On Friday I went to Chiqitos in Lenton for a birthday meal with Lisa, her parents, her brother and his girlfriend. As people are off doing different things on my birthday weekend next week, this was a good time to all meet up. I had to walk in carrying a helium “30″ balloon of course and as well as the meal I also had a cake brought out, complete with model motorcycle on it.

The meal was very good and I do like upbeat Mexican places for social gatherings rather than more formal joints. I even got a free birthday cocktail. I also got some pressies of Lisa and her family, namely:

A very expensive bottle of cognac and two rockford crystal glasses from her parents
A bottle of very good ripasso valpolicella along with a selection of fresh cheeses off her brother and his gf

And the present from Lisa was two tickets for three nights in a four-star hotel in the center of Milan for my actual birthday weekend. I will be turning 30 under an Italian sky sipping wine and eating pizza!! This Friday, the weather forecast in Nottingham is very similar to the rest of the weather we have had this summer - a dull, overcast day with rain and a temperature of 19 degrees. In Milan it will be 27 degrees, a gently 2mph breeze and a glorious sunny day with no clouds

On Saturday we drove to Chelmsford to visit my brother and his family along with my parents. Had a day catching up and then we went off to our hotel in a nearby village. The hotel was actually really good (an old manor house) so had a few drinks in the bar before bed (in a very nice king sized bed) and then got up for a buffet breakfast (I was expecting yogharts and fruit, but it was a full English cooked selection with waiter service for hot drinks and toast - Bargain for just £65 for B&B for the both of us). We also had a chuckle on the way to breakfast as we go past the pool, to see a woman in there swimming in a very tiny thong bikini. I admit that when I see girls in beach bikinis in normal swimming pools at gyms, I generally think “poser”, however yet to see one with her arse hanging out until that day! The woman swimming behind her didn’t look too impressed.

I also got even more birthday presents, so consider myself rather spoilt. I got a cheque from my parents to put towards my police-trained advanced riding licence and a fantastic watch from my brother and his family (which is great timing as my little Marks and Sparks one is looking a bit battered)

I also picked up a new Spurs shirt in Chelmsford, slightly at a loss as for the first time in five years I can’t have “Keane” and “10″ on it, so I settled for “Yid Army” and “30″ instead.

I dropped my parents back off at Stansted on the way home and then four hours later (I love the M25) we got back to Nottingham. We were both pretty shattered, so skipped the planned Salsa class and met up with Lisa’s brother and his gf in the pub instead for steak and beer.

So then, this week on Wednesday it’s off to WEM-BER-LEY for the England match and Friday I’m off to Italy. Woo hoo!

This really gives me faith in the good nature and decency of humanity

I sang a song of joy as for the last time ever I had to use a pair of pliers to unscrew them because the useless allan key socket on the anodised bolts simple sheered off when the slightest pressure is applied. I then lovingly screwed in my marine stainless steel bolts, and even unscrewed them as well as it was so novel being able to - and gleamed as that are 5mm shorter so no protruding parts on the other side.

It’s often the little things in life that bring the most pleasure.

Take Free Personality Disorder Test
personality tests by similarminds.com ]]> http://supple.co.uk/archives/310/feed/ http://supple.co.uk/archives/309 http://supple.co.uk/archives/309#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:46:36 +0000 ray http://supple.co.uk/archives/309 Every time I raise this subject, people often assume I’m trying to justify speeding.

To set the record straight, I’m not. If you want to ride at silly speeds then go to a track day and enjoy tear-arsing around without the risks of hitting a raised manhole cover or having a Volvo pull out on you.

You’ll find quite a few motorcyclists feel the same way, but naturally people only notice the knobheads and tar everyone with the same brush - and it’s the knobheads that make the headlines. My bike is twenty years old and can break the national speed limit by over 100mph, so you can imagine what newer bikes can do. There’s a lot of responsibility when riding a bike as you do have that power and speed, unlike the four-wheeled counterparts where it’s often to do with the performance of the vehicle stopping the driver speeding (i.e. even if you wanted to go from 0-60 in 2.5 seconds, you’re not going to do that in your typical Mondeo).

Anyway, this is regarding the latest story of a motorcyclist getting the strong arm of the law:

A 44 year old has been sent to prison for 15 months for being caught riding at over 100mph (he was disqualified as well which no doubt had an impact on the sentence). Previous cases in the last few years have seen other speeders getting jail sentences as well.

The DI giving a press statement pretty much summed it up with: “Excess speed is one of the main causes of collisions”. And that’s what it comes down to - whether or not you were in control, if you actually caused a collision or any other factor is irrelevant. If you speed, then you’re classed as dangerous and you will get the book thrown at you.

