Todays - What Grinds my gears

[A100man]

[Kawasaki Jimbo]

Effin’ Facebook. I know it’s for old folk these days and I stay on it to keep tabs on a small number of acquaintances who’d probably vanish from my life otherwise, and without consequence. Maybe I should let them go. Still, I stick around.

Search for something on the web and it’s immediately reflected in Facebook stories or ads. I even suspect Facebook listens in to verbal conversations in the presence of the device because of the way subsequent posts crop up.

Now I’m lured to respond to the rash of political posts from gobby unknowns who don’t share my political views; I wonder if Facebook is indulging in socio-political engineering and I’m on their wrong side. The left wing Facebook groups have begun to require some kind of pledge to join and comment, otherwise your view isn’t heard.

What a sad world. I feel I’ve let my nieces down by allowing such censorship and bias in the 21st century but what could I do?

Edit: make a post on the aforementioned sites and they’ll allow it if they think there’s a critical response their affiliates can make, but make a point they can’t invalidate and it won’t be allowed.

[A100man]

[to v or not to v]

saw a rat ambush a starling fledgling in the garden.
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current bike Yamaha Thunderace.
Moto Guzzi V7.

[stinkwheel]

Fucking IAM.

Mrs stinkwheel has her IAM membership for marshalling triathalons. She's not been out on her big bike much recently and signed upo to go out on a slow speed riding course at a local airfield with them. On our last ride-out I could see she was struggling with low speed riding but I've tried to keep away from instructing her because as anyone who's married will tell you, this often doesn't end well. I thought a session with a professional instructor would be a good thing.

Anyway, she arrived home in tears 2 hours earlier than I was expecting having struggled horribly, dropped the bike and is now convinced she's shit at riding.

Drilling down, they've been telling her to set the rpm at 1200 and slip the clutch while riding the rear brake. All well and good if you're riding a standard issue IAM nazi tractor. She's on a CBR600F. The fucking idle speed is 13-1400 rpm. For slow riding you need 2000rpm plus, probably closer to 3000.

So her reports of not being able to get going properly and stalling all the time (leading to a fall off) is due to the so-called expert instructor telling her to effectively lug the engine below idle speed against the rear brake. They also told her to tell me the engine speed is set far too high and that anyway it would be difficult for her to slow ride because the bike has her leaning too far forwards.

I've set that bike up with flat bars and using cycle-ergo so the ergonomics are practically identical to a CB500 twin, probably the most common riding school bike in history next to the CG125. Feet are 1" further back but it's otherwise identical.

I'm fucking furious with them. I've had to show her in the manual that the idle speed is correct and explain repeatedly that they are flat wrong in what they've been instructing her to do. That at no time should the rev speed of the bike be below idle or it'll risk stalling. Poor lass has been trying to follow their instructions and now thinks she's a shit rider with no idea how to ride her bike.

In 45 minutes, they've undone the confidence she had from years of riding, she was barely able to ride home. I'm going to have to take her out in a carpark and start from scratch.

Pricks.
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“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[MarJay]

[stinkwheel]