Author: Buck

It’s been a while. I kind of stopped updating this because all I was doing was working and sleeping. However, things are changing. I’ve been back at my running for a month or two and not buggered myself up. I went at it too hard, too fast, as ever and got warning pains in my legs. I decided to go back to basics so I’ve downloaded a basic marathon training plan. It’s a stage 2 intermediate one. The utter noob ones are walk/ run ones so no good to me. This is pitched at getting a former marathoner back up to fitness. Perfect. I started at the end of week five, with 12 miles as the ‘long’ run. I’m a week and a half in and have achieved some good results already. I will be up to 20 mile long run in 7 weeks. That’s as long as this plan goes, but the logic of it is two weeks increase, one week step back, I can carry on in that style for another few weeks until I’m up to full race distance. Then, when I’m fit enough and hardened, I can go back and start speed training and pushing the distance. I’ve entered the Warrington half marathon and the Chester marathon, then I want to see where I am. If I could realistically get my speed up to a sub 3 hour marathon pace (a *huge* ask) I might enter next years Manchester marathon (flat as a pancake) if not I’ll do the Liverpool- Manchester ultra. 47 miles along the transpenine trail. Which is all old converted railway tracks and canals. Nice scenic day out. The big problem is the November/ December working stupid hours thing. If you are doing 12+ hours a day you can only sleep after it. Both of the runs are in April. So realistically I can only commit to one. If I’m running 40 miles as 10 m/m to conserve energy that;s the opposite of running 20 miles at flat out 6.30 m/m. I was just looking for the figures for that. 6.40 is a 2 hrs 55 min marathon. Yesterday the training plan called for 4 miles easy. (I know! 4 miles!) Anyway I went out against a strong wind and I was doing 8.30’s (it said to run 60-90 seconds off your race pace, which, pitifully is only 8 m/m’s for me at the moment.) I couldn’t force myself to run it at 9.30, which is my bad. I turned around and putting the same effort in but with the wind at my back I did a 7.55! I’d broke the 8 minute barrier! I put my back into it for the last mile (again, I shouldn’t have. The plan is to get there slowly but without breaking) and did a 7.22! In a few weeks I’ve gone from 8.30 being a tough pace to breaking 7.30. I’m looking at that 6.40. That is do-able. OK, I only did one mile, but I’m […]

..was to keep on keeping on. To quote Bob Dylan. I’m over my sulk about the bike. There’s always tomorrow. And now I’ve got my new exhaust and I’m back to riding again I love my bike again. One thing I have taken from that Triton, and a professional W650 chop, is to get ‘velocity stacks’ (bellmouth intakes) for the carbs. I’ve had to order them from the States to get the right size, I’ve also got some bigger jets for the carbs. When the bellmouths arrive I’ll fit them and sort out my my jetting once and for all. Bike’s looking like this at the mo: Or, back in the 60’s The change of intakes from cones to bellmouth won’t be that noticeable at first, as those black plastic side covers mostly hide them but I want to fabricate flat, polished aluminium, inserts to fill in the triangle made by the frame (under seat, down from shocks, up to back of tank). That will keep the battery nicely hidden and expose the carbs and intakes. Also ditch the plastic. I’ve a feeling that Sexy Bastard (the bike) is always going to be a work in progress.   Work has been my other obsession of late. Seems to be a week of crap, three short shifts, then get battered for a week. I’ve had enough. I was off for 3 days this week and I’ve spent them mostly trying to find a job. I’ve applied for two, not got an answer yet, registered with another agency (that was a bust) and I’ve bookmarked a local company. I keep checking to see if they are advertising for drivers as they won’t let you put in a speculative CV and application form. Some random guy I got talking to at work said he’s starting on the 23rd. £12.50 p/h, guaranteed 40 hours minimum, full time job, 06.00 start. It doesn’t get much better than that. My game plan, through want of option, is to stick at Herpes until I can get a real job. The agency with which I registered today were promising lots on the advert, but can only give me one day at a time, £11 p/h. Ideally I could take days with them when Herpes didn’t want me, but I never know in advance. Bugger. I’ve come over all knackered. Finish this anon.   ……………………………..   Right, weeks later. I got my bellmouths. They looked great. I tried many different jets (seat off, tank off, side panels off, disconnect wiring, intakes off, engine breather filter off, free carbs, flip them, take off bottom, unscrew jet, replace, put everything back together.) I have gone from a dread of messing with my jets to being able to strip and rebuild the whole bloody thing in about 25 minutes. All to no avail. Online it says if you are OK off the mark but lacking top end put in bigger jets. Poor bugger was getting to 5,000 revs then just strangling. Standard […]