Now believe it or not, I’m not opposed to this. I am fine with this system providing we have one little addition - consistency. If you are getting jailed for potentially having a collision that could result in a fatality, then I’d like to think that if you do cause a fatality from dangerous actions then you’ll get a more sever sentence.

No chance..

Excess speed means that your braking distances are increased, you have less time for reactions and the force of impact will be greater. It does not automatically cause collisions as the learned DI states, as a collision is a logical and predictable set of events, however there is less chance of being able to avoid that sequence of events that lead to a collision if travelling at high speed and the consequences may well be greater.

Speeding carries the charge of dangerous driving though with a maximum of ten years in prison, yet other actions that often have far greater consequences are only classed as driving with undue care, which at the maximum sentence comes with a fine and driving ban.

In the grand scheme of things, going at 130mph on a motorway with full concentration of the roads is a hell of a lot safter than going at 40mph and paying no attention at all to the road as you’re talking to the kids in the back, messing with the CD player or in a recent case that resulted in another road user being killed - looking for a tissue due to hay fever and drifting into the oncoming traffic!

Speeding is a factor that should be taken into account along with other factors such as location, visibility, concentration etc. It should not be an automatic admission of guilt for whatever the other charge is, in the same way it should not be an automatic release with no charge for mowing down and killing people though acts of gross stupidity as long as it is within the speed limit.

The law needs consistency and a very big overhaul. If we are keeping the penalty for speeding as severe as it is, then we need to bring other offences up a lot higher (some more so than speeding).

Going at 60mph in a built-up

Will it happen?

Will it fuck..

I had picked up some bike bits earlier in the afternoon on Friday from the Derby Kawasaki centre, so planned on sorting them at some point that weekend (probably Sunday evening back home). Thankfully Pete’s offer to fit them there and then came in very welcome as it turned out to be a bit more tricky that I first thought to install a new speedo drive. The new oil seals on my leaking water pump also had no effect, but lucikly Pete had a spare water pump off of his spare ZZR1100 engine and as if by magic, if fit perfectly into my ZX10

So end result is my bike is no longer leaking oil, my speedo actually works and there was also the added bonus of draining the coolant as part of changing the water pump which turned out to be a bit contaminated anyway with rust and other crap, so a few flushes of that have helped and I just need to get some proper pre-mixed coolant to replace the water in there now.

The ride to Cheltenham is just under 100 miles from my house, and all motorways (M1, M42, M5) so having a good constant run at about 70mph in sixth gear does my bike wonders, as short rides to and from work aren’t ideal. The bike was handling very, very well (even with the Bridgestone tyres that I haven’t been that happy with) and if it wasn’t for being loaded down with panniers on the side, I would have added some frersh scars to my knee sliders on the way back on some of the slip lanes and other roads off the motorways (as it was, my panniers would have scaped the road before my legs, and as they’re canvas then I wouldn’t fancy them ripping open and my pants causing a crash from the driver behind me.

One thing of note about my travels this weekend though - FUCKING CARAVANS!. Having them trundle along at 50 mph on the motorway is a pain, but it’s more of a pain when lorries have to overtake then, effectively shutting down lanes 1 and 2 and then other caravans doing 1 mph faster try to overtake as well so you’ve got two lanes reduced to 51mph for a few miles. Then the dipshits all tailgate each other, so when a lorry or another caravan finally does overtake, they can’t pull in anyway! Gahhh!! And also, thank you for the caravan owner who never secured his push-bike on the back. I really enjoyed having to dodge that when it hurtled towards me on the M42.

Anyway, my stay in ‘Nam (aka Cheltenham)

- Friday evening was a catch-up, some booze, a ruby and watched “Don’t mess with Zohan”
- Saturday was helping move a washing machine, an overhaul on the bike, more booze and a pizza and playing the Xbox until 4 in the morning
- Sunday was a trip out to a Biker friendly pub outside Tewksbury for a pint of ale and a carvery before heading home mid-afternoon

On the subject of bikes, I finally found a system for my Sat Nav that works a treat, which is simply using the normal car windscreen mount (however with some superglue to make sure it doesn’t vibrate off). The position means I don’t have to look down or take my eyes of the road and thanks to my screen design it’s also protected from the rain. All I need now is to get a power socket that I can attach to my fairing and wire it into the battery so I cn have it on charge at the same time.

Anyway, my bike is pretty much all sorted now on the mechanical front. The only other possible change I may do is replace the tyres with some Avon Storms, as I’ve never been that comfortable running Bridgestone Battlaxes. There is the temptation to get sports tyres rather than sports tourer tyres, however with the miserable weather we get all year round then even in the height of summer I still need something that grips in the rain. Bah.

