On the Road Again!

Recently there have been a spate of reports about trucks getting stuck in narrow lanes, or people driving into rivers swollen with flood water; all of them blaming the sat-nav. Here's my version except we expected to have to stop along the route. There are two pics linked together. One the track disappearing into the lake (bottom of page) and the one above of the sat-nav screen. The route is was telling us to follow is to the right of the black triangle! The black triangle is the car's position and I am in mid-turn to go back the way I came..... The route that goes under the tadpole shaped lake doesn't exist.

Another eventful day. I needed to be in early and déja-vu. Broken down trucks and loads of traffic meant I was late again! Luckily I have a fairly flexible hours and a boss that is understanding! The ride home was pretty uneventful except from a grandstand seat watching a plonker in an M5 BMW and a (mere) A3 Audi racing along the A2 from Bexley into the road works by the M25 near Dartford. Never a copper about is there? My new riding style doesn't allow me to join in so now I am Mr Calm I let everyone get on with it. Even in the tail-backs where I used to get pee'd off with the lane splitters pushing me along, I just let them go!

When at Laguna's open day when I bought my new jacket, we entered a free competition raffle. By some strange stroke of luck both Claire and I won. I chose an Alpine Stars t-shirt from the choices when the girl from the shop rang up. Later when Claire got a call to say she had won too, she was offered an Oxford Products tank bag. We picked them up at the weekend. The t-shirt too small for me so Claire has it, and as she doesn't have a tank to magnet the bag to, I'll have that! I'll give it a go over the National Rally in a few weeks and see how it goes for camera etc.

I decided to start commuting on the bike this week. Yesterday, nice ride-in apart from the arseholes on the approach to the Blackwall Tunnel who can't line up behind the car in front. If I wasn't so charitable I'd think they deliberately did it to stop us slipping through the gaps... Today, misty and then foggy. By the Kent and London border it started to drizzle, then rain hard. Once at work, my jeans were wet, yep, bloody waterproofs have leaked round the balls! Bollocks.

Mmmmm. Why do we do this? Bloody crap to sell cards and inflated price flowers. Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Had this album for about 5 years and hardly bothered to add anything to it! Added a few pics tonight. by invictamoto

I haven't been sending anything to the blog in recent weeks. It is primarily a bike oriented blog and I an having trouble remembering when I was last on the bike. I have tugged it out of the garage a few times, once to give it a check over. The other simply to start the engine. Of course, it doesn't matter how cold it has been it started after a few seconds. So what else? 1. Had a lot of December off work firstly with flu, then food poisoning and then it was Christmas! 2. I am now the official Ivan Benda sub-editor. Ivan sends his articles directly and I sort them out. Should ensure that they reach the SOC in one piece. I have some photos to scan as well. 3. We had to buy a new mattress and that saw off the money set aside for an HiD headlamp for the GS. I'll have to start again! 4. Had a shock to find that a week after getting paid that my maestro card was rejected when I came to buy my season ticket last week. "Cloned!" I thought. No. The bank has a sweeper t...

After a few days, okay 5 working days off with flu, I set off this morning. I got as far as Sevenoaks and started to feel sick, eventually after a coffee I felt no better so I struggled home again. If I hadn't bothered I would have saved the £92 (for now anyway!) for my weekly season ticket (photo attached!) and the £6.90 for the taxi from the station!

Okay, so it's not the most sophisticated software you can play with and I suspect anyone with a lack of hair will get the same character to add bits too.. but it passes a few minutes!

GT550A_1976_on_IOM , originally uploaded by pauldevall . Cripes! Another pic from the past I found. Yes, it is me with hair!

Something of a disappearing style of "fast food" being overtaken by foreign imports. The traditional food of Londoners is sadly on the decline but real purveyors still exist. Two can be found in Islington and geographically not that far apart. Whilst all around them the trendification goes on in leaps and bounds, Clarkes in Exmouth Market in Clerkenwell is still there. Their neighbours are no longer local shops for local people but imported coffee shops and the paraphernalia of the more money than sense set. "I saw you coming" couldn't be more apt. Luckily the oasis that is Clarkes is there for is that like to keep at least in touch with our heritage. The other Islington Pie & Mash shop is Manzies in Chapel Market. A stone's throw from Upper Street and its New Labour connotations; all trendy with no real foundations.  Honest grub for the working class or indeed anyone not afflicted with vegetarianism!  When I mention heritage. My ...

Up this morning and get the first crap job of the day done; the silicone seal round the shower tray in the en-suite! Yesterday, it took the best part of two hours on my hands and knees ( oo -er!) to cut and remove the old seal. I'd not done it that long ago but it was a cheap brand from Aldi and had no nasty chemical shit in it to combat the bathroom's friend: mould. This morning, I cleaned it all up again and went in with the latex gloves (chalked inside of course) and laid a new seal. Had Bodgit the Builder who built the house managed to get the tiles level at the bottom of the wall, the seal between shower tray and tile would be easier, but instead the gap isn't consistent. Much messing about and it is done. Once try I have a bit of trimming to do.

