Pulled

Despite our advice to the contrary a work colleague rode his bike home
in the snow yesterday, rather than locking it in the loading bay and
taking the train. On his way home he got skittled by a skidding car.
Nothing too serious, bruised shoulder and mainly cosmetic damage to
his GSXF750.
Old Bill came out to him and helped sort things out, bike collected in
a van by Streetbike
Colleague was not at work today but his brother popped in to let us
know he was OK. Turns out the WPC was drop dead gorgeous and our
colleague is taking her out for a meal tomorrow night! Any body else
pulled in such adverse conditions?

Boxerboy

 

Not quite the same but I was in a roof-fall down t'pit many years ago
and broke my neck. In hospital the nurse assigned to clean me up
(taken in nearly naked covered in coal dust) was an ex girlfriend who I
hadn't seen for a few years. After she cleaned my bits we got rather
more 'acquainted' than is (I guess) normal in a hospital!

Went out with her again for a year or so ...

 

Back in 1999 I asked the vet out after she put my cat to sleep
following a weed killer eating incident. I ended up going out with her
for 6 months.

 

I think you'll find it's pronounced "hutzpah"

 

I once pulled a plodette at a gig when she'd finished sorting out a couple
of loony pissheads. She said I was the first sober person she'd met that
night.

And I once pulled a lass and later discovered who was married to a plod. A
fucking BIG bastard plod. I kept away from her after I saw him.


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

As it happens ...

In my (lengthy) time as a foolish yoof, I had a TR7. It was one of
the shitest vehicles in a long line of shite vehicles (before and
after) that it has ever been my misfortune to own. It looked 'orrible
(as do all roofed TR7s), it didn't go very well, didn't handle very
well and didn't have a back seat, to boot. It did, however, feel very
nice to drive, as once I was ensconced in the, admittedly, nicely
designed and quite ergonomic cockpit, I couldn't see the 'orrible
chopped off back end, nor the equally 'orrible rubber-bumpered front
end.

I could never come to terms with the design of the thing - OK,
inasmuch as the MGB was the A60 coupe, this was the Dolomite coupe -
but the front end of the wedge, with the big flat bonnet and the pop-
up lights (one of mine was a bit keen, TBH, and used to pop up for a
look around when the road bumps woke it up (aka just popping out for a
quick wink)) was quite acceptable in appearance - and the steeply
raked windscreen, little flat roof (most of which was taken up by the
Halfords retro-fit tilting glass sunroof) and vertical rear window
went quite well with the lines - the designer seemed to have gone on
holiday and let another committee finish the back end off for him.

Anyway, as things went then, I had to Nige it about a bit and as LED
lights and rear-end tidies were future artifacts, I had to actually
improve it. So I pulled the 8-valve motor out and slotted a 16v
Sprint engine in it (from one of my many Sprints) breathing through a
couple of 45 DCOEs and complete with matching overdrive gearbox and
the de rigeur Salisbury Powerlock LSD back axle. I've always loved
parts-bin vehicles.
A set of alloys, complete with well-scrubbed Pirelli Singeyerarsole(1)
tyres, a pair of front fog lights courtesy of Joe (Prince Of Darkness)
Lucas and a six-foot fibreglass whip aerial rounded out the outside.
A Harry Moss radio/cassette player and a pair of Matsui pod speakers
provided the bangin' sounds and it rolled out of the workshop sooo
much better than when it went in.

So, that was my pride and joy, resplendent in BL Arctic White with
abstract BL Ferrous Oxide accents to seams and extremities and a dirty
great decal on the bonnet which declared "Triumph" surrounded by black
laurel leaves to even the hard of seeing at some distance. Lovely.
Not.

I was late out of work one night - and it had to be a night I was due
to go out: I had a pair of tickets to see Hale and Pace in
Barnstaple's version of the Albert Hall (capacity 300 on a good night,
provided not too many patrons brought their sheep with them).
Entertainment in North Devon was frequently hard to find and getting
an act off the telly there was quite remarkable - apart from the ever-
popular Jethro, of course - he was always good for a near-sellout and
the sheep liked him too.

So, I flipped home in a hurry, weaving through, past, under and over
the evening holidaymakers wending their weary way back from the
beaches to the B&Bs in their gritty grockly droves, did the S,S and S
thing and shot out to pick up the then-current girlfriend. Rather
than dawdle down the main drag, I opted for the back roads as it was
nearly always grockle-free that way. Made good time for the first
five miles, then caught up to the dreaded Sheep Vurmer in his grotty
Landie -well, I assume it was a Landie as I could only see the odd
mirror poking out in front of this bloody enormous Ifor Williams
double-decker sheep trailer. Perhaps he was on his way to provide the
half-time entertainment for Hale and Pace (sheep pimping is still not
really a crime in North Devon) but if he was, he was not only going
the wrong way, but he was going to be nearly as late as I was.

