{"id":8451,"date":"2012-11-03T22:33:12","date_gmt":"2012-11-03T22:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=8451"},"modified":"2012-11-03T22:55:34","modified_gmt":"2012-11-03T22:55:34","slug":"ride-out-best-laid-plans-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=8451","title":{"rendered":"Ride out! (best laid plans, etc)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I met up with some of the Oxford-based motorcycle group that I hooked up with via the internet.<\/p>\n

The plan was for the half-dozen of us to meet at the Pear Tree services just outside Oxford, then head to a cafe on the edge of Salisbury Plain.<\/p>\n

We didn’t make it.<\/p>\n

Just south of Hungerford one of the bikes picked up a nail in the rear tyre; instant flat.<\/p>\n

We limped back in to Hungerford. One of the guys went off and got some of that emergency puncture repair compound and the flat was reinflated.<\/p>\n

We made lots of phone calls to find a motorcycle tyre specialist who could fit one today.<\/p>\n

You won’t believe how many motorcycle tyre fitters don’t actually carry stock. It seems most of them order stock in for ‘next day fitting’.<\/p>\n

I managed to get hold of Probike<\/a> in Newbury who said they had a stock and they could fit a replacement right away.<\/p>\n

Because we didn’t know where in Newbury Probike was (and also didn’t know our way around Newbury), I fired up the SatNav on my phone, plugged it in to my ears and – cautiously – off we set.<\/p>\n

The SatNav did the trick and we arrived at Probike within 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

While the tyre was being fitted we found a place for a drink and a sandwich. There was talk and good-natured piss-taking.<\/p>\n

Because all the faff had taken so long, we abandoned the original plan and headed back to Oxfordshire, across country, and stopped at H Cafe for more drinks.<\/p>\n

While we were there we met a guy who described his pillion passenger as a total bitch.<\/p>\n

Here is a photograph of her:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amazing!<\/p>\n

I left the others at the cafe, and cut back home on the A415 via Abingdon.<\/p>\n

The standard of driving – you know, appalling and getting worse – is even more dire when your view is from two wheels.<\/p>\n

There are people out there, people controlling motorised vehicles, people who should not be in charge of a pencil sharpener, let alone in charge of a two-ton killing machine.<\/p>\n

Can we have compulsory retests please? Every five years?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I met up with some of the Oxford-based motorcycle group that I hooked up with via the internet. The plan was for the half-dozen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}