I had this vague idea that riding to work in the summer holiday would be easier and less stressful than normal days when the commuters are racing to work. The traffic in August is only marginally lighter, the roadworks on the M25 don't help. You realise that whilst there are some wallies on the road, at least out of the holiday season, they are consistent wallies! Mr and, more often than not, Mrs Vacationer, is far less predictable. Put one of them at the wheel of a car, add a liberal dose of kids and then they weave from lane to lane, mess about with their stereos or whatever it is that means they take their eyes off the road ahead, and generally are a menace. Only today I had "Mum" (not her real name obviously) at the wheel of an MPV who was unable to actually keep to a consistent speeds, ebbing and flowing in the fairly open reaches of the M20, varying anything between 50 and 70 mph. As I past her she was looking down at her lap for the best part of 15 to 20 seconds.....

So the question went. "Well. To be pedantic I don't have an ipod . I do have a Creative mp3 player though." "Get on with it!" "There's a couple or three Gary Moore blues albums, Take That, Michael Buble , some Creedence Clearwater , and yes, two Amsterdam tourism podcasts , and yes, a rather interesting album from Electric Six..." "I thought you were an old rocker?" "Ah you mean Hendrix, Led Zep and Pink Floyd? Got them too." "Yep" "And Metallica and Megadeth ..." "Never heard of them." And they say the youth of today are musically challenged! TRUE! "Dave Mustaine and Megadeth were at the forefront of music with a conscience whilst knobs like Bono were still looking for sunglasses that look like he was delving through Yoko Ono's rubbish bin."

Why change to a machine readable, credit card sized licence, valid across Europe, and then we still need to carry the big foldy-out paper bit as well? Defeats the object innit? Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

I think today was ride to work day. I was certain it was anyway.  Sadly my trip to work involved 143 miles mainly on the packed motorways of southern England. What joy! The familiar M20 was as normal, full of tossers in 4WDs who join the carriageway by running straight to the third lane. Never a copper about when one is needed.  The estimate of two hours door to door wasn't too far off. The delays were as expected at Tesco getting petrol after a ride up the A20. Worse were the hold-ups on the M25 for no apparent reason, then the road works at the A10 junction, after which we strangely encountered crawling traffic all struggling to keep to 69mph. The reason? A column of Essex's finest boys in blue, bikes, cars and the even more curiously labelled ANPR pursuit cars.  Bearing in mind we were in Hertfordshire at the time.... Let's just hope that whilst this lot were causing the decent folks trying to get work to be held up, that the ne'er do wells of Essex weren...

It seemed like a good idea at the time. To go to the zoo park up the road in Lympne. It was raining on and off and the car-park was pretty full when we arrived in the afternoon and by the time we came out three hours later, there were two cars; ours and one other. In the dry and perhaps even warm, the park would be great, but as it rained the entire time we were there, only the gorillas put on much of a show. The park's main work in conservation is with gorillas and black rhino. At least we got to see them! The gorilla family in the "Palace of the Apes" were hunting through straw bales for snacks and we were told that the dominant male, a big silver back, has six wives and loads of kids. His life looks ideal as he does nothing but lie about all day, eat and have sex. Lucky bugger. Mother and a baby pictured above. I took this through the thick glass! The park is set in a few acres, okay a lot of acres, and a lot of it on the hillside below Lympne towards the marsh on the ...

I've had the new specs for about a week now and still haven't really got truly comfortable with them. I still can' get used to wearing them and looking where I like. In the shop they said you have to use your head a bit more - "looking where your nose is pointing". This means a major re-education of the way you look at things. If you look too low you then start to look through reading glass bit when you want to look at distance objects. I always seem to try them in the evening when my eyes are a bit tired and then my eyes feel a bit strained. I need to try them in the day so will have to give them a go on the bike! Maybe fit the GPS and see if I can read it!

When I came to fit the headset into my new C2 I was a little worried that I was going to have to unpick the lining and perhaps even cut parts of the helmet away to get it all to fit. In the end it was all very stress free. The headset I have is a single speaker in and a rather long cable that leads to a plug that usually hangs about 8 inches from the helmet. In the Caberg J1S the ear recesses were deep enough and the padding was removable with pop studs fasteners to slip the speaker in behind. The speaker comes complete with a backing disk that fixes to the front part with Velcro. Luckily, the speaker is stitched to that bit. The outer part that is in contact with your ear is brushed nylon. In the C2 the ear recesses are quite shallow in comparison but if you delve about the can find a further recess, hidden by the lining that is about 1.25ins in diameter. Exactly the right size for the speaker. Fitting was simply a matter of separating the two halves of th...