sex: Female
- Years Riding: 16
- My Motorcycle: 2017 Africa Twin 1000cc
- Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
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noodlenoggin
- Legendary 300
- Posts: 415
- Joined: Mon Jul 17, 2006 2:08 am
- Sex: Male
- My Motorcycle: 1995 Ford Thunderbird =-(
- Location: Lithia, FL
Wow. I'm sorry to hear you had to go through a time like that, but glad to hear that the major things (job, bike, health) are all good now.
Isn't that the way things like your keys always go? Something seemingly minor happens...and it's like the little stick holding back the rockslide. We worry, and worry, and worry ourselves sick over it -- and then something happens to *poof* make it go away.
Anyway, good to hear from you.
Isn't that the way things like your keys always go? Something seemingly minor happens...and it's like the little stick holding back the rockslide. We worry, and worry, and worry ourselves sick over it -- and then something happens to *poof* make it go away.
Anyway, good to hear from you.
1979 XS650F -- "Hi, My name's Nick, and I'm a Motorcyclist. I've been dry for four years." (Everybody: "Hi, Nick.")
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blues2cruise
- Moderator
- Posts: 10184
- Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:28 pm
- Sex: Female
- Years Riding: 16
- My Motorcycle: 2017 Africa Twin 1000cc
- Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
Something to make you laugh.....The British have some humour in them..... 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_lXqMmevog
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_lXqMmevog
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bandit600
- Elite
- Posts: 128
- Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2007 3:08 am
- Real Name: Niroop
- Sex: Male
- Years Riding: 10
- Location: Northern VA / DC
Wolf,
Glad to see another SV1000 on the forum, especially one with so many miles on the odometer. After reading your congrats on getting my SV1000 I stumbled upon your blog. At first I was reading it to learn more about your experiences with the SV but the way you write it's like a wonderful window into your life and I couldn't help but get sucked in to everything.
I'm a rather impatient person so I made it to about the end of 2006 before I started skipping ahead but in the past 2 hours of reading I've laughed, smiled, shed a tear and turned a full circle back to laughing and smiling.
Having only read your blog you truly are an amazing person. Hope you're doing great and finding the happiness you deserve. You certainly have a loyal following for your blog and now you have one more
PS - I didn't read if you ever resolved the electrical issues with the SV but I hope you have replaced your ignition circuit harness with one that is properly rated for the current draw it will experience (suzuki's folly that they refuse to acknowledge). This is referred to by other SV'ers as the dreaded "green connector issue".
PPS - Is your rattle all sorted out, any words of advice regarding it, you are not the only SV'er to experience it based on the sv-portal forum...
Glad to see another SV1000 on the forum, especially one with so many miles on the odometer. After reading your congrats on getting my SV1000 I stumbled upon your blog. At first I was reading it to learn more about your experiences with the SV but the way you write it's like a wonderful window into your life and I couldn't help but get sucked in to everything.
I'm a rather impatient person so I made it to about the end of 2006 before I started skipping ahead but in the past 2 hours of reading I've laughed, smiled, shed a tear and turned a full circle back to laughing and smiling.
Having only read your blog you truly are an amazing person. Hope you're doing great and finding the happiness you deserve. You certainly have a loyal following for your blog and now you have one more
PS - I didn't read if you ever resolved the electrical issues with the SV but I hope you have replaced your ignition circuit harness with one that is properly rated for the current draw it will experience (suzuki's folly that they refuse to acknowledge). This is referred to by other SV'ers as the dreaded "green connector issue".
PPS - Is your rattle all sorted out, any words of advice regarding it, you are not the only SV'er to experience it based on the sv-portal forum...
2003 Suzuki SV1000S
1999 600cc Suzuki Bandit - SOLD
1999 600cc Suzuki Bandit - SOLD
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sv-wolf
- Site Supporter - Platinum
- Posts: 2278
- Joined: Sat Dec 13, 2003 2:06 am
- Real Name: Richard
- Sex: Male
- Years Riding: 12
- My Motorcycle: Honda Fireblade, 2004: Suzuki DR650, 201
- Location: Hertfordshire, UK
Hi bandit
Good to hear from you. And thanks for the complimentary remarks.
