close callz

Excellent news, according to the BBC, drinking every day is good for your heart. There was other stuff in the report about liver disease and strokes and shit, but the heart! They did the test on some people for a bit and that was the result. In short, you’re guaranteed to not die if you drink too much. It said so on the BBC.

My ex-buyer hasn’t bothered getting in touch with my estate agent to make a counter offer, this would seem to be typical of her laissez-faire attitude and the one that led to her losing the flat after arseing me about for most of the year. I’ve been scanning peripheral news stories in South London for information about some tit jumping behind a train. Anyway, my guilt is fully assuaged; my gaff is back on the market. Fingers crossed, he types weakly.

Brutta is loosening up. She’s due for her first 600-mile service (and de-restriction) on Saturday and recently has begun to show signs of the locked potential within. My journey to and from work is becoming more like a track-race than a commute conversely leading to some rather hairy moments when split-timed forays in and out of the ribbon of vehicles lucks-out. The difference between Brutta and The Black Bitch is that the former can be flung about mercilessly, and because I’m relatively tall over the traffic the mesh of cars, cyclists and busses is viewed less like congestion and more of a code in which one must forcefully engage.

This is all well and good but I seem to be having increasing degrees of difficulty with, ironically, other bikers. It’s fine when we’re travelling in the same direction. Most proper motorcyclists (those on larger, sportier machines) will let me get on with it; they know that whilst they have straight-line power they’re unable to flow through congestion as I can. Some of them (after they’ve caught up) even ask after my bike at traffic lights, a Supermotard, you see, makes sense in the city. The wankers on Scooters, most of them fucking learners, need to be taught that that they can’t win, once educated by example most allow me to move on with impunity.

The biggest problem is bikers coming in the other direction, not the wankers on scooters but chaps on Sportsbikes. From the front Brutta is quite unassuming, she could be anything from a 125 to a 600, and as my machine is rarer than hen’s teeth (there are only 9 in the whole of London, only 3 exactly like mine) from their POV the chances that I’m moving as fast as them in the opposite direction is slight.

For the second time in a week I’ve nearly dyed my leather pants accident brown when, whilst overtaking a line of vehicles sat stationary at a set of red lights, the lights have changed, I’ve nailed it and met a biker approaching in the other direction having done the same thing on his side of the road. Of course, he thinks I’ll yield as he assumes I’m smaller and slower than he, but of course, I’m accelerating as quickly as he is…

I discovered, under these conditions, that if I brake very hard the back end will sit up (I mentioned this in a post a couple of days ago but as it’s happened twice already, most notably this morning, it’s worth further investigation.) In a controlled environment it’s called a stoppie, when done to escape my melding with a fellow human being it’s called ‘out of control prick on a bike.’ The snag, when one isn’t in control of riding on ones front wheel, is there is a good chance one isn’t parallel to the road. This means that when the rear lands it’s going to naturally steer itself straight, which may not be the same ‘straight’ as the bike is pointing, thereby forcing a violent ripple to shudder through both machine and rider, to wit, me, as the lore of physics takes charge of proceedings. I fucking shit myself so I did. Close? A Rizla would’ve been too fat.

I love it.

Pride comes before a fall as they say, check out these berks, the last is my favourite.