Even the mighty Sprint7 wasn't going past him, as every time there was
an overtaking opportunity, he swayed onto the crown of the road and
was allegedly entirely oblivious to my ever-more-urgent presence.
Eventually the old git gimmed off up a track and I slammed open the
stable door and unleashed all available horsepowers to the tarmac.
Another couple of miles of hedge blurred by to left and right and then
the straight I'd been waiting for opened up and accordingly, the
throttle was fully opened too. I hit the crest at about 140, in the
perfect position: slightly off to the right, to allow for the kick to
the left, which would land me on track for a further half-mile of
flatoutness before drifting through the esses and backing off for the
next junction. I knew that road so well, you see. Daytime, night
time, sober and not-so-sober, I could cane anything along there.

However - I hadn't allowed for the daydreaming when being trampled
underfoot behind Old Sheepy backalong the road. This wasn't the crest
I was looking for ... oh, no. This was The Other Crest. Its Other
status became instantly apparent just on the moment of take-off. Just
as the front wheels left the tarmac I looked down the bonnet to see,
not the 800 yards of clear tarmac I expected, but a nasty little left-
right kink followed by a long curve to the right. Bugger, I thought.
I may have said it too, but then things started happening very
quickly, but at the same time very slowly.

In that moment of great clarity, familiar to many of us who have
crashed before, I could see that things weren't going to go to plan
that evening. Accordingly, I implemented the well-practised Crash
Drill: turn off ignition with right hand, lift feet off pedals to
obviate broken ankles and brace the left arm against the console and
side of my seat. I'd been done so often when rallying and banger
racing it all came as first nature, not even second.

The offside front wheel made landfall first, on the right-hand verge
which quickly became vertical hedge. This raised the front of the car
abruptly skyward and shoved the car sharply to the left, causing my
right shoulder to hit the partly-open door window hard enough to break
the glass. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but it would push
fragments of toughened glass through my untoughened skin and into the
flesh beneath, far enough to ensure that spikes of it would be making
their way to the surface for several years afterwards.
So up we went, to the dulcet strains of Robert Plant warbling his way
through "Kashmir" and then we were four wheels airborne for the second
time in three seconds - only this time inverted. Yep, it was the
dreaded "ground, sky, ground" scenario. Halfway round, we met the
road coming down, as it were. The first point of contact was the roof
hitting the tarmac, the second was me hitting the inside of the roof,
as the inertia-reel seatbelt was in a state of real hysteria, it
seemed, and there was yards of webbing lying around me to not much
avail. The rear window shattered and my cassettes made their breaks
for freedom through it, followed by both pod speakers which trailed
along on their cables. Suddenly I was hearing Kashmir from quite a
distance ... if only I'd shortened the cables I'd still have been able
to listen in stereo.

I risked a look through the windscreen and wished I hadn't: the
inverted car was whizzing along on its roof, being guided, Trik-Trak
style, by the hedges on either side - still doing around sixty it
seemed and unlikely to stop anytime soon. I dunno what the
coefficient of friction between BL paint and tarmac is, but it can't
be much. Not much more between BL steel and tarmac, because the paint
didn't last long, and neither did the outer skin of the pillars. I
recall being soundly impressed by the forethought of the BL designers,
as they had ensured that the balance of the TR7 would remain unspoiled
by inversion and that it would assume the characteristics of a curling
stone in such an attitude on smooth tarmac.

So there I was, lying curled up on my side, pulling in the yards of
useless seatbelt, waiting for it all to come to a halt, listening to
my car being ground away beneath me (and the ever-fainter strains of
Kashmir fading as the cables unwound from the shelf and stretched
further down the road) when the noises abruptly changed. It wasn't so
much Jimmy Page winding up, as fingernails being dragged down a
blackboard. Nick Lowe's voice would have been apposite, as although
it wasn't the sound of breaking glass as such, it was the sound of
abrading glass ... the glass of the sunroof on which I was lying. Oh,
the curse of an active and Technicolour imagination: I could see, in
my mind's eye, what the result of the glass yielding would be.
Unpleasant, to put it briefly.
I risked opening an actual eye and looking forward, to see that the
hedge was still passing me by, although it seemed to be slowing. No
sign of oncoming vehicles, though, which in my current predicament was
a bit of a relief. See, even in the midst of inverted adversity,
there's something to be happy about. I found the end of the
seatbelt's unwinding generosity in the end and yanked myself into a
half-upright posture, shoulders against the seat cushion and feet
straddling the sunroof and that was even more of a relief.

