Longest Day Up

  I'm still away at sea with work, I've not heard from the exhaust company and nor has the corporate sponsorship money arrived yet. But I keep checking the Cancer Research fund every few days and on Monday for some strange reason there was a flurry of donations, much to my surprise. I recognised one name as someone Mrs EvilSpike works with and messaged her to convey my thanks and tell her about the other random donations. It turns out she'd had a bake sale at work and the donations were from other pilots, observers and the students at her squadron! She was going to keep it quiet until the end of the day and then let me know with a total which was £121 plus some gift aid in the end which is fantastic. Her mum had been baking too and they managed to present an amazing array of cakes and flapjacks for everyone. I'm only mildly jealous that I didn't get to eat any of the fruit slice offered up.  Unfortunately one reason the donation and blog pages might ...

After changing the leaking fork seals in the right leg and leaving it two weeks, with no oil escaping I felt quietly confident that stripping the left leg so I could service and give it a lick of paint would take less than an hour. It would appear I underestimate the number of ways I can be wrong on any given morning. The fork came out of the leg easily enough, bottle jack under the sump and the bike became tripod. Fork into the workbench, ratchet strap to keep it secure and use the long 6mm allen key to undo the retaining bolt then... ah. Bollocks! Houston, we have a problem... That wasn't quite how I had planned this to go. I'd given the socket a good baste of Silkopen over the preceding few weeks but my guess is the 6mm ball socket on the end of my 300mm long allen key wasn't the best of ideas. Luckily in the village we have the Perranwell Classic Car Garage (who will hire you a Morgan for the day to tour around Cornwall and it's brilliant fun!) and after a quick c...

 Sorry I've been quiet for a couple of weeks, we've been away in foreign climes over Easter, although annoyingly I've only been back a few days and now have to go away to work. But there has been progress. Firstly and most importantly I am in possession of a pair of shiny, new Tourmax discs courtesy of Kerry and Rob at Brooks Barn in Pembrokeshire. Kerry was fantastic and did us a grand discount on the new discs which I'm sure will get me through the MoT unlike the warped ones on the bike at the mo. I've also managed to snag a corporate sponsor which will give the total raised for Cancer Research a significant boost. Considering the company will merely get a middle aged man complaining about how much everything hurts in the days afterwards, plus a few photos of his (slightly)* less than Adonis frame wearing their t-shirts whilst spannering on a bike, I feel the LDU fund has done very well in this cost/benefit equation. Thankfully Elevate Offshore , the premium pers...