Icewind Dale

Sadly, this post isn't about an ancient PC role playing game, so if you came here after googling that title - I apologise. That's apologise, with an 's' - not a 'z.' Fuck off auto-correct. I went back up to Manchester at the weekend on the motorbike. I set off on Friday afternoon hoping to avoid the traffic on the motorway (it's always, always congested around Birmingham. Without fail. I bet it's congested right now, actually), but on the way to the M5 I discovered that my back tire was flat. It didn't look particularly 'down,' but when I was riding, the back end just felt 'funny.' Not Joe Pesci 'funny,' just a bit unstable. I stopped a few times and looked at it and pressed it with my thumb, and it looked and felt OK to my novice eyes/thumbs...but I called in to a garage before my junction and asked if a mechanic could have a quick look at it. Turns out it was completely void of any air whatsoever. Completely flat. He pumped it up with his little hand held squirty-gas thing (technical terminology, right there) and it went rock solid...and the ride quality improved dramatically. Leads me to wonder whether it's been flat the whole time I've had it, as truth be told, it's felt a little bit unstable the whole time. With the CBF, you could instantly see if you had a puncture because the tires were quite thin, but with this bike's big fat tires, it's hard to tell. Unless you get a bloke with a pressure gauge to check for you. So – note to relatively new motorcyclists: check your tires. If I hadn't just happened to pass that garage, I probably would've continued on to the motorway and then cranked the bike up to 70 – 80mph with a flat tire...and who knows how badly that little scenario could've ended.

The weekend passed with little incident – saw my myriad nephews and nieces and brother and sisters, saw some friends on Saturday night and then came back. The ride back was particularly horrible, though it had nothing to do with traffic jams or a flat tire – it was down to the fucking gale-force winds that threatened to blow me sideways off the road almost continuously. Seriously, the trees at the sides of the motorway were bending over with the force of the fucking wind and at one point just past Stafford, the back wheel actually shifted from under me and I thought I was dead. I managed to keep control and get the bike straight again, but fuck me – what is it with the damned weather this year? It feels like mother nature is throwing everything at me: January – February, when I first started riding, the weather was stupidly cold – to the point where I was wearing 3 pairs of gloves to keep feeling in my hands. March – September it rained almost constantly, with a little bit of wind and sleet thrown in for good measure, and now we've hit October, the wind seems to be wanting to get in on the act. The kind of wind I've only ever seen in news reports. And it's always blowing against me – never behind me, making the ride actually bearable. So, not only is riding a motorbike loud and cold and (to be honest) a little bit uncomfortable, now I've got to hold on for grim death because the wind doesn't want me to stay upright. Makes me wonder why I fucking bother to be honest. Oh, wait – petrol is still £1.40 a litre. That's why.

Went back to that shopping centre in Bristol this week to try to use some more of my vouchers. I'm probably in an enviable position in that there's not really anything I want or need. I've got a fuck load of gadgets, and enough clothes...so I bought a travel towel for my planned Thailand trip in early 2013, and an iTunes voucher. Never used an iTunes voucher before, but it's pretty straight forward really – you just scrape the silver strip off the back and input the code that's revealed. So what did I get from the store? Bit of a mixed bag really. Got the new Muse album, The 2^nd Law. And it's a bit cack. Several of the tunes are complete rip-offs of Queen songs, and the rest are, in the main, floaty high pitched dross with a few guitar riffs thrown in. There are one or two semi-decent tracks, but this is a world away from their last good album, Black Holes and Revelations. Their previous effort was underwhelming too... so might give Muse a miss from now on. The others I got were the new Motion City Soundtrack offering, Simple Plan's latest, an album from a band most people have never heard of but actually write some of the best punk/pop I've ever heard – The Click Five, and the latest album from Nas. I'm not a massive fan of the rap genre, but Nas' stuff is quite good in my opinion. Hence the purchase. So there you are. A few near-death experiences and some iTunes purchases. An action-packed weekend I'm sure you'll agree.