wednesday night, aware that autumn is on the way, the night's are drawing in and the tax on the sporty runs out at the end of the month, i've been so focused on the racer that i need to get out on the road and have a ride, home from work, walk the boys and drag the sporty out of the shed, i'm going on my own tonight, if i go out with dangerous we always end up racing, if i go out with barse we end up standing on the peg's, bumping each other's back tyres and acting like juvenile hooligan's, i head up the other side of carsington reservoir, away from the usual tourist haunts, through the blackwell plantation and stop to take in the view, love it up here, no-one about at this time of day, i head into wirksworth on an unclassified road and spy what look's like a big, standing stone in a field, i stop the bike, climb over the gate and make my way to the huge, slab of limestone, it's very phallus like standing proud in the empty field, i've spent hours looking around the prehistoric sites in derbyshire but this is a new one on me, brilliant, i turn off towards turnditch, the grass is growing through the road surface here, i get my camera out and start the bike, riding along, taking stupid photo's on the move and laughing to myself like a madman, i like this time of year, summer's gone but there's a feeling that everything is good.

des davies, #42.

saturday night, bottle of budweiser, craig charles funk and soul show on radio six and barse has dropped my expanny pipe off after chris w. has applied some welding alchemy to it, pipes repaired and strengthened with fillet pieces, lovely job, thank's lad's.

0535 hours, driving into work, i hate working saturdays........

0550 hours, dawn over pride park stadium, derby,

maccee-dee's hash brown, egg mcmuffin and a brew.

1352 hours, the weekend starts here.

sitting in the shed friday night, headphones on, glass of merlot in hand, deftones 'white pony' on i-pod, i'm staring at the empty space where my ducati used to stand, wedged between the milling machine and the sporty, i never really liked red bikes anyway.........

been busy with the racer, built carb up out of parts from two carbs, had big problems at snett with the bike blowing fuel/oil mix all over the back tyre, dodgy as, we failed scrutineering at snetterton, got the chief scrute and he had to find something wrong with our bike, 'footpegs are too square, they should have radius ends", i had to buy a pair of pegs for twenty-quid to be able to race, £20 for a pair of shit-mass-produced pegs that we could have made in ten minutes, i took them off as soon as i got back and drilled the end of my homemade pegs, mixed up some araldite rapid and bonded in a couple of nylon sliders.

wonga, cash, readies, folding, filthy lucre, dosh, wad, dough, a dirty envelope with two grand in it in exchange for my ducati, a grand to mrs b for 'wife tax' leaves me with a g to fund the racer, two bikes gone in a week, i'm feeling wounded.......

two-strokes, love 'em, totally anti-social, fast, noisy, smelly and in your face, the two-wheel equivalent of punk, [yep, i admit it, this picture is where i got my idea for the rearsets and the exhaust on the 'zed racer project].

love it, love it, love it, sporty racer, not too sure about that front tyre though.