Why should a foolish marriage vow

Why should a foolish marriage vow,
   Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now
   When passion is decay'd?
We loved, and we loved, as long as we could,
   Till our love was loved out in us both:
But our marriage is dead, when the pleasure is fled:
   'Twas pleasure first made it an oath.

If I have pleasures for a friend,
   And farther love in store,
What wrong has he whose joys did end,
   And who could give no more?
'Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me,
   Or that I should bar him of another:
For all we can gain is to give our selves pain,
   When neither can hinder the other.

by John Dryden

Cracking, grommet

An excellent haul waiting for me at the post office this morning :) The grommet and the satnav mount bring the Triumph back into play, while the cateye mounts mean that I'm legal (and safe) to ride the pushbike after dark again. And the Workshop Manual for the Africa Twin is a work of explanatory beauty. Though it does still say "Installation is the reverse of removal."

It's that time of year again!

My annual pilgrimage to Northwich to meet up with Nikos and ride in circles round the town centre. Though not with blue underlighting and a baked bean can exhaust.

now I remember why it's called the Book of Lies...

I need to go to Halford's to buy some Q-bond which Graham says is the best thing to replace the crack in my fairing which *may* have resulted from a cack-handed reassembly of 2Moos' front end (not by me).

So I thought I would pursue my new role as "Person who can do simple bike tasks," adjust the chain on the Triumph, and nip off to the shops.

I've read the instructions, and I've seen it done, so I felt pretty confident. But I have fallen at the first hurdle (again). Here's the picture in the Book of Lies, and the same shot showing my bike:-








Can you spot the difference?

In other questions, how do I get a torque wrench on without taking the exhaust off?

The next challenge

This box contains a new exhaust for Hortense. At the moment she is wholly ornamental as her MOT ran out last month and she won't get a new one with a bloody big hole in her tubes. Not having her on the road hasn't been a huge inconvenience: I'm cycling to work most days and since the Guided Busway opened I have the exciting, if over-priced, and overcrowded, option of public transport too.

Which leaves me very conflicted about whether to sell her or keep her. The logical choice is to sell her to a proper owner, who will keep her in the garage, use her on sunny days and not reverse her into lampposts or scrape her rear wings with dirty great motorcycle panniers when they forget which side of the bike they're hung on today. Which I haven't done. Definitely not.

But the emotional choice is to keep her and find a solution to the practical problem of providing shelter for one car, two motorcycles and two pushbikes.

I like looking after her. Or trying to, at least. Being able to maintain the things around me is an important step towards being the person I want to be. When I had a small motorcycle and a scabby 2CV I bled brakes, solved electrical faults and repaired a dodgy carburettor. Somewhere along the last 20 years I lost the confidence to do these things and paid other people to do them for me, with varying degrees of competence.

I have been taking small steps in the right direction. I started with putting a new front brake cable on my pushbike, after fitting a stem raiser to lift the bars by about 3 inches. That went well - the bike still stops and is now an insanely tall beast, which suits my T-Rex-esque physique. Then I put the new boots on the car, which is a filthy and back-breaking job but not a complicated one. I was going to fit new head bearings to the Africa Twin with the help of @biggus1975 on twitter, but ran out of time before the MOT was needed (I need at least one vehicle officially fit to travel!) So my next jobs are the new exhaust on the car and a service for the Triumph. I have the workshop manual and the Haynes Book of Lies, I have the spanners and I have a positive attitude. And if it all goes wrong I have the phone number of Steve and Caz at Raceways.

Graham and I causing a security alert at Olympic Park

According to the man in the hi-viz, stopping is Not Allowed.

Bank Holiday Monday's looking good....

This is my reward

....at the end of a long day spent trying to rein in a photographer who refuses to understand why some 16-year olds don't like having their picture taken. Apparently in Afghanistan they're just peachy keen.