Steve_M

Cumbria, certainly. Photo taken from near Brampton. There seems to be a common theme to many of these areas. Lack of light pollution.

I have the app. The sky is clear with little or no light pollution here, the stars are bright but no sign of the Aurora, and my camera isn’t up to the task of capturing it anyway.

Good evening. Last night, around 10pm, the Northern Lights were visible from near our location. The photo was taken by someone in the nearby town. I’d been outside looking at the night sky earlier but missed the spectacle. It’s something I’ve wanted to see since I visited Norway as a youth. Tonight I shall be staying up, standing at the top of the paddock looking north, camera in hand, hoping to see it. Wish me luck.

I was just wondering about that. I once tried to move my bike with a disc lock fitted… embarrassing. I only ever use a disc lock when travelling and have got into the habit of putting an Oxford disc lock minder (a bit of yellow curly cable) from the disc lock to one of my grips, usually the clutch side, wrapping it around the lever several times so I don’t try to set off with it fitted. This device needs something to prevent riding of with it engaged or there could be a very expensive result.

NC30 is an awesome bike. I had one as a courtesy bike when mine was being fixed some years ago. Only you can determine whether it’s the right bike for you. I once, briefly, owned a ZXR750 which I found uncomfortable after an hour. I learnt to take regular breaks… If nothing else, you will find out what your biking needs are and will be in a position to change it to something appropriate if necessary.

Back when I was a COBOL programmer, I always managed to type ‘EBGIN” instead of BEGIN when creating run commands in the system control language, which was a block control language and BEGIN was a kinda important word. I’m still a two finger typist and I rarely get through a sentence without a typo, though I can’t discern a pattern or theme.

Good point. How would we find out?

Sorry to resurrect this thread but… My car’s engine management light came on yesterday - it’s done around 23,000 miles. I popped it to the local garage who said it’s a couple of sensors. Luckily the car is still under warranty so will be covered for this work. He asked if I used E10… Now I’m aware that it’s a tenuous link (correlation vs cause) but he was saying that he’s encountering more such failures, and he’s hearing similar tales from other garages.

I should be so lucky.

Good evening. I’ve had a superb day at Chatsworth House with mum, now chilling at a rather nice hotel nearby. I see in my near future.

This popped up for me. I’ve only heard good things about Rapid Training as a group, so I would add this to my list of options to help you. Rapid Training link

It was through roadworks with two narrow lanes, speed limit 50mph. I was on the inside lane and there was another car just behind me, by possibly a couple of metres, in the outside lane. He was about to slowly overtake me when the rider used him as a mobile chicane and went through the decreasing gap at speed.

It was broadly on par with the tossers I saw ‘filtering’ along the M25 around 1999 heading home after the WSB round at Brands Hatch. I saw at least three bikes on the ground before I got to the Dartford Crossing. My good lady, who was travelling along that stretch of the road on her way back from Paris, also commented on the riding as she had a few close encounters in the car. I thought we had (mostly) matured out of that idiocy.

There is no link. I don’t have a dash cam, and I was too busy trying to make room for the rider to get through a decreasing space as he (she?) thought they were on a video game and, thus, invulnerable.

Life is short. And possibly painful if you’d hit my car with that manoeuvre.

They were fine until Aviva bought them. They don’t seem to have recovered from that period.

Good point. Well made.

I always had RAC cover through Aviva (staff discount so dirt cheap, hence the full works). I made the mistake of changing insurer, but got two years free with Motorrad for a similar level of cover anyway. I’m now with Green Flag, home breakdown, overseas cover etc. Having experienced punctures in remote spots, in the Alps, Pyrenees and Scotland (twice) I’ve found the peace of mind worth every penny.

At some point you have to make a giant leap of faith. Don’t let these tales put you off. I was married for 21yrs and it was, mostly, good. Neither of us were perfect, I could be a complete ar*ehole with my attitude, though usually in response to when she was totally unreasonable. I had a one night stand early on, and she never trusted me from that point (who can blame her). Ultimately all the little niggles, her unreasonable and entitled attitude and me railing against it led to us separating. In hindsight yes, the writing was on the wall for a while, but communication had stopped (me working long hours, running a boys football team, being an observer for the IAM. Her working shifts). I had custody of our son, which wasn’t easy given that I worked long hours, though we never discussed “visiting rights” as my view was he was a teenager, he could go and see her whenever he wanted - we lived in the same village. I would also mention that I have since found the most amazing woman as my partner, and we’ve been together for around 23 yrs. We have five kids between us and the families have merged amazingly well.

At our previous house the neighbours mostly had little to say about motorbikes - just accepted that my hobbies were different to theirs. New neighbours moved in over the road and one of them had a bike, so we’d chat occasionally. It was a friendly little community at the end of a cup de sac but we we didn’t intrude on each other’s time or space much. Current neighbours? We’ve lived here two years and only just found out our nearest neighbour owns an old Franny Barnett in need of restoration. He’d rather talk about farming …

My son’s girlfriend is a paramedic. Some of her tales of being messed around both by work and the public are many and varied.

We settled out of court relatively amicably. At my insistence we went for a clean break. As I have a couple of final salary pensions I didn’t want to risk her getting her hands on those at any future time through maintenance. It was best to provide her with a lump sum that included a sum taking into account my pension’s value at that time. It meant selling the house and starting almost from scratch but worth the few years of less financial comfort.

I don’t recall the date of my decree nisi. I do recall what I was told as I went through my divorce. Your marriage is like a tropical hurricane… It started hot, moist and steamy, and ended cold and took your house* with it. *yes, genuinely did.

I face that going down my drive at this time of year. What with the strip of moss down the middle… just getting to the road can be a nervy business. I’ll have to sweep the drive again… I need to buy an attachment for the mower to speed that up.

I tend to lean the bike slightly to the right as mine steps onto the near side foot peg, and bring it upright as she settles into the seat. Her way of getting on the bike is not the most elegant… and takes a while to complete. A guy I know let’s his wife get on first, having the bike on the side stand so she uses the rider’s foot peg initially. Not something I’d try…