Bikes, Cars and uh, vintage tv.

So, I got my car back today.

We know which garage we won’t be revisiting. 60 quid to unstick a stuck brake cable. ‘An hour and a half’. Uh hu. Right. Yearh, my left tit it takes an hour and a half to do that.

And it doesn’t match with the alledged fault. Frickin’ bastards.

I think they’ve also lowered the idle on my car, to the ‘irritatingly low’ level. It’s around 600rpm, it was about 800 when I took her in, so… mmm. Not impressed.

Anyway, enough of that. I’ll only be more moody.

I was struck by something riding the bike back. I’m scared of corners. I don’t know why, actually, I do know why, it’s partially because my bike handles like a goat in a snowstorm. The suspension, well, uh, I say ‘the suspension’… The entire bike, excepting the engine and wheels is worn out.

I should think the headstock bearings have gone west. Possibly so far west as to be in Russia. The front springs are pathetically soggy, as are the rear ones; and the bike’s started whitelining like a crazed roadmarker. (oooh, I’m all into my similies and metaphores today, aren’t I?).But that’s actually handy, because I think the dampers are probably completely shot too. So if the springs *were* springy, the bike’d probably behave more like zebedee (“Boing” said Claire).

Uh, but this all makes for a rather poor handling experience, which is a shame, ‘cos MZ’s… Well, ETZs, normally handle really well. The fact that Claire’s still roadworthy at 14 years old and 118,000 miles is not unimpressive in itself, but as I’m riding her every single day I’m starting to ponder that at some point a new exhaust (one which is less….flat…..) and some progressive front springs, new dampers, new rear dampers….new rear springs, and a seat cover are probably in order (I suspect I’ve spent almost the value of a new seat cover on tape – I fear how many layers of tape there are on that bike!).

But it’s very odd to be scared of corners. See, the thing about bikes is they know how to be bikes. They know how to go round corners, it’s the human that fucks it up. This morning I nearly fucked it up; but as I was screwing up the corner I consciously relaxed (something I used to have to do sometimes – when I was going into a corner and got nervous) – and the bike went round the corner for me.

But it got me thinking, the thing is I’ve got the knowledge to ride much faster than I have the capability to ride now. I may have ridden about 600 miles in the last few weeks, but I’m still really *way* out of practice. And with a bike that’s handling not at it’s best, I need to be careful. I have been being careful, but I need to maintain that caution and not drift into complacency.

Mind you, with it whitelining and weaving round corners I don’t think that’s all that likely to happen.

Uh, and the Telly. Some people know my TV set is actually a vintage device. It’s from approximately 1973; and is actually classified as ‘vintage’ by TV people. It’s all components and it’s guts fold out like some sort of origami/transformers/rubics device; allowing access to all the boards pretty easily. This is required because it has a bit of a tendancy to go wrong. Mind it did do 6 years service free; and then it blew a fuse, which is fair enough, ‘cos I replaced it with a non-slow-blow one 6 years before… and uh, it’s meant to be a slow blower.

Annnnyway. Now you’re all bored witless, I’ll tell you. John came round and we had a go at coaxing it back into life; see, it died when I moved it to Brizzy. Worked okay for about 6 hours solid, then expired. Expired in a fairly unexciting way, it just stopped working *properly*.

No obviously dead components, no obviously sick areas. Thus beyond my fixing ability. So John came round, and we spent several hours working on it… And, well, we got a picture out of it, not a great one, but a picture. Then we fixed something…and now all it does is trip the thermal cutout. Which is ungood. We’ve also used all the 3A fuses in the house trying to work out *why* it’s doing it.

Meh.

But now sufficent time has been expended that it *has* to be fixed. So… yes… more time will have to be spent on it. So there you go. I would write more, but my mum’s just rung to stress me out. Or at least, that’s the effect. So, um, I’m going to go and relax and think of Trey.