yen_powell

I'm back from the nerve agent capital of the UK, plus north Devon. I have a black eye and a gashed finger as a souvenir of my long weekend. I was also escorted of some National Trust premises at 7:30am by a nice man in a stab vest. Ride report will follow as some point.

After riding around lots of different places at work, I parked at our contractor's yard and walked through a few streets to a Turkish restaurant where one of my friends/colleagues had invited us to lunch to celebrate his second retirement. On the way I cut through the Lefevre estate and took some pictures of the giant flowers which you'll see in the pictures I took today FRED. My friend's name is Nasser, he's an Iranian. He came to the UK to attend university and to keep him out of the Iran/Iraq war which was killing and maiming his school friends at the time. Further education was encouraged by the state, exempting you from compulsory military service. When he told them he fancied studying civil engineering in Britain they pointed at a map of the UK and said choose wisely which city he would like to go to..... Nasser said he knew nothing about Britain at all. He had a quick squint and put his finger on what he hoped was a throbbing centre of nightlife, loose women and wild parties and it was all sorted out for him. Anyway, after a few months in Bournmouth, he spoke to a friend who was also studying in the UK and they said he should leave Bournmouth and switch to where they were, another crazy happening place. So he transferred to Colchester!! There he met his English wife and eventually in 1986 he ended up working with me. He partially retired about 10 years ago and used to do 6 months on, 6 months off. When he worked with my team we gave him new jobs that he would start and finish in that time and it worked really well. He could visit Iran and help organise his parents care as they got older etc. Then he was transferred to a lazy team in maintenance and they saved loads of jobs up for him and presented them all to him on his first day working that year. He would get loads of grief from people who thought he had been sitting on the work for months. So now he has hit 65 he decided it was time to go permanently. He has two grown up sons. One applied to join the Police but was turned down as not being ethnic enough. When he said he was half Iranian they said that wasn't good enough. He became a plumber instead.

You need to go old style.

Just watched 10 minutes of this. In a way, it's just like an early UK biking experience when you were just left to teach yourself, the only difference being here it's on a 650 rather than a 125/250. It mentions some sort of course attended, they obviously never told him how to slow down properly, he'll come a cropper when he puts the brakes on with the clutch in at 45mph all the way down to zero in wet weather. Or maybe he won't as bikes all seem to have ABS now.

It's a shame, they seem to be a well thought of machine.

Doesn't seem to be available new in the UK. I assume it doesn't meet the latest emission bollocks here.

I know some on here are fans of slobber creating, hair moulting, flea ridden creatures, some have pets as well. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2023/08/06/at-the-pet-cemetery-i/

Dry here tomorrow, I may go to one of those events where people dress up and pretend to be who they're not. Not a Harley rally. Next weekend I am off to Wiltshire with my littlest tent, with a brief foray into north Devon.

I've had 13 main bikes in 40 years, plus 3 extras for trail riding duties only.

No, I thought that as the plastic parts are quickly removable I would get on better with fitting muffs on the super cold winter days which I struggled with over the Yamaha ones. I pulled up at the shop, it's on a rural industrial estate, and the one legged man was standing outside on his crutches. The same one who was sat behind a desk when I was buying my waterproof trousers a few years back and I told him leg length was very important to me. The bloke then stood up and I realised he was a single pegger, I felt like I'd put both my feet in it when I said that, which was more than he could I suppose!

It is if you look out of a window.

Popped to Suffolk in my lunch hour and collected some Barkbuster handguards for my XT. Just finished putting them on. I have left the old inner handguard brackets on for now in case I want to switch back at any point.

Have you tried switching it off and then on again?

My younger brother did that. He asked my Mum if he could borrow the tin of pins she used for her sewing. She asked him to confirm he wasn't going to do anything silly with them. He swore he would be careful. He came running back into the room 10 minutes later in a panic saying he's swallowed a pin. Turns out he had made a blow pipe and had taken a deep breath in with it actually pressed to his mouth. He's not the brainy one in our family! My dad has a magnet halfway down his throat for a while, but it was no good and he was taken off to hospital. They could see it on the x-ray but then later it wasn't visible any more. His turds were searched for a few days by the hospital staff then they sent him home and my mum had to carry on doing that for another week. Never any sign of it. He must be about 56 now, this was when he was about 5 or 6.

Have you seen the clip of him rock climbing as a teenager. He sounded posh. He seems to have changed his accent a bit when he became famous.

Shame that

I think it's made in Germany, inside the EU, so no customs problems? Weird you can't get it.

I reckon they had a sponsorship deal with Rice Krispies

Swan Upping. Not as pervy as it sounds. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2023/07/25/swan-upping-season/

You're gonna get a tide mark if you lower your blood pressure. You'll be pink up to about your nipples and pale from there to the top of your head unless you lay down.

I sped through it, but the tail on the lady was good.

That'll be wind. My son used to do that when he was a baby.