I've just opened up the forum to paste in this latest blog. I'll reply to your post shortly.
Cheers
Hud
.........................................................................................................
Tuesday 26 October
I’ve come down here into the cellar to do some blogging and get something off my chest.
Not one hour ago, I was in the kitchen cooking myself a chicken curry. To keep myself company I switched on the radio to hear a typically smooth Radio 4 presenter hustling me into a hospital operating theatre where an anonymous man was being treated for swine flu. In the background cool professional voices gave clipped instructions to one another. There were graphic creaks and chinking noises suggesting heavy medical equipment being moved around and metal instruments being tossed into kidney bowls.
I chopped carrots and stirred lots of turmeric into the curry (I love turmeric) while the presenter gave me a stomach-churning, blow-by-blow account of the surgical intervention required by this unfortunate victim of the 'pandemic'. As talk continued of cannulas and incisions I started to feel increasingly grumpy.
(:mad2:)
I am aware that in a few cases swine flu can have serious or fatal consequences. But so can almost any disease – in a few cases. Why is Her Majesty’s most benign and thoughtful Government constantly trying to terrify me into submission? The number of very graphic and government-orchestrated health scares in recent years has been ridiculous.
(:humm:)
I also note that I have never heard a smooth-talking Radio 4 presenter talk me through the surgical intervention required by someone who had sustained injuries in the Iraq war. But that’s not surprising, is it? I’m supposed to think that the Iraq invasion was a necessary, even good, thing, aren’t I? And I am not supposed to harbour nasty images about it. Iraq – GOOD – cheers and hurrah. Swine flu – BAD – OMG – must get my vaccination. It’s such a simple equation – and shockingly effective. (:shock: )
[Stick with me; normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.]
But what has all this to do with bikes? Quite a lot, actually, in a tangential, negative sort of way! Well, OK, not a lot, but a bit.
I’ve been on annual leave since the beginning of last week, and have spent most of it at home nursing a bad dose of flu and feeling sorry for myself. (Was it swine flu? I’ve no idea. It had all the right symptoms for swine flu, but if that’s what it was then it was not measurably different from any other kind of flu I’ve ever had). The significance of it on this occasion was that it has prevented me from taking a biking holiday in the West Country.
The plan was to ride west, visit some friends on Dartmoor, check out the Eden Project and do some coastal walking. The reality has been shivering limbs, hot and cold flushes, meepishness and bad temper. I have to be at home here on this coming Saturday to take the Daytona over to the dealers in Letchworth for its MOT. It is now Tuesday so I am currently nursing the last whisper of flu in the hope that I will be fit enough to ride tomorrow and get four days of my two week holiday in the Cornish sun (or rain or anything that doesn’t happen to be falling on Hertfordshire.)
Quite a lot of bike related things have happened recently. Here’s a brief roundup
I took the SV in for its yearly MOT. I expected a bill for about £60 and ended up paying £460 for the dealers to replace two fork seals, change a rear tyre, check the hydraulics and do a whole lot of other bits of work on her before I could ride her home again.
Because the small accident I had a few months ago was the second claim in two years, my insurance went through the roof, nearly doubling to over £1,000 for the two bikes.
My next door neighbour called round one day and asked if I wanted to sell the Hyosung. I thought, ‘this is easy,’ said yes and came to an agreement with him. He paid me and all looked well and good. I’d buried the V5 form somewhere in my paperwork and had to spend a couple of days looking for it. Eventually, having sifted through every drawer, file, folder, box, pile, and forgotten heap in my small but remarkably paper-filled house, I found it, and took it round next door to get his signature. He wasn’t at home. And he continued to be not-at-home whenever I called throughout the next couple of weeks. At one point I managed to get hold of his girlfriend and left a message with her for him to contact me, but nothing further came of it. Finally, I discovered from his landlord that he had disappeared suddenly and without leaving a forwarding address (The implication being that he had done a moonlight).
Word on the street has it that he and his girlfriend had a huge falling out row, and he is now living in a travellers camp somewhere in the north of the county.
