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It's hot work being a werewolf at a disco. Worse than wearing leathers in the summer. Here's a facebook pic someone else took. Not sure if the link is going to work here.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =1&theater

If you can see it, that's magic Mike in the Harry Potter wizard gear on the right and me in the wolf fuzz at the 5 Counties motorcycle club Halloween party.

It was a good evening. But time now to get back to sorting out the Daytona. The oil cooler has sprung a leak. I took the bike to my regular dealer who quoted me £480 for new replacement part. When I checked on the Triumph site, the catalogue item came up at £365. As the dealer will no doubt get a further discount on the catalogue figure, that left me with the strong impression that I was being ripped off. I've since been looking on e-bay to see if I can find a second-hand item. There are a lot around, all going for £30-£40, but they are all for earlier models which have different mountings and pipe arrangements. I'll ring round some of the breakers yards on Monday and see what I can find.

Everyone here is getting ready for gale force winds tomorrow night. We are going to be right in the middle of the storm here in Hitchin. No late night rides tomorrow, I'm thinking. It's probably a good thing that the Daytona is still at the dealers as I don't have a garage to keep it in. I can put one bike in the kitchen out of harms way at times like this, but I don't have room for both.

We don't often get storm-winds in this part of the world, but when we do they cause a lot of damage. And it's very early in the year to get weather like this, which is doubly concerning since the trees here are still in full leaf and under a greater threat from high winds. There are a lot of beautiful old trees in the town and it would be sad to lose any of them - quite apart from any damage they might do if they come down. Of course the meteorological office forecast could be completely wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. But somehow I doubt it. As I walked home from the party in my werewolf gear this evening (apparently scaring the dodo out of a group of young Mormons from the local church) the wind was already beginning to set everything in motion.

Wind started banging the letterbox this afternoon. By 6.00 trees were in motion. Rubbish is rattling down the street. Looks like the Met Office was right. The big wind is due to hit in the early hours of the morning.

The bike looks at home in the kitchen.

Great costumes.

Not a good get-up for dancing in, though, blues!

Bah! The 'storm' turned out to be a big disappointment - a storm in a teacup. There was some local damage. A few chimney pots came down, and a couple of trees fell across the roads. And there was one road accident. All unfortunate, of course, but you would think that even with that low level of damage you would get a little meteorological drama for your money. Apart from a few extra leaves on the road the next morning I saw and heard nothing of it.

I rang 'Sandy' at Triumph-ant, today. Sandy told me that second-hand oil coolers for Triumphs are like gold dust; you can't get them. They are apparently very weak, especially where the pipes enter the 'rad' and eventually they all fail. And they rarely survive a crash, so breakers don't get to sell them. It looks like I'm going to take a deep breath and order a new one from Triumph at £365. I've just spent £600 on the Daytona having the alternator rewound and the rectifier replaced after the electrics blew. No pudding this month! Again!

Do we need to take up a TMW collection and send you a care package?

Okay, as a postal worker and a Facebook idiot, I often get "TRUE" stories and pics sent to me. I was definitely curious as to how true this one is...

LOL. Sorry Doc. This is entirely fictitious. No such places as Erbum or Tillet exist in Hertfordshire. They don't even sound like English place-names. If there really is a Tillett somewhere in England, it would almost certainly be spelled with a double-t at the end. But the real giveaway is this: 'In the sleepy village of Erbum. In the town of Tillet.' English villages are separate communities and they don't exist within towns.

There are, however, plenty of 'stick Inns' [heh, heh, heh, Robocop at work], in Hertfordshire and elsewhere in the country. There's one in Hitchin.

We don't really have 'posties' either. Only postmen or postwomen.

Thanks for the clarity...

LOL. Just re-read my last post, doc. Clearly I was at my wordy and didactic best on that occasion. Sorry bout that!

Hope you are enjoying the ride.

I'm bike-bereaved at the moment. The SV died on me last month. She needs new gaskets on the exhaust, new air box, new rocker, new rocker cover, new forks and half a dozen other things to make her well. It would cost far more than she is worth to fix her up, so she is sitting in my garden enjoying her last few weeks. I've got a dealer who would part exchange her for resale on ebay, spare or repair. Then the Daytona came down on some gravel last week at slow speed. (I was fine - slightly twisted ankle, nothing to speak of.) She has three smashed panels, a hole in her clutch case, a broken gear lever and smashed indicator. The insurance company took her away on Friday. They only pay on repairs under 60% of a bike's value. As she isn't worth much now I expect they will write her off. Heigh Ho. All change.

So I'm looking for a new bike. Two actually: a road bike for regular use and a dual sport for a long distance ride early next year. I'm planning to catch the ferry across to Europe and then ride to Turkey to see some friends and spend several weeks walking and camping along one of the country's long-distance trails. ('Merhaba' - having fun learning some Turkish right now.) If all goes well I'd then hope to ride on to the Caucasus, particularly Georgia, then down on through Iran and into India. I think I will probably have to ship it around Pakistan; it's hard to get visas these days. After India the plan would then be to take another sea trip into South-East Asia, Malaysia and Indonesia. Iran is the place I really want to go if I can get in. It sounds fantastic.

I'm possibly looking at a Gixxer 600 for the fun bike, though I'd prefer a thousand (just like the grunt of bigger bikes). The problem is I'm not a balls-out or track-focused rider and there don't seem to be many good road-oriented 1k sportsbikes around any more. Anyone got any suggestions on that? I'm looking for something that will raise a little adrenalin without killing me, carry some soft luggage and also be reasonably comfortable (or only reasonably uncomfortable) on a longish ride. For the dual-sport, I'm currently looking at a XR650L but I want to get some test rides first. The Honda isn't available here in the UK, so I'd be looking for an American import. Shouldn't be too hard to find, though. They are popular here. Don't know why Honda don't sell them directly.

Oh, and the reason I can now do this long trip is that I am now effectively retired. (I'm slowly getting used to saying those words.) I was made redundant three weeks ago. I'm not yet at retirement age but I'm old enough to make finding another job pretty difficult. Right now, I'm enjoying the exceptional sunshine we're having here, and doing very little - because I can.