My Ramblings

I just wanted to warn everyone that I will not be updating this blog until December. the reason for this is that I will be participating in NaNoWriMo . The challenge is to produce 50,000 words of a novel starting on November 1st and finishing at midnight on the 30th November. I'll be doing some planning in October. I'll be writing up my characters, and trying to get an outline plot so that when I start on the 1st Nov I can hit the ground running. But it does mean that I won't be posting here until December, sorry.

So, whilst waiting for the fork legs to be ready, I started fitting the body panels back on the bike. the rear section is first, and I put that on the bike, then pushed in all the fasteners used to attach it, and the two hex screws. As we have easy access and I can see the seat lock, I decide to check that it's working okay. Funny, I cant get the key in. As I haven't put the rear pod on yet, I can easily see the lock and where the key should go. My wife was still helping me (thank god) and she got down and had a good look from underneath (stupid position for a seat lock) and said that she couldn't see where the key went in, so I took the lock off its mounts and there was the culprit. I had pushed one of the plastic tabs that hold the rear bodywork on, into the keyhole. as these are just push fasteners I thought it had gone home, but actually, I'd put it in the keyhole instead. with that out of the way, the lock worked fine. then the rear pod went on, fol

Well, I didn't win with my story for Seat 14C, so I'll post it here for people to read. I was dozing when we went through the turbulence, I've been through a lot worse before. I hardly notice it any more. It's part of air travel. I did wake up though, so I asked for a cup of tea and went back to reading my book. This was the last leg of my round the world trip. I had started in London, travelled around Europe, then on to Asia and Australia. Now I'm off to travel across America for a few weeks, then back home to England to my friends and final year of college. I had decided on this trip after a car accident had killed my parents. I don't have any close family left, so after my recuperation, I decided I wanted to make sure I had seen as much of this world as I could before settling down. The sun had come out by the time we approached San Francisco Airport. I was excited to see this bustling, foggy city. A little later the captain announced he had bee

Well, some good news. the headlights didn't need fixing. they were working all along. My wife helped me diagnose the problem. It was a really tricky one too. She suggested I try the headlights with the engine running, which I knew wasn't going to work as my other bike's headlight comes on when I turn on the ignition, but I thought I'd humour her. So, ignition on and press the starter. Oh crap. nothing. I turn the ignition off and on again (I know it's not a computer, I was listening for the fuel pump) all was quiet. no fuel pump. Here we go again. Tank off again. I feel like I'm going backwards here. I put a battery directly to the fuel pump. whoops, should have put a cloth underneath the fuel hose first. But i don't care about a little spilt fuel. the pump works. So it's the wiring (again). My wife suggested I try the pairs of alarm wires (which again, I knew wouldn't help as they were fine). I wonder if I'll ever learn

The next thing I wanted to do was check that the headlights were working. I got my multi-meter, placed the probes into the headlight sockets (instead of the bulbs) and switched on the ignition. Nothing. The Z750 has two front headlights. one is dipped beam and the other is full beam, so I tried the other headlight socket. yep, you guessed it. nothing. So I tried each socket again, and pressed the full beam switch and the passing flash switch. still nothing. bugger. I went back to the two pairs of alarm wires and tried each combination of joined and separate, but still nothing. so I made sure that the indicators were still working, and left the headlight whilst I mulled over the problem. At worst I could ride it to the bike shop so that they could fix the headlights (once the forks were back on of course).

So, I've finally done it. I'm a Triathlete again. First a bit of background. In the 90's I used to work at Xerox in Hertfordshire. I used to run with the work club some lunchtimes, swim with friends on the other lunchtimes and cycle to work some days. Xerox had a small gym on site with a resident fitness instructor. Approximately every six months I would have a fitness test to see if I was getting fitter. it was a stationary bike test and they measured fat percent and blood pressure (probably a bit more, but it was a long time ago now). During one of these fitness tests the instructor asked what exercise I did, and told him, and he suggested that I have a go at triathlons. So I looked for magazines (This was actually before Google. Yes there was a time before Google existed). I found a magazine called "220 Triathlon" and read through it to learn more about triathlon and look for races. I'm not sure how I found out about it, but I was told about the "