andy saunders, bmzrc champion and holder of the number 1 plate, my bike wouldn't start for qualifying and the only way i could qualify was to go out for practice with the yamaha past master's, i lined up with the boy's on their lc's, tzr's etc, then i heard the unmistakeable sound of a 'zed, mr saunders nod's to me, i nodded back and i got a lesson in riding as andy passed most of the ypm's on a bike with half the bhp, respect due, i hate you andy.......

keep on keeping on....

i'm in the shed tonight working away on the sporty project, dangerous is away playing caravan's and i'm wallowing in 'me' time, cup of tea on the go, dog's doing that dog-nap thing on the chair, the backdoor is open to the garden for the first time this year, spring is here, radio six chugging out the tunes in the background, i hear it and can't quite place it at first, then it click's, sounds like the groundhogs but not a track i'm familiar with, i turn up the costco dab mono radio/i-pod dock, it's a new tune, the mighty groundhogs are back, respect due to tony mcphee....

franta stastny

heinz rosner, check out the left hand, fingers hovering over the clutch lever, anyone who has ridden a highly tuned two-stroke will know why, eeeeeeeeeeah, eeeeeeeeah, eeeeeeeeeah, scrich!

trial fitted the exhaust header pipes tonight, the rear pipe catches the top right mounting bolt on the plate we have made up to carry the rear brake master cylinder, right hand footpeg, fluid reservoir, either going to have to reduce the head on the bolt or counterbore the bolt head into the plate to give us some clearance, whatever, the pipes still look the business....

i'm working away on the lathe, reducing the spacers that mount the rear brake / master cylinder / brake fluid reservoir when i notice the lathe getting noisy, dangerous looks at me like it's my fault, 'what's that noise?' , 'it's the lathe dangerous, it's gone all noisy', 'i don't like that noise', 'neither do i mate, let's strip the lathe down to it's component part's and investigate, it's not like the sun is shining and we should be riding, i've just done a twelve hour shift on my day off and i need to shower and eat something before i faint or anything...' i struggle to get the bolts off the motor in the confined space of the base unit while dangerous has a chat with stuart, i drop the motor off and discover the pulley is wafting about on the shaft, we dig some shimming steel out of stock and shim the pulley back onto the shaft to square it up, the pulley has sheared the key off the shaft sometime in the past and the previous owner has bodged it to keep the lathe going, i sort out two old quarter bolts from the scrap bin and we manage to fashion a repair, not ideal but sometimes needs must.......

ditched my rearsets and gone back to the traditional 'mid's', spent loads of time trying to come up with something trick for the rear brake lever but i keep coming back to the standard lever, sometimes i search too hard to change things when the answer is staring me in the face, ten minutes with the hacksaw, file and wet and dry and i have what i've been looking for all along....