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blues2cruise wrote:Autumn sounds perfect.

Planning something?

fireguzzi wrote:

blues2cruise wrote:Autumn sounds perfect.

Planning something?

I have one remaining relative in Scotland....who does not have a computer and letters take forever....If I have enough $$$, I may try to go to the UK....while my passport is still good.

Sigh! Feeling pretty blue these days. There's not a lot going on here in Hitchin that isn't going wrong. Or maybe it’s just the way I’m thinking about things. Not sure.

I’m feeling very much like Marvin the depressive robot in "Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy". Don't you just love/hate that guy/machine. I used to think that we all had a relative like that. Now I know that relative is me.

Thinking about Douglas Adams and the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", I’ve just decided that what I need to do is read “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency” again - one of the funniest books I've ever read.

Here’s my catalogue of woes, so y’all can share them with me.

Motorcycle blues
- Both of my good pairs of motorcycle boots (winter and summer) bust a zip last month within a week of each other.
- I bought a pair of cheap motorcycle boots (seconds) at the BMF a week later - great boots except that when I wore them on a ride up to Chester a couple of weeks ago, the zip bust on them too.
- The only pair of road boots I had left (an old pair of Sidis) has just popped a sole, so this afternoon I put on my off-road boots and set off to go to Hein Gericke in Luton on the Daytona to see if I can get a new pair. They have a sale on.
- On the way to Luton the battery (electrics?) died on the Daytona. I was on the by-pass at the time but luckily there was a slip road onto the old A505 and a way of looping back. The bike continued to make enough charge to get me back into Hitchin and to within 500 yards of home - 500 uphill yards.
- The SV's front brakes died completely a couple of months ago and the bike is garaged up at Meppershall with Dave and Bob waiting for some pistons and seals to come in. I had to wait a month before I could afford to order them. Since I did, three weeks have passed and they are still not here. Yesterday, Dave and Bob buggered off to the Isle of Man for the TT and won’t be back for a fortnight.
- One of the cracks in the Daytona's fairing has opened again and some bastrd has put a scratch on it on the other side.

Tomorrow I will go into Stevenage to buy a new battery that I really cannot afford.

Household blues
- I’d finally got around to advertising the therapeutic bath I bought for Di when she was paralysed (all £7,000 worth of it) only to have it break down on me a day later. I can’t afford right now to get it fixed or to buy a new one. Four posts run through seals in the base of the bath and support a platform. (The bath rises up and down around it.) - - The only way I can get a bath now is to lift up the platform and squat down in between the four posts, which not only makes me feel ridiculous but is uncomfortable too – which is why I've taken to scrubbing myself down at the wash basin instead.
- Ever since it was hacked, my ‘puter has been going slower and slower and my frustration levels are getting higher and higher.
- Some tiles have come off the roof and the rose arch I put up in the garden for Di has collapsed.
- A birch tree near the house is threatening to undermine the foundations and I will have to hack it down.
- I trod on a snail this morning and crunched it. Now I feel bad.


Social blues
- In a fit of enthusiasm I agreed to give a couple of evening talks, one on local history and one on the rx industry. They're both about six weeks away and have been publicaly advertised. I’m now fretting about these because time is going by and I can’t be arsed to do anything about them. I could probably wing the local history one but I need to do some serious research on the other.
- I met up with an old school friend from back in 1964 last week. I haven’t seen him for 45 years. He's a fascinating bloke but seems quite needy and wants to meet again soon. Right now, I’m not sure I have the energy for this.

I feel overwhelmed.

I'm consoling myself in the evenings by regular trips down to Molly's, my local pub. It’s a friendly little place but, more than that, it’s a fizzing live-music venue. There is some great local talent playing there most nights. There are loads of R&B bands. Most of all though, there is plenty of rock’n’roll to feed my soul. (Hey where would early rockers have been without that rhyme).

One of the big plusses about Hitchin is that it’s heaving with music and musicians. There is a major music retailer in the town and two nationally recognised music schools. More bands and sessions musicians are based here than you can shake a stick at. The pubs and clubs are always popping. Every year the town puts on a huge world music festival and we are close enough to London for many professionals who play in the City's orchestras to live here. If you like live music this is a great place to be.

PS. I hope to god that it’s just the battery on the Daytona that's kaput, because I really, really want to go on a Bank Holiday rideout to Bournemouth on Monday with some mates. I need to get some speed under me to rip this depressive mood out of my gullet. Sumer is icumen in, and I want to make the best of it.

Just waiting for my world to turn a nice sunshiney shade of yellow.

Bugger! Bugger! Bugger!

It looks like I'm not going to get on the rideout tomorrow after all. The problem I have is not with the battery but with the bike. The engine is hunting badly and is not charging up the battery at all.

The Daytona has always killed batteries. I've had to buy a new one every year for the last four years. No-one has ever been able to find a reason for it. In the end it got to be cheaper jus to buy the new battery than to pay out loads of money for people to tell me that they could find nothing wrong with her electrics.

Now it looks liike the problem (whatever it is) has matured and will not go away.

