The Mucky Duck

Gaz and I went for a ride yesterday and surprise surprise ended up in a pub affectionately known as the "Mucky Duck" at Fradley Junction. The pub used to be a popular spot for bikers but now the numbers have dwindled somewhat, however you'll always find a few there on a sunny day.

Along the way I managed to take a few shots of Gaz getting his knee down. In case there's any nice policemen out there reading this I'd just like to point out that obviously none of the photos were taken on public roads. No, in fact all of them were taken on private property.... Honestly!

I'm saving the best photo of Gaz until Wednesday. All will be revealed soon.






▲The canal outside the Mucky Duck▼

Some Photos

There's nothing much happening at the moment, largely due to the appalling weather we've been having in England so I thought I'd spam the site up a bit with a few photos.


Don't blame me, Matt took the photo. It was supposed to be an action shot of my new boomerang. The photo was taken on Castle Ring which is an iron age fort dating back around 2000 years as a guess.


This is Alex demonstrating how to make a grand entrance onto the pub carpark. The bike's a KTM 200 2 stroke.


I thought I'd stick this photo of John and Mel on the site as it represents perfectly how modern technology has left the old 'uns behind! Not only that but it gives them a little bit of fame on our site :)


And finally I thought I'd share a picture of Winnie taken at Blithfield Reservoir earlier on in the year just to remind people what summer actually is/was.

That's all for now folks.

What Comes Around Goes Around

When we set this blog up fifteen months ago I had little concept of what blogs were all about. For me it was nothing more than free web space for my friends and I to upload our photos and keep a diary of what's been going on in our lives.

I'd have never guessed that eighteen months down the line the blog would have opened up a whole new world of friends. For me it's like a modern version of having pen pals. Not just one pen pal but lots of them.

Reading my meme a couple of weeks ago when I mentioned my love of boomerangs, Kate Isis took it upon herself to send me a hand painted Aboriginal boomerang all the way from Australia where she lives. This morning one beautifully hand crafted boomerang arrived on my desk and along with it came a huge smile on my face from ear to ear.

I'm going to fly it a couple of times (of which I'll try and get some photos) then it's going to be displayed on my wall and treasured for ever.

I was going to finish off by saying; "Kate, you really are a genuine, caring, thoughtful, lovely, wonderful and beautiful person." (Which of course you are, ten times over) but it's a bit slushy for a bike blog isn't it?

So how about....... "You really do fucking rock!"

Yip, that's the one..... perfect :)

Big S Gets Naked

Big S got married last Saturday. The day and evening went well with both bride and groom departing the reception slightly worse for wear late on in the evening. From there they headed off to a local hotel for what you'd think would be a romantic night of passion. I don't really want to delve into the sex lives of Mr and Mrs Big S but after the amount of alcohol drunk I doubt that part of the evening went to plan.

Somewhere in the middle of the night Big S got up to go to the toilet. He got out of bed and went into the bathroom closing the door behind him. The only trouble was he hadn't actually entered the bathroom, instead opting for the exit door of the hotel room. There he was without a stitch on in the middle of the hotel corridor banging on the door to try and wake Mrs S. Eventually giving up he wandered downstairs to find the night porter collecting a suitable cushion along the way to hide his wedding tackle. No doubt pissing himself laughing, the night porter wanders back upstairs with Big S and his new friend the cushion to open his hotel room door with a master key. Well would you believe it, the master key wouldn't open the door. Another ten minutes of knocking on the door continued to no avail. Eventually in someone's wisdom it was decided that enough was enough and they kicked the door in. At this stage you'd probably be wanting to put the whole incident behind you.

But........

Of all the rotten luck, a friend of a friend happens to work at the hotel and he has kept the CCTV footage of the whole incident (For money making purposes of course). The landlord of Big S's local pub has offered £400 for the tape and Big S is offering to double any offer the pub makes. It couldn't get much worse really....... Unless of course it happens to make it onto youtube ;)

Oh and if you want to know who Big S is, just search our blog for the "Italian Grand Prix".

Bungee Jump

Here's a few photos of the bungee jump held at the local pub on Monday evening. There was no chance I was going to have a go but I did go up in the cage five times to get some photos.

I was talking to Duncan later on in the evening and we decided it would have been fantastic for three or four of us to have had a barbecue up there. Not that it was ever going to happen but the idea was good. Just image it, sat on a garden chair two hundred and fifteen feet in the air, drinking a beer with some kebabs gently sizzling away whilst we admire the stunning views.


A view of the pub from the top of the crane (I should imagine you've already guessed that). My car's in the foreground, the red one just left of centre....That, you wouldn't have guessed.








Mark 1, Big Phil and Shoey who's blowing her nose on a sponsor form.


Don't be fooled, he was crapping himself.


Mark 1 on the way back up.


That's me.


A superb portrait of Dean and Nicola expertly taken by yours truly, and I don't care if you disagree. :)


Mark 2 taking a swig of sedative fifteen minutes before launch.


