Second contact closing fast, bearing 076!

Tired of hearing about idiot things I've done?

No?

OK, one more.

In today's episode, I embark on the path to world domination by testing the feasibility of starting my own land-based navy by turning a normal everyday people carrier and a laser printer into a submarine hunting death-dealer.

Some time ago, I worked for a certain West-Midlands based builders' merchant - who shall remain nameless, but according to their radio adverts, They're 'Where the Trade go'. My job with them, amongst other things, involved the upgrading of the IT at their stores around the UK.

The senior management, in their infinite wisdom had decided that the IT team didn't, at the time, require the use of a van and we were expected to use our own vehicles to transport the equipment to site - The inventory for a single store usually comprised half a dozen tills, cash drawers etc, half a dozen PCs with all their associated doo-dads and gee-gaws - and a number of laser printers.

Now, at the time, I had a Ford Galaxy people carrier, which was nicknamed by all and sundry as 'The Van' - My boss would often say things like;

'Vet, grab a couple of printers, stick 'em in the van and toddle off to install them at <insert store name>.'

(The reason I got called Vet may, or may not, be covered in a later installment.)

So, I became the go-to guy for country-wide 'humping and dumping', which I didn't really mind as I got paid mileage, and it got me out of the office, often for days at a time. On this particular day, the first day of land trials for The Chimping Navy, I'd been tasked with delivering some kit to the Reading store, this was just a quick jaunt down the M40, a couple of hours there, a couple of hours eating a fry-up and fiddling about in the store and then a couple of hours back - Simples!

The only jam in the DVD player was that it was raining, not heavily, but wet enough for you to not want to stand out in it, well unless you were a particularly statuesque young lady in a thin, white top. Now, as many of you that have owned a Ford Galaxy will know, they have a couple of little design faults. Firstly, the 'Brain' that controls the central door locks sits in a little cutout, under the carpet, in the passenger-side footwell. Secondly, when it rains heavily, the passenger footwell floods. Either of these problems, on their own, aren't show-stoppers - But taken as a pair... Well, you can imagine the constant hilarity.

I set off down the M40 with a spring in my.. erm... step and a song in my heart. Everything was right with the world and the rain was just heavy enough that constant wipe was too much, but intermittant wipe was not enough - I have since realised that the car had variable wash/wipe - But at the time I couldn't be bothered to read the manual. Around halfway down the motorway, I noticed that the footwell was filling with water - I made a mental note to drill some holes in the floor when I got home, I was getting pretty bored with the carpet smelling like a rancid Afghan (That's the breed of dog, not someone from Afghanistan - I have no idea what these wonderful and ancient people smell like when they go off).

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flashing light on the dashboard. Looking over, it turned out to be the 'Your boot is open' warning light - It wasn't doing the whole 'You're running out of petrol' type flash that you get from your petrol guage, it was more a sort of 'Now it's on, now it's off, no, on, I mean off,' jittery type of thing. I had just enough time to think,

'Hmmm... that's odd!'

When the boot flew open - and one of the Dell laser printers I was carrying, transformed, Bumblebee-like, into a depth charge. Now, I don't know how many of you have ever thrown electrical equipment out of the back of a moving vehicle at 70Mph, but it makes a bloody great noise.

As the scene unfolded in slow motion in the rear view mirror, I saw the printer hit the tarmac and bounce, it then started to spin, and hit again. This time it disintegrated, seriously, there wasn't a piece bigger than my thumb left at the end. The look on the face of the lorry-driver behind me was a picture - He did his best to avoid the wreckage, but he still managed to run over the toner cartridge - Hooo boy, that made a mess. But I had other things to worry about, I was hemorrhaging paperwork all over the rainy motorway, and my boot was still open. I pulled onto the hard shoulder, got out, and slammed the boot shut. I almost missed the feint *click* of the central-locking, but my worst fears were confirmed when I tried to open the door... Locked. With the keys AND my phone inside.

I cursed my choice of wearing a thin, white shirt to work that day and started to walk the half-mile back to the emergency road-side telephone in the suddenly heavier rain. I explained to the nice lady on the phone that 'there was some debris' on the road and that I needed a locksmith, she told me that she'd dispatch someone to take care of the mess, but I was on my own as far as being stranded was concerned.

It took them a good half an hour to arrive, by which time I was wetter than a geriatric dolphin's nappy. They gave me a bit of a talking to about messing up their motorway, and how my employer would get a bill, but they thought that I, personally, had suffered enough and they'd see if there was anything they could do to get me back in my car.

The big chap in the waterproof Hi-Vis walked over to my car, pulled the doorhandle, and the door opened.

'Seems OK to me.' He said, with not a hint of a laugh in his voice at all. 'Want me to close it and try again?'

'NO!' I shouted, possible slightly louder than was strictly necessary.

I thanked him, and wondered how long I'd stood in the rain not trying to get into a car that wasn't actually locked anymore.

Luckily, my face was so wet that they couldn't see my tears as I drove off.

Barnaby Wilde (Pt. 1)

Talking about my trike yesterday reminded me of some of the good times that I'd had in the past on various three wheelers, thought I'd jot some of 'em down so that you could see just how much fun customised motorcycles can be.

