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Tonight my tipple is Tiro, a lightly carbonated grapefruit drink over ice, with a generous portion of 42 Below vodka, making something akin to a greyhound, appropriate considering the other night I watched a DVD of a film called The Castle, which in fact features greyhounds (the four-legged variety). It’s not half bad - actually much better than at first sip when it wasn’t properly mixed. The film was good as well.

At present there are two bits of decent news. The first is that I finished the final part of the course I was required to take to get my learners permit for motorbikes. Not a big accomplishment by any means, given that all ten in my class passed the mini-test at the end of the session, but still satisfying. The second is that I’ll be finished with a project tomorrow night, and I can’t wait. The group for this project hasn’t completely gelled and as a result neither has the actual spec. Ah, creative differences. But tomorrow evening, it will be done, and it might be better than I feared.

So the motorbike thing - I’ve moved in the past few months and it’s a bit of a fresh start. I had a decent scooter where I last lived, but I never tested for a proper license. I took the intro course, the written test, but never got around to finishing the process. So here I am in a new place and I’ve decided to do things by the book. I can ride a 50cc scooter with a regular automobile license, so I’m on a little Vespa at the moment, but as of Monday when I turn in my paperwork I’ll be able to ride anything up to 250cc and a handful of relatively low powered vehicles over 250ccc. In the next year I’ll go in for a test and at that point I’ll be sorted (assuming I pass). The thing is the test will be conducted on a motorbike with manual gears, while the little Vespa is twist and go, so riding around on it between now and the test isn’t going to do me much good.

This is exactly the type of problem I like to have, in that it’s an excuse to buy a bike. The only question is what should I buy? On the one hand, I do like scooters, so I could get a vintage scooter with manual gear shifting which would be useful for passing the test. On the other hand, I already have a scooter, so I could instead get a vintage motorbike and use that for practice. I really don’t have time right now to put too much thought into it, but I expect to spend a fair amount of time checking out vintage bikes over the next week. The big problem with old bikes of course is that you need to be comfortable getting your hands dirty to keep them running, and my mechanic skill rating is very low. I’m good with software, but don’t know much about combustion engines.

Anyway, I’m listening to Ash as the moment, and while I still like them without Charolette Hatherly, they’re a bit like XFM without Lauren Lavern: excellent music, but missing something essential. Oh well, I’ll still listen to Ash and XFM, but I’m still keen to hear what Lauren and Charolette are up to on their own.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 21st, 2007 at 11:06 am and is filed under beer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.