Longrider

I’ve never been one to get too sentimental over vehicles. My motorcycles have been something I’ve enjoyed while I’ve owned them, but slip into memory as soon as I trade them for something new. There has been one exception, though. My TR1. The XV1000 TR1 was an oddity. Derived from the custom styled XV750, it did not share the shaft final drive of its smaller stablemate, rather it had a fully enclosed final drive chain that ran in a litre of grease. This meant that chains lasted in the region of 35,000 miles - something unheard of in 1981 when fully exposed chains lasted 10,000 miles if you cherished them and 2,000 if you thrashed them. The TR1 was blessed with “Euro” styling - an upright riding position, a large 5 gallon tank and decent sized and comfortable dual seat. It also came equipped with a small rear carrier.

I fitted a Pantera touring fairing and Krauser panniers to mine. This changed the bike from a sports tourer to a fully dressed touring machine capable of carrying two people over long distances in relative comfort. Between 1984, when I bought it new, to 1993, when I bought my first BMW, Frankie and I travelled Spain, Portugal, Austria, France, German and Italy. In between times, I used it as my daily commuting vehicle and it coped admirably with whatever the weather threw at it.

By 1993, the engine was starting to tire. Nothing major in the scheme of things - it merely needed new camchains. On the ride back form Portsmouth following an Italian trip, the loud rattling under acceleration was a tell tale sign that they had reached the end of their wear and new ones were necessary. Here comes the first major disadvantage of the TR1. The V twin engine is a stressed member, forming part of the frame. It hangs from a simple spine frame with the rest of the peripherals attached to the engine. Which means that getting to the top end to replace cam chains involves removing the engine from the spine frame - this is a major job involving two people and a trolley jack. Once on the bench, the engine is relatively simple to work on. I replaced the cam chains and rebuilt the motor. A few miles after the rebuild, a tinkling noise accompanied by a sudden loss of momentum told me that something was seriously wrong with the top end of the motor. There was no oil getting to the camshafts, so I had to replace both - which meant going through the rigmarole of getting the engine out again. It transpired that the TR1 has a second oil filter attached under the oil pump. The workshop manual conveniently omitted to mention this point.

By this time, I had bought a BMW R1100RS and was using this as my everyday bike and the TR1 became relegated to a second, backup machine. Gradually, I used it less and less. The BMW was a much better bike in every way - better handling, performance, tyres, suspension and was a more enjoyable ride. It was a modern machine, while the TR1 was yesterday’s technology and felt it. In 2003, I realised that I was paying road tax and insurance for one trip a year - to the local bike shop to get it MOT tested. So I took it off the road and cancelled the insurance.

This week, I did what I should have done in 1993; I put it on the market. Far better that someone buys it and rides it than it sitting in my garage gathering dust. I will be sorry to see it go. While it is, after all, just a bike; a lump of metal; it carries memories. Those trips around Europe and significantly, centre stage at our wedding. I’ll miss it. But then, I did keep it too long…

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My pond pump finally gave up the ghost this week. It’s been running with a wooden leg for several months now, so the decision was made; to get a new one. Simple enough, you might think. Go to the local aquarium shop, buy one, take it home and fit it. You might think that; apart from a little notice inside the box. “This is a notifiable item,” it warned in big unfriendly letters. According to the new building regulations that came into force earlier this year, I am required by law to notify my local building regulations officer - whomsoever that is - and get my “installation” approved before I install it. Yes, that had me thinking, too.

What exactly do you need to do to install a pond pump? Well, you put it in the pond, run the cable to a suitable socket and fix a plug to it. Then you plug it in through a ground fault circuit interruptor. Now, I realise that this is an outdoor item using electricity in the vicinity of water - as was its predecessor. However, it is a sealed unit designed to be immersed in water - that is why we call them pond pumps; they pump water in ponds. The socket in my greenhouse is of the outdoor variety designed to be used in potentially wet environments. So what is this government appointed bureaucrat supposed to approve? My plug wiring technique?

George Bernard Shaw once exhorted us to be careful about what we wished for. Once, I wished for a Labour government to remove the yoke of the Thatcher tyranny. To my undying shame, I supported and voted for this government in 1997 and 2001. Oh, I got what I wished for alright… and more. In my ignorance I believed the rhetoric about a fairer society. What I got was the overweening nanny state interfering in the minutiae of my everyday life. What I got was the state deciding that I am too incompetent, too untrustworthy, too stupid to manage “health and safety” in order to wire a three pin 13amp plug.

I am sufficiently compos mentis to be able to carry out a simple assessment of risk; water + electricity = death by electrocution, so I make sure that; as I can read; I follow the manufacturer’s clear instructions. It is not beyond the wit of ordinary folk to do this and we have been doing for rather longer than New Labour has been in power. Just how many pond pump electrocutions have there been after all? This obsession with health and safety has nothing to do with health and safety at all but with dogmatic control freakery and job justification for the public sector.

In the UK since the government was elected in 1997, we have seen a massive rise in public sector employment. There are those who have pondered just what it is that all these people do. After all these jobs do not contribute to the economy; they are funded by our taxes. Consequently it is no wonder that those taxes have risen to an overall tax burden of 37.1%. So now I know what I am paying for; the plug wiring police.