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged with one thing and another. As usual it was “be careful what you wish for”. I wanted the Hermes job for some fast bucks (as it were) then ended up doing 70+ hour weeks. Two weeks my top line was over a grand. Yet we still owe as much. As soon as xmas rush was over, the very next week, I got 3 shifts. Then three shifts, then 16 hours in a week.  I thought I’d pissed the women off who runs the agency as I had 4 days off before xmas, when I was bedbound with some filthy malaise. I sent a text after the 16 hour week asking what was occurring, but thankfully they then shifted her upstairs and we got a new boss. Since then I’ve not been doing too bad. The downside is that the work starts in the afternoon now. So a 16.00 start can (and has on three occasions) turn into an all night shift. Glass half full, I did get 54 hours last week. Then they announced, post xmas peak, an arbitrary pay cut. The long term workers say that was the peak rate, September to January, but no one told me when I started. It’s a pound an hour less on days and nights, one pound fifty on Sunday, and a fiver an hour on Saturday! I raged and looked for a new job straight away, the trouble is, no one else is offering £12.50 p/h (day rate, £13.50 past 18.00) and definitely not £16 p/h on Sundays.   I swallowed my pride out of lack of option. I’m not cutting off my nose to spite my face. I text them and said I don’t work Saturdays anymore. Sunday-Thurs/ Fri only. My pride can live with that.   I’ve not posted any pictures of my latest incarnation of the bike on here. She’s looking good. Actually that’s not quite the latest. I like the peashooter exhausts but I wanted the upswept megaphone style. I tried to do it on the cheap. You can buy just the silencers, and also some upswept pipe bits. You have to take your bravery by the scruff off the neck and actually saw off the peashooter bit, just leaving the downpipes. This I did, fitted the kick up pipes, slipped on the silencers,all in a few hours. Job’s a good ‘un. You can tell this story doesn’t end there, can’t you? Fired her up, roared like a wounded dragon!  Absolutely massive din. I took the silencers apart (as you are supposed to do) and the interior was basically a tube with holes in it. I should have took pictures. It totally took the piss. If you can imagine a bean tin drilled out all down the sides and all over the bottom, that was it. They said you could adjust the sound baffling (hence it being designed to be stripped down) but it was ridiculous. There was no way I could […]

