Lost Lad and Magnetic Sump Plugs

The Nikos family has been associated, one way or another, with the Peak District for many years and it is woeful that we have never ventured more than five miles away from the comfort zone of the Cat and Fiddle.

 The tell tale sign at the Fairholmes car park that is the start of our 71/2 mile walk around the Upper Derwent valley. Actually there is only one dam in this direction.

No excursion in the Peak District would be complete without a vacuously staffed filthy counter  with bikers standing around although we would have to wait four hours for the pleasure of weak tea and stale eccles cakes.

This is the base of the Derwent Dam and not somewhere in the Ruhr.

Not an Avro Lancaster in sight.

View from Derwent Edge to the Ladybower reservoir.

The going is mostly easy up here on Derwent Edge as we pass Lost Lad peak.

The outcropping grit stone has been weathered into some weird and wonderful shapes - here are some weird and wonderful rock climbers playing with their equipment.

Looking in.

Looking out at....

K75 interlude - apologies for this but I have not mastered the blogger text editor.

A magnetic sump plug doing its job.

Now its clean.

Sheep

Male sheep

The Titillation of Tubby

The reason the electric screen fails to operate - crud! The vendor made a point in saying that at least the screen had failed in the down position - the author subtracted £100 from the asking price.  A five minute job to remove the switch, resolder the green wire, clean and lubricate the sliding contact.

On the delivery journey home I had noted (apart from wobbly handling) excessive movement in the brake pedal.  On inspection and adjustment to take out the slack, a dollop of brake fluid emerged:  New cylinder £103 - Nikos now £3 down....
(I have never seen aluminium delaminate like it has on an area of the brake lever - this lever is mounted on the bike where it is exposed to all sorts of crap from the road so it has now been cleaned up and sprayed with ACF 50 corrosion inhibitor in case you are concerned).

New tyre fitted - seems to have cured the wobbly handling.  The old tyre had squared off and was down to safe limits at the centre.  Curiously the previous owner had kept fastidious records and notes but had wrongly converted  the rear tyre pressure of 2.9 bar to be 46psi. I had subtracted £100 from the vendor for this and so I'm £4 up overall.

This is a demonstration of  the HID headlamp bulb conversion on dipped beam.  The H4 bulb system normally produces high and low beams from 2 filaments.  I was curious to discover how a single HID H4 gas discharge bulb could do this and the answer is an electro mechanical shutter integrated into the bulb assembly.
You will note that Nikos cousin's broken deck chair is picked out  by the dipped beam and the tomato plant is receiving extra white light.  You will also notice the external air temperature guage that had been sitting in the spare parts box for 20 years has now been put to "good" use.

Main beam - the IKEA folding chair is now fully exposed and irradiated at 5000K whereas the tomato plant is mainly in the dark.  I decided to upgrade the headlamp so as to avoid festooning the bike with add on lamps as I did with Tractor (my GS) and keep the lines clean on the aerodynamic masterpiece of the K75.  I realise that I have no redundancy.

The IKEA sofa aka  the bargain remade seat waiting for £70 on Tony Archer's workbench and this should provide 2 inches of extra leg room and allow me to slide back my riding position and position my legs for aerodynamic effect within the fairing.

Further to the first test ride to validate the titillation and repair (during the Northern lights night time spectacular HID light demonstration) the rear brake switch gives up the ghost - this is a manifestation of the law of sod especially as its function appears to be key in the operation (or otherwise) of the ABS system. Now I'm  £23 down.

Rosinen Bombed Tour

The sweltering tropical weather over Wiesbaden broke just before I arrived back for the weekend, but by Sunday the thunderstorms had abated, the sun shone but with fresher air temperatures and we donned the protective clobber for our second tour of the Taunus. (The first tour has remain unblogged in deference  to the hapless bee that had flown up Mrs Nikos' jacket cuff and stung her on the arm somewhere near Dietz...)

On the way to Epstein - a typical Taunus vista.

Statues at Schlosshotel Rettershof.

Frankfurt cathedral surrounded by modern buildings - we arrived here due to roadworks  near Bad Homberg.

Clearly a large organ.

