MooN

we were SOOOOOO lucky with our childminder, 100metres from the pharmacie where Madame MooN works and i still remember that when Madame was helicoptered of the roof of Auxerre hospital to Dijon menacing seriously premature birth of twins (14yrs ago) I rang her to see if she could pick up No.1 daughter from school ( No.1 being 5 at the time) she told me to go home, pick up a bag of clothes for No.1 and drop them off with her on my way to dijon...No.1 stayed with her for 3 days and nights, to and from school and everything, bloody brilliant and she then took on the twins when they were 3.

fukmine, how much?! I have 3 kids, my parents are in the uk and Madame Moon's parents were never in a fit state health wise to have any one of them, even for a weekend. We both work full time though Madame was allowed to work half time for a couple of years. We paid a child minder as there was no creche or association in the area. I can't remember exactly how much we paid nut it was nothing like that much and then we got part of it back in childcare allowance and it was all deductible from income tax.

144000km on my 600 transalp by the time i sold it. never let me down in 17 years and and only ever had wear parts changed.

Bonjour Motobiker, seems like you know some of the local nutjobs already

before 2019 and Brexit bullshit, 80%. we specialised in the uk market. in 2019 we lost about 20 % due to Brexit related uncertainties. 2020 we had 0 uk clients and only worked 4 months out of our usual 8. This year we were, untill this morning 50% down on bookings. that was going to pick up in august and sept... not anymore.

Boris has fucked us now, we were fairly busy early august and full on in september with brit bookings, but with Boris' announcement that brits returning from France will have to isolate even if they've had both vaccinations they're all cancelling... again... just over 10,000 cases yesterday in France so yes it's on the up, but compared to 54000 in the uk...

google the definition of "scrawny" and Tym's photo pops up

i passed my test on a heavily customised Honda CM125 ( the gutless wonder), sold it cos of moving to France and after saving up for a while over here bought a yamaha Xj 650 just like this one 'cept mine had 4 into one pipes I loved it so much that after winding it up to 130,000km I sold it on ( and saw it a year later with a paint job and 60,000 km less on the odo...) and bought an xj900 same as this but without the luggage or the lower engine bars. same colour and same screen but mine was never that clean of course... would I recommend either of them. They're so outdated now that they can't compare to modern bikes. They were both utterly bomb proof mechanically I bought the 650 with 60,000 km on the clock and wound it up to 130,000km in 3 years basic maintenance was all it got except for replacing the carb inlet pipes which had become porous. the 900 had 40, 000km on it when I bought it and i sold it with 98,000km 3 years later having done 2 uk return trips, Alsace, the jura, the alps and mont blanc on top of being my only everyday transport. I could ride it all day and the longer I stayed on it, the better it fitted me. If someone found a clean one I would absolutely recommand it as a tourer.

I thought this would be more your style Tym

makes you proud don't it?

tiger does about 52 mpg when just oodling around like yesterday. hooning around or autoroute work it drops to around 45 ish. when I first got it it was only doing 38 but that improved following the first service I had done.

nope, problem is really that any new job wants to pay minimum legal wage "to start with" which is basically 30% less than I currently earn.

too knackered by the time I get home and, frankly nothing to say. if it stops raining long enough I'll get some more ride reports in.

ok thanks Pete, waiting for things to evolve on all fronts and that always takes time.

you want boaty advice / Info? start with what sort of boat? sail, motor, river, lake, sea, sporty, cruiser...? what do you want to do with it?

'bout 20 minutes. 36€ i had the bike booked in for 14h00 but got there about half an hour early, Vincent, the shop manager turned up about 5 minutes after I did which was a surprise ( French lunch break is still traditionally 12 till 2) and he said he starts before the others to get a half h of calm and do some paperwork before oening the shop at 2 but he let me in so I could sit in the air conditioning and drink his coffee whilst waiting, Pascal the mechanic turned up at 13h45 and rather than open the main shop doors just pushed tigger in through the customer entrance and through the showroom and got straight into it. This sort of behaviour is sufficiently unlike normal French "service" to be worthy of note. Pascal invited me into the workshop to show me what he'd done and to ask how I wanted it finished off. He'd started by joining the wires that were flagged white and yellow with bits of tape, to see if that was effectively the solution, and it was, alarm out of circuit and everything else functioning, I've even still got the dashboard LED flashing as if there was an alarm. he then chopped the remaining wires and I ceremoniously removed the alarm unit, still weeping and clicking ( it has an internal battery) to the workshop bin. Pascal then soldered the connections he'd made, grouped and insulated the loose wires and secured the whole lot together. Good job jobbed! Thank you to all those who made useful and / or helpful comments, cos it was only really because of what I learnt that I was able to push them in the right direction and get the neccessary information out of datatool.

I have no clue, I know where the depot is and its actually closer to me than the hospital, it was a sunday morning so maybe they were "on call" rather than actually at the depot and had to come from home to the depot first but that seems a stoopid way of doing things ( it'd be typically french though, Sunday hours count doiuble here)

Yup, going to the dealer tomorrow. that way there's no " fail" option. well that's nothing if not honest. I'll take that. dealer tomorrow. I'll let you know how long it takes them.

im still kinda hoping that they'll not let the english back in 'til next year.

pedro's right, when I had a "cardiac incident" a few months back, it took the ambulance nearly 40 minutes to get here, on a sunday morning so no traffic and I live about 10 minutes by car from the hospital. I reckon I could have walked it in 4o minutes...

hot here at the mo, high 20's and just into the 30's the last couple of days. looks to be set fine too.... but I can't ride, obviously! I thought I was orking sunday but aparrently not so a lazy day at home on the cards I s'pose.

naaah, sorry mate, I figured that in this particular case you would be about as much practical use as a the little motorised cupholder that slides in and out of the side of my computor.

at the moment it atarts and runs ok. cos i haven't started cutting bits off it. the problem arises when you switch it off. If you're within a certain distance of an autoroute toll gate, or a mobile telephone antenna or relay, or a number of other radio emission sources, You can't disactivate the alarm with the remote control due to the interference from external frequencies. This happens on a regular basis and is extremely annoying. There is a solution when this happens: switch ignition on ( alarm siren sounds, indicators flash and electronic immobiliser cuts in) once the alarm stops screaming ( 30 seconds) you have 5 seconds to switch off and switch on again the alarm emits a series of short "bips" and a series of long "beeps" the long beeps correspond to your manual pin code. when the number of long beeps equals the first digit of your 4 digit pin code switch off the contact, then immediatly back on again and count the beeps corresponding to your 2nd digit... and so on untill you have entered the 4 digits of your pin code. the alarm then emits a series of "bips" for 3 seconds and flashes the indicators once to confirm the alarm is disactivated, you then have 45 seconds to start the engine or the alarm will reactivate in it's default mode. believe me, you learn this procedure by heart... you notice that the whole procedure relies on the "series of "Bips" and "beeps".... so when your alarm no longer makes any sound ( which is now the case here)... you're "fucked" ( Fucked being the correct technical term for the position in which you find yourself in the middle of sodding nowhere at 2 o clock in the morning.) It will then start raining.

don't for one minute I hadn't thought of the possibility of getting Fred and / or Bob over for beer and bike fixing.... not currently feasable with 14 days quarantine involved at each end.. If I want Triumph to do it, they can do it tuesday. I,m going to be working this sunday so tuesday would be the first opportunity I could have a couple or 4 hours clear to have a go at it if I want to try it myself.