Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 12:33 pm
Cheers Doc. Good to hear from you - but the joy was shortlived.
Last night I got back from the club's Monday night pub night (that's a lot of friggin' nights. Is there such a thing as a hangover flashback?) I left the bike outside the house for half a minute, came back, and then found I alsmost ('alsmost' - yep, definitely some kind of hangover!)... I almost couldn't wheel it into the back garden. Flattie! Back tyre as flat as a pancake.
I'd thought the bike was running a bit squiddly on the way home (fast run too.) I guess I should be thankful the tyre didn't go suddenly while I was riding. Now I've got to get the wheel off and figure out how to get it over to Bob's Tyres in Stevenage. Sometimes being a non-driver has its disadvantages.
And I was hoping to have a cheap month this month. Last month I had both bikes serviced. I renewed the insurance on both of them. I retaxed the SV and sent it for its MOT. I had a week's holiday down in Dorset and then another one over in Ireland. My temporarily robust bank account is suddenly looking a bit wilted again.
With the Daytona out of action, I had to ride to work today on the SV. It was the first time I'd ridden it in a week. After getting me down to Dorset then over to the far side of Ireland and back, the SV's non-responding throttle and cutting-out problems have come back. They seem to kick in after the bike has stood unridden for a couple of days. Then, they just as mysteriously sort themselves out again. I've given up caring for now. So long as the bike gets me to work I'm not going to worry. Well, dodo, no. I'm lying. It bothers me like hell!
The truth is, I'm feeling a little bit p1ssed off with bikes generally at the moment. 'Biker's have more fun than people', my T-shirt says, but I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't be much happier living as a person again - well maybe just for a while.
It might have something to do with the fact that I'm feeling dodo this week. That's worrying because I've been planning to ride down to Southern France in a couple of weeks - to the Pyrenees. I've booked time off work from the 21st. But right now, I'm really not feeling like another long journey. I'm not feeling like lugging a lot of camping gear around or of putting up a bloody tent every night. I'm not feeling like living on strange grub for a week when I've had too many allergy attacks recently. The alternative, though, is to carry on working through September. And that idea is next to unendurarable.
What to do?
I could just take some time off, stay at home and go for short rides, I suppose. But what a waste of precious annual leave!!!!
I'm in a dither. I have no idea what to do. And Ron has just emailed me to ask if I'm going down to the Pyrenees as planned. He's down there already and says he'll stay on and wait for me if I am coming. But he needs to know.
Aaaaargh! Decisions! Decisions!
(Can't think about that now. Too difficult. Everything is too difficult.)
But I did have a mad fit of enthusiasm last week and applied for a job as manager of the complementary health centre where I used to work - I'd love to get my teeth into that place. That's what went through my head: 'I'd love to get my teeth into that place.' It has so much potential. I still feel very attached. But then remembered why I left. Woah! Hang on a moment, Dick. What are you getting yourself into, boy? (It's a long and very convoluted story)
Still, that burst of enthusiasm might have kicked my arse into gear and given me the motivation to start looking for another job. I've got to get away from my present work before I suffocate under endless layers of bureacracy - service plans and delivery plans and improvement plans, policies and procedures and service standards, impact assessments, risk assessments, mission statements, aims, objectives, priorities, Key Lines of Enquiry, yearrrgh. I'm identifying with Neo in The Matrix. I'm just waiting for someone to pull the plug on me and flush me down into the sewer. At least there's something inescapably real about a sewer.
I have been getting in some riding though. I went to the Ace Cafe's Brighton Burnout with two mates on Sunday. More bikes went down there than ever this year. The atmosphere was popping but I wasn't in the mood for it. Finding a parking place on the sea front was a nightmare. We were delayed getting down there (the A21 was closed off), delayed getting out of Brighton (a nasty crash - it looked like it was probably fatal for the biker) and delayed getting home (traffic on the M25). All those delays and a lack of attentiveness to the time meant that I missed the church memorial service at home in Hitchin I wanted to go to. Once a year the local church has a special service where they remember all the people in the parish who have recently died. I was kicking myself all the way home. I knew I was going to miss it. I had worked myself in a really foul mood by the time I got back to the house. (I seem to do that a lot these days. It's not normally like me.)
As many of you will know, I'm not at all religious - quite the reverse - but Di was - in her own quirky way, and she valued the sense of community which the local church fostered. So missing the service made me feel like I was letting her down badly. And I was sorry on my own account as well because, though I have very little in common with the people who attend the services, they are a good lot, and I owe some of them a great deal for all the help they gave me when Di was ill.
Fortunately, a friend went and had Di's name added to the list of those to be remembered. I spoke to her later and she told me that the service was all a little bland and lacking in energy or special significance. That made me me feel a bit better because I could imagine Di giggling over it. Beside valuing community, she had a very developed sense of irony and the ridiculous.