Well, it had to happen sooner or later. The SPAM scumbags have started to infect my blog board. This facility is not there for these parasites and I won’t allow them to use it. So, I’m moderating the blog board from now on. In order to do this effectively, I’m using my Tag Board rather than the native Blog-City item. While the Blog-City board allows a time delay before messages appear, it is inconvenient for users. Tag Board allows me to block offending IPs. So, we see how things go…

Hopefully there will be no inconvenience. If there is, I apologise, but I will not have these messages on my blog - I don’t pay for this site to provide free advertising for these people.

Edited to add: Sorry, it’s offline at the moment. I was fiddling with it and broke it. Technical support are on the case. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible…

Following on from the French motorway discussion, I See that the French government is planning to sell its considerable stake in the network, much to the disdain of opposition leaders. This was all news to me as I thought that being operated by private companies, they were owned by them, too. Apparently not. The French government uses the revenue generated to fund other major infrastructure projects. However it is in a bit of a financial bind and auctioning off its stake in the motorways will raise a fair bit of cash to plug the gap and keep them on the right side of EU budget rules. There are some flaws in this plan. The French public are not happy at them selling the family silver, leaving French motorists paying foreign companies to travel on French roads. And, perhaps more importantly, the revenue raised will be lower than predicted future earnings.

I had to take a quick trip along the M4/M5 this morning. The roadworks along with a 40mph speed restriction are still there, several months after work started. They are working on that stretch again - the period between works is a fleeting memory of being able to travel at 70mph, now once more vanished. It seems sometimes as if it has been going on for years. Indeed, at one point the roadworks had permanent speed cameras in situ.

Which reminded me of my trip last week to Swindon. A journey of about 35 miles, I had to slow twice for roadworks. Barely had I accelerated to a decent cruising speed when I encountered the next lot and had to drop back to 50mph. Again, these are works that have been going on for months. It would be nice, one day, to make that trip from start to finish at the posted speed of 70mph. I cannot recall the last time it was possible.

Okay, I know, someone will point out that these works are necessary and I’m sure that they are. But why is it that it is always the same stretches, they are rarely coordinated to minimise disruption and 500 miles of French motorways were traversed this month without one single traffic cone or temporary speed restriction?

Ah, now there’s the rub. In the past two years of regularly travelling on the A13, A71 and A75, I have encountered only one set of roadworks that caused disruption. Apart from that, there was the accident on the A75 this year and subsequent repairs, but they were gone within 24 hours and accidents will happen. No, my beef is with the “planned” work and its ongoing nature. When traffic cones are put out, they are there to stay.

What is it, I wonder that the French do differently? Not only do they not disrupt the motorway users, they also manage to provide a better road surface as well. It can’t be the private roads argument because the A75 is a free motorway (with the exception of the Millau viaduct). So what is it?

Perhaps one of the greatest truisms is that the one thing we learn from history; is that we learn nothing from history.

Benjamin Franklin is credited with several versions of the following quotation:

”They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Yet, Monday’s Guardian contains a poll that suggests some 73% of the British people would be prepared to make that very trade off.

Are they stupid? Are they plain evil? There is a trend in today’s society to ridicule civil liberties as something that is the domain of woolly thinking “liberals”; the white middle classes who do not have to deal with the realities of criminal behaviour. Yet our civil liberties are what enable us to keep government at bay, it is the liberty that means we do not exist under the yoke of oppressive regimes such as those endured in the past under Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini. Today, such regimes still exist in Africa and the Middle East. Is this what the British people want when they decide that they wish to trust government with removing freedoms in order to make it easier to catch “terrorists”? And, what exactly do we mean by “terrorist” anyway? Is it the current flavour of the month; Muslims? What about tomorrow? What about those of us who dare to remind people and government alike that the tradeoff is not only undesirable, but doesn’t work? As Guy Herbert points out over at White Rose, the Saudi regime doesn’t bother overmuch with such niceties as civil liberties, yet still suffers from terrorist action - indeed, rather more than the relatively liberal Britain.

Are we who want to keep our hard fought liberties to be labelled “friends of terrorists”? and therefore get exactly what we deserve when our freedoms are removed? Because, make no mistake, the people who think removing freedoms is a good idea were referring to other peoples’ freedoms, not their own.

Maybe they should try going to Specsavers…

From Legends of America, this:

Longrider - An outlaw, someone who usually had to stay in the saddle for an extended period of time while on the run from a crime.

So now you know…

France is suffering from an invasion of frogs. The French are now attempting to cull the critters. The French Wildlife Agency has hunters tracking down and killing the rogue amphibians.

“They have been mobilized for the most intensive effort so far to terminate a plague of giant Californian bullfrogs which is threatening to disrupt the ecology of the Gironde, Dordogne and several other départements.

The aggressive and voracious bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana), introduced illegally 37 years ago, can grow to more than 4lbs in weight and almost 2ft long. It consumes other frogs, fish, lizards and even small birds.”

That’s one big frog. And, unfortunately, like other introduced species elsewhere, they are endangering the indigenous species, so they have to go. Apparently this is easier said than done.

“Destroying the frogs is not easy, however. The Gironde fisheries protection association attacked a pond full of bullfrogs with electricity a few years ago. The frogs fought back. The hunters battled with them for two hours. They killed just one frog before they gave up.”

I can’t help thinking there’s an irony in this story somewhere…