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Monthly Archives: March 2019

Tales from the XJR1300

Having Javier and Bainzie pop in to the site put me back to my XJR1300 years which lasted from 2000- 2010 plus a few dabbles in the years that followed.

The annual club meet for coffee at the Broadway Hotel in the Cotswolds was always guaranteed to bring out some heavy metal —

and sumwun had to keep them all in line —

Especially when you had tearaways like Bainzie there – 4th from left in the shades – he was the best tailgunner in the biznez when the pace got hot and a few fell by the wayside —

Did I see Tony here on the left – just checking his bollocks as usual – last time we ran together was from Matlock and we didn’t get far on that occasion before a bunch of us were spread up the road! A Suzuki riding Loonie from Manchester coming fast on our side of the road round a blind bend wiped us out. It took two armed polis – two ambulances and a whole lot more to clean up that mess.

What else have we got?

Mad Mick on the right and Ollie with their Yellow Perils at Ravenglass in the Lakes – the faster red bike is mine. Poor Ollie there in the centre had recently returned from a trackday on a circuit in the south of France. Having discovered the freedom of the race track the XJR was in the proccess of being exchanged for a go-faster Ducati. He lost his life when hit by a car just a couple of days after this photo was taken — a sad loss.

H-mmm – that memory detuned me a bit – I will dig a few more pics out when I have time because every ride didn’t end badly – even if an over-exhuberant Lampy did make a habit of killing lamposts and bursting holes through stone walls —


 
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Posted by on March 24, 2019 in out and about

 

A Shock for CRF250 Rally

Now would you just look at this lil beauty new arrived from it’s German manufacturers and handed to me by the helpfull ferryman t’other day.

Wilbers rear shock for Honda CRF250 Rally

She should give the wee bike and I a whole new lease of life as the original would barely cope with any rider over 12 stones (old money) and I weigh considerably more that that.

Can’t wait to bolt her in there and try her out — Don

 
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Posted by on March 5, 2019 in out and about

 

Don’t fence me in

With two days to go before Loki’s first birthday it’s only a matter of time before our big boy get’s a whiff of a bitch or even a visiting roe deer and takes off for places he is not supposed to go.

The flapping Tibetan flags do little to dissuade dogs or deer from roaming and with Loki growing by the day it’s time to increase the height of the boundary walls and fences around our patch as seen here from our perch on Rowan Hill —

His two room kennel with small open run is tucked away behind the shed on the far left where we can watch one another through the kitchen door. He has a reasonably sheltered spot for windswept Bardrishaig which is what I thought I had chosen for our ‘Instant Garage’ boat shed.

More fool me! We had little warning of the gales to come but I should have known as it is March after all and had spent a few hours yesterday putting extra pegs and anchors at strategic places around our tent.

They must have helped – but not enough. At midnight I wakened to the crack of flapping canvas outside the bedroom window and a quick look from above showed that the downwind end of the tent had blown out and was vigorously flapping and cracking in the 60+mph gale. There was nothing else for it but to pull on some rough weather gear – grab my big torch and get on out there.

It took me two and a half hours of scrabbling around in the semi-darkness with gusts that threatened to have me off my feet at times – but a quick shufty this morning showed I had been successful and had managed to anchor the tent to the boat in quite a few places in addition to the cross-braces ties I had secured across either end.

The 20×12 tent has obviously taken a hammering but she is still there. A ‘hammering’ is what I almost got from the wee wifie when I woke her with a cup of tea at 2.30 this morning and told her where I’d been for the previous two and a half hours.

‘Foolhardy’ is a polite way of interpreting her views on the subject but at least our visions of the boat sailing across the island suspended from a tent shaped kite came to nout and everything remains safely anchored in our backyard till the next Big Blow.