Steve_M

We have nosey neighbours. That seems effective (they once asked if we had driven a horse box out of the property at 4am. This was the week before we moved in).

That’s a bit disconcerting bearing in mind how much of our garden is full of nettles.

No biking plans for 2021. Having moved up North 18 months ago, I still haven’t really explored the area on the bike as much as I’d like, so that’s a to do. I think I’m due for my RoSPA 3 year retest this year so I’ll need to revise and practice for that. Away from the bike will be visiting the kids and my mum (better still, they can come and have a holiday here). Continue with renovating the house, build a polytunnel and raised beds to start growing our own vegetables. And get more time walking the fells in the Lake District.

I’m not sure system architects, system designers and programmers would be of any use to me. And the managers... they’re mostly only good for getting in the way (I except my good lady who was a techy / manager).

Yup. Most of my circle of friends work in IT in some sort of techy role or other (or a few are in manglement)... and live 250 miles away. What bloody use are they to me?

I had just read about that. It was on my list of places to visit, too. Brings to mind the fire at the National Motorcycle Museum near the NEC. That, I understand, didn’t have a sprinkler system at the time(I hear it does now). It makes me wonder if this one didn’t either.

I would recommend, if you can book in, the Kylesku hotel. It was first class, and one of the best hotels we’ve stayed at. Excellent food and service, and the view from the restaurant and the room we stayed in were delightful.

Nice work. We reconfigured the bathroom in a similar manner. There wasn’t a shower, but by moving stuff around and, like you, making a cupboard smaller, we’ve managed to fit in a shower as well. This has allowed us to remove the shower from the old shower room and install ian airing cupboard. This, though, is proving problematic as it’s a dormer, with leaking flat roof, which we only found when I pulled down the ceiling. So work has ground to a halt until we can get someone to put a new roof on it. Ho hum. Oh, look, a skip has just arrived. Filling that with rubble should keep me busy.

We went in August 2016, with planning starting in the January. By mid- February we found it difficult to find accommodation. Admittedly, August is a bank holiday up there but with the pandemic, as I’ve commented before, I suspect the place will be heaving with bikers and motorists. On that assumption, I would be booking a year in advance.

Second childhood? I’m still on my first. I have never, I’m told, grown up.

The macho image has long been with us regardless of the type of bike. Looking back to when super sport bikes were the in thing, how many riders actually took them on track, while riding around Foggy (other riders were available ) replica leathers? As you say, my GS is never going to go off-road unless I crash. Though I may well have a ride on the gravel roads around Kielder. I may take it for a spin around Cadwell, though. Sans panniers and topbox, mind.

My VFR is a knackered old, well worn, used and abused bike in need of a major overhaul. It was nice once upon a time... not recently, though.

I did have a Nurburgring sticker placed discretely on my VFR at one time. But by and large, not a fan.

It’s looking good. I tried plastering once. I ended up with more plaster on me than the wall. The wall looked like a relief map of the Lake District, too. That’s a trade I’ll happily pay for.

It’s just out of shot on my left in the first photo. A little while later we’d done a little more demolition.

Bathrooms? We’ve just finished remodelling our bathroom. Similarly, we took it back to brick (or stone, in some places, being a stone built house). That done, we’ve started on what was a shower room, and converting it to a toilet room with an airing cupboard. It seems this is the third of fourth time this room’s been worked on as there are already three layers of tiles on the end wall, each boxed in.

I started learning the to play the piano. At this point I remembered how much money my parents wasted on me as a child sending me to piano lessons.

Despite his critics, I quite enjoyed Delboy’s stuff in the past. He seem to have run out of ideas on where to take the channel now, though (how many fork rebuilds can I watch?). Now if he fancies restoring a VFR800fi to original condition... that would be new, and I have just the bike (and would happily source and pay for the parts)

There will be image copies and inbuilt resilience... (though I did work for well known, multi-National infrastructure company that failed to patch their servers for 18 months, so I would, and do, keep a a couple of solid state backups of my own).

A couple of years ago my son recommended the book, The Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. Well worth a look. I’ve since become quite a fan of Mr Gaiman’s work, though some of it is definitely “different”.

For those thinking of doing this and staying in hotels if I may add my two penny worth. I’m on two forums (this and one other), a Facebook touring page, as well as discussions with my mates in East Anglia. There is a common theme about touring and that’s if overseas travel isn’t permitted then they’re heading to the NC500. Even a former work colleague is heading up there in her car. My advice, then, is to make sure you have somewhere to rest your weary head long before you go. We struggled to get accommodation for August when looking in February in 2016, and that was without the added numbers heading there should overseas travel be impractical. And, yes, we’re heading up that way but we’re couchsurfing on the kids sofas and, we hope, with former colleagues.

I bought my VFR in 2002 for £4,000. It is now worth the scrap value. If only all my bikes had depreciated at that rate.

Filter where safe to do so. Except when my good lady is on the back. She hates it when I filter, and I can hear a growling from the pillion seat (even with intercom switched off) when I do. On one of our trips to the Goodwood Festival of Speed, she was flying from Heathrow the day after, so we dropped her bags off at her hotel near the airport and rode to Goodwood from there. The M25 was a traffic jam, so I ended up filtering for close on 11 miles with a severely disgruntled pillion. It cost me an expensive meal in the hotel ear Goodwood to placate her.

That’s pretty much it. Some photos from the back of the bike tended to include some of my shoulder, too, which detracted from the enjoyment of reviewing them

In our case, the higher pillion position allows her to see more and, as the photographer, take better pictures. I agree about the screen on the FJR. Both the Tiger and the GS cause less helmet buffeting (ooh-er missus ). I had a MRA flip up screen (the one with the separate little wing on it) on the Tiger which made a significant improvement to that, though. I have been very surprised by the effectiveness to the GS screen. I do miss the electric adjustment, though.