There is also another (maybe related) electrical problem. My super-clever alarm system has been telling me that for about eighteen months she has been overcharging, but every time I stick a meter on her she seems fine.

OK. So I will have to now fork out again and get her sorted. More difficult is the task of noodling myself and reimagining the next couple of weeks as bikeless.

Looking on the bright side, it's a good job it has happened now and not next month as I've booked in to do the national rally again this year. That is something I don't want to miss.

When I went to buy the new battery this morning, I also gave in and bought a new pair of sidi boots. I tried on a couple of cheaper pairs, but they were bad fits, or uncomfortable. I could have afforded them much more easily next month, but I needed them for Monday (or so I thought). It now turns out that I didn't need them, and they will now go back into their box for goodness knows how long until a dealer can see to the bike.

That bright sunshiney yellow has just turned a dirty shade of brown.

I am generally fairly civilised about the way I manage my moods, but to say that I am p1ssed off right now would be a large understatement.

Ya know it might be cheaper to fly me over there. I'll rebuild the bike while exploring around your country, and you'll get a rebuilt bike for the cost of a plane ticket!

Wrider wrote:Ya know it might be cheaper to fly me over there. I'll rebuild the bike while exploring around your country, and you'll get a rebuilt bike for the cost of a plane ticket!

Brilliant idea!!!!

First of all.....he should ask the dealer who has his bike for a loaner.....or Triumph for a replacement..it's been nothing but trouble since day one.

Maybe you can convince him to trade in both bikes for one reliable bike.

Oh his bikes just have "character."..... Lot's and lot's of character.... And I mean a LOT.

fireguzzi wrote:Oh his bikes just have "character."..... Lot's and lot's of character.... And I mean a LOT.

Funny, that's what everyone said about one of my mates in the 70s shortly before he got sent down.

As to my characterful steeds, they are being quietly characterful right now - so quietly characterful that I would like to kick them. This has left me feeling at something of a loss. Funny that! Since being bikeless, everything around me has felt suddenly intangible, as though I'm powerless to make anything happen in the world. It's like sleep paralysis, when you wake up in the morning and can't get your body to move. You flail around in your head but your physical body won't budge. That happened to me for a few months in my mid-twenties. It scared the living dodo out of me for a while and I was afraid to go to sleep. Then I found out it was fairly common and perfectly harmless. Being without a bike doesn't feel harmless. It feels like a threat. I'm wasting away.

It feels weird to be suddenly back down to a fraction of a horse power again, max (from 130 odd hp on the Daytona), and only that much if I stock up on bacon and eggs. It feels weird not having a bike to ride, and I don't like it.

Not being able to go on the rideout on Monday, dropped me into a hole. Everyone else had buggered off for the bank holiday weekend leaving me to fend for myself back here in Hitchin. I spent the morning (well, a few minutes, really) assessing how I was going to use the day. There are a growing number of jobs that need doing around the house. The fence needs fixing; the roof needs attention, I've bought a load of paint ready to redecorate the kitchen; the garden needs weeding and thinning out.

Unlike my house, I, on the other hand, am perfectly functional, and know damn well that doing jobs around the house is no way to spend a bank holiday Monday, especially if you are feeling glum around the gills because both your bikes are ready for the knackers yard.

That left me with only one rational option: I needed to take a train up to London and trog along to Camden Stables to cheer myself up. This place is the biggest Alka Seltzer pick-me-up known to humankind. There is no hangover, or letter from your bank manager that it will not cure or put into perspective.

Back in the nineteenth century Camden Lock was a huge commercial rail and canal depot. Goods were lifted from the Grand Union Canal and onto Midland Railway trains at the depot nearby. Horses were used for this - hundreds of them. To avoid having to walk the horses over the railway lines a labyrinthine network of brick-built underground passages, ramps and tunnels was built together with a big underground stables. Today the canal basin, the old stables and transfer yards are home to a huge market. It's the nearest thing in the UK to an oriental bazaar, a very English oriental bazaar - with horses - big bronze or brass horses - eveywhere - dozens and dozens and dozens of them, ramping, rearing, bursting out of walls, pulling drays or being quietly shod. All around them is an endless variety of market stalls and and an endlesser variety of human life.

Beyond the stables and the canal is Camden High Street, a wonderland for the young and uninhibited. If you are into clothes that are punky, kinky or just plain weird this is the place to come. All human life is here in its multitudinous strangeness. I won't bore you with a lot of words: here are some pics.


















Murals outside the loos


















Camden Lock


Camden High Street, home of the weird and wonderful

After leaving Camden, I took a trip into Central London. Keeping to the theme of the bizarre, here's a shot below of the latest 'statue' to occupy the notorious 'fourth plinth' in Trafalgar Square. When the plinth's previous occupant was removed (I forget why) there was a huge row about what would occupy it instead. The only thing people were sure about was that they didn't want to see yet another statue of a boring old general or king or politician. Since then it has been occupied by a succession of artworks and oddities.

