our mate stuart is a painter and decorater and was doing a job at a customers house near chesterfield just before christmas, the lady said he could leave his ladders and tools in the garage and he spied a little boxford lathe covered in dust and obviously unused, he enquired about it and found out it was her husband's who had sadly passed away six year's ago, stu asked if she wanted to sell it and the lady said yes so long as whoever bought it would use it and not just sell it on for a profit, we went up to see it today, mr's penny is a lovely lady and i asked her about her late husband, he used the lathe to make parts for making aeroplanes and made a replica, flying model of a sopwith camel first world war plane using a rotax motorbike engine, she showed us loads of pictures of his projects, the bloke was a genius, i would have liked to have had a chat with him for sure, i got a real feeling of my own mortality standing in his workshop, you never really own anything, you just have it for a short while during your span and when you are gone?, well, that's it, we met one of his son's and he really wasn't bothered about owning and using the lathe that his dad had enjoyed using, i thought about my own kid's and they will be the same, when i'm gone they will be selling all my stuff off or chucking it in a big skip, thing's i've spent half a century collecting and loving, my vinyl collection, tools, bikes and books and all the other old tat that means nothing them but everything to me, i explained to mr's penny that i needed to rent a van to move the lathe and base and she said no problem, just give her a bell and collect it when we were ready, she just wants it to get used, i assured her we would wear it out for her which she liked, on the way back we called in to the harley dealership, the usual collection of people buying into the lifestyle, only one thing to do, a guerrilla '51' sticker attack on the bikes, thanks for your support harley davidson........

stripped my front brembo caliper and gave it a good clean, pushed the four piston's back and flushed all the old fluid out, cleaned up all the component parts with a spray of car wheel cleaner and an old toothbrush carefully removing all the brake dust from them and the caliper body, the pad's will go again so i dressed them with some p400 wet and dry to bust the glaze on them and scothbrited the mounting pins to get the surface rust off them so the pads won't bind on the disc, easy job, but so satisfying when you put it all back together.

finally picked a copy of performance bike [pb] up this afternoon, well chuffed with gary's article and paul's photo's, gary's obssesion with motorcycles is infectious, his love for everything two-wheeled comes across and although we had not met each other before, [apart from commenting each other's blogs], it was like seeing an old friend, if you fancy getting your sheds, workshop or bikes featured contact gary through the http://sideburnmag.blogspot.com/