Modern Vespa

I also need the out of town practice so let me know when you are available, I hope to get quite a few miles in as its Easter break for school.

i hear you are quite progressive through the corners

weather next week looks quite nice - I'll have a look at my schedule when I get back (deliberately left my diary behind on this trip) and we can make a plan.

Lots of events on that weekend of 26/27th April. I'm planning to do the London Scooter Body Shop open day on Sat 26th, to see as many of the Skoks who can show, after missing the Ace Cafe. So who's with me?! (need an event thread...)

Ah, yes. Winnowing all those "treasures" down to a 14 ft x 8 ft x 8 ft section of a container (left 6 ft for the scooters) to move to Greece. And we still brought too much.

Not only cathartic, but liberating.

I think my collector/hoarder mentality took its first major hit when i moved to London from Montreal. Going from a 1400 sq foot flat plus a 500 sq foot studio, to living initially in one small room, then in a 750 sq foot flat, has taught me to be pretty minimal. Al, you're right when you say it is liberating to be free of 'things'. I get great satisfaction from giving my treasured possessions away to close friends. All of my record collection (which includes a lot of rare, hard-to-find, and obscure vinyl, laboriously assembled over a period of years from the age of about 16) has been farmed out to various mates in Montreal, and I couldn't be happier about it

You gave away your records?!

At least you got to give yours away. My Dad waited until I went into the service then tossed all of mine and sold the Hodna I had at the time. I had some that would have been worth quite a bit today and I would love to have that Hodna now. I still give him a hard time about it.

I got rid of my storage about 7yrs ago. I've had the thing or 15yrs. I did however sell my records and got about $500. FROG my mom threw out all my comic books which could of netted me big bucks. They were like new. I don't destroy anything when i read it.

RAF Cosford for me that weekend:

http://www.bike4lifefest.com/

PLEEEASE, don't even mention old "vinyls". My step-mom (a Lucille Ball look-alike, act-alike) was the office manager at the Stork Club from 1942 until 1948. She had a huge collection of records from the 30's and 40's - many autographed by the artists, as she knew them from the Club.

When she sold the old family homestead and moved into a cozy apartment, her niece helped. I had offered to come in from the West Coast, but my sister said, "It's about time that neice did something to help Mom. Mom took care of her mother (Mom's sister-in-law) for years."

Several years later, it's time to move Mom from NY to Calif. "Where are all your records, Mom?" Answer, "My niece got rid of them for me. As she said, nobody has a 78 RPM phonograph any more, so what good were they? Just took up a lot of space. Wasn't that nice of her?" Now, I'm sure the niece didn't sell them, would she?

Fortunately, the niece missed the stacks of 8 x 10 photos of virtually everyone who was anyone at the time, with Mom or otherwise, many also autographed, in various poses at the Club. Nor did she grab any of the Stork Club memorabilia, like this, all of which fit in our shipping container, of course:

I'm in, Dave is a star!

Looks like I'm going to take a ride down to Beaulieu Motor Museum this morning.

Should be there by 1030- 1100 if anyone wants to join me.

It's close to Southampton.

Bill xxx

Added a thread to gain interest for Dave's event at the London Scooter Body Shop Grand opening on the 26th April here:
London Scooter Body Shop Open day on Sat 26th April
Add your name to the thread if you want to meet up earlier and turn up en masse

I'll be there.

Bill xxx

Renewal for the BV for a year with Bennets Ins £222.05

Not bad.

Bill x

Went to a performance tonight by the Theatrical Group of the Women's Club of Naousa. They did two short plays, a comedy and a romance. Both very well done.

During intermission, I commented to a friend who is active in another theatrical group in another village about how amazing it is that an island of 12,000 population has three or four theatrical groups. He laughed and said, "If you count the three youth groups, there are nine." (Shows how much I know)

Add to that several folk dance and choral groups. The Folk Dance Group of Naousa has been invited to perform all over