Last night (14th Oct) Rush the Canadian 'prog' rock gods were playing in Manchester at the MEN, and boy can those guys rock! It was the best part of three hours of musical brilliance, showcasing the new album 'Snakes and Arrows' (which is at the top of Tony's working on bike shed play list just now) combined with numerous classics from their back catalogue.
How ever banging on about how good the gig was is not the point of this missive, instead I'm going to babble about the nightmare of getting there and back. The day started fine, got out of work for 1pm and tootled home to give the Bimbo 2 the once over, before we got off. Oil check, tire pressures, lights the usual sort of thing before a blatt down the motorway. Anyway after topping up with petrol in Ambleside I'm working my way through the normal sunday driver congestion (which meant I was running late as I was meeting my mate Ferrit at Forton services on the M6) when the arse end of the bike starts feeling wrong... the back tire decided it did not want to contain air anymore. Just what you want when you need to be somewhere in half an hour! Still it could be worse as I'm only 10 miles from home and I've got a spare wheel with a new tire in the shed and have topped up the moblie phone to ring the missus to fetch me the wheel...
An hour later Fi arrives with said tire and with in ten minutes I'm on my way again, now running really late but just about have time to meet Ferrit and get to the gig! Kind of important as I've got all the tickets! Okay sod the speed limit and settled down for a 90mph blast keeping my eyes open for the plod... Well that was the plan until the M6 road works threw a total spanner in the works - 15 miles of slow moving traffic, which with a little 'aggressive' filtering we negoiatiated with out losing to much time. Filtering is something which the nimble R65 is superb at, and surprised the hell out of Ferrit on his GS chop who thought beemers were supposed to be cumbersome and sluggish (I'll convert him from his heathen beliefs one day to the light of the airhead) until I proved his assumption wrong.
Anyway we made the gig on time (fingers crossed I'm not going to get a letter of PC Gatso Camera) and found ourselves a much needed pint (crappy Carlsberg lager or disgusting Tetleys smooth flow but beggars cannot be choosers). Although normally I don't touch a drop if I'm riding my bike one pint of beer before a hot sweaty evening singing, cheering and bouncing about in at a concert will be well out of my system before I'm back on the bike.
The gig was great and after stopping in Chorley for a brew at my old school mate and fellow Rush head house, Ferrit and I were blatting back north with buzzing ears, horse voices and most importantly stiff necks keeping us mostly to a sensible speed. Although I hate Motorway riding in daylight I really enjoy it at night. I find the wide empty strip of tarmac streaching away in the dark a nice place to be even on the coldest of nights, when I'm hiding behind the RT barn door fairing ... Don't think Ferrit was having as much fun on his high bar chop though.... After a brief 'bog' (toilet) stop at Burton I waved 'tarra' to Ferrit and peeled off the motorway at Kendal heading for home thinking, only 20 miles to hot shower, big mug of tea and something herbal to see the night out.
Dropping into Windermere passing where I first noticed that the tire was acting up on the way out guess what happened? Yep I got got another sodding puncture... I went thirteen years and the best part of 220k miles with out a single puncture until earlier this year, and now I've had two in one day! Talk about pissed off! I'm 6 miles from home stranded on an unlit road just off a blind bend... Not a safe place to be so with the bike in first and feathering the clutch for the second time that day I was walking her along the road... until I get a phone signal. Since the AA truck had to come from Maryport I was stuck there for 3 sodding hours, broken only by the plod who stopped to see what my bike was doing on the pavement with the side lights on and me 'resting' my eyelids ligged out on the saddle with feet on the pegs and my head on the top box.
Yesterday should have been a simple 160 mile round trip but instead turned in to an epic of frustraited thumb twiddling waiting for first the wife and then the AA, bookending what was on the whole an excellent evenings entertainment... And the cause I hear you asking? Well in both tires are long nasty Blackthorns... Since the plod mentioned when they stopped last night that since they came on shift at 10pm I was the third biker stranded with a puncture with in a mile or two of Windermere plus one of their bike lads earlier in the day all I can guess is some pillock had been chopping blackthorn bushes and not covered his trailer when he took the brash though to the tip consequently leaving a trail of tire eating spikes on Windermere hill...
And to sum up I'm blaiming Sods law 'anything that can go wrong - will!