For a while anyone could apply as a living statue to occupy the plinth for a couple of hours and do whatever they wanted. They were lifted up onto it on a mechanical elevator truck and then left to their own devices. Some bellowed Harry Potter at the crowd through a megaphone, others built model railways, other danced or sang or did gynmastics or just yelled abuse. It seems now we have - a ship in a bottle! I hesitated a moment before uploading this pic because it is spoiled somewhat by that bizarre red and white flag mounted on the embassy behind it.







And since everyone who visits London wants to come away with a photo of this lairy little bugger (god only knows why!) in Piccadilly Circus, I will oblige. (Di always admired his tight little buttocks, but I will leave that judgement for others to make.) I thought the cranes at the end of Regent Street would demystify him nicely. And just to demistify him further, this is not a stature of 'Eros, god of love, (that would be far too interesting) but a statue of boring ol' 'Christian Virtue', erected in the memory of the (so-called) 'philanthropical' Lord Shaftesbury, who bulldozed a road diagonally through hundreds of properties down into Piccadilly Circus, opposite.


The spirit of Christian Virtue, aka the Saftesbury Memorial, or 'Eros'.

More mysitifcation? Here's a neat little group of statues commemorating the Crimean War at the bottom of Haymarket. Despite being a load of old chauvanist codswallop, I rather like it. It seems that William IV, one of Britain's less memorable monarchs is here represented by a lamp-post. That's Florence Nightingale, on the left with her lamp. The truth is that Florence Nightingale was little more than a rather anally retentive administrator. The real nursing hero of the war was Mary Seacole, a black Jamaican woman who was refused a post at Scutari, so made her own way out to the Crimea to minister to the forces there. She was far more popular among the soldiers than Nightingale who was very bitchy about her. After her death, Mary was completely forgotten and has only recently been rediscoverd and given the recognition she is due. She's one of my favourite people. She carried out medical procedures on the battlefield, helping anyone she found, whoever they were fighting for. She was a humanist, which in the scale of things stands about ten rungs above a nationalist or a patriot. She set up a shop selling basics to the soldiers who would otherwise have had to do without. She also cooked for them. Her autobigraphy makes an amazing reading.


Crimean War memorial, Haymarket, London


Well, that's my trip to London over then. I hope all the rest of you bastards out there have a great time riding your bikes over the next couple of weeks.

Spit! (Hnnnnnrrrh! - , I guess)

Thanks for sharing. That looks like a fun place to visit.

Next time you are feeling morose over a battery.....watch this...

The English way of camping???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ASs4Kj3KZU

A quick catch-up.

On Monday 7 June I rang up Bruce at the Triumph dealer's and asked if he could arrange to pick up the Daytona from my home and take her over to the workshop in Aston Clinton (about 40 miles away.) He said yes. I took the morning off work on the Tuesday 9 June and handed her over when the van arrived.

Meanwhile...

The SV was still up in Gamlingay at Bob and Dave's workshop (I think I said their workshop was in Meppershall in a previous email - a senior moment. Hem! ). The pistons and seals for the SV's front brake had arrived at last, but in the meantime Bob and Dave had buggered off up to the Isle of Man for the TT. That meant there was going to be no progress on her for another ten days or so.

The Triumph dealer rang me two days later on Friday 11 to tell me they had found the problem: a couple of heavily corroded wires under the fuse box. Great! but damn! Because the casing to the fuse box was broken, I'd checked all around there before sending her off but hadn't spotted anything.

The next day (Saturday) I caught a couple of buses over to Aston Clinton to pick up the bike - a long and tedious journey round the Herts, Beds and Bucks countryside. The bill was very reasonable (that was one good piece of news, anyway). On the way home she ran beautifully. By Monday though, the engine had started to hunt and hiccup again when running at anything under 30 mph in first or second gear - but at least the battery was charging.

On Tuesday, Bob rang me. He'd arrived back from the TT, had received the pistons and seals and had fixed the SV's brake. On Thursday I rode the grumbling Daytona up to Gamlingay, left it with him to see what he could find, and picked up the SV. The brake lever had become so worn on the SV that Bob had had to put a small spacer in it to make it work, temporarily. Tomorrow, I need to order a new lever. After chatting for a couple of hours (it's nice to be self-employed like Bob) I headed off west on the SV towards Ripley in Derbyshire. I was off for four days of camping at the annual Horizons Unlimited event.

Anyone know this organisation? It's an international, long-distance biking network set up by a couple of Canadian bikers: Grant and Susan Johnson. If you want to know which parts of Colombia or Afghanistan are safe to travel in; if you want to know what problems bikers are having with border crossings into Iran, Russia, Argentina, Mongolia...Turkey...Nigeria...; if you want to know what the latest rate Egypt is demanding for bike carnets, what the latest political situation is in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who best to ship with from South America to South Africa, what the best tyres for riding the Road of Bones are; or if you just like reading other people's biking journals, then this is the website you need to look at. It's phenomenal - and vast.

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/

(Be warned though, it's not the most user friendly site I've ever seen.)

I've just got back from the weekend. I had a truly brilliant time; I learned more about bikes and off-road riding in those few days than in years of poring over manuals, books and videos, I met several of my biking heroes, and I am not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.