Testing times

Well, the sun is shining (sort of), the roads are dry (hmmm), the biking season is officially here.

But first and foremost one or two minor obstacles need to be overcome.

The first of these is the annual MOT (or bi-annual in Papa Phallus' case).

Mine and PP's bikes were booked into the excellent Trackside Motorcycles in sunny Stockton to be prodded and poked and bounced and squeezed by the charismatic, sharp as a knife, MOT tester.

My Blackbird went first, to be honest I was a little nervous, not because the bike is a shed (shut it Zippy) but because I had put the noisy Micron race can back on the bike (after spending the latter half of last year with a standard set-up on the bike) so I was a little worried the tester would knock it back as being too loud. I need not have worried, the money spent on a re-pack kit for said can paid for itself with a thumbs up from Mr tester man. Positives for tyres, brakes and condition came next but he did pull me up on my slack chain and my wobbly luggage rack, but these were only advisories.

So far so good, until we came to lights, I had checked all the lights the weekend before and all were working fine so I was shocked when the brake light refused to light up on the front brake lever, bollocks. The tester apologised but he had to fail the bike.

A quick drop in to Tillston's in the town for a replacement micro switch yielded nothing, so it was just a matter of raping one off of Fruit'n'Barley's bike to get my XX through a re-test. And that is exactly what I did, and now my bike has a lovely shiny full ticket.

Papa Phallus' turn now. He rode 'Yellow Snow' into the testing station looking more nervous than I was, he had a right to though, he was worried about his front tyre which was showing signs of unequal wear but our friendly tester just issued an advisory for it.

The tester was tempted to fail PP's bike on the amount of chicken strips on his back tyre, but another mechanic in the garage pointed out it would be unfair to fail it as it was clear that PP could only ride a bike upright and in a straight line........Ha ha...hammered.

'Yellow Snow' passed with flying colours, so a good job all round, 2 bikes passed and ready for a cracking spring and summer.

Your turn now Zippy...........

Bungle