Training
November 29, 2007 at 8:48 am | Bike, Trip | No comment
I’ve been without the internet for a few days now, changing from one provider to another.
Doesn’t make much difference to life in general, but it has meant I’ve not been updating the blog so regularly.
It shouldn’t have made any difference to that though, as I’ll be without the internet on the road for days at a time, so I should really get into the habit of offline blogging (using Word at the moment *gasp*).
I’ve been on a couple of days more training for the bike, had a new instructor called Martin who I didn’t get on with, who was insistent on late braking and following him closely (he didn’t actually let me lead at all!) and considering that the biggest issue of mine he identified was running a bit wide at junctions, his blat through the countryside was not very instructive.
The next session however was with Chaz again, who I get on with much better, he restored my confidence and gave me useful information on how to get round my junction issues and took me somewhere we could practise them.
I bought Kim a helmet and took her out for a very brief ride last night.
She absolutely loved it. She’d told me that she’d been on her mum’s boyfriend’s bike before, but never expressed any particular enthusiasm for it (in fact, initially she said she wasn’t going to get on it at all!).
However once we’d done a quick circuit of the housing estate and the briefest possible dual carriageway section, she was grinning from ear to ear.
Having a pillion passenger was much easier than I’d expected, I was quite apprehensive about the effect on my balance at low speeds, but she did very well and it wasn’t an issue at all.
I had a bit of a scare a few days ago with my panniers, as Kiwibob (the German redistribute of Jesse panniers) hadn’t replied to my emails for three days , and when I tried to go to the website I got a 404 page not found error!
Still, after the weekend I pinged him another email and he responded saying that he’d shipped them that day (as it had taken the full 5 days for the bank transfer to go through, why the hell do they bother saying 3-5 days anyway? We all know it’s always 5!).
On Wednesday I got home to find that the WP rear shock had been delivered, but the panniers had been bounced back to the depot as no-one was home.
This posed a bit of difficulty as I had no way of transporting them home having sold my car.
My mate was kind enough to offer me a lift to go and get them, however I was a bit dubious about his car’s ability to pick them up as his boot is significantly full of subwoofer!
As a result I decided to pull a sickie the next day at work, saying that my back’s playing up and wait in for UPS instead.
I’d decided to have a quick look at my shock absorber, not that I’d be able to discern anything from it, merely because I was curious.
However I discovered that they’d sent me a shock specced for the F650 GS as opposed to the GS Dakar!
This basically means that the amount of travel the spring has is significantly reduced, which would make it less capable off-road (the whole point of buying the Dakar being it’s improved off-road vs the standard model!).
To their credit, the company (Full Travel Suspension) acknowledged their mistake and arranged for TNT to pick it up today and promised to sort it out as soon as it arrived and send it back for Saturday delivery!
So all good then! I’ve got two mates coming round on Saturday (potentially, at least one of them should make it!) to help me fit the shock and panniers.
Things are progressing nicely!
I need to start sending off for Visas, but I just can’t seem to get round to it, oh well, at least I’ve managed to get my dad to send off my mum’s birth certificate so that I can apply for my second passport.
I’m pondering explaining my plans to my dad when I see him at Christmas, but I still don’t know what his reaction will be. It could be that it was my mum that was completely anti-bike, it’s quite possible as my dad was always far less over-protective than my mum…
I’ve started worrying again about how Kim is going to cope once I’ve gone.
I’ve been trying to get her to make stronger friends with the people she works with, which was going quite well as last month I cajoled her into organising a night out with everyone, and despite a few hiccups with her getting upset about everyone else changing the venue without her approval it went quite well.
Last weekend we had another night out with her mates from work.
It wasn’t going well, even before the night itself she blew up at work when her friends kept teasing her that she and I were joined at the hip at the last outing.
On the night itself I thought it was going much better, I tried to encourage her to hang around me a little less and get into the group a bit more (which was helped by me going to the bar and having to wait half an hour to get served!).
However at about midnight I just got back to the group with pint in hand to find the guys had gone to the other side of the room to play pool, leaving me with Kim and the girls (fair enough really, I didn’t know or establish a rapport with any of them), then when the girls went to join them, me and Kim were left standing on our own somehow.
She then reached into my inside pocket and pull out her wallet, phone and keys (which I was keeping for her as she had no pockets or handbag) and walked out of the bar!
Abandoning my pint (which I was enjoying inordinately and only had two sips of) I trotted after her asking where she was going.
“Home, you go back to the bar with your friends”
This puzzled me somewhat as I knew nothing about those people and would never have even hung around with them had they not been friends of Kim.
As it transpired Kim felt that they’d been ignoring her and blocking her out (which, may have been the case to a small extent, but I being the social butterfly that I am was used to that sort of thing).
For some reason this caused her to vent her frustrations on me (the first time she’s done that, hopefully the last too).
She walked straight past the taxi rank declaring she was going to walk home.
I trotted along her angry striding gait cheerily chiming in that I’d come with her.
She kept ranting about how they were ignoring her and that she should just give up on people and commit suicide (she says this in moments of frustration, though even at the time she admits to having no real intent on doing any such thing).
I was getting a bit pissed off at this point, as interwoven in her insults at her friends were insults and insinuations against me when I’d done nothing wrong in the slightest, so for one of the first times ever I raised my voice to her and demanded to know why she was taking it out on me.
I sat down at the side of the road and she squatted in front of me, looking me hard in the eyes.
“Shall I pack your things when I get home?”
“Why?”
“Because this is the end, isn’t it?”
I said nothing, I wasn’t worried, I knew she didn’t mean it and my momentary anger had passed.
After a few minutes of silence she seemed to realise what she’d said and started to calm down.
I stood up and hugged her, and after a few more minutes she conceded that maybe it would be best to get a taxi (a wise move considering we live some 3 miles away and it was midnight Saturday!)