Just as I'd got comfortable, of course, everything came to a halt.
Quite smoothly, parked neatly against the hedge, facing the right way
and on the correct side of the road - all was in order, apart from
being upside down, of course. The cassette had auto-reversed itself
as we stopped, so I took the next track title quite literally and
emerged Into The Light - through the shattered rear window.
I took a moment, as one does, to appreciate the golden evening
sunlight at that juncture. Looking back up the road, I could see the
crest where I'd taken to the air outlined against the cerulean
blueness - and a dirty great stripe of whiteness coming down the road
towards me: roof paint, then scratches in the tarmac where the roof
pillars had left their indelible mark of passage - commendably
parallel to the hedge, if I say so myself. And the debris field - a
line of cassettes and their cases leading to my rather battered
speakers, one of which was still attached and still banging out
Zeppelin in fine style.

Not quite seizing the severity of the moment, I waltzed back up the
road and started collecting my music collection as that seemed to be
important right then. Just then I heard a car, and my Good Samaritan
appeared - an angel in a Fiesta. He squeaked to a stop well clear of
my wreckage and gave me a hand, then gave me a lift to my girlfriend's
house, a couple of miles down the road. We were all accustomed to
finding cars stuffed in hedges and the like, it being peak Grock
Season, so we just weighed in when we could, I suppose.
I calmed the burd, made a call to my mate the recovery operator,
stressing urgency, then got her to drive me back to the scene of the
crash to await his appearance. Coming up the lane towards the TR7, I
spotted a little blue tit flashing over the hedge. Bugger. I got her
to stop behind the Panda car and left her in the car as I approached
the long arm of the Law.
It turned out to be the long blonde ponytail of the Law, in this case
- a lovely little WPC looking rather distressed: pink cheeked, huge
blue eyes and trembly lower lip: she'd been searching the hedges for
my presumably battered corpse, see. She was awfully pleased to see
me, for a burd I'd never met and it got quite emotional: rather
appropriately, Harry Moss was still at it and Mr Plant was halfway
through "The Wanton Song". I managed to persuade her that the blood
dripping from my right sleeve wasn't serious, then cajoled her into
calling in that no reinforcements were required, nor was recovery as
it was all in hand.

I had to do some very fast talking, tell the truth, as I really didn't
want her or, worse, a Vehicle Inspector looking too closely at the TR:
the Singeyerarseoles were looking distinctly shiny, now they were
exposed to the harsh light of day, both rear shocks were rather oily
and one front strut glistened evilly. Not only that, but I doubt my
insurance would have appreciated my installation of the other eight
valves and the Webers. Fortunately, my line of babble hadn't run out
when my second Samaritan turned up in his flatbed truck and with no
messing about, we winched the TR up, still inverted.

Blondie was still concerned with me though, so I slipped her my
business card and told her to call me the next day so I could reassure
her. Bingo! She called, I gave her a bit of the old chat and she let
me talk her into meeting after work. I progressively discovered that
she was a good sport, that she was a proper old-fashioned girl at
heart and insisted on wearing stockings with her uniform and that she
was a big fan of back seat aerobic exercise - in about that order, and
all within a couple of hours. We had a thing for some time after
that, but as she still lived with her folks and had an Official Thing
going with a fellow copper (as I did with my hairdresser, even after
turning up at her Mum's door fresh from inversion and bloody and
sweaty and still insisting on taking her to see Hale and bloody Pace),
it wasn't that regular, but it was Jolly Good Fun.

1. Pirelli Cinturato, to the uninitiated.

 

<snip>

*Applause*

One of your best effort, Mr Pip. Brightened up my afternoon no end,
has that.

 

In communiqué

It's the way you tell 'em.

Heh, the Saab had those, but they soon needed replacing. Being an
impecunious student EHO I put Semperits on. So they'd be 'Simpertits'?


--
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Fisher at Home: |
| Voxan Roadster Yamaha WR250Z/Supermoto "Old Gimmer's Hillclimber" |
| Gilera GFR * 2 Moto Morini 2C/375 Morini 350 "Forgotten Error" |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+

 

<applause>

 

Heh, I did some similar speaker rewiring in one of my first cars. I just
never tested how they'd spool out like you did.

Bloody good read that.

 

<Snip>

When does the compendious book of your memoirs come out?

 

I don't think Pip has answered this oft asked question.

 

<Thunderous applause>

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, The Older

<echo>

 

Superb.

<shudder> about the Cunteratoes - horrible things with all the grip of a
greased pig on ice, even in the dry.