Buggery and tarnation. I’ve applied 3 times for jobs at Bookers without even getting an interview. I had some time off, thought I’d focus my chi for the big xmas madness. 12-15 hour shifts, 5 shifts/ 6 shifts all the way through until mid January. Nothing. Not an xmas sausage. I got 4 days last week, 39 hours. One of those shifts I did a drive to Blackpool then was sat around for 4 hours until nearly all of my 8 hours was up. They were expecting massive volumes and were going to start 20 temp to perms. They’ve lost a big contract, and the volume hasn’t been there. If it’s like this now, I fear for the Jan/ Feb/ March dearth. Long story slightly shorter, I’ve gone back to thrice damned Herpes. They have upped their game, I think. They’ve certainly upped the money. It’s now £13 p/h until 18.00, £14.50 after, £17.50 weekends. They want afternoon starts and nights (I’ll do afternoons) so even on 45 hour 5 day week, plus, say average 5 hours at weekend rate, that’s £500ish take home a week. This is what we need. More than the amount it’s the consistency of pay we need. Just this week I got bitchslapped off the tax man. My seat and tank have finally been made to order and shipped from Thailand. I got a letter off Parcelforce saying I owed £77 import tax. Grim, but not excessive. The next day I got another bill for the tank, £114, import tax! Two parcels. And, a year of so ago I killed my lovely Nexus 5 ‘phone that was on contract. Luke gave me his old Nexus 4, I swapped over the sim card and all was well. Last week, a month before my contract runs out, and it went on the fritz. Kept opening apps and jumping pages and allsorts. Basically unusable. I need my ‘phone. The previous day I’d been stuck in a poxy one horse town, my trucknav misleading me, blocked in by inaccessible side streets and 7.5 ton limits. I spent over 25 minutes trying to drive 1.8 miles. In the end I went over my legal driving hours looking for somewhere to park. The point is, I then had to use my ‘phone to google the address, then use google maps to work out a route I could use, and work ‘phoned me asking where I was, but that’s a little used function of smart ‘phones. So I had to get a replacement ‘phone ASAP. I looked at 3 mobile, (the only one to offer unlimited data) to upgrade my contract, and they’ve stopped doing Nexus. The other Android ones use the same basic Operating System but then add loads of their own brand stuff to make it crap. It was either get an iPhone on contract (£1,400 over 2 years) of buy a Nexus 6 outright and get a sim only contract (£17 p/m, with ‘phone £900 over 2 years.) I […]

Just thought I’d better clear something up.  We were on about bikes and such the other day, when Wendy said “they think it’s cute, your bike deathwish…” or words to that effect. I don’t have a bike deathwish. I accept that the laws of statistics say that’s probably how I’m going to die and I still give it beans, but that’s not the same thing. I’m not sure I treat death with the same gravity as most, for a start. I remember when we were burning captured enemy weapons and ammo magazines in the Gulf. We were all sat around the fire, suddenly a load of sharp cracks sounded. I said, conversationally, “sounds like there’s live rounds in there, lads.” “Lads?” They’d all ran off and were sheltering behind our gun. It hadn’t occurred to me to be worried about getting shot. Which is not to say I am without fear, I get a bad, bad, feeling in the second or two between realising you’ve lost it, and the impact. But it is a distant thing. Your stomach can knot up, and you can think, “this is going to hurt” but it’s not the same dread and panic as seriously contemplating the personal cessation of being. I’ve been loony on that trip twice. It’s a horrible and nihilistic obsession that renders everything pointless. The bike thing, or other times when you are actually facing death, is less scary. It just is. I either make that gap or I die. That sounds melodramatic, but if I ever get around to getting an onboard cam, and can upload it anonymously, you’d see it’s just a daily occurrence.  Some van driver leaned out of the window the other day to tell me off. “What was that about? You’ll give us all a bad name!” This confused me as I hadn’t done anything dodgy, I’d just overtaken him at a fair clip on the motorway off slip, and he was in a van. It took me a second to realise the ‘us’,  must have been referring to bikers.  It took me by surprise, and it was confusing, so all I managed was “Why not?” My reply, having time to realise what was going on, would have been “Well, duh! Why aren’t you?” I have on the back of my helmet, “It’s this sort of behaviour that will ruin motorcycling for everyone.” If you are going to ride like a car, get a car. You can’t fall off and you don’t get wet and cold. As a lorry driver I practise defensive driving and try to remain patient in the face of myopic, somnambulant car drivers and constant traffic jams. As a biker I am aware of the concept of queuing and treat it with the contempt it deserves. Bikes are more than just a mode of transport. They are thrilling, liberating, somewhat dangerous, fun. I could spend every day chugging back and to to work in the car. 50 minutes of my day lost […]