I lightened up after that.
Last night I got back from the club's Monday night pub night (that's a lot of friggin' nights. Is there such a thing as a hangover flashback?) I left the bike outside the house for half a minute, came back, and then found I alsmost ('alsmost' - yep, definitely some kind of hangover!)... I almost couldn't wheel it into the back garden. Flattie! Back tyre as flat as a pancake.
I'd thought the bike was running a bit squiddly on the way home (fast run too.) I guess I should be thankful the tyre didn't go suddenly while I was riding. Now I've got to get the wheel off and figure out how to get it over to Bob's Tyres in Stevenage. Sometimes being a non-driver has its disadvantages.
And I was hoping to have a cheap month this month. Last month I had both bikes serviced. I renewed the insurance on both of them. I retaxed the SV and sent it for its MOT. I had a week's holiday down in Dorset and then another one over in Ireland. My temporarily robust bank account is suddenly looking a bit wilted again.
With the Daytona out of action, I had to ride to work today on the SV. It was the first time I'd ridden it in a week. After getting me down to Dorset then over to the far side of Ireland and back, the SV's non-responding throttle and cutting-out problems have come back. They seem to kick in after the bike has stood unridden for a couple of days. Then, they just as mysteriously sort themselves out again. I've given up caring for now. So long as the bike gets me to work I'm not going to worry. Well, dodo, no. I'm lying. It bothers me like hell!
The truth is, I'm feeling a little bit p1ssed off with bikes generally at the moment. 'Biker's have more fun than people', my T-shirt says, but I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't be much happier living as a person again - well maybe just for a while.
It might have something to do with the fact that I'm feeling dodo this week. That's worrying because I've been planning to ride down to Southern France in a couple of weeks - to the Pyrenees. I've booked time off work from the 21st. But right now, I'm really not feeling like another long journey. I'm not feeling like lugging a lot of camping gear around or of putting up a bloody tent every night. I'm not feeling like living on strange grub for a week when I've had too many allergy attacks recently. The alternative, though, is to carry on working through September. And that idea is next to unendurarable.
What to do?
I could just take some time off, stay at home and go for short rides, I suppose. But what a waste of precious annual leave!!!!
I'm in a dither. I have no idea what to do. And Ron has just emailed me to ask if I'm going down to the Pyrenees as planned. He's down there already and says he'll stay on and wait for me if I am coming. But he needs to know.
Aaaaargh! Decisions! Decisions!
(Can't think about that now. Too difficult. Everything is too difficult.)
But I did have a mad fit of enthusiasm last week and applied for a job as manager of the complementary health centre where I used to work - I'd love to get my teeth into that place. That's what went through my head: 'I'd love to get my teeth into that place.' It has so much potential. I still feel very attached. But then remembered why I left. Woah! Hang on a moment, Dick. What are you getting yourself into, boy? (It's a long and very convoluted story)
Still, that burst of enthusiasm might have kicked my arse into gear and given me the motivation to start looking for another job. I've got to get away from my present work before I suffocate under endless layers of bureacracy - service plans and delivery plans and improvement plans, policies and procedures and service standards, impact assessments, risk assessments, mission statements, aims, objectives, priorities, Key Lines of Enquiry, yearrrgh. I'm identifying with Neo in The Matrix. I'm just waiting for someone to pull the plug on me and flush me down into the sewer. At least there's something inescapably real about a sewer.
I have been getting in some riding though. I went to the Ace Cafe's Brighton Burnout with two mates on Sunday. More bikes went down there than ever this year. The atmosphere was popping but I wasn't in the mood for it. Finding a parking place on the sea front was a nightmare. We were delayed getting down there (the A21 was closed off), delayed getting out of Brighton (a nasty crash - it looked like it was probably fatal for the biker) and delayed getting home (traffic on the M25). All those delays and a lack of attentiveness to the time meant that I missed the church memorial service at home in Hitchin I wanted to go to. Once a year the local church has a special service where they remember all the people in the parish who have recently died. I was kicking myself all the way home. I knew I was going to miss it. I had worked myself in a really foul mood by the time I got back to the house. (I seem to do that a lot these days. It's not normally like me.)
As many of you will know, I'm not at all religious - quite the reverse - but Di was - in her own quirky way, and she valued the sense of community which the local church fostered. So missing the service made me feel like I was letting her down badly. And I was sorry on my own account as well because, though I have very little in common with the people who attend the services, they are a good lot, and I owe some of them a great deal for all the help they gave me when Di was ill.
Fortunately, a friend went and had Di's name added to the list of those to be remembered. I spoke to her later and she told me that the service was all a little bland and lacking in energy or special significance. That made me me feel a bit better because I could imagine Di giggling over it. Beside valuing community, she had a very developed sense of irony and the ridiculous.
I lightened up after that.
