"Big Wheels Keep on turnin...."

It's interesting just how many thoughts come through the bottleneck when your standing at a wee shelter in the middle of nowwhere awaiting a bus.Its saturday and the number of buses to the ends of this "earth" can be counted on one paw, so I missed one and have 90 minutes to wait..of course I'm too scared to go back in the workshop for fear that "just perhaps" a bus turns out.

So, its a nice evening and the ipod is charged, and in the middle of this surreal situation I have a 1975 Yamaha TZ500 wheel to take home and weigh up, a beautiful rock breaker Estwing and japanese butterfly blade for company. The butterfly blade was found amongst all my junk and is basically a remembrance from my young teen years where I bought this one in Geneva just to see if I could carry off the spin.The Estwing is from Colorado and the wheel comes from an early project in 87.It's now a rarity, just try and find one on Google or ebay for sale.So I'm letting it go and have to weigh up to ship...anyway, back to the shelter and the ipod. I ran " The Rocky Horror Picture show"..now theres a classic for those of you around th weirdos in the 80s.

To this day Theatres in America run the show and the cult following is incredible.So, there I stood, suns going down, wheel under one arm, a Musical about transvestites and smelling of burned rubber and old oil.

Rewind five days earlier:

Okay, some people would argue your not a man until you've done this and that, kinda changes with the crowd. Well, I'd say you if you've never removed a tyre from an alloy rim with a high beaded edge, you just don't know the concept of "steaming ears"...bloody hell, draw blood first so you don't get disappointed..I even tried to cut through the tyre just to break the bead, but not luck. 1 hour and a ruptured disk later and the bleeder was ready to take off..sweating bullets and blood shot eyes. Its about this time you really need some time in the "quiet room" with Vince Furnier, aka Alice Cooper, with the plastic knives and forks..

The "to do" list today included removing a tyre, washing the racing gear with a view to sell and of course finally the most fun job, stripping down the gasgas 450 supermotard engine.

Cutting a long story short, sometimes you understand why pneumatic airtools were invented..

deadline for the start up after the camchain snapped, is the end of the month.However, I found what looked like the end of a shifter fork bangin around the bottom of the casings..we shall see, I'm borrowing an air tool tomorrow.

The Now:

So it took me around 3 hours to get home. The irony of carrying a wheel along and getting a bus, it got more attention than I did anyway. The evening ends with the usual Volteraine suppository before the back seizes up and suddenly I wake up from a 3 hour daze to the whistling of the old fashioned tea kettle, realising that old age has finally caught up..but thats the next blog, read on..