boom boom

A man is waiting for his wife to give birth. The doctor comes in and informs the dad that his son was born without torso, arms or legs. The son is just a head! But the dad loves his son and raises him as well as he can, with love and compassion.

After 21 years, the son is now old enough for his first drink. Dad takes him to the bar, tearfully tells the son he is proud of him and orders up the biggest, strongest drink for his boy. With the entire bar patrons looking on curiously and the bartender shaking his head in disbelief, the boy takes his first sip of alcohol.
Swoooosh! Plop! A torso pops out! The bar is dead silent; then bursts into whoops of joy. The father, shocked, begs his son to drink again. The patrons chant, "Take another drink!"

The bartender continues to shake his head in dismay. Swoooosh! Plip! Plop! Two arms pop out...?

The bar goes wild. The father, crying and wailing, begs his son to drink again. The patrons chant, "Take another drink! Take another drink!"
The bartender ignores the whole affair and goes back to polishing glasses, shaking his head, clearly unimpressed by the amazing scenes.

By now the boy is getting tipsy, but with his new hands he reaches down, grabs his drink and guzzles the last of it. Plop! Plip! Two legs pop out. The bar is in chaos.

The father falls to his knees and tearfully thanks God. The boy stands up on his new legs and stumbles to the left then staggers to the right through the front door, into the street, where a truck runs over him and kills him instantly. The bar falls silent.

The father moans in grief. The bartender sighs and says,


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(Wait for it.)

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(It's coming.)

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"He should have quit while he was still a head!"

roll on summer

It stopped raining today, and the temperature has risen to a tropical 3 degC so I bunked-off work and went for a ride. Bit wobbly to begin with, but a quick stop to put air in the tyres soon cured that. Dropped my helmet on a garage forecourt while filling up with petrol and gouged the visor, but by some process of time travel to a parallel universe or something I had anticipated just such an event and purchased a new visor and pinlock insert over the internet just a few days ago. I'd also forgotten how the engine sounded like a tin with a load of old nuts and bolts rattling around, so must get my mate Derek to look at it, but those minor things apart I had a great day! I just love being on the bike even when its freezing and the roads are covered in crap - roll on summer!

Sexy bits

I believe all blokes collect shiny stuff that ends up stuffed at the back of the wardrobe, go on count up how many cameras/digital music players you have. I was looking for a new camera to take on expeditions this year, as I trawled around e-bay I slowly realised...there's the film SLR that I bought a few years ago hardly used, the compact digital with extending lens that I only used once, the digital SLR that I bought cheap on e-bay (still in the box) and the compact digital I carry in my pocket when out riding. Then there's the semi-pro film video camera I bought on e-bay to make a film (still editing), the compact film video camera I used on that trip to Australia and the digital video camera I bought recently that I was thinking of changing for a HD version. And don't even mention ipods/music players/mini discs! Or that B&O CD player that was a steal on e-bay which is still in the box. So thats all a bloke thing and thats fine; but then as I was deep into the internet looking at bits for the bike that I don't really need, I wondered if lady bikers do this as well? And if they do, is the selection based on things they actually need, or the fact that the thing is super-light or super-shiny or just plain sexy as only stainless steel bolts and carbon fibre things are...hang on, I think I've answered my own question there. Sexy & stainless steel are probably only used in the same sentence by a bloke.

The saga continues....

Despite the bravado expressed in my previous post, financial considerations dictated that I really should get back to work soon. So after trying to get a flight again on Thursday with no luck, I decided to drive up to Aberdeen. I spent the day Friday thinking about it, then finally got round to getting in the car today. I set off around lunchtime after a hearty breakfast followed by a mid-morning snack, sure that I could get lunch on the motorway - I'm back off the booze now and seem to have found my appetite. The car seemed to be driving a bit strange, but I put that down to lack of use. A quick stop to check the tyre pressures revealed a bloody huge carbuncle on the wall of one tyre, which I decided was not good, so I decided to head into the nearest town of Oxford to find a tyre dealer.

Four hours and several 'kwick-fits' later, and without any lunch, I was back on the road. Evidently my car has an uncommon tyre size, which I find amazing as there's bloody millions of them driving around, but there you go. I set off again, by now it's getting dark, the roads full of salt and grit and my washers have frozen - why did I think this was a great idea? So I decided to stop and find a hot meal to keep me going; the management of the service station on the M6 toll had however decided that no-one would want a hot meal at the unearthly late hour of 6pm, and had closed the food counter. As I sat eating my partly-frozen sandwich I thought bugger this, the travel gods are against me, which is why I'm sitting in a motel room reading bike mags with 450 miles still to go.

No work today

I spent two hours today in that "international retail opportunity" that is Heathrow Terminal 5. There were no flights "due to adverse weather conditions", so I couldn't return to the frozen north, and work.

Hooray!

I'll try again tomorrow, but am praying to the weather gods to carry on snowing so I can have another week away from that hell-hole. Actually, if it snowed until March I'd be happy if it meant I didn't have to return to work.

An update.......

I phoned my pal Derek yesterday, he tells me that since I left Aberdeen they've had constant snow, night-time temperatures of -16 degC and daytime temperatures of around -4 degC. Sounds like leaving was a good idea!

I've just caught up with a film I wanted to see - "The Motorcycle diaries" the story of Che Guevara's early travels around South America with a friend on a 500 Norton named "the mighty one". I enjoyed it for many reasons, the main one being that the fim is in Spanish with English subtitles; and as its basically a buddy road movie, there's loads of swearing. I love to hear swearing in Spanish, it seems so much more descriptive yet almost poetic. I work in 'Engineering', so our everday vocabulary consists of the f-word, the c-word and a few descriptive additions like "nut" or "bolt" thrown in to add clarity ( although I did once hear probably the ultimate description comprising of swear words - "this f#ckin' f#cker's f#ckin' f#cked"-classic!) but we 're not very descriptive when it comes to insults. I mean, no-one would say "son of a bitch" and expect it to raise an eyebrow, but somehow "hijo de puta", especially when the emphasis is placed on the "puta", has a special ring. In fact I was so impressed with the swearing in the film that I'm working on a couple of new phrases that I could use if I ever go back to South America. The first one is "may your excrement turn solid and block your back passage for ever" which is non-gender specific so could be used in almost any situation; also because I love to say the word "eternidad", it does actually sound like forever. I'm also working on another one "may the tip of your penis heal up and force your testicles to explode" but thats still a work in progress. In the meantime I'm going to continue with my meditation, beard-growing and self-imposed task of consuming the total EU production of wine and beer. Bottoms-up!