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]

[RhynoCZ]

My bicycle chain has got rust spots.

I recently, roughly 400km ago, swaped to chain waxing. The chain runs smoothly and is quiet, however the plates of the chain have rust spots on them! Am I missing something or is this how chain waxing is? Be that as it may, I might as well swap back to wet lube. I mean, the only benefit of wax over oil based lubes, that I can see so far, is having a clean chain that doesn't leave marks on skin/clothes.
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'87 Honda XBR 500, '96 Kawasaki ZX7R P1, '90 Honda CB-1, '88 Kawasaki GPz550, MZ 150 ETZ
'95 Mercedes-Benz w202 C200 CGI, '98 Mercedes-Benz w210 E200 Kompressor

[thx1138]

GP suspects i have a rare-ish ear disease Keratosis Obturans, as he used to be an ENT doctor i believe him. Not particularly serious but an absolute PITA to live with.

Constant buzzing noise in my ear, pain, can’t hear properly, frequent ear infections which really hurt with pain radiating into jaw and eye socket, and prior to that there was weeks of being fobbed off as “just ear wax “ and being doubted that i was applying olive oil like told.

Referred to ENT. But according to ENTUK.org website second longest waiting list out of all NHS specialties, East of England worst of all. My referral not even looked at yet. Guess I’ll just go deaf then,

[Tarmacsurfer]

[thx1138]

Yeah I didn’t have great experience with IAM either, nagged for not making progress, it was pissing down, told to follow trainer instead of being followed to see how to “take roundabouts properly “ in MK in a monsoon, watched him come off in a lake of diesel.

HOPP rider training were great when i did their skills course I did road bike only track days with them.

[Ste]

No posts on BCF today.

[MarJay]

[thx1138]

Tried and failed to buy a new crash helmet in town today, absolute piss poor selection in Halfords, the one independent bike garage that still sells stock didn’t have anything suitable, nowhere else for miles around. ?

[panrider_uk]

Put a new battery in the Pan (been laid up for 10 years).

Key won't turn in the ignition.

Looks like when scrotes broke into my garage a few years ago they tried forcing it with a screwdriver and have knackered it.

!!!
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Current bikes: Honda ST1100 Pan European. Moto Guzzi V85 TT Travel

[A100man]

[Kawasaki Jimbo]

[to v or not to v]

drove past a dog that had just been run over today.
____________________
current bike Yamaha Thunderace.
Moto Guzzi V7.

[RhynoCZ]

Well, not as depressing as what to v or not to v says, but my XBR is leaking brake fluid.
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'87 Honda XBR 500, '96 Kawasaki ZX7R P1, '90 Honda CB-1, '88 Kawasaki GPz550, MZ 150 ETZ
'95 Mercedes-Benz w202 C200 CGI, '98 Mercedes-Benz w210 E200 Kompressor

[stinkwheel]

Bloody AI searching costing me time (if not particularly money).

Searched for clutch plates by part number. A job lot came up on ebay, absolute bargain, worked out at 60p each for 10 OEM Honda plates.

Just went to fit them and they are the wrong size. Yeah, on further inspection the part number is one digit out. Checked back on the order. Yes they were correctly listed.

So it showed me ones with a similar part number. FFS.

I don't care what sort of intelligence you have, artificial or otherwise. A similar part number is not the same thing.

Yes, I'll admit I didn't double/triple check but still. There was a time when if you entered a part number, that's what they showed you. I'm used to that shit from Amazon (their artificial retardedness is a special kind of special, you search for M8 nuts and it shows you M6 ones). Hasn't noticeably infected ebay up 'till now.

And yes I did enter it correctly, I copied and pasted it from CMSNL.

As luck would have it, the wrong ones actually fit my VFR so it's not a dead loss. But the CBR is now sitting in bits waiting for a delivery when i thought I had everything.
____________________
“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.

[hellkat]

Last week everything was grinding my gears.

I tripped over whilst gawking at a blue-haired pixie walking down the road during ComicCon, and I ended up with a massively bruised knee. It ended up being literally black, and not much blue. Now its a charming shade of yellow.

But fortunately I had two male buddies visiting (in a complicated series of manoeuvres) - as they are both quite self-absorbed, it was doing my head in having them both there at once, but they kindly pandered to my injury and made cold compresses from frozen tea-towels, whilst waiting on me hand and foot until the rugby-ball sized swelling went down.

The mad Ex Boyf was on his way to Australia to visit my grand-daughter, so I was having to drive him to Heathrow, whilst at the same time I had the Military Type visiting for a couple of weeks.

Both smoke like a train.
But they behaved themselves and smoked out the back door.

So whilst its always nice to see him, the Military Type is rather hard work, and quite messy. Drops things on the floor and doesn't notice, knocks things over and doesn't notice. I can't complain about the shaking hands which causes sprinkling in front of the dunny as its a military injury, bloody veterans but at least he cleans up after himself.

But on the plus side, he does bring me cashew nuts, dried fruit and spicy sausage from Turkey, and he fixed my Death Star fountain in the back garden. I need to superglue my Imperial Stormtrooper back in there, but I am very happy its working again.

This week, almost nothing has ground my gears.
I bought myself some nice scented house-cleaning goo, and am getting my life/house back in order now that they have both been and gone

I adore men, but as I get older it seems that they're so much hard work.
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Not nearly as interesting in real life.

[thx1138]

Went to make preparations to cash a small sum pension pot out when i turn 55, login doesn’t work, companies been bought up by a big “closee book” organisation with a crappy website that craps out everytime i try to register , ill get the cash eventually, but bureaucracy and delays are on the horizon ?