As the V5 has not been signed and he failed to tax the bike or SORN it when the date fell due, the DVLA has now issued me with a penalty fine of £35. I am hopping mad, and will not tell you what I have imagined doing to him if I ever find him.
.....................................................................X <--- My ex-neighbour
Though I've not been able to track him down (bastrd!), there has been a curious postscript to the story. While we were negotiating on the sale of the bike, he told me that he was buying it for his son and that his son worked for a local bike dealer. He spoke with some warmth as he told me this, but I was pretty sure that he was spinning me a line. I thought he was using this tale of paternal love to soften me up so that I would give him a better price on the bike. He was obviously a bit of a wheeler dealer, and was very familiar with buying and selling motorcycles. I noted it but didn't think any more about it at the time.
Once he had disappeared, though, and I had got the penalty letter from the DVLA, I remembered this comment and took a walk down to the local dealers he had mentioned. By chance, it was where I had bought the Hyosung in the first place. I knew the owner a little and thought that if he had any information about my ex-neighbour or his son, he would tell me. Mostly though, I expected him to hear him say that he had never heard of either of them and that the story was a complete fabrication. As it turned out, it wasn't a fabrication - not completely. Yes, the dealer knew my neighbour pretty well, and yes his youngster had worked for him several years previously - but that was before the boy was killed in a bike smash.
I find it pretty weird that a father should spin a story about his son in those circumstances. But I get the feeling that he wasn't being entirely mercenary. Remembering the look on his face at the time, I suspect that in some sequestered part of his mind there might just have been some imagined truth in what he was telling me. I would not have understood this before I lost Di. Her death taught me that truth and longing often get mixed up in the mind in the most obscure and subtle ways.
That doesn't change anything, though. I'd still like to punch the daylights out of him!
The Daytona’s alarm is giving a triple beep every time I turn off the ignition. According to the manual this means that the bike is overcharging. I stuck a meter on the battery and revved her a little but couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. To make sure I was not about to fry some vital component, though, I took her up to see Dave and Straight-Line Bob one Saturday morning at their workshop at Meppershall, a village some twenty miles from here. Bob looked her over for me and told me she was fine.
“Forget about it”, he said. It's probably just the alarm. I’m trying to follow this no-doubt excellent advice, but with the Daytona’s history, it isn’t easy.
Nobody can pin down the cause of the knocking sound on the Daytona which has been growing over the last couple of months, and from its periodicity can only be coming from the chain.
I spent a great weekend at the ‘Tail-Ender,’ the September BMF show in Peterborough. The Tail-Ender is so called because it is always held at what is supposed to be the end of the riding season when the rains and cold weather begin to settle in. (End of season? What’s that? Wusses! OK, I know I can be a smug bastrd, sometimes.)
Still nursing my wounds over the cost of my insurance and the MOT work, I didn’t buy anything at the show - at least not at first. And as the two days of the show drifted by in a pleasantly cider-induced haze, I continued not to buy anything. In fact, I continued not to buy anything right up until the last moment, when I bought something. I bought another jacket, which looked good on me and was a real bargain at £50. As I already have enough bike jackets to last me several lifetimes, and I haven’t worn this one since I bought it, it has matured rapidly into an abysmal and unloved object that is merely cluttering up my small house. Ho Hum!
Top of the bill at the ‘Tail-Ender’ concert this year was Alvin Stardust. Grief! Does anyone remember HIM. Now, that was a blast from the past. As it turned out, he was surprisingly good and did some great rock 'n roll numbers. But, if he was entertaining, he was too controlled a performer ever to set the joint alight.
Apart from a couple of rideouts with the club, several solo rides, a couple of trips down to Kent or into London, and a number of pub clubnights, that’s it. Pretty boring really. Heh, heh, heh!
Good to hear from you. And thanks for the complimentary remarks.
I've just opened up the forum to paste in this latest blog. I'll reply to your post shortly.
Cheers
Hud
.........................................................................................................
Tuesday 26 October
I’ve come down here into the cellar to do some blogging and get something off my chest.
