A motorbike and comedy post

Warning! Bad language, bad taste and good humour ahead!

There's been a few things this week that have made me laugh. One of the best was when I was chatting to a mate online and she mentioned that there was a "Mock the Week" marathon on Dave (for non-UK guys, that's a TV channel). I was in work the next night and sure enough, there was another set of episodes on. If you don't know it, Mock the Week is an improv show, and theoretically there's about 4 or 5 rounds of comedy challenges for the various standups such as one comic does a version of a speech (Dubya addressing Congress, the Prince of Wales talking to his mother) and another translates what's actually meant, or various topics are given and they compete for quick-fire laughs and so on. One of the episodes, I swear they had three rounds, and one of them had just one topic that was covered for about 15 minutes. Like all shows of the type it can date quickly but some of the rest of it is still painfully relevant. I think I managed to give myself a decent stomach work-out with the amount I was laughing.
From youtube, here's a few, including an outtake. The BBC have posted a load but can't embed them.

These are from the final rounds, "scenes you'd never see..."

SMIDSY

Or "Sorry mate, I didn't see you!"
From the Biker Banter section on Petrol Heads, they linked to this video from the Devon council.
Brilliant.
I'm a bit concerned because my brother has taken up the two wheels, which is great, but he hasn't done his CBT yet (he doesn't need to for the twist-and-go scooter he's got). I'm only concerned because his helmet is second hand and I think it would be better if he did some more training. I know he's planning to do so, but tempus fugit. In October the test changes and it becomes not only more difficult but borderline silly.
There's a new meme I might stick on here as well, you pick your 15 favourite films, find quotes from them (IMDB etc) and post the quotes up for people to try and guess the films WITHOUT using IMDB/Google. Darc's RCSI journal on Livejournal had the first one of these I've seen, I'd link but owing to some evil gits on her comments she's put the journal on friends only, which is a shame but I can understand it.
The challenge for me will be to find quotes from my favourite films which won't be too obvious. For example, I could say something like "The greater good!" but that might be a bit too easy.

Playing catch up..again

Sorry I've been lame at updating this thing, I'm rubbish.
And for Pippa, yeah, not sure why the instructions have gone all Danish...

So, what's been happening? Well, went down to see Swiral and EMB in Brum, also Dajousephine and Jules and Ulrich da dog. Was brilliant seeing them all again, and we went to a great rock pub in Birmingham. We need one of those up here ,there aren't any rock clubs up here as far as I can tell. I'm planning to get at least Matt, and preferably more of them, up here at some point in the near future, there's plenty of Scotland to share and I want to get friends up here. While I was down Matt gave me a memory stick, which was cool, and Sian filled it with mash up tunes, which was amazing. Was sat in a service station uploading from a laptop to the iPod then plugged it in and had the best trip north I've ever had. Motorways were pretty clear then the A9 was beautiful. Any slow traffic I came across moved out of the way, signaling nicely and the music was superb.

A couple of weeks later I popped down to see Tash and Chris. We're going to be going climbing in Inverness around New Year's with a few others and both Tash and myself wanted to make sure that we were good enough to supervise a friend.
Now the thing about climbing is that you can buy all the kit you want and go to a cliff and climb. There aren't any rules about who can and can't climb, it's your life, it's your responsibility. Indoors climbing is different, you're using someone elses place so legally they ask you to sign a bit of paper (or take a course) to show that you're good enough not to anything too silly. The course in Inverness has about 18 months of waiting list on it. I'm pretty happy that I can remember all of the stuff for wall climbing but it doesn't hurt to go back over things and get a refresher, especially as there's going to be a kid climbing with us after Christmas and with kids you don't take chances.
So Tash and myself went to the Edinburgh International Climbing Arena at Ratho.
Oh ye bloody hellfire.
I've seen big indor walls before, the Welsh International is big. Ratho is in another league. You walk in on the second floor and look through from the reception aera to windows going out onto the floor and think, "oh, that's big." Then you walk towards the window and realise it's not just big but you look UP and then you look DOWN! This place is huge! Pricey but massive. We had a great guy checking us over, running through the basics and suggested wrapping the ropes a couple of times at the top to add some more friction to stop Tash taking off when she's belaying me, always a problem. Almost worked as well, until we had an overhang, then she DID lift off, so Ewan (instructor) held her down and then we tied her to the wall for the next climbs. By this point my arms were pumped, the forearms solid and I managed most of a couple more climbs then just belayed Tash. It's quite depressing, she's less than half my weight, much shorter reach than me and is climbing over a grade higher than I am. Ahh well, she always was better than I was. Gives me something to work on.
Next day went swimming with Tash, found out I need to work on my stamina, but then I knew that anyway. Only really managed 32 lengths of a 25 m pool, need to get that better. Then later on had a go on Chris' bike, a lovely 600 ninja. As I've only got a CBT I was of course only riding on closed private areas, and not at all on any kind of by-pass, but even then it was great to get on a bike again. Makes me think I need to get my full license as soon as possible. But not that bike, the geometry is too short for me, would cripple me within two hours and I'm going to need something with more tourer than sports. Besides, the micky taking from the guys due to the ninjutsu training we did would be horrific, and perfectly justified. And it's green.

And that's pretty much me up to date, Tash is coming up next weekend, we're going to have a look at Inverness climbing, and possibly Aviemore as well; and I'm going to have a chat with a couple of car places, see if I can get a new (or different) car within my budget.

Reading - Greg Mandel series by Peter F Hamilton,
Listening to - Mash up mixes.
Watching - Long way down.

And another WOO-HOO!!

Today I had my first experience driving a motorbike. Previously I'd had a bit of time on the back of Chris and Tasha's bikes (lovely tourer 600s) and lots of time on my push-bike (that's bicycle for anyone wondering).
Today I went for my CBT. This is the first stage in learning to ride a motorbike in Britain. You've got to have a provisional license first (full car or prov bike) then you do a short course covering basics of riding, maintainance and other stuff. The idea is that from never having been on a bike before, you're now safe to ride a small (125 cc) bike on the roads until you take your full test. Before this you could just hop onto a 125 straight off.
After this you do lessons on a more powerful bike. For over 21 year olds you can take it on a 500 cc and there are now legal to drive any size bike (this is called the "Direct Access" method). If you're under 21 (or too short to sit on a 500 - as was the case with Tasha) you use a smaller bike and then have to wait 2 years until you can ride bigger ones. You can do the CBT and the
direct access in one intensive course, but that looks to be more expensive.
I think I'll hire a 125 for an afternoon and get some road time in, to get used to things like canceling my indicators after turning, road position and not thinking that I'm on a push-bike. Then I'll get the rest of the lessons.
Stay tuned for more info.