InvictaMoto's On The Road Again!

Oldham Athletic iPhone screen Love this image. About 52 years since I made my debut behind the goal with my Aunt Linda and her friend Anne. My Dad didn't stand with us preferring to sit in the stand with his friends.

What a great concept. Reward workers that put those extra hours in the office with a day off in the month after. When it works it has to be applauded. Another benefit is when there's an unexpected problem, instead of merely being late, a person can make it up by the end of the month. Such a case is today. I arrive at our rural station. The "down" platform chock full of people. Train late? The arrival time of ours comes and goes. No train. Smartphones appear in hands. Tap tap. No information on the National Rail app or website. A cyclist appears. "There's a person under a train at Ashford" he says. Local radio knew. "No trains..." Some people depart, other hunker down in their cars. I could go home but... At the service area called Stop 24 I sit in Coffee Republic. Nice latté BTW. Free wifi. App now up to date and shows trains up to and inc the 1019 cancelled. It's 0840. What to do? Good job I had...

The Transport and Tourism Committee (TRAN) of the European Parliament have now had time to look at the new Super MoT proposals from the Commission, so it's time, as voters, that we make contact with them. They had their first discussion on the topic a week ago and are due to meet again on the 8th October, but I haven't seen the agenda to know if they'll discuss it again so soon. MAG has been in contact with the Department for Transport here in the UK, so we know that we share many of the same concerns about this proposed legislation, but there is a long way to go as the legislative process has just begun. You may remember the public consultation was held back in 2010 and is now the subject of an investigation by the Ombudsman, after MAG member John Strong formally complained that it wasn't fit for purpose. This case is ongoing, but I have read erroneous statements on some web forums that no-one was ever consulted. Over 9000 people did respond even though the quest...

Sadly, back on the train this week. The "summer" that arrived a few weeks ago lasted until Sunday, then the heavens opened. It washed out our local MAG Fundraiser, with proceeds to the local group and the Kent Air Ambulance. Incredibly, the Air Ambulance is a charity supported service and not provided as part of the huge tax burden on UK citizens. So they need every penny available. You can read more here . Overnight rain and high winds meant that only the most hardy riders turned up to the Ocean in Dymchurch. The idea had been for the three bands, and a supporting disco, to play on a truck-back. The p.a. was setup but in the end it was too dangerous to play outside.  Electricity and water aren't good bed fellows. Unfortunately, that meant relocating into the pub itself and although they do have an area where they have live bands on Saturday evenings, it clashed with the regulars (and locals) weekly dose of live football on the large TV. Sadly, the or...

Two weeks to go and everything in place. Parking arranged and resort sorted.

After much campaigning by FFMC (MAG's sister organisation in France) we hear that the French Government have now scrapped the idea of banning older vehicles from city centres. The original idea was that 8 major cities in France would introduce access restrictions on bikes built before 2004 under the guise of improving air quality. This was a nonsensical idea given that bikes of any age will always be moving in an urban area and never adding to congestion and thus increased pollution in the way that stationary cars do, no matter how new they are. The move would also have penalised those who chose older bikes for financial reasons, or, perversely, because they felt the carbon footprint of producing a completely new machine, was an environmental price they didn't want to pay. This is a huge success for riders' rights and campaigning. Well done FFMC. Paddy Tyson Campaigns Coordinator Motorcycle Action Group www.mag-uk.org

81000 miles Came a little quicker than I had really thought about it. I pulled into the kerb in Dalston and took the snap. I also set up the Bluetooth link on my phone to the Scala headset so that I could speak to work. On the way home the sun was a problem. Virtually all the way home along the A2 and M20 the low sun glared out the mirrors. As expected our car driving compatriots seem unaware that low sun equals low rear visibility. I stopped on the A20 and took another pic. GS in the Sunset

TomTom Screenshot At least the Tom Tom seems to know where I am at journeys end, but on the way it seems to get its knickers in a twist. When the recorded route is put into Tyre it shows some strange inaccuracies that seem to log that I have ridden in circles for part of the journey. In some cases it shows the arrival point in North London completely wrong and a point 25 miles away. It might seem a minor problem, but in the SOC we exchange routes so that when we are on runs out, we have the same route. If someone has done the route before, sharing the actual route taken is better than a planned route that no one has ridden before!

Screenshot A few days of using the throttle a bit over actively has seen the mpg drop under 50 again after an improvement. I tried to stick to no more than an indicated 80 on the clock on the motorways, but a few times I forgot and let it creep up, plus a few traffic jams that were slow going seem to have killed off the improvement over the last four fill ups. Tomorrow I have a longer trip as we have a Team Away-Day in rural Essex.  Most of the trip will be motorway and there might even be a ford to have a look at..... It's a bit of fun in reality, and I don't take too much stock in that graph but maybe someone else does. The free app doesn't calculate as many figures and the history is limited, but 69p and the full app is pretty good. I don't know if they do it for the other smart phones, but the iPhone app is pretty easy to use.

