mardy, drunken rant. [part one]

what's happening people? where's the spark, where's the crack? what's happening in the blogosphere? everyone just seems to be more interested in making money / selling merchandise / saying 'hey, look at me! look how interesting my life is! look how cool i am/my friends are/my bike is/my show/my designer emporium' where's the creativity? where's the idea's? the help? the communication? what happened to the undergound? it just became the 'norm' the 'same as it ever was' taken over by money grabbing tossers with an eye to making a shilling and fucking over everyone else. almost every blog i read has a link to a 'merch' page, what the fuck! what happened to offending people? we have just become too 'politically correct' i don't mean offending 'real' people, just the 'tinterweb toss-pot's pedalling so-called 'kool' to the easily led masses. like anyone gives two-fuck's what i think. i wish i was a big robot so i could jump on the bastards...... [tim bailey- aged 7 and a half]

newark

had a ride over to newark for the traditional 'winter warmer' this show is dying, half the size of the past few years, overpriced tat, cheap, horrible tool's, 'snap-off'  toss 'biker' fingerless gloves / skull bandanas / 'if you can read this the bitch has fell off'' patches and leather good's, plastic helmets and some bloke selling 'polished' stainless at stupid prices, i'm in the wrong job me, buy a load of shite quality imported 'stainless', machine the grade marks off it and a quick polish and bang them out at four-quid a bolt? squeeze me, baking powder? are people really that gullible? [don't get me started about the bike-shed]  it's a bike show, why do i want to look at stalls selling 'ultimate shower heads' or cooking pot's? total waste of time, the only bikes worth looking at were the scooters, [particularly the total carbon, drop-headset lambretta, just a beautiful bike with lot's of lovely engineering, tried to get a picture of the ' tt legends' scooter with the amazing airbrush pictures of all the old tourist trophy riders on it but had my old box-brownie on the wrong settings and didn't manage to get one decent picture i'm afraid, hey-ho. a word of advice to the organisers. don't charge the vendor's. simples. more vendor's =more competition = lower prices= happier punters. no vendor's= no-show. i'm no genius me but why charge vendor's to show their wares? you are making a fucking fortune off the general paying public! why be greedy and charge the people who are trying to make a living? they've made nothing this weekend. will they be back next year? i don't think so and neither will the punters..........................just sayin' [i'm here all week, any international bank's or multi-national corporation's need any business advice just leave me a bag of used twenty's by the shed door, i promise i'll ring you back / the cheques in the post / i won't come in your mouth......]

james fountain - 'seven day lover'

'nuff said.....

not a ducati tt replica.

sneak preview of the ex. 'peaky blinder', not a ducati tt replica project. handbuilt, aluminium tank by chad. coming home soon........

beaky blinder [aka the ktm supermoto project]

i'm not a fan of christmas, i admit it, all that false bonhomie leaves me colder than a freshly shaved hipster's chin. [if i hear slades 'i wish it could be xmas everyday' again i'll spew up a concoction of tyskie, luke warm mince pies, cynicism and quorn roast.] don't get me wrong.  i like the time off work but for me it's reaching the winter solstice that does it for me. the promise of the days slowly getting longer, creeping towards spring, brilliant. finished work today and dragged the bikes out of the shed into the milky winter sunshine. started them both up to warm up the thick, cold oil, [i long ago threw my battery 'optimiser' in the bin after advice from an expert who told me to just start my bikes every couple of weeks instead, let them reach operating temperature and i would never have to buy a new battery again. and. you know what? he was right. apparently it's something to do with disturbing the majik stuff that makes batteries produce electrickery, don't ask me why but it works for me] anyhoo, while the bikes were gently warming up me and dangerous took full advantage of sweeping out the shed and completing the clean up operation that we started last week and erm, sort of just ground to a halt while we drank tea and ate hot mince pies.
     dangerous is like larry's evil conscience in the 'animal house' movie, you know the one, 'fuck her...' anyhoo, we are sitting quaffing another brew, dangerous is giving it the bee-gee's 'ooh, ooh, ahh, ahh, ahh' as he gorges on another too hot mincer. between the swear words i can make out ' get your helmet on, go on, just round the block' 'i've got no tax on it dangerous' 'fuck that go on, go, fuck her....' so i end up donning helmet, no gloves and a fetching shorts, batman hoody and trainers combo.
       it's january, the roads are damp, i have a quarter turn throttle, new tyres and  a 63 bee-haightch-pee, 150 kg, big single between my legs, i mean, what could possibly go wrong?
       out onto the road and a big handful of throttle see's the back end of the beaky blinder coming around parallel to the front, holy shit! i'm four feet out of the saddle, both legs flailing behind and getting spat off the highside, how i save it i don't know! i snake off up the road, selecting gears and the rev's rising as the tyres fights for grip on the greasy surface. two laps of the block, front wheel pawing the air, no clutch here just sheer, nasty, power. straight back into the shed. i'm shaking like a shitting dog. dangerous is soiling himself. 'fucking hell' i say. 'fucking hell' say's dangerous. my toes are poking out of my ruined trainer, my sock atomized, toes bleeding. 'fucking hell, i'll put the kettle on........'

