sporty

ok, i admit it, i've dropped a bollock, i love the racebike aesthetic, i pushed it too far, daytime m.o.t, no headlight, carbon numberboard, look's great, but the reality is that you are watching the clock all the time, just when all the interesting machines are turning up at the local bike-night, you are on your way home before you get a pull from the local constabulary, you have to wait until dawn before you venture out, an already short riding season is reduced even further, so, headlight going back on, admittedly, it's only a four and a half inch, chinese copy, bates, but, at least i can ride during the hours of darkness, the paintwork is finished, i'm pretty chuffed with it for a rattle-can job, halford's satin black with a plasti-kote satin varnish top coat to seal it, i dropped the bates and gave it a coat of satin black, the rim and the shell, look's better than the gloss shell and chrome rim, this bike is going to be 'stealth', i'll leave the bling to my old mucker's  marshy and ben jones, bloody hell, next thing you know they'll be having their forklegs gold nitrided, oh, they all ready have?, well, there you go, no accounting for taste i suppose, i prefer my bikes well engineered and subtle, looking at the sporty i hadn't noticed how shit the shock mounting bolts looked, stainless steel?  check, machined up to remove the manufactures marks? check, looking good? no, what the fuck was i thinking of? got them in the lathe and machined them up, dished and drilled, proper,  the seat? thirty quid e-bay special, as above for the paintwork, the seat cushion is a honda rs seat pad, re-worked to fit the flatrack  profile, carefully cut to shape with a craft knife, the close cell neoprene lends itself to shaping with wet and dry, scalloping the edges to get some shape into it, job done, i have to stop every sixty miles for fuel anyway so comfort's out of the window anyway, fuck me, if i wanted something practical i would have bought an anorak, or a honda or suzuki or yamaha or kawasaki and let's face it, it looks cooler than a hand-tooled leather seat with colt  pistols and skulls doesn't it ben.........