Parteo-Parteo, where for art thou Parteo?
April 26, 2008 at 10:08 pm | Bike, Philosophy, Trip | No comment
No prizes for guessing that my part hasn’t turned up.
The tool did however and I’ve been able to get my clutch basket off (incidentally, 140nm is a LOT when the nut has nothing to stop it turning other than a tool on your knee) and inspect the bearings.
They look fine to me…
This made me somewhat upset (to the tune of a gin and tonic or three), however I was heartened by Midge’s post as that “release bearing” is one of the parts I have on order!
After chasing Motorworks and asking them the eta on my new bearings (middle of next week) I nipped down to my local bearings shop (who’d have thought there was a shop that just sold bearings?) and they measured the perpetrators with a micrometre and ordered some new ones in to arrive on Monday (seeing as it was Friday!).
Time since then has been spent reassembling my alternator, rewiring the cable of said alternator, new sealent-grommet as to get the grommet that’s made for my alternator cover would cost £350 (as it only comes with a new alternator from BMW!) and trying to figure out why I wake up angry each morning (very counterproductive, takes me until 2pm before I can do any work without throwing the first object that annoys me across the room!)
I also got a reply from BMW’s marketing department regarding my request for sponsorship, which was… declined.
Primarily based upon the content of this site I believe…
I don’t blame them in the slightest, with this blog I don’t exactly cut a very presentable front, certainly not the sort that I dare say BMW would be keen to back.
As stupid as it sounds I only applied to BMW in a fit of desperation as I don’t really want sponsors.
Sponsors feel far too much like a commitment, cutting into my feeling of “ultimate freedom” which is what this trip is all about.
A blog post I saw a few months back (alas I forget the link) summed it up for me in a way.
It went on about how nobody was alllowed to have an adventure anymore if it wasn’t for charity.
You’re not allowed to be a brash young man in another country after stories to tell the grandkids, you have to be politely tiptoeing through they various PC minefields, manitaining a good standing for your country and most importantly doing it for lukemia research.
I don’t want to do that, half the point of this trip is to find out who I am, and I’m not going to start that off by constraining myself with a load of guidelines set out by my sponsors.
It may seem like I’m being a bit of a dickhead to some people, but maybe that’s the point as well, this idea we as a society seem to have at the moment that we absolutely must go through our lives without offending anyone else in the slightest at all costs… It’s mad, and I don’t buy into it.
My view of chavs (or various other ne’er-do-wellers) remains unchanged and while these seemingly opposing views may seem unreconcileable to some people, I point to my recurring theme (in thought if not necessarily in this blog) of Balance.
It seems a popular misconception that you have to be for or against virtually every concept or principle in the universe, whereas I’m generally of the opinion that just about every concept and principle in the universe has its place in all its extremes, whether or not it affects you negatively.
.. But maybe this is a thought for another time…