yen_powell

Four people ended up in hospital or injured from that event. I was ambulanced in to hospital for a stroke before I had even had a chance to hand out the rally tickets so never left Essex at all. My parents were given a list of addresses from my hospital bed and ran around town distributing them. I was the least injured out of the four by the end of the weekend! Jackie made it to the rally, then had a crash on the associated trail riding and broke a rib or two, spending all night in a welsh hospital. She was very upset at having her bra cut off she said afterwards. Strange Dave's brother Tony had a head on crash with another trail bike at speed on the same trail riding event, possibly by a Welsh nationalist making a point. This was captured on film and made me wince with the crunchiness of it all. He had bruises all over and a wrecked DR350. He was very upset about Jackie having her bra cut off as well. Martin rode his DR250 up a hill on the same trail riding event and had a tumble which did something to one of his knees and he was off work for a week afterwards. He wasn't that bothered about Jackie's bra, he's a bit self centred.

Flame freezing on your lighter. Brass monkeys crying.

That's the jobbie. I used to go to the 'other' one. Kent's Custom Show. The last time there I missed Debbie Harry on stage as I was dying of a fatal dose of ear ache?? I preferred it when they didn't have famous people playing music, I liked the rubbish bands they had in the years leading up to that. Suzi Quatro was good though.

My mate xxx, a fellow council worker, had the hots for a particular girl and in a drunken moment invited her to come with him to the bike show run by the Hells' Angels at some drag race place in the midlands, can't remember what it was called. Sir Fallsalot will know, I'm sure he has been. Now xxx had a habit of misunderstanding females when they said yes to his invitations and this had caused a few problems at various events, including a drunk Irish girlfriend of his trying to attack another girl at 2am as she slept in her tent and him breaking up with said girlfriend by text as she flew home because he was too scared to do it in person after she went for him with a whisky bottle in a pub. But that's a whole other story. Anyway, he's got the hots for some girl, he has got drunk one night down the village pub and invited her to this HA show, she has said what a good idea, he has bought the tickets. He is plumping up the seat of his GSXR1100 and zipping two sleeping bags together ready for a weekend of passion. Then it turns out that what she actually meant was she would be going with her boyfriend he didn't know about and her friend was also coming and could xxx give her a lift on his bike and put her up in his tent. Xxx is a bit of a shallow person and his exact words to me were that he didn't like to stare but he had never seen such an odd looking girl as the friend he was supposed to take. A healthy strapping girl with a large, even huge head of red frizzy hair was roughly how he described her (no offence Pete). Basically, there was no way he was taking her, but on the other hand he still harboured hopes of success with the girl he did like so was in a panic about how to get out of it and still keep on her good side. In a moment of inspiration he asked me to go to this rally on the back of his bike and share his tent so he could tell the flame haired maiden that he could not take her after all as it was my lifelong dream to go. I said no way in hell was I doing either, I had suffered both of those fates before!! Now he was/is notoriously tight, he has been known to glue on a set of heated grips given to him by a fellow rider for the Elephant Rally in Germany (pay me when you get back they thought he'd agreed to) and he carefully removed them and handed them back to the original owner after getting home. So imagine my shock when he asked if it was the cost stopping me, because he would happily give me his spare ticket for free. I said no again. He kept asking me every time he saw me, this went on for weeks. Then I found out that Chuck Berry was playing at this rally. I remember being very tempted to go, the chance to see one of the original rock and rollers, I mean, he couldn't have many years left could he? But then I thought long and hard and decided it would be funnier to wind xxx up about spending the weekend with the ginger siren. Come the weekend of doom and I couldn't resist ringing him up on his mobile on Friday night. I may have made some comments about checking his sleeping bag for red curly hairs when he got back, but no, my fun was ruined. His actual words were, "Very funny, well as it happens, I have had a bit of luck. Her friend has been in a serious car accident and couldn't go after all." He is a charmer isn't he. So I switched to my second line of piss taking, asking how he was getting on with his quest for romance with the girl he did fancy and did her huge boyfriend put any sort of damper on that. Turns out they had both decided not to go after all, he was there on his own (relatively speaking). Oh yeah, Chuck Berry was ill and didn't play I hear, so I wouldn't have seen him anyway!

I'm always hitting my head on stuff. Scaffolding, MIND YOUR HEAD signs, my own handlebars when I stand up under the bike, low hanging lights etc. I usually have a lump or two on the noggin, plus shin and elbow bruises from other acts of clumsiness I have forgotten. When I was a teenager and got run over I put my head through the car windscreen, didn't even cut it. The doctor who checked me over at hospital asked to see the crash helmet I was wearing so he could see how damaged it was. When I said I didn't have a motorbike he re-checked my x-rays and felt my head all over again before he let me go.