Mark 2




This is Michael the owner of the pub. Frankie, one of the bar staff got everyone to sponsor him without him knowing. In the photo he's thinking "Yes you, you little fekker, I'll get you for this."


Michael and Frankie.

That's your lot. I won't bore you with the other 165 photos.

Royal International Air Tattoo

A rather damp 7.30am start to Saturday morning saw Matt and I heading down to RAF Fairford for the annual air tattoo. An hour into our journey the roads had dried out and we had a superb bike ride. I feel sorry for the poor buggers travelling by car though because there was a fifteen mile tailback of stationary vehicles all the way from Cirencester to the RAF base. It took us about twenty minutes to overtake everyone and I have to confess to wearing the biggest ear to ear grin a motorbike has ever given me. Upon arrival it turned out that had we have been travelling by car we would have been stuck in the traffic jam for two and a half hours! Things got even better once we arrived, motorbikes were given privileged parking right by the entrance! None of this parking in grass fields miles away from anywhere. No sir, we had tarmacked parking facilities!


Matt's and my bike in the foreground.


F-15 Fighter - Seriously noisy, seriously fast. A proper chaps toy is that one.




The Eurofighter - Easily the most awesome plane at the show (that we saw).


▲F-117A Nighthawk Stealth fighter▼



A Lynx helicopter doing a loop the loop!


Again, not sure what this was but it was noisy, fast and spectacular.


One of the USAF Thunderbird display planes.


▲Three Spitfires and a Hurricane▼



Three Spitfires and a Hurricane being escorted by the red arrows.







As you can see the weather was fantastic. Lucky considering it chucked it down all day Friday and again on Sunday. I managed to get thoroughly sunburnt and my face resembled a well cooked lobster. The ride home was a real blast and following tradition we ended up in the pub afterwards. Life's a real bitch sometimes.

For the interested, the pleasant journey there was down the A446 past Bassetts Pole, onto the A452, A417 and finally down the lovely A429 to Cirencester. Not a single motorway in site.

Lord Mike

Loz has recently taken a trip over to Amsterdam for a long weekend and happened to stumble upon an English Pub! What do you reckon, time for a new business venture?



Other stuff in the news, Dean has recently had his birthday. What that has to do with building human pyramids I'm not too sure but it was a good idea at the time.



The chap on the right is Big Phil, and below is his sweaty ass smudging my car window.



This weekend Matt and I, along with whoever else wants to tag along are heading down to Fairford on our bikes for the Royal International Air Tattoo. (I've just received a text this very minute off Loz saying "Plane Spotting! Ha Ha not for me." so I can assume he won't be going. It's not like it's train spotting is it. Is it? Is it really THAT boring?)

Talking of boring, the wonderful and charming Miss Understood has described our blog as..... well tell you what, I'll paste in just what she wrote on her blog.....

"Mike (he's in my sidebar) usually writes about all of this really dull, boring, blokey stuff. You know…bikes and engines and beer and things like that. I don't know why I bother reading him actually, cos he normally sends me to sleep."

So the plan of action, seeing as we won't be too far away from where she lives, is to gatecrash her house early Sunday Morning and completely bore the pants off her whilst she cooks up a load of sausage and egg sandwiches as an apology..... If she can stay awake long enough!

Tedious Motoring

There's one thing motorbikes have over cars.... You never get bored of them. Never.

Due to rain, rain and more rain I haven't bothered getting on mine for what must be almost a month now (The Tatenhill post was a little late uploading to the blog in case you're wondering).

Today I have to take a long boring drive down the motorway to collect a part for a machine. Not even the novelty of a new car can generate enough enthusiasm to make the journey. So, with built up frustration caused by lack of riding I had this brainwave that come rain, hail, sleet, snow, tornadoes or hurricanes I was going to take my bike instead. Brilliant idea, until I realised that the machine part is too big to fit on my bike. I doubt even Loz could invent a suitably ingenious mounting structure for the job! So sadly a tedious car journey it has to be.

I thought the following photo just about sums up my feelings.


Moi, the happy chappy

One Man and His Dog

Just thought I'd share a photo I took yesterday evening of Bob and Sparty outside the local pub.

Tatenhill

Matt and I took a trundle up to Tatenhill airfield so that Matt could have a chat with somebody about helicopters. He's now officially a pilot you know!

The airfield is situated just outside Burton on Trent in a nice quiet rural location surrounded by some fantastic biking roads. There's a public access area which offers a good view of the planes and helicopters taking off and landing and there's also a cafe. All in all it was a very pleasant couple of hours.


Winnie (my Blackbird) with Matt in the background.






A view from the cafe.


If you get your binoculars out you might just be able to see a helicopter which is exactly like the one Matt's been learning to fly in.

The Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford is being held on the 14th & 15th July. It's £32.50 entrance fee which I think is good value. I might just take a ride down there. There's cheap camping to be had too because a lot of the farmers open up their fields for the weekend.

I can feel a jangle coming on!