supple.co.uk

Getting Old

Posted on June 19th, 2009 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

I’m currently at the ancient age of 30.

I’ve had a few observations about some people of a similar age. I wonder if it’s some unwritten rule of rite of passage?

If you’re a male with long hair, you will feel the need to cut it short (understandable if you’re receding though)
There’s a high chance you will be married and have kids.
You will put a photo of your kids as your personal profile picture on your Facebook/Twitter/MySpace/etc. page. rather than yourself, as you feel people who are searching for you must be mistaken and are actually searching for your kids instead.
You will develop an uncanny fetish for scat, where you can discuss the colours, consistency and odour of your kids’ faeces with other parents for hours at end.
If not with another parent, you will still discuss your fetish for scat anyway, in the aim to covert other people into your fascination with turd.
You will find getting a new co-ordinating coffee-table for your lounge brings you greater satisfaction than a good shag
On the subject of sex; Rather than just getting on and doing it, you will instead talk and joke loudly about it with lots of smut and cackling/sniggering with other people, as if it is taboo.
You will have no comprehension that people who do not join in with your joking obviously know you make such a big song and dance about it because you’re not actually getting any.
You will willingly choose to shop in a 24 hour supermarket at the busiest, most chaotic time on a Saturday afternoon.
Your cool clothes will be replaced with the drab range from the “I secretly wish I was 40″ range.
If not, they wil be upgraded to “I think I’m still 19″ range.
If a parent, they will be replaced altogether with the “as long as my child is co-ordinated, then it’s ok if I just wear a track-suit as it’s easier” range.
You will name pets with cute or sensible names, rather than funny names.
You will put on a few stone but deny it’s anything to do with eating too much and exercising too little, but put it down to age.
You will get drunk on a few pints, but claim you could drink 27 pints in your early 20’s and still want more.

Any cool people out there still? Or should I just grow up?

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Posted on June 2nd, 2009 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

Sunshine! Wonderful! It is so nice to be able to sit out in the garden in summer clothing.

We invested in a garden table and chairs (metal and glass table rather than plastic) and a decent parasol, so have been enjoying sitting outside chilling and having meals outside as well. This weekend we had fish and chips with a bottle of chilled cava. Perfect!

I’ve also been painting all the fences which thankfully is nearly done now (I hate tedious work like that) and I’m still trying to revive our lawn, which has a lot of bare patches and dried out straw like parts. I’m hoping weed and feed and lots of watering helps. I put grass seed down, but that’s done f-all.

In other news we saw some people trying to break into a neighbour’s van on the weekend, so called the police who caught all three of them red-handed. Result.

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Hello

Posted on May 18th, 2009 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

I’ve been neglecting this blog of late, as most of my mundane activities are ending up on Twitter these days, so rather than blog posts there is a running commentary instead.

I have lost interest in Facebook altogether now. It seemed fun at first, but these days it looks like it’s aiming at the MySpace mentality. Every time I log on I see pages of crap about someone sending easter eggs or lollypops, ratings in daft surveys, random quizes etc. At least Twitter just cuts out all the crap, if that’s your thing.

Went to Ireland for a week at the start of the month, been to a couple of Salsa nights, been going to the gym. Other than that, there’s not a huge amount to write about.

My Cuba trip is creeping up on my though, so that’s something to get prepared for. Some more hard graft at the gym to help me fit into some beach wear a bit better, brushing up on my basic Spanish and a few trips to the tan shop to prepare my skin gradulally for the Carabean sunshine is in order. Looking forward to it all.

Oh well, that’s about it. I was going to do a longer post but it’s taken a sodding age to load up my blog. Bah!!

