Just for Ron.

There’s one left!! back in the seventies, Ron and I worked together and the company had a pool of dire seventies cars. One of which was a Hillman Avenger a bit like this. Others in the fleet comprised a pair of Austin 1300’s and an Austin Maxi - the one with the seats that folded down to make a bed. Quite useful when one was in one’s 20’s! Our challenge was to drive them as fast as possible and all would show over 100 mph on the clock (probably 75 in reality) None achieved more than 20 mpg, which always surprised the transport manager. I can confess now that I did have the Maxi airborne for a good two car lengths once, over the hump back bridge near Market Bosworth. Sorry.

There's just a small bag round the back.....

Not quite the roll I had in mind for the Jeep, but after the Pick Everard ‘PE in the Park’ event held at Leicester Grammar School last Saturday, I seem to have volunteered to take away the rubbish. Fortunately it was well wrapped and nothing oozed out. The Jeep did make an excellent toy for small children to play in. At most stages of the day there were at least four kids in it pretending to conquer the World. Great fun on a hot afternoon.

All you really need.

I photographed this back in January in the market square of Ben Ghardana, a dusty little shit hole in Tunisia, just before the Libyan border. Looking at it earlier today It represented such a simple and uncluttered life I was moved to print it out, frame it, and stick it up on the wall for all to see. It terms of fulfilling it’s role in life this bicycle represents total efficiency at minimum cost. It probably looked exactly like this ten years ago and will look exactly like it again in another ten years. Lovely.

There is still hope.

A chilly evening yesterday with the wind coming direct from Siberia at a pace fast enough to prevent it picking up any north European warmth. This did not put three of us climbing into the Jeep, sans screen, to head off to Ashby Folville for the monthly gathering of the sane. Preparation included getting the front wheels balanced (big difference) and finishing the stencilled number plates for that original military, if it doesn’t move, paint it, look. A couple of stills here and a video of surely the coolest car there, Mark Walker’s 4.2 litre GN Thunderbug. I have seen this racing at a couple of VSCC events and believe me, it doesn’t hang about. Have sympathy with his passenger as she eases herself into the bottom shaped, hand beaten aluminium seat for the ride of her life!

Cheap thrills.

With freakish regularity, my Honda C90 has just passed it’s MOT again. Not even a ‘You may need a new flange sprocket next time mate’. Just a straight forward pass. At £29 that will be the most expensive annual expenditure on the ultra reliable Honda. Tax is £15 and insurance is £20, (tacked onto my ‘big’ bike insurance). The petrol tank holds just £3.50’s worth and that seems to last at least a month. As it’s a sunny morning I am about to fire it up and ride into town to deliver some work. I will be there and back on the bike faster than the there only journey in the car. Good fun.

Barn find Lamborghini.

A flight over to ‘Comboland’ last weekend promised a glorious walk in the hills of Piedmonte. ‘The views will be spectacular’ promised Ron. The walk, organised by the Club Alpino Italiano was a circular hop around five Medieval Towers at the villages of, Monastero, Scarampi, Olmo, Roccaverno and Vengore. A total of 32 kms for the real walkers and 18 km for us feeble, booze soaked Englishmen, who took a coach up to the first village, Scarampi. Sadly the weather was so foul that even at the foot of each tower we could barely make out it’s top, shrouded in mist and rain. The meal and copious quantities of red wine and the end more than made amends and I had the dubious honour of winning a generous hamper of local produce for travelling the furthest distance to compete. After the thrill of the ‘barn find’ Lamborghini, Ron and I suffered the humiliation of being overtaken by a 72 year old, who ran the full distance, gave advise on the route to the second oldest man on the walk, caped in red, who strode ahead at a brisk pace and finally, drowned in red my name appeared in lights at the end scrawled on an old cardboard box!

Viva Las Vagas.

I saw this last week. How many of these can be left? The whole generation of seventies cars and vans seems to have become extinct. Not a great loss, but odd how earlier motors have hung around far longer. My mate Rich Dunnil had one like these in the late seventies. It was brush pained black, had a length of 4x2 timber as a bumper and front wings made from an old fridge. They looked rather Jeep like.