Mississippi Bullfrog

Happy birthday. Hope its a great day.

Check the obvious first....is the battery OK. A dying battery can turn the bike over but not sufficient juice to get it to fire. If it's got fuel and spark it's not something like a stand sensor.

Fourways is a regular haunt for the local police. There's nearly always a couple of table occupied by His Majesty's finest.

Some of us still do. Unfortunately the British weather means that the winter hack has become an all seasons necessity.

Today I got home without needing to wear my waterproofs. No rain fell. No motorists played silly beggars. The roads had grip and even the local road that was meant to be closed all week was re-opened. And sat on my desk was a Nemo oiler courtesy of the excellent @S-Westerly (Thank you!) So a very good day bikewise.

Same here. It's legal so long as you're reasonably sensible about it.

Last night's ride home was plagued with Gandalfs. Virtually every time I was filtering some wassock decided it was clever to try to block me. One spectacular moron even thought he was going to get away faster in his Vauxhall Mokka. Some journeys everyone seems sensible and helpful, yesterday I'd only gone 50 yards when some clot moved over to try to block me. I just knew the whole journey back was going to be irritating. I mean - what's the point of moving out to block a bike when the other side of the road is empty? Did they seriously think I was going to sit behind them when there was no oncoming traffic?

A sound strategy with just one small drawback Filling in the divots becomes a tad more labourious.

Plenty of the guys I know who used to work as 'technicians' at main dealers left because they got fed up of the constant demand that they find at least £200 worth of extra work on every car that comes in. Most people don't know any better so if they are told brakes need work they just pay up.

Don't Gerbing offer lifetime warranty on the heating elements in their gloves? Mine are brilliant in cold weather.

I don't have TPMS - but I now have a TPMS sensor fixing device courtesy of my brother who is bit clueless and gave it to me for my birthday. I suspect it's crap anyway. https://www.amazon.co.uk/GERUI-Training-Pressure-Monitor-Learning/dp/B0BSC5HGZ9/ref=asc_df_B0BSC5HGZ9/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=658778180565&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7416190432672362821&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9046503&hvtargid=pla-2212560693992&psc=1&mcid=680995b6c9d63882b6b15fc0e10978aa The blurb says it should be used after every tyre rotation. That's going to make driving to the shops a bit of a faff.

More to the point - did you not notice the rather splendid Triumph Bobber parked behind the Norton?

Just to add that someone I know set up as a Zero dealership and found they were a nightmare when it came to warranty work. In the end he gave up because they fell to bits so quickly and customers weren't getting the support they needed from the company.

My usual thrash over the Aintree in pouring rain. Why I bothered to wash the bike I have no idea. I had an interesting conversation with gentleman from the council who had closed a rural road by putting a road closed sign halfway along it. It is single lane road with no turning space. The suggestion that he might consider placing a sign at the entrance to the lane to prevent traffic entering it did not seem to go down well. It wasn't on his map so he wasn't going to do it. Since he had left a gap between his road cones I slipped through and found his colleague at the other end who had sensibly closed the road at the junction. Needless to say no work of any kind was taking place along the entirety of the closed section.

To be fair the promenade between Perch Rock and the Seacombe ferry is quite nice on a sunny day. I remember the days when the only sealife you'd find would be Mersey Goldfish. These days the pools are full of starfish.

I was certainly very much swayed by the sound my Triumph Bobber creates. The soundtrack is a key part in the joy of riding it. Triumph spent a lot of effort getting it right. My CBF by contrast has no character in terms of engine noise. Riding the two bikes is totally different. In traffic a lot of motorists will cheerfully pull over to allow the Bobber through with a wave. The Honda gets ignored.

Sunny Birkenhead....the riviera of Merseyside.

Apparently we are in for a very interesting weekend - looking after both granddaughters at once. One is 3, the other 18 months. Together they find life totally hilarious. I think by Sunday evening I shall be lying down in a darkened room with a bottle of medicinal single malt.

The winter weather hasn't been kind to my CBF. The led aux lights died and also my chain oiler is now leaking. The chain oiler is a Gidibi which so far as I can tell is made in the same factory as the Nemo - they are identical. It has been brilliant, dead simple and very effective. But it relies on the reservoir holding vacuum and mine now clearly doesn't because the oil is constantly dripping. Riding in all weathers means a chain oiler is handy but having had a Scottoiler I didn't find the expensive system worked any better than some of the cheaper products.

Not going to happen. I might be interested in an electric pedal bike but not a car. Not practical for the driving I need to do.

I would never buy a car without some means of physically checking the oil level. And I do frequent oil changes using a pump that uses the dipstick tube so it's kind of essential. Plus I suspect the cars without dipsticks tend to at the more expensive end of the market whereas I'm at the rent-a-wreck side of things.

On the contrary - the nickname stuck because he was mean enough to drag the poor fellow (and the dog) all the way up to Copperas Hill police station. He was on duty at the same police station when I got pulled in Chester and given a producer.

I dislike cars that don't have a temperature gauge. Being able to see the coolant temperature is essential in my book. By the time a warning light shows its usually too late. My wife's Skoda Citigo has a detachable screen that can be used as a sat nav or to display various sensors. It's a handy way of doing it.

7 and 6 is about 37.5p in this new fangled money. I used to shoot with our local police on a farm. One of the coppers went by the name of Dog Licence. This stemmed from an occasion when at the end of shift he found himself down at Liverpool Pier Head and a long walk ba k to the station. So he spotted a bloke with a dog and demanded to see his dog licence, which the guy didn't have. So the copper nicked him and summoned a black maria to transport the detained criminal back to the cells. Hence he didn't have to walk back to the station and got to clock off on time.

Having not ridden the Bobber for a while I had forgotten how helpful motorists tend to be when I'm coming up behind them. It's totally different from riding the Honda. There's something about retro bikes that people seem to respond well to.