-oOo-

I remember the very first time that I rode a trike, thinking back, it was probably a sign - I should have quit whilst I was ahead. It had a 1275GT Mini engine, with a gear linkage made from plasticine and cocktail sticks. When you changed gear, it involved a stirring motion, akin to the one you see in any cartoon where witches and cauldrons are mentioned - The gear you actually got at the end of this process was as random as you'd expect. I rode from the house of my very good friend Scots Mick (He of the Chilli recipies fame - See last years blog) to my own house, some four miles in total. Along the way I clipped the apex of every, single corner - In this instance, you should take 'clipped' to mean rammed into, mounted the pavement and then careened off the other side. In fact, a number of times, I clipped the apex of several perfectly straight roads, which didn't even have apexes.

I was being followed by Mick in his car, in case anything fell of the trike, including myself. We had planned to take the trike to a van hire company where one of 'the boys' worked, so that we could get one of the tires re-seated as it was leaking. Now, before I relay the punchline I have to explain that this particular trike was fitted with what we, in the trade, call 'Ape Hangers' - These are a particular type of handlebar, designed by the devil himself, to make any type of motorcycle that they're fitted to virtually uncontrollable. They do give you that Concussed American Starfish riding position that seems to be popular (or was in the 90's at least.) - Take a minute, Google them, see what you think.

So, we pulled into the car park and I changed down to 2nd gear and attempted to pull into a parking space. Of course, what actually happened was that I accidentally hit the 'Gamble' button on the gear selector and got 1st. This caused me to go skipping across the carpark with the front end in the air (thus rendering the steering inoperable) and punched the back quarter of a parked van with my left fist. Have you ever punched a van hard enough to leave a dent in it the shape of your fist? - It really hurts... Of course my assembled friends ran to my aid, checking that I hadn't done any irrepairable damage to myself - Actually, no, what happened is that they stood, having to lean on each other because they were laughing so much. I think one of them actually wet himself - Especially when they showed me that the trike had skidded to a halt about 12" from a 6' drop.

-oOo-

On another occasion, I left work at 06:30 in the morning to discover it had snowed quite heavily during the night. The snow was deep enough that the rear axle was dragging in it, which played merry hell with the handling. I managed to wrestle the trike out of the industrial estate by bouncing gently off the pavement kerbs as I couldn't see exactly where the road finished and the pavement started. Once out onto the main road, things got a little bit easier as the virgin snow was replaced with black slush. I admit that I got cocky, fishing the back end out on purpose and spinning the rear wheels. Of course, as so often happens in these situations, I got bitten in the butt.

As I approached a busy traffic island and tried to brake, nothing happened - Well, nothing involving slowing down happened, a number of things involving going in the wrong direction took their place. In the 60' trip across the island, the trike spun through 540 deg - A full one and a half turns, with me hanging onto the Apes for grim death. Luckily the other vehicles using the island at that time of the morning managed to avoid me completely. When the trike finally came to rest on the wrong side of the road I had to wait a good ten minutes before I carried on my journey - Not because I was shaking (though I was, like a Portuguese Man O'War with Parkinsons), but purely because the vacuum that had appeared between my clenched sphynchter and the seat meant that I couldn't move.

-oOo-

My final recounting (for this morning at least) involves a trike that didn't actually belong to me as such, it belonged to a young lady that I co-habited with for a while and was powered by an 850 Reliant Robin motor. Don't laugh, it's a great engine when you strip all the fibreglass body from around it. It used to suffer every once in a while from the carbs freezing, but other than that it was bulletproof.

Anywho, we were on our way back from doing the weekly shop (one of the redeeming qualities of trikes is that they can usually carry more cargo than a bike) in the pouring down rain. You know that rain where you just have to look out of the window and you're soaking wet? Well it was heavier than that, heavy enough to frak with the electrics and cause misfires. So, it took a while to get home, sometimes on three cylinders, sometimes on two, but not very often on all four. I chanced to look down between my knees as we pulled onto the drive and noticed that a couple of the HT leads (The leads that go to the spark plugs) were 'tracking' - This means that they were making pretty blue sparks and dumping their precious electricity somewhere other than where they should - In this case they were swapping it between themselves and also with the cylinder head, very kind of them, but not exactly what you want in a perfect world.

N.B. The next two seconds of this story involve the complete disconnection of my hands from my brain.

I thought to myself, 'If I just seperate those leads, I bet it'll run a whole lot better.' Now, the HT leads on a Robin carry about 30,000 volts (as opposed to the 240 volts in the sockets of your house) at an amperage, luckily, just below that required to stop your heart stone dead, so obviously I reached down and went to move the cables apart. The belt I got was sufficiently strong to lift me off the seat, throw me to the ground and cause me to lie in the rain, jumping around and laughing uncontrollably for a good few minutes. Do not try this at home kids, in fact, do not try this anywhere. Again, the reaction of the assembled onlookers was almost terminal merriment.

Bikers are generally a caring bunch...

Below is a picture of my new baby - Well, new might be stretching it a bit - Latest is probably a better bet. She hasn't bitten me yet, but I'm sure she will, given enough time. (Plus you get a free photo of my Daughter, mugging uncontrollably for the camera)