poetry, wordsmith, bob smith, we are not worthy........

suddenly out of the darkness of another boring sodium lit night on the streets of parr, sparks would ignite as the douglas dragonfly grounded its pegs around the sharp and dangerously rutted "oddfellows" bend. the rider wrestled the ill handling machine, teasing out more and more performance than was ever intended, in a split second blur of soundtrack and speed he had battered the corner into submission....he now owned it... and off he sped...to his next task. nailing it round the "horse shoe".. "aye that will be bob then"... said the teenager looking on in awe. "aye that was bob"... on bob smith         just by chance i found this comment left by 'z1toecutter' on a post about the legendary racer bob smith. i was contacted by bob's brother in law regarding my post's on bob from way back when and the family sent me copies of a photo album of very personal pictures that i will post to celebrate the life of great man once we have sorted out all the photo credits. bob smith was a great racer, humble, funny and fast as fuck, his memory will live on with the recently announced bob smith trophy races at scarborough, [the scene of many of bob's win's] looking back through the pictures reveals the talent of bob, ex world champions, marco luchinelli, wayne gardner and barry sheene amongst the fellow racers bob bested.           z1toecutter must have known bob, or, at least been a fan, he has put into words what i can't. respect due.

clean that evil mud out your soul

long term contributor, music aficianado and all round good cornish egg, jan, from the stinky 5 blogspot and new fangled instant-gran sent me a copy of the brilliant ladybird-for-grown-up's book about hipsters for christmas. so, so funny, using artwork from the original ladybird books but with a 'large, clear script, the careful choice of words and the thoughtful matching of text with pictures all enable grown-up's to think they have taught themselves to cope.'
[to be read as a companion to the bikeshed mc cafe/bar/shop here http://thebikeshed.cc/cafebarshopclub/  [please be sure to read the 'rules' for membership and please behave if you do visit, i mean, we don't really want to have to ask you to leave because you have a noisy exhaust or are riding like a twat and don't think about leaving your bike on our premises if you have had a couple of port and lemons even if you have the membership deal that actually allows you to buy alcohol after eight in the pm. remember folk's, motorcycles are meant to be displayed in a trendy, exposed brickwork, leather 'chesterfield' sofa, 'bro' handshaking, air-conned [yeah, you fucking have been] tattoo/barbershop/brasserie/retail emporium, something to be admired whilst sipping an overpriced coffee and talking bollocks about your recently commisioned honda superdream 250 cafe racer................

cardiacs - 'is this the life?'

the queens speech........

beaky blinder [aka the ktm supermoto project]

 new rubber, is there anything finer? this week we are mostly continuing the replacement of the o.e.m plated fasteners with stainless stuff, turned up on the lathe as usual, new renthal superlight sprockets and a gold chain from rob at racinglines. fitted the acerbis race handguards and cleaned up the chain adjusters and alloy spindle-nuts. the mirror is the oberon one off the 'peaky blinder' ducati, turned down along with the oberon bar end weight to fit the renthal 'fatbars', rg tail tidy fitted, need to solder up the wires for the number plate light and tidy up the wiring by pulling it back into the seat unit, the numberplate is a 'cheater' courtesy of chalky's mate, stamped up with the bsi number but ever so slightly smaller [ 'it was fitted when i bought the bike officer' ahem...] keeping it tidy using double-sided tape to mount it rather than drilling it and using those horrible plastic screws, [admit it, you didn't even notice it did you, but now you have am i right or what?] what goes around comes around so back to the new rubber, dunlop mutant's, [great name] a specialist supermoto tyre, very sticky, soft compound and sidewall, an almost road legal 'wet' race pattern tyre and very expensive, but seriously, can you imagine anything else being fitted to this bike?........

beaky blinder [aka the ktm supermoto project]

 so, the ktm beaky blinder project continues, this week i have mostly been replacing rusty oem fasteners with stainless stuff, machined of course within an inch of their life, all grading marks and tapered for the 'factory' look, something that only those in the know would recognise, a little attention to detail that makes or breaks a bike build, all within the realms of a 'shed builder'. [you can buy a hobby lathe from machine mart, [or harbour freight for our american bro's] for a couple of hundred pounds [or dollars] a lathe will change your life forever, spacers, turning up bolts, screw cutting, the world is your oyster, yeah, you will make mistakes, you will leave the chuck key in the jaws, but you will only do it once i promise. it will open up a whole world of self satisfaction, save you some hard-earned and the feeling of pride that you did that.[and let's be brutally honest, it's more cost effective than buying shit off the cool kid's, [who source it from someone else anyway because they haven't got the skill's to make it themselves, mark it up three-hundred percent and pass it off as 'artisan' artisan? artisan my arse!] anyhoo, new renthal fatbars and grips fitted, new brake pads, calipers cleaned, new fluid and bled up for a stupid- fierce- brake, tyres ordered, [dunlop mutants] along with new chain and renthal sprockets, oh yeah, i'm keeping the pipes, you know why? because they just say fuck you............