"Red" After another of his " treatments" to mirror and screen I came out to catch him on the box singing his little heart out.

On the way in to work, I stopped briefly to take an iPhone pic of the event.

Whilst doing the "big shop" at Tesco in Cheriton I came across a display for tins (actually plastic nowadays) of biscuits, then a complete aisle full of Christmas treats. It's September 7th for God's sake. The kids only just went back to school!!! Commercialism is horrendous. Anything to make a quick buck.

For the second day running I have been the victim of "Red".  I have only seen him once sitting on a fence post and he hardly made eye contact.  I went out at lunch time and there was the evidence.  Not visible from afar but once up close it's easy to see he has left his little mark on the mirror glass. His aim is getting better, yesterday he got the black surround, but today, bulls-eye. As I put the phone away the culprit emerged from the bushes. We made eye contact. His beady little eye stared at me, then he ambled towards me, grabbed a piece of bread that someone else had left for him, then he scuttled back to the bushes.

iPhone Screenshot Amazing though it may seem, 2012 has seen the wettest summer for a 100 years, and the wettest April to June ever. So it makes it more amazing that the last week of August and into this week are hot and sunny most of the time.  Hurrah. Sadly it looks like it is all downhill from Monday. http://news.sky.com/story/978880/official-the-wettest-uk-summer-in-100-years http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19427139 http://news.sky.com/story/954453/weather-uks-wettest-ever-april-to-june

For a while I have been playing with an app in the iPhone called mpgcalc. There are two versions, free and the full one that stores more entries and also gives a wider choice of stats. mpgcalc data The export data file is a txt file but comma separated and it goes into excel pretty easily and here is the resulting graph.   It shows 19 entries.  The 1st is actually the sum of the fuel put in and the miles ridden from a whole load of entries I would have lost as data isn't transferable if you pay the 69p and upgrade to the pay app.  Shows a pretty consistent pattern with a wide difference between the highest and the lowest mpg.  This is for the UK gallon. When I fill up tonight the graph is liable to take a dip as I was quite "spirited" on the way home after I was blocked on my favourite curve by a muppet in a BMW 5-series.  Outside the Emirates Stadium The ride in this morning was pretty easy. The same holdup as yesterday, so there must ...

With the weather forecast looking like summer has arrived at last I decided to ride the bike in this week. My season ticket ticket ran out on Monday and so the bike seemed like the best option. Wear and tear aside it is cheaper to ride in. In fact it saves me about £50 a week fuel against rail fare. Not to be sneezed at in these days of austerity. A months savings should cover the service the bike is due soon. On top of that it is about the same time as the train, plus I can come and go as I please. Today I left about the same time as yesterday, and arrived 15 minutes earlier.  At Work I had expected there to be a load of traffic as the Paralympics are on. But, au contraire, light traffic and hardly any holdups. In fact, the Olympic Lanes were open to all and luckily hardly anyone read the signs so it was straight through. My first stop was at a school. A ten minute job that turned into hours and hours of going over why taking the register electronically is better...

Not exactly true for me as I work around the calendar, but today is the first day of the new school year. Traditionally, the students will not be back until Wednesday or even Thursday, but for many schools today is the first day back for staff and teachers. Despite what the government thinks, schools like hospitals, can't function without the non-teaching(medical) staff. Often much lower paid than teachers, and always less valued, these ladies and some men (in primary schools) are the backbone of the school. No admin, no cleaners, no support workers, just teachers, and chaos will ensue. There will loads to do and I expect the phones to be running hot all day as they come back and have forgotten their passwords or haven't set the new year up in their MIS. Still, it's what we get paid for........

Up a bit later than expected and away to Ashford. With the Network Card the return fare was only £11.90 for Claire. I have a season ticket this week and this week will get six days out of it. The journey was quite quick up to Stratford and a short walk across the shopping centre to the Olympic Park. The walk to the Riverside Arena is the furthest of then event venues from the entrance. First up is the Aquatic Centre, then the Olympic Stadium. The park is littered with eating and drink places. We had tickets for the 7 aside football tournament in the morning. We missed the first half of the first game where the Russians beat Argentina 8-0. The rules for the game are based on classifications, four different classes of disability are included all based on cerebral palsy and people that suffered a stroke. The second game was Iran beating the Netherlands 4-1. Both winners so much better than the oppositions. We then left and found that for the remainder of the day w...