Last Saturday I had to drop some bits off to Simon Morgan's house in Reading. This could have been a chore, but I phoned up a mutual mate and the two of us set of for Reading at 7.00pm Saturday.
We arrived in time to walk to nearby Theale for a drink or two. We settled on a nice little pub that was strangely quiet for a Saturday night. However, the beer was good and the Landlord was playing some great music (when did you last hear Dillinger's 'Cocaine' in a pub?)
Some blokes in lids came in and Simon decided to play 'What-bike-do-they-ride?' He settled on Bandit 1200 and Bergman 400 so I wandered over to tell them and see if he was right. It turned out they were both Lambretta riders. This prompted a nice discussion of all things two-wheeled and led to us being served two more beers in a locked pub.
On the way back to Simon's we walked past a McDonalds that seemed to be serving food. Sadly only the drive-thru was open so that's why me, Chris and Simon crouched down and pretended to be holding steering wheels whilst ordering cheesburgers. They told us to bugger off, but Chris persuaded a car driver to reverse and order our scoff. After all that it tasted crap
All was not lost, waiting for us at the house was a huge plate of sandwiches left out by Simon's wife, the fragrant Sarah. She topped that though by providing us with a tasty brekkie the following morning.
Back in Wales on Sunday afternoon I did a bit of remedial work on the poor old XBR. There's only one British-made bit on any of my bikes: the sidecar lights. They are beyond rubbish, they are the most useless pieces of crap ever known to man and it took me 3/4 hour to get the bloody things working properly. after that I replaced the knackered battery (free 8 months ago from an auto factor - "try this, but I think it's knackered"). This time I fitted a bike battery back on the bike, this freed up a load of room in the sidecar and also reduced overall weight. To make things even better, this battery cost me a fiver and is only two weeks old. A bloke had bought it for his FJ1200 and he bought the wrong one. A friendly mechanic then passed it on to me. With the indicator fixed, a new chain and sprockets fitted and a rattly exhaust tightened up, the bike is going well... apart from the snapped frame held together with odds and sods
This week I took the CB500 to be looked at and the reason for its poor running turned out to be one spark plug with hardly any gap... almost as if someone had dropped it before fitting it
I'll be picking that up tomorrow and MOTing it on Saturday (with luck).
As for work... I lost a day to a puncture on Tuesday. It didn't take long to fix, but by the time I was mobile it was too late to order materials to be delivered to the job... so that cost me £100
Ho hum
GC
p.s. Sorry to hear about your illness Steve... pehaps you should wrap up a little warmer, buy some new slippers, etc.
