Gremlin's Tall Stories

Saturday morning, I’m up and about… hang on, no, got to bed in the early hours, so rose around midday Kicked my arse into gear, and got to Botany Honda before they closed. Annoyed the guys as usual, and showed them the LED strips, as they had been interested in how they would look. Of course, I get the piss taken out of me, but I bet they all secretly desire some themselves.

GiJoe is nowhere to be seen, despite a txt, so he must be otherwise occupied. I head off to Motomail to look at gloves, as I need a good warm reasonably waterproof pair to complete my long distance riding outfit. GiJoe comes to annoy me there, after I’ve spent at least half an hour with 4 pairs of gloves (all rev’it, all winter gloves) trying to decide which suits me best. Unfortunately, it’s the most expensive (Rev’it Kelvin).

It’s now around 4pm, but still enough time to go annoy Toto at Cycletreads, so we duly set off. Reaching him, ‘treads is pretty much closed, but he comes out asking what we want. Once he realises the intent, no problem, and start talking.

They want to ride, but I want to do maintenance. Katie needs a clean, rear reflector properly installed, wof and rego updated with new ones, etc etc. They can ride, but I will join afterwards. Since Toto needs to be taught about GPS, Mapsource etc, and doesn’t have riding gear anyway, we suggest he goes home, gets it, then meets at my place.

GiJoe and I head back to my place, where he sets about making a nuisance of himself. He finds a water blaster, and insists on wanting to use it. He complains about the type of cleaning fluid I’m using (at length) and then, hassles me when I mess up the holes for the reflector… his fault. Truth be told, the reflector takes so long to get right (still ended up skew, but I was taking my time being careful) that Toto pitches up as we start with the water blaster.

The buggers insist on cleaning my plate (I can’t stand them looking totally white, preferring a bit of dirt on them) so Toto gets a soapy shower, whether he likes it or not. Handy I had the water blaster in my hand at the time. It’s started to get dark by the time the wash is being finished, but being the good buggers they are, they pitch in, with GiJoe insisting I fit my long range fuel tank, because I need to test it. We figure out how to (fuel link line seems to have shrunk) and I replace wof and rego.

All tidied up in the dark, it’s time to return favours, so I sit down and give Toto a lesson in using the GPS, installing Mapsource on his laptop along with the NZ Open GPS Maps, how to use Mapsource, how to send data to GPS etc.

This ends up lasting until after midnight. GiJoe left early to go on a date with a girlie.

Mates sure are handy to put on the end of a spanner, and they didn’t break nothing!!