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!

Holidays in France

I'm sat in the pub sipping a pint listening to Frank as he tells me he's taking a holiday to France with his wife, his best friend and his best friends wife. He has nothing organised as yet. I listen contently to his plans on where in the country they'd like to stay and what sort of accommodation they had in mind.

"Why don't you rent yourself a Gîte?" I enquire, expecting some sort of logical answer.

I should have known better.

"Fuck off man, there's no way I'm hiring a car and attempting to drive on the wrong side of the road."

Caption Competition Winner

Eh up folks, sorry for keeping you all in suspense for so long but it's been a tough competition to judge this time round. Let me tell you this though.... Ant was never going to win it for a fourth time running........ Not a chance.

Every entry was superb and very funny apart from a couple that I didn't understand, but that might just be me being a bit thick. Right then, I'll delay it no further.

Wait.... before I go on I'd just like to say that I hate having to choose only one winner. You all deserve to win (apart from Ant because he's always winning and also the couple of entries I didn't understand).

The winner is............. oh I hate having to do this.......

The winner is............. drum roll.......

The winner is............. Ali, with her very witty comment; "Someone said it was Matt's birthday, so I thought I'd give him a blow job.. *hic* ... Mike, what do you mean "the other Matt"?

Caption competition

This is what happens when you drink too much at Matt's birthday party and end up in a worse state than the birthday boy himself. It's been a while since we had a caption competition and I'm probably going to get murdered for using this pic for it. But I tell you what, I'll apologise now shall I, then run like hell? Usual rules apply whereby the winner gets absolutely nothing. Generosity abounds I know. Before I leg it I'll just quickly get the ball rolling with..........

"I'm still standing lalala la la la......... hick"

Wedding Photos

As threatened by me last week, here's a few pictures taken from the wedding I went to. Without boring everyone too much, I tried to take them in a reportage style. I'd like everyone's feedback good or bad...... I can take the insults being a man and all that.

As if by magic there is a bigger version of them if you click on them. The wonders of technology.