Not one hour ago, I was in the kitchen cooking myself a chicken curry. To keep myself company I switched on the radio to hear a typically smooth Radio 4 presenter hustling me into a hospital operating theatre where an anonymous man was being treated for swine flu. In the background cool professional voices gave clipped instructions to one another. There were graphic creaks and chinking noises suggesting heavy medical equipment being moved around and metal instruments being tossed into kidney bowls.
I chopped carrots and stirred lots of turmeric into the curry (I love turmeric) while the presenter gave me a stomach-churning, blow-by-blow account of the surgical intervention required by this unfortunate victim of the 'pandemic'. As talk continued of cannulas and incisions I started to feel increasingly grumpy.
(:mad2:)
I am aware that in a few cases swine flu can have serious or fatal consequences. But so can almost any disease – in a few cases. Why is Her Majesty’s most benign and thoughtful Government constantly trying to terrify me into submission? The number of very graphic and government-orchestrated health scares in recent years has been ridiculous.
(:humm:)
I also note that I have never heard a smooth-talking Radio 4 presenter talk me through the surgical intervention required by someone who had sustained injuries in the Iraq war. But that’s not surprising, is it? I’m supposed to think that the Iraq invasion was a necessary, even good, thing, aren’t I? And I am not supposed to harbour nasty images about it. Iraq – GOOD – cheers and hurrah. Swine flu – BAD – OMG – must get my vaccination. It’s such a simple equation – and shockingly effective. (:shock: )
[Stick with me; normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.]
But what has all this to do with bikes? Quite a lot, actually, in a tangential, negative sort of way! Well, OK, not a lot, but a bit.
I’ve been on annual leave since the beginning of last week, and have spent most of it at home nursing a bad dose of flu and feeling sorry for myself. (Was it swine flu? I’ve no idea. It had all the right symptoms for swine flu, but if that’s what it was then it was not measurably different from any other kind of flu I’ve ever had). The significance of it on this occasion was that it has prevented me from taking a biking holiday in the West Country.
The plan was to ride west, visit some friends on Dartmoor, check out the Eden Project and do some coastal walking. The reality has been shivering limbs, hot and cold flushes, meepishness and bad temper. I have to be at home here on this coming Saturday to take the Daytona over to the dealers in Letchworth for its MOT. It is now Tuesday so I am currently nursing the last whisper of flu in the hope that I will be fit enough to ride tomorrow and get four days of my two week holiday in the Cornish sun (or rain or anything that doesn’t happen to be falling on Hertfordshire.)
Quite a lot of bike related things have happened recently. Here’s a brief roundup
I took the SV in for its yearly MOT. I expected a bill for about £60 and ended up paying £460 for the dealers to replace two fork seals, change a rear tyre, check the hydraulics and do a whole lot of other bits of work on her before I could ride her home again.
Because the small accident I had a few months ago was the second claim in two years, my insurance went through the roof, nearly doubling to over £1,000 for the two bikes.
My next door neighbour called round one day and asked if I wanted to sell the Hyosung. I thought, ‘this is easy,’ said yes and came to an agreement with him. He paid me and all looked well and good. I’d buried the V5 form somewhere in my paperwork and had to spend a couple of days looking for it. Eventually, having sifted through every drawer, file, folder, box, pile, and forgotten heap in my small but remarkably paper-filled house, I found it, and took it round next door to get his signature. He wasn’t at home. And he continued to be not-at-home whenever I called throughout the next couple of weeks. At one point I managed to get hold of his girlfriend and left a message with her for him to contact me, but nothing further came of it. Finally, I discovered from his landlord that he had disappeared suddenly and without leaving a forwarding address (The implication being that he had done a moonlight).
Word on the street has it that he and his girlfriend had a huge falling out row, and he is now living in a travellers camp somewhere in the north of the county.
As the V5 has not been signed and he failed to tax the bike or SORN it when the date fell due, the DVLA has now issued me with a penalty fine of £35. I am hopping mad, and will not tell you what I have imagined doing to him if I ever find him.
.....................................................................X <--- My ex-neighbour Though I've not been able to track him down (bastrd!), there has been a curious postscript to the story. While we were negotiating on the sale of the bike, he told me that he was buying it for his son and that his son worked for a local bike dealer. He spoke with some warmth as he told me this, but I was pretty sure that he was spinning me a line. I thought he was using this tale of paternal love to soften me up so that I would give him a better price on the bike. He was obviously a bit of a wheeler dealer, and was very familiar with buying and selling motorcycles. I noted it but didn't think any more about it at the time.