And then it’s the cosmetics and bodywork, with the first step being to repace all the bolts with the new ones I have, so no more cursing trying to remove a zinc bolt that has corroded onto the nut. Methinks I will be spending one evening this week repairing any cracks and then replacing the bolts.

This is a significant improvement from my current ADSL connection of 0.5-3Mbps and the noise ridden piece of crap telephone line I have at the moment.

Suffice to say, moving my broadband and telephones to Sky was probably the worst ever decision I made when it comes to changing providers, as I have had nine months of techno-misery.

I have told Sky I’m leaving them to go back to Virgin and I want a refund for the services they never provided, however they have said no. I expected this would be their standard response though and in fact their argument for not refunding me works in my favour, as it’s exactly the reason why I do want a refund - so thank you Sky, perhaps that’s a lesson for you to treat customers as individuals before making decisions rather than blanket responses and having commission driven Salesmen.

Their whole stance is they say “up to” on various literature about the speeds you can get and when you telephone them, which I am fine with which is why I’m not daft enough to order a service blindly - but when they specifically tell me what I can have then it’s a whole different ball-game (basically they said I could have the full 16Mbps speeds as I’m only 400 metres from the exchange, but I said as long as I get 10Mbps then I’m happy so wouldn’t mind if there was fluxuation between 10Mbps - 16Mbps providing it doesn’t go to single figures). I suspect there’s so much controversy at the moment with the ancient copper lines and “up to” adverts that they’re assuming all customers reporting speed issues are the same, which is what they seemed to have done with me and their standard response. In reality, my complaint is the service sold to the service promosied which happens to be speed in this case but could really be about anything.

I’ve seen this so many times in so many companies where a commission (or greed) driven Salesman makes promises they can’t keep, but as soon as it’s a “ker-ching” and you’re signed up, then they wipe their hands of you and it’s over to Support and Customer services to deal with the aftermath, where Support and Customer Services are most likly pretty resentful for having to clean up after a Salesman who’s got a nice commission for creating this problem (as his managers only see it as a new sale/customer) yet they’re not allowed to just be open and honest that the Salesman was wrong and you need an apology and a refund as this will then be reflected as a customer churn figure that their managers do not want, and there’s no chance of being put back through to the Salesman who created the problem as “that’s not his role” (as he’s too busy bullshitting other people)

Without giving a plug for where I work, this is one of the big reasons we have the one team to handle a customer’s whole life cycle. If a customer has any problems, then he’ll be speaking to the same lads and ladettes who he spoke to when he first took out the package.

Anyway, if you are intrested in what I and they said and why I want a refund for the unprovided services, then see below:

–>

What has always irked me is that the government seems to miss a really basic fact when it comes to carbon footprints:

Car manufacturers contribute in the materials and energy in building a car
Car drivers contribute for actively driving their car
Car owners contribute nothing!

Yet the taxes are always aimed at the owners

For example, the owner of a 4×4 will face a huge tax hike whereas the driver of a Fiet Punto will probably be unaffected. Yes what produces more pollution? The punto driving 50000 miles a year or the 4×4 being occassional used and doing under a 1000?

Put the tax on petrol instead if you must, then you do get taxed for what you actually use! I for one would also be more willing to pay for public transport if it was done this way, as then I’m not paying for my car to be sat at home - whereas currently I pay tax if I’m driving my car or not.

I know there’s always an exception to an idea, but I can’t help think the goverment gets it wrong so often

Took the bike out for a spin last night around some of the surrounding areas for an hour. Running very nice, but it’s just not really possible to go for a leisurely ride in a city, as there are traffic lights every few minutes, boy racers and just too much traffic in general. I think I need to plan a day out somewhere a bit more isolated at a quieter period. On the subject of my boke, I also need to strip the fairing down to replace the bolts from the current mish-mash, to the new marine-class stainless steel ones I got (designed for boats, so very strong and very resistant to salt and other crap). It will be bliss having decent bolts, as I’ve lost count of the times that they are so corroded I have to use a hacksaw rather than a spanner.

My mate Mike got married to his good lady Tracy on Friday, so went down to Gloucster for the reception. Great to catch up with some old faces there, as ‘ve known the bunch down tht way since my late teens when I went to Chetenham for martial arts lessons.

Knackered last night and this morning, so skipped the gym this morning for sleep insead. Best go after work instead and not be a azy arse

I walk in and the drink vending machine has an out of order sign on it (nevermind, I never use it anyway)

I get into the gym, walk to the water cooler to fill my bottle up and there’s an out of order sign on it

I go to get some tissue paper from  the dispenser to wipe a machine down and it’s empty.

I go to the pool afterwards, walk to the steam room and there’s an out of order sign on it.
So why exactly do I pay £52 a month again?