mad john finally finished the paintwork for the bonneville in the early hours of sunday morning, 1500 hrs sunday afternoon he was sat in our shed hand compounding and polishing the finished tank and sidepanels, i'm making up my front brakeline for the sporty, dangerous is turning up a couple of aluminium mountings for the sidepanels to replace the galvanised items that come with the sidepanel mounting kit, 'bastard', me and dangerous look round, mad john is oblivious, 'shit job', we look at each other, mad john is lost in his work, 'fucking rubbish', i'm trying to stifle a giggle, dangerous is suddenly concentrating very hard on his turning, 'right, that's it, fuck it, i'm taking them back and doing them again', i make a brew and we seriously have to talk him out of taking them back and repainting the flawless finish, mad john, painter, legend....

toots and the maytals.

still waiting for the wheel rims, always jobs to do so nipped down to racing lines to pick up a couple of brembo fluid reservoirs off rob that i'd ordered a couple of weeks ago, on my way home i called in at a van hire place that i had seen many times but never got around to asking about their rates, got chatting to lee and michelle the owners  who are keen racing fans, they were really interested in the mz and struck me a deal, 28 quid a day, i was paying over a ton for a weekend so thats a great saving, dangerous and mad john were already in the shed when i got back, kettle on and down to work, dangerous making up a rear brake line for the bonny, mad john discussing the merits of two-pack paint over cellulose and me fabbing up a carbon bracket to mount the front brake reservoir, i drilled the master cylinder perch and tapped it 5mm, made up a spacer out of 10mm aluminium round stock to off set the hose, cleaned up the stainless fasteners on the boxford, took me the best part of 20 minutes, then spent two hours trying to get the spring clips on to hold the hose, sticking a screwdriver down the back of my thumbnail in the process, cue, swearing, pain and claret and much laughing from mad john and dangerous, it's always funny until someone gets hurt, then it's fucking hilarious.........

had a day off today, me and dangerous went to the race retro show down at stoneleigh near coventry, michael dunlops manx winning gs 1000, gold star, peter williams norton, the eight cylinder bill lomas guzzi racer, [doing laps of the carpark, oh, my, god], sammy miller, [gentleman, laugh-out-loud banter and an enthusiasm for motorcycles that would shame us mere mortals], aermmachi's, austin healey's, jaguars, seeley g50's, £2000 oil paintings of guzzi racers, pott's desmodromic norton race engine's, big, big money cars and bikes, thought we had dropped a bollock at first, not like stafford or classic race meetings, big, big, big  money, you could almost taste it but everyone had one thing in common, racing,  racing, racing, ............................................. and an appreciation of the internal combustion engine.

tonight, i am mostly listening to lcd soundsystem, drinking red wine and dreaming of mz racer's.......

got home from work to discover the dog's had wreaked havoc on my brand spanking new copy of sideburn, don't know if it's some sort of dog-punk thing where they de-construct the contents and reform them in the old sex pistols/jamie reid blackmail letter form, or perhaps they just don't like kawasaki's?.......

heinz rosner, mz racing legend, top photo, isle of man, bottom photo german classic bike meeting, the more i look at this bike the more i reckon a replica based on an etz250 will be my next project, i'm driven by the fact that loads of honda replicas with a modern, watercooled honda engine are allowed to race in the vintage motorcycle club races, they are not original in any way, shape or form but allowed to compete because they look like the hailwood/robb bikes that were raced in the '60's, i got ridiculed for trying to enter my 33 year old mz in vmcc races because i run jap wheels and italian brakes, hello, surely my bike is more eligible in classic racing than a honda engine from 2006, a replica frame from 2011, pattern bodywork and japanese copies of a grimeca four leading shoe brake?, my bike is an outlawed two-stoke, surely the sound of classic bike racing?, i'm on a mission with this one, and to the unhelpful twat at the vmcc eligibility team, fuck you.....

aj chopper, don't know where from but would bet a pound to a pinch of shit it's british, i like strutted bikes, it's an easy and cheap way to get the back end down, i reckon this bike is early '70's judging by the front end, overstock forks with a modded rake to keep the bottom frame rails parallel to the ground, many '60's chop's were unraked, kicking the headstock into the air and generating the whole 'tall' bike thing, i'm digging the tall backrest complete with dead sheep, the hi-level pipes and three headlamp combo, [i bet all three of them didn't work at the same time], it's easy to ridicule bikes like this now but they were at the forefront of the british customising scene back in the day, forget the so called bobbers and chop's [including my own] that people call 'old school' now, proper bike this.

barse nipped up to see us this afto, i'm just washing the dog's down and i hear the off-beat sound of a shovelhead approaching, barse is frozen, his fingers are white through a combination of vibration and cold, we catch up in the shed over a brew, he digs out in his blue primary school pe bag that he carries all his 'special bits' in, he roots through the bag and finds the kickstart off the dangerous bonneville that chris w has repaired, pulls on his gloves, jumps on the kickstart, the shovel coughs into life and he rips off down the road, listen mate, you need to get yourself a modern bike and stop fucking about with that old nail.........