Once he had disappeared, though, and I had got the penalty letter from the DVLA, I remembered this comment and took a walk down to the local dealers he had mentioned. By chance, it was where I had bought the Hyosung in the first place. I knew the owner a little and thought that if he had any information about my ex-neighbour or his son, he would tell me. Mostly though, I expected him to hear him say that he had never heard of either of them and that the story was a complete fabrication. As it turned out, it wasn't a fabrication - not completely. Yes, the dealer knew my neighbour pretty well, and yes his youngster had worked for him several years previously - but that was before the boy was killed in a bike smash.
I find it pretty weird that a father should spin a story about his son in those circumstances. But I get the feeling that he wasn't being entirely mercenary. Remembering the look on his face at the time, I suspect that in some sequestered part of his mind there might just have been some imagined truth in what he was telling me. I would not have understood this before I lost Di. Her death taught me that truth and longing often get mixed up in the mind in the most obscure and subtle ways.
That doesn't change anything, though. I'd still like to punch the daylights out of him!
The Daytona’s alarm is giving a triple beep every time I turn off the ignition. According to the manual this means that the bike is overcharging. I stuck a meter on the battery and revved her a little but couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. To make sure I was not about to fry some vital component, though, I took her up to see Dave and Straight-Line Bob one Saturday morning at their workshop at Meppershall, a village some twenty miles from here. Bob looked her over for me and told me she was fine.
“Forget about it”, he said. It's probably just the alarm. I’m trying to follow this no-doubt excellent advice, but with the Daytona’s history, it isn’t easy.
Nobody can pin down the cause of the knocking sound on the Daytona which has been growing over the last couple of months, and from its periodicity can only be coming from the chain.
I spent a great weekend at the ‘Tail-Ender,’ the September BMF show in Peterborough. The Tail-Ender is so called because it is always held at what is supposed to be the end of the riding season when the rains and cold weather begin to settle in. (End of season? What’s that? Wusses! OK, I know I can be a smug bastrd, sometimes.)
Still nursing my wounds over the cost of my insurance and the MOT work, I didn’t buy anything at the show - at least not at first. And as the two days of the show drifted by in a pleasantly cider-induced haze, I continued not to buy anything. In fact, I continued not to buy anything right up until the last moment, when I bought something. I bought another jacket, which looked good on me and was a real bargain at £50. As I already have enough bike jackets to last me several lifetimes, and I haven’t worn this one since I bought it, it has matured rapidly into an abysmal and unloved object that is merely cluttering up my small house. Ho Hum!
Top of the bill at the ‘Tail-Ender’ concert this year was Alvin Stardust. Grief! Does anyone remember HIM. Now, that was a blast from the past. As it turned out, he was surprisingly good and did some great rock 'n roll numbers. But, if he was entertaining, he was too controlled a performer ever to set the joint alight.
Apart from a couple of rideouts with the club, several solo rides, a couple of trips down to Kent or into London, and a number of pub clubnights, that’s it. Pretty boring really. Heh, heh, heh!
Last edited by sv-wolf on Mon Oct 26, 2009 1:56 pm, edited 5 times in total.
Hud
“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
SV-Wolf's Bike Blog
“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
SV-Wolf's Bike Blog
-
blues2cruise
- Moderator
- Posts: 10184
- Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2005 4:28 pm
- Sex: Female
- Years Riding: 16
- My Motorcycle: 2017 Africa Twin 1000cc
- Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
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sv-wolf
- Site Supporter - Platinum
- Posts: 2278
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- My Motorcycle: Honda Fireblade, 2004: Suzuki DR650, 201
- Location: Hertfordshire, UK
Then I could be truly miserable. (Is that the idea?) LOL.blues2cruise wrote:What can we do to help spice up your existence?
As for the woes with your bikes....shoulda got a cruiser.
Cheers blues.
Hud
“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
SV-Wolf's Bike Blog
“Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
SV-Wolf's Bike Blog