Riding next to the River Main.

The day is improving as on our quest for the Berlin Airlift memorial I spot on the map a village called Zeppelinheim.  Naturally the museum is closed.

The Berlin Airlift memorial - easy to see from the A5 autobahn but hard to find as it is appropriately sandwiched between the South main runway of Frankfurt airport, the A5 and a high speed rail link.  Access is by a footpath and bridge from Zeppelinheim.

The C54 "Rosinen Bomber".

The C47 "Dakota" with a glimpse of the autobahn sign in the near background.

A pair of Mrs Nikos' noteworthy rosinen bombs (recipe on application) redolent of a design by the late and great Barnes Wallis.

Bus Lover's Holiday

A Leyland Bus picking up passengers outside Mosta Dome

 

Mrs Nikos had some good fortune and willingly consented to come with me on my almost regular five yearly bus spotting holiday to Malta, that little gem of an ex British naval base skulking in the Mediterranean sea just below Sicily.

An AEC bus picking up passengers at Cikewwra having made it up the fill from the Gozo ferry terminal in the outstanding heat.

An Airbus A 320 at Luqa airport - another of Nikos' famed night-time ramp shots.

Another AEC bus moments before running over some Scuba divers.

A Leyland Tiger Cub with a misleading Volvo number plate light ornamentation at Valetta bus main station .

A Bedford Supreme and an AEC Commander pose side by side at Valetta main bus  station.

Heaven knows what this is  - the name plate has fallen off.

This soulless vehicle looks like something from the Iron Curtain.

Mrs Nikos pets a stray cat as she is fed up with looking at obsolete British buses. 

 

 Mrs Nikos concludes the purchase of an AEC bus to convert into a camping car.

Meet Tubby

And I'm looking forward to a completely new three cylinder world of Flyingbricks, K-bike world and other excellence in motion including the possibility of fitting a radio and a reading light.  Inspired from childhood by the monumental writings of Jack Riepe over in PA USA, I have tickled my overdraft facility and ensured the continued survival of local BMW Repair shops.

P.S. I believe that Muttley is not included in the purchase price.

Pictures of my Motorcycle at Different Locations in the Eurozone

Or to put it another way, a chronicle containing few words of part 1 of the Nikos Cosmos 2010 Near World Tour  (tm).

Let's start with an apology.  This is at Warwick services and € are not, and will never be, accepted here. The Tomtom is playing up and I have almost burnt the clutch out in a 2 hour crawl through roadworks at Birmingham with lanes too narrow to allow filtering, there is a freezing cold Force 6 cross wind blowing and I'm really enjoying myself on the way to meet Mrs N.

This is at a Travelodge "Hotel" in beautiful rural West Sussex, overlooking the runway at Gatwick Airport. I did not pay for parking as the receptionist said there is nowhere to stick my ticket...

Here we are outside the cavernous and vacuously staffed service area in delightful Kent, the garden of England where the last expensive coffee before the Channel tunnel may be consumed at leisure because there is a 3 hour delay on The Shuttle.

I did say there was a 3 hour delay.

This could be a tea room anywhere in England judging by the 2 coach loads of English kids who have just departed  but we are near the Somme at the Ena Sharples Tea Rooms and this place has renovated child friendly WW1 trenches in the back garden.

In a town in France near the Somme.

Extremely cheap beer in a very expensive side case.

One of the cats at Les Ballastieres. (You cannot see my motorcycle in this picture)

Les Ballastieres - motorcycle friendly lodgings.

A pit stop on the way to Spa: Some horrid little dump just before a really nice town with a splendid weir and fantastic cafes that we did not stop at because we stopped here instead.  I blame Mrs N's bladder capacity.

Dinant -  a picturesque Belgium river side town spoilt only by hoards of enthusiastic motorcyclists roaring through on a Sunday afternoon.

A little gem of a B&B at Trooz found on biker friendly places to stay dot com  I parked overnight in the garage and petrol leaked all over the previously pristine floor.

Here we are outside an amusement park somewhere in the volcanic Eifel mountains.

Wiesbaden - end of part 1.

Garden Bouzouki taster