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Fucked Off

Posted on April 16th, 2009 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

Fucking wind has snapped one of my front yard fence posts so my fence is ready to fall down. Tried screwing in some brackets to secure it until I have time to get a new post (I’m away this weekend) but the wind is so strong it’s riped these out as well. Now have a creaking fence all night that’s ready to fall down and rip the other posts up with it and I have no free time to try and repair it

My bike cover is gone, again thanks to the fucking wind. Somehow the wind has got through two luggage straps keeping the cover on and it’s nowhere to be seen. Just what I needed - my bike on display all weekend to any thieving scumbag who happens to walk past my house.

An ebay order that I’ve been waiting for for nearly two weeks have finally appeared in the form of a letter, where good old Queen Liz’s Customs and Excises want £66 before they let me have it.

Fucking fuck fucks

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Dance, dance wherever you may be

Posted on April 14th, 2009 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

Friday evening was a Salsa night in Long Eaton, hosted by the chap who organises all the lessons. It was a ticket only affair and only open to the various class members. Even so all the tickets sold out before the night, so glad I got mine when I did.

I’ve been to Salsa nights before, however previously I really didn’t know enough to do much, but it was all good experience anyway. However this time was a lot more enjoyable as I’ve been having lessons for a few months now, so whilst I’m only just being classed as an “improver” from a “beginner” and I’m still leaps and bounds behind the people who have been doing it for a couple of years or more, I know enough moves to have a good old boogie which made all the difference.

In addition this night was all R&B music as opposed to the traditional Latin American salsa tunes. Whilst many “purists” hate R&B, personally I much prefer it - especially as a lot of the tracks I know (yes, I do listen to other music than just rock). We stayed from 8:30pm through to midnight and had several dances. It actually got a bit tiring and I was breaking out in a mild sweat (but thinking about it, salsa dancing is pretty energetic). As usual at these do’s, I don’t drink much but thanks to a cheap bar I had a steady suplly of rum and cokes feeding me.

Being able to hold my own at a Salsa night finally is a great feeling and I am really loving the whole scene. My aim for New Year’s Eve this year is to be at a big Salsa party somewhere and also hitting the clubs in Cuba when we go in a couple of months is still on the agenda.

I had two experienced girlies ask me for a dance which threw me off guard a bit and let to a blurting of “But! I’m shite!” (or words to that effect) and let one to tell me to just relax on the dancefloor,  but with a bit more experience I won’t be such a wuss

I did take a few pics, however lack of flash on the iPhone (thanks Apple!) means I won’t bother posting them

Next dance night in two weeks. Woo!

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Vrooom

Posted on April 9th, 2009 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

This weekend just gone has been very bike related, which was much needed as this was the first chance I’ve had to properly deflower my R1

Saturday was a trip to the Burnt Stump pub in Arnold where I met up with three other guys off the Nottinghambikers forum and went for a blast around the roads near Southwell and the like. Suffice to say my bike coped a lot better than it’s predecessor and I now remember how nicer Sports bikes are for that style of riding that Sports Tourers. Afterwards it was a trip to Junction 27 to see who else was there doing some knee down antics before a ride back home.

The next day it was up early for the Nottingham Easter Egg Run. I had raised £15 from donations at work and Lisa had collected about £70 from her workplace, plus I had a backpack full of easter eggs.  First off was a trip to McDonalds at Castle Marina to meet up with the rest of the nottinghambikers forum before heading off to the main meet at Forest Fields. All in all there were 800-1000 bikes there which was a great turnout, and the Trent FM girlies and various journos giving it some good publicity. We also had John Reynolds (three times BSB winner) leading the ride.

The ride finally headed off to the Mansfield fire brigade HQ who organised it for a bloody great meeting place with stalls, presentation, food stall, raffles etc. Some pics of the days events are below:

Get thee here if you wanted to see all the photos from my flickr site.

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Waiting over

Posted on March 30th, 2009 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

I picked up the R1 today.

Took a stroll to the bike shop, went throught the paperwork, paid the outstanding balance, went through everything with the mechanic and then up, up, up and away.

Fast, very fast. 0-60 in about 2.5 seconds fast. Proper sports bike handling as well and you can certaily hear it coming with the growling akropovic pipe.

