Plan A.

Ok listen up, here's the plan. What I'd like you to do - that's YOU - not him sitting next to you, or your neighbour, or another guy in the club who looks at the blog - YOU - is when you visit for the first time this week (starting today, Saturday 21st March, until next Saturday 28th March) you just need to click on the YES button and then click the VOTE button. This will register one vote and if everyone who visits does it, I'll have a better idea how many people are visiting in a random week. Of course, I might be very disappointed and would probably prefer not to know that only 3 people visit this coming week. But I don't think that's likely, given that the site clocks up over 1500 visitors a month, and I'm sure that's not just BigBob and Darrell clicking on and off all day, all week, all month long. Well it better not be! I'm asking this of you because last night I was at the monthly meeting of the Central section of the VMCC and so many people came up to me and said they read the blog - people that quite honestly surprised me - in a good way, that I thought it would be good to do a little experiment. Remember now, only one click per person for the whole of the week.

Before dropping in on Shorty's meeting Mrs BC and I were in attendance at the first UCAN Fun Run (on bikes!) 2009 planning meeting at Ballater. Organised by the rather appropriately named Chris Norton, the aim of the event is to raise loadsa money for a local charity called UCAN, which tries to increase peoples' awareness of all of the urological cancers, as well as improving the quality of life and support for people who are affected. Not a cheery subject to talk about really, but when you think that 1 in 5 of all cancers in men and women are urological, we need to know about it. I can't quite recall how we got dragged in to help, but we were and we don't mind, it's a good cause. See more here - https://www.charttrials.abdn.ac.uk/ucan/manage/menu/Home/. Last year's run was pretty successful and all we need to do this year is build on the good reputation the run is getting, but there are venues to consider, routes to sort out, advertising and promotion to look at, a website to build, and people's arms to twist for favours along the way! It was a glorious morning for a drive out west to the mountains and just before Tarland is the Queen's View (one of two in Scotland I believe) where you round a bend in the road and a most stunning view across to Lochnagar, Morven and Mount Keen opens up. The light was just like that of a late autumn day, hazy, misty and lazy; lovely. Anyway, the meeting at Chris's place went well with a full compliment of committee members tuning out for Val's superb luncheon spread! Afterwards Mrs BC and I popped into Banchory where I had some work to do, then on to Aberdeen for more work, where a nasty thick blanket of fog came down. We grabbed a sarnie at Sainsburys (usually it's Asda but the diesel was cheaper at S'burys for some reason) and ploughed on down the A90 in more thick evil fog, arriving absolutely HOURS before Kawa who had the nerve to text me earlier in the day to say there was a bet on whether I could get there on time or not. Really, one should not make such remarks unless oneself is sure of being there on time, nah nah nee naaaaah naaaah!! The meeting was a good 'un, with Geoff Brazendale talking about Sunbeams and showing a few pictures. One of our members has a rather prized model apparently, I can see I'm going to have to go and take him up on his offer of trying all his bikes some day, especially the Sunbeam.




As well as an overwhelming desire to see Mr B and witness his talk on Sunbeams, part of the reason for going was to bring Cubbie home. Kawa had kindly been accommodating the wee bike since the Edinburgh show, and had even more kindly ripped the primary case off, pulled the clutch apart, fixed the leak with some fancy black gungee stuff and a couple of new screws, laughed at how much the case is warped and cracked and then stuck it all back together. While he was at it, he just couldn't resist the washing and polishing job, the bike looks like new now. I think he even washed the number plate. Tell you what though, it started up first kick today and while it still sounds good, it also sounds slightly different. I reckon all that muck has been masking the true sound of Cubbie. Thank you Kawa for the work and the pics/evidence.

Well, that was yesterday and today is today, sunny Saturday. We got a load of old branches cleared and burnt up and I even found time to drag the old MZ Skorpion out into the fresh air. After Cubbie it feels big, bulky and unwieldy but still so handsome. I really do believe this is a classic of the future. Look at that lovely stainless silencer - they came with those as standard ya know, boomboomboom, and the Grimeca brakes were standard fitment complete with braided hoses, I mean, this is quality gear people, and all on an MZ. The big single 660cc Yammy motor is plenty powerful enough for an average road rider who wants to have fun yet keep on the right side of both the law and life, and look at those light weight 3 spoke wheels - blimmin' difficult to get tyres for I'll tell ya! The battery was completely dead so borrowing Cubbie's tool kit, I whipped it out and will charge it up in the next couple of days. A few odd jobs need to be done, probably ought to strip the calipers as the main job before getting it back on the road, oh, yes, nearly forgot, it's gonna need some new bushes somewhere in the midst of the suspension - don't think Mr MoT man will let it slip through as it is, and I reckon I'll just live with the excessive oil consumption for a while longer. So so so so SO let's go peeps, get those bikes fettled and ready for the new season - I'll be seeing you around up and down the country.

Don't you just think it's a yummy scrummy looking big bikey?

PS The Rooster Booster has landed!