The good, the bad and the it'll do.

The good:
The MZ is done and MOT'd (yay! a year of road-worthy-ness, ish)
The DAF is booked for transport to the welder.
I plastered the curve and the wall under the window (or alternatively, as I originally wrote, the window under the wall) yesterday.
I have done much laundry and our laundry basket is no longer full.

The bad:
The 'zed is still not doing any more than 6k rpm. She needs a full engine rebuild to work out *why* she's not revving right.
The DAF is, at the moment 4 miles from the restoration place. It will cost 10 pounds a mile to get her there.
The flat bit of the wall under the window needs a lot of work to make it smooth. Conversely the curve looks ace.
It's intermittently trying to rain on the clothes.

It'll do...
Well, the 'zed, really. It's not worth the hundreds of pounds it'd cost to fix it, but the new brake MC and a mirror, (a mirror on the right hand side!) they make it much safer to ride. Well, the mirror does. The old MC was fine, but I was rather worried about the crack which had made the metalwork for the lever not really, well, attached very well in once place. It was all hodged back together with washers and the hand protector, but I wasn't really very happy with it. Now I can brake with confidence. Poor old Cherry Red Zed, she'll probably end up being a spares bike for Charlie. I may even pinch the new MC and such for Charlie... And keep the original MZ one as a back-up. I do need to get Charlie back here though, so I can reassemble her and get her MOT'd.

The DAF'll have to do. I am peeved that it's 10 quid a mile, or there abouts, for the journey to the welder. I have had these terrible thoughts of 'well, technically it's legal to drive to and from a place of repair'. Once the brakes are serviced 'n all, the only person I'd be putting at risk, theoretically, is me. But if the police were to, say, stop me as a car with no MOT or Tax and ask questions it'd be hard to defend and difficult for them not to notice the huge-gaping-lack-of-sill on one side. I shall, instead, content myself with attempting to find time to do the brake-service in between now and then so that I can drive her directly from there to the MOT; thus saving at least the 40 quid for the return journey.

The wall? Well, the curve I'm really proud of. It's not perfect and has a couple of small ridges on it that'll need a little sanding to make right; but really? It's pretty darn good for someone who's plastering qualifications are 'I've patched up a few walls now and then'. Me and the float though, we couldn't get on when covering the scratch coat on the flat wall. To be fair to me I think the problem was I was trying to do a proper skim; not a full on coat of plaster. On the curve it'd more-or-less all come away so the curve was a proper thick layer of plaster that I could skim until it was right. On the wall, it was a skim on top of a very thin scratch coat on top of multiple patches and such - which I was just attempting to smooth out. And without making it so high as to make the skirting entirely disappear that's pretty hard to do. It'll look alright after a light (moderate in some places) sand, but it's slighly disappointing - I really felt like I'd started to get the hang of plastering with the stuff in the kitchen. I've still got the big section by the light-switch / door to do. That still needs more stripping back though :-/

Anyhow, I'm off to nodnol in a bit, go and collect the 'zed. 'm just letting the phone charge and having a cup of tea first :)

If my bank account had money in it, it'd be somewhat lighter

So, I went to pick up Cherry from Burwin's - they weren't sure that they'd fixed her problems, although she was running better... 245 quid that MOT ended up costing - new front wheel bearings (apparently they were completely shot), new fork seals, new brake MC/brake-light-switch and a free mirror (because they rock). They changed the oil, checked the timing and the mixture and found that Cherry's been running very rich.

She does now rev much higher - but as soon as we hit 65 there was the familar sudden loss of power and back down to 50-something she went. She is now running better though, and seemed to do over 50 fairly reliably. However, 245 quid means I ain't buyin' no new jacket for a while. The bike also needs a new front tyre (tread's fine, but it's too old); so I need to order one of them and sort out fitting...

She does, however, look vastly more respectable - they replaced the fork gaiter which I'd been gaffa-taping back together for some-time, and with two chrome mirrors perking out from the bikini-faring she's looking all the more like a motorcycle.

Hopefully she shouldn't drink quite so much fuel now, either, which'd be nice. It would, of course, be nice to be able to travel at speeds over 60, but this I fear is not something that's likely to happen while I'm riding Cherry.

Quote of the day, though, I feel was me as I transiently got lost in London:

"Who stole the A3220! I was bloody using that!"

I also (and I say this while hiding so that Kathryn can't tell me off) touched the exhaust down on a corner. They really do lean over a long way, do 'zeds, if pushed. I wasn't even going particularly fast, I don't think, but as I ducked around the corner I felt the familiar sensation and heard the light scrape which meant that the exhaust had touched the ground.

Oh, and London? Not so good traffic wise - had to filter almost all the way out, which was tedious. Also had to buy petrol, thankfully Burwin directed me to a 116.9p/litre ($8.55/US gallon) which was less painful than the next garage I saw (120.9p/litre)... Here's praying that the bike running leaner puts her back up towards the 60mpg mark.

Whilst I've not bought a new jacket I do still have the new helmet, which is grand. I'll break that one in on Saturday. Anyway, I should get on with my ATLS reading, I've cleaned the kitchen, taken the washing down from outside (where it got rained on many times) and hung it on the rack inside.

Oh, quick question: anyone read Vinyl Underground? Is it any good? I heard a recommendation for it (from

cadhla's journal) and it looks interesting...

 

At some point I'll comment on the internment thing in the UK (42 days without charge; y'know it's sad that we're having to rely on the House of Lords saving our civil liberties because of the pathetic excuse for a government we have at the moment); but at the moment I'm rather too pissed off about the not-so gradual destruction of our liberties that I doubt I could say anything sensible. Incidentally, days you can be held without charge in Canada? 1.