It's the little things that add up

Here's the thing. Mrs Kpone and I have had the last week off work doing absolutely sod all, lazing around the garden, catching up on some reading (my mate dumped his entire last years subscription of "Superbike" on me) and generally just chilling out. The weather's been great but I've not suffered the urge to take the bike out, the idle gene has just been too strong and I just couldn't be arsed.

Now yesterday Mrs Kpone saw the weather forecast and the weather man said that the rest of the week is going to be pants (they were of course wrong, today is quite nice too, remembering that I can actually see the Met office from my house), and she started nagging me "you should take the bike out, you're wasting the weather, blah blah". Well what man can refuse such nagging. Out came the 'Blade, off to Heine Gericke in Taunton, I thought, up the A38, running more or less parallel to the M5 so nobody will be using it.

Okay, we'll start with the resurgenge of double decker buses on rural roads that are no longer maintained sufficiently to allow them passage. Double decker buses with four people on them including Reg Varney up front, ripping spikey, puncture inducing bits of trees off and dumping them infront of my tyres while completely blocking the sight lines needed to overtake the stinking dinosaur safely.

Then there's the convoy system roadworks, where you wait for ages for some pimple on a quad to lead traffic through p**s thin re-tarmaccing operations that shower your plastics with grit and bitumin for weeks after they've finished, while suffering said pimple stopping for a chat with his mates on the way and practising their wheellieing skills.

Then there's the caravanners, generally, people with little skill or indeed qualification in the driving of an articulated vehicle or regard for anyone trapped in their wake, despite what caravan club propoganda says to the contrary, using the B roads as a rat run home in order to bypass the motorway visible on their left that was built specifically as a rat run for them so that we, on the peninsula, can get rid of them as quickly as possible.

Top this off with, what seemed to be every agricultural vehicle without tail bars, number plates, brake lights or indicators in the south west also deciding to go to Heine Gericke at the same time as me and you'll see why I got about half way and decided to turn around and come home. Through all the above once more.

Now, all the above is a rant, and once I'd thrown the leathers back in the cupboard and had a beer it didn't seem as important or as irritating and by now I don't mean any of it (maybe), but I was wondering... Was it bike karma, the 'Blade getting it's own back for me ignoring it all week, or was it kpone karma teaching me a lesson about if my head's not in the place to ride out don't do it?

 

Thank you all for your support for my little therapy session. I'd like to say that I'm not normally so ranty when things get under my nails but that would be misleading you all, but I do feel that taking it out on the keyboard is better than taking it out on something with nearly 150bhp on tap and a contact patch the size of a credit card.

Ken

 

Liking that, may grid lock the server though.