In between TEAMS meetings with consultants. The thickness can be magnificent if you get a goodun.

Just had a bout of rain here that Noah would have thought twice about going out in.

This must surely make burglary easier if you fancied dabbling, every cloud and all that.

My Mum had that in the 80s. First time I realised was when I was mucking about and picked her up off the floor and she came up so so easily as she had lost lots of weight. The NHS opted to cut her throat (in a nice way) and take a bit of thyroid away. As she was a theatre nurse in the same hospital at the time she applied a bit of blackmail and made them schedule the operation so she would not miss going to see James Last in concert. I recall visiting her in hospital and taking her a gift of a Frankenstein parody type book to cheer her up about her new scar. She was on tablets after the operation to balance everything out. I can't recall even seeing a scar in the following years.

I mentioned earlier in this thread about the yard foreman, a young bloke called Tony. As stated, he was all good looks and muscles and he liked the ladies. Our yard was squeezed between the river and a load of flats and maisonettes in Barking called The Gascoigne Estate. Named after the Gascoignes who had been the big cheeses and land owners for hundreds of years. A few old fogies on here will know one of the family as he used to host University Challenge. I was mooching about the yard one day and happened to look out of the gate. I was used to seeing odd people wandering about, plus we were in a road with various types of yard all down the same side as the river which meant we had some strange people working in them. On this day I looked and saw a man wearing a white Judo suit. He was on the little green shown on the right below with the big tree. He was doing all the harry karry stuff, kicks, chops, all directed at the tree shown. Basically he was being a bit of a knob. I could also see Tony, flying about in a fork lift. I called out to him and he roared up and came to a skidding halt. 'Wassup Yen?' he was the one who christened me with that name, it developed out of shouting Ian in a noisy yard. 'There's a bloke outside, says you have been messing with his woman, he is waiting for you!' Tony looked out the gates and there is this twat punching imaginary baddies and kicking invisible things above his head, he's really going for it now. To give Tony his due, he jumped out of the fork lift and was on his way out to the bloke before I managed to stop him. Tony got me back later that day, he had me sitting on the top rails of a covered articulated lorry to help pull the sheet over. He told me to sit still on the rail whilst they moved the lorry up a few yards so they could line up the next load from the road side. What I didn't know and he did was that there was a large tree branch behind me. As the lorry backed up I was pushed off the rail and down into the skips of swarf. I lay just inside the skip covered in small pieces of metal and cutting oil. A blonde head appeared over the edge and a finger was wagged in my direction as he told me not to ever try and get one over on him again.

When I left school I was 5 feet 11 and 3/4 inches. I now seem to have lost those 3/4 of an inch and am at 5'11". This is also coincidentally Buckster's inside leg measurement.

My feet didn't touch the floor on either side, I have never had that with any bike before. Some grown ups had to hold me vertical till I pulled away and then after I had gone round in a big circle I was like a kiddie on his first 2 wheeled bicycle calling out to everyone to catch me when I stopped.

Race to Dakar by Charlie Boorman is an interesting read once you get to the part where he gets injured and it switches to the support rider's story.

I suppose I could hire a van??

No, nothing exciting to photograph.

I voted for the AT, because it is the best paint scheme for an AT plus the twisty road going into the background is also most excellent. However, I have to say the scooter on the jetty is a gorgeous picture and would have had my vote, but it is a scooter, I rode one once and nearly hit a wall when the brakes failed, also I can't swim so the water made me nervous. Edit, I should point out that the man in a Parka who let me ride his scooter said afterwards that his brakes were the best on any scooter he'd owned and they hadn't failed, they just had character.

Looking at some of your pictures, everywhere around you is a beach, it's just the sea that is a way away. (A way away???, is that right??)

Tis true, the silver fox.

Perhaps you are always accelerating or slowing when it is not so noticeable. It only drove me mad when following traffic at a steady speed.

I think this is a similar bike, no idea how much fuel it used, but I wasn't that keen on riding the thing, there seemed to be a very narrow rev range where the engine seemed happy and it never matched the speed I was doing whatever gear I put it in. Rest of it was okay though.

Just seen a video of these Japanese girls doing a duet with Rob Halford from Judas Priest. Someone didn't think it through when they chose the song, shades of Life of Bwian. The song was Painkiller and you can distinctly hear the girl singing Painkirrer at the top of her voice!

I rode a Harley once and also one of those weird Buell things. I don't think anyone saw me though. Enjoyed the Buell when it was actually moving, not so much when waiting at a red light as the vibrations made my whole body shake side to side like I had a bad case of Parkinsons. That went away as soon as the clutch lever was fully out though.

I like it, but no mention of Elsa?? No Bill Travers either?