Monday, June 27, 2011

Yewr Old.

My mate Gav put a post up on his blog about an ancient Yew tree not to far from my house. I'd been meaning to go and check it out for ages so me and Faithir headed out on the pushbikes to find it.

Its an impressive thing. The Yew is said to be 1000 years old.

Not quite as old is my mate Bruce. It was his 40th the other day, so HB and I headed down to his for a barbecue and plenty beer. Tom was there with his Pembleton, a three wheeled 2CV engined car. I took it for a wee spin before the beer started flowing, its a funny wee thing to drive and it sounds awesome!
My GS and Tom's Pembleton.

A good night was had by all. We used my drum barbecue to cook loads of awesome food. Bruce's neighbour Oney had some really nice game meat which went down a treat. We eventually went to bed at 5.30am. Aye, I was rough as fuck the next day.
Happy birthday Bruce!

Sunday, June 19, 2011

My Ring.


My pushbike has taken quite a lot of stick recently. After the wee trip up to Applecross my bottom bracket was sounding a bit grindy, it only being eight months old On One sold me another at a discounted price. Then Dave pointed out that my chain was stretched and worn out and that it could have worn out my cassette too.
Now I know that whenever you change a chain and sprockets you do the whole lot, not just the chain and rear sprockets like I did. The result was that the chain skipped on the front ring, which resembled a row of fucking piranha's teeth. The chain started to skip just at the start of the cycle so I nipped home with the plan to replace the bash guard with the original large chainring. It didn't go to plan. Here's an excerpt from an E mail I sent to Dave telling him how my repair went.


Went out on a cycle tonight but it didn't go well. Mind my worn chain and cassette? Well I replaced them and didn't remember to replace the front sprocket. Which looks like fucking piranhas teeth. Result? It's slippy as a cunt. I tried to replace the bashguard with the big ring I have in the shed but the Mech was to low. When I discovered this I addressed the situation by losing the plot and launching the bike across the garden. What a twat.
As J Dawg says, "The learning curve is still steep."


Aye, the learning curve is steep all right. Jason gave me a few pointers on where I was going wrong and with a new front ring (only the 32 tooth one was worn) from Adam at  The Bike Chain I got the back on the road no worries. Here's the video.




With the pushbike sorted I've managed to get down to Glentress a couple of times. On the first trip I was joined by J-Dawg, (Jason's extreme street name) Big G and G's laddie Ian. We took the easy option and parked up at the top car park, with the plan being to do our favourite bits of the red run and play about on the jumps, practicing catching sick air and the likes.
G gettin air.
Ian about to take off.

Jason was riding really well, flying down the hills, and Big G and Ian really enjoyed their first visit to Glentress.
A few days later Jason, Woody and myself went back down for another evening cycle, with the same plan of parking at the top car park, doing some red and then hitting the jumps. Woody got some good jumps, but J Dawg must have been having a bit of an off day. He done a massive jump at the top of Spooky Woods and ripped his tyre off the rim upon landing, leaving lots of jizz looking sealant out his tubeless tyres all over the place. Then on the next run he went over the bars going into a corner!
Don't worry J Dawg, I'm sure you'll be back to your usual self soon!
Luckily I managed to catch all this on film, watch out for me hitting a tree too, the gopro even knocks a bit bark off, but the camera was undamaged. Sweet!



Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Sorted.

Original.
GHC came through with the goods. He made a replica of the part I lost on the run the other day. Fucking champion. Nice one GHC.

GHC's effort.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

I've got a screw loose....


Ben, GHC, Faithir and me went on a wee spin over the hills to St Abbs, a wee harbour village just down the coast from where we live. I wanted to try the gopro on my GS and some of the other bikes. Unfortunately while half way up the hills Ben noticed one of my panniers was loose. Shite. One of the wee metal clips that are held on by a big screw wheel had came loose and fell off. Its a good job the pannier didn't fall off. A zega pannier travelling at 60 mph could really fuck someone up. We traced our way back home and dropped the panniers off. GHC reckons he can make a new clip thingy part, which is good as Touratech would probably charge me forty quid for a new one. Faithir got a different bike as he was cold on his old R80GS (old bastard), and we set off again. This time we headed down the A1 to St Abbs for a cake, a coffee and a wee look around the harbour. Well everyone else did. I was a bit later than everyone else. I lost them all when I missed them turning off for petrol, then I missed the turn off for St Abbs and ended up in fucking Eyemouth. I had no fucking clue where St Abbs was untill GHC phoned me with directions. I eventually got to St Abbs and had a coffee and a nice cake in the wee cafe. They do a full breakfast so I might return to review it. We wandered round the harbour for a bit then we went back home cross country through Duns and up the A68.



the Massif.
A quick "up the arse" moment for Ben and GHC
Shiver me timbers.
St Abbs
Home of the amazing Ass Bottomed Boat 

It was a good day out, I made a wee video of the run, but I ran out out of memory before we got to St Abbs. The battery also went flat but that was my fault, I forgot to turn the camera off and filmed loads of footage of me carrying my hat around. Twat! I'll buy a new memory card too. I only have a 4GB one at the moment, so I'll go for an 8 or a 16. Anyway, heres the video.

I went over to see GHC on the C90 today and gave him the remaining clip thingy so he can use it as a template to make the new one. Here's a wee video so you can see what the fuck I'm going on about. 

I'm sure he'll sort it oot nae problems.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Another year of cheap transport.

The C90 passed its MOT! So thats another year of cheap motoring for me, the C90 is getting around 130 mpg which makes it even cheaper than the bus, plus its great fun.
Faithir has finished doing up his auld R80GS, so I took it for a wee spin. Its a good wee bike, great for farting around the back roads.


This next one isn't exactly along the lines of cheap transport, but my mate Bert sent me a link to this video. It really shows how impressively fast the new S1000R is. I'll need to get me a shot of one soon. I was pretty suprised that the cars didn't out drag the GS ADV, especially that tuned M5.
Cars for show, bikes for a pro.