Most of all though it’s just great not having to knob about with my old bike. This is fuel injection so no messing with the choke lever, I have a light switch again (not linked to the ignition), no corrosion, bits falling off, rattling fairing etc. Just a sweet performing bike.

It now has residence in the front yard with my ground anchor:

As for the old bike, well that needs some work doing to it and I didn’t want two bikes out the front, so I thought I’d see if it would be possible to get it into the back yard, which I really doubted I could do as not only is there a narrow alleyway:

But at the end there’s a 90 degree turn with the gate to the yard on your right:

There’s no way to push the bike around that turn, so I thought I’d have to see if any of that gym work has paid off and can I lift a sports tourer Kawasaki?

Well, my shoulders ache, my arms are probably an inch longer, but taa-daa:

Makes a change to a garden gnome, don’t you think?

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The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.

Posted on March 28th, 2009 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

I decided to move my ZX10 this afternoon to make room above the ground anchor for the R1 on Monday, but also so I could put it on it’s centre stand to give it a check over to see if anything is needed to get it through it’s MOT (I’m pondering keeping it fully legal, as it makes life easier moving it from A to B if I do get rid of it).

It required all my effort just to move the bike a few inches, as once again the brake callipers have totally seized up and the pads are locked onto the disc. A spray of WD40 made it possible to move at all, but I decided that I’ll give it a bit of TLC and remove the brakes, dismantle them, clean them and put them back on. It’s a tedious task (especially bleeding the brakes after I reconnect them), but I thought I have a couple of hours, so why not.

It required a bit of welly undoing the two bolts that hold on each side of callipers, but I got a brake calliper remover from a land rover tool kit off ebay ages ago (basically a really big alan key), which is great as it’s so big it’s easy to get a good pivot on it. The callipers, rather than just slide off once the bolts were off though, again required lots of brute force to get them free of the discs.

And then to undo the brake hoses from the callipers.. After lots of force all I got was my hand slipping twice when the spanner lost it’s grip and bruises under my nails. Soaked the bolts in WD, reattached the calliper to the forks to hold it in place, tried gently tightening and loosing it, but the fucker would not budge. After lots of trying, the most I got was the spanner turning but the bolt staying glued on - a sure sign the bolt head is sheering off.

And this to me really sums up my Kawasaki ZX10 - nothing but fucking stress!! There is no such thing as a simple task, as a routine job needs to be multiplied several times to take in the down right fucking awkwardness of that damn bike. There’s never any sense of achievement either, as solving one problem just means it’s time to tackle the next, and the next and so on.

It’s things like this that is one of the main reasons why I decided that enough is enough and I need to get a new bike before that pissing Kawasaki swats the biking bug out of me once and for all.  I need to think about going for a two hour bike ride with enjoyment - not wonder if it will make it there or I’ll be sitting at the side of the road. I want to do some basic servicing myself, not already prepare for seized on bolts, rust and sheered off bolt heads.

Time has taken it’s toll on that bike and it might do for an experienced mechanic who knows tricks of the trade to not let all the problems if has get them down, but that person is not me.

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Posted on March 24th, 2009 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

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We could be heroes

Posted on March 13th, 2009 by ray.
Categories: General Blog.

I run the risk of opening myself up for lots of abuse by typing this, but hey-ho, freedom of speech and all.

I honestly do not see why serving in the army automatically makes you a “hero”

Perhaps in the days of old where you generally joined the forces to protect your county, but these days soldiers seem to be fighting other people wars (and illegal wars at that)  and fighting more for oil than freedom.

If we’re on the subject of heroes, then perhaps nurses, carers, police and people from other walks of life are more heroic?

I don’t want to tar everyone in the forces with the same brush here. Putting your life on the line, dodging bullets and risking your limbs being blown off by land mines is not my idea of fun - and putting yourself in that environment either takes a lot of courage, a lot of dedication or a blatant disregard for your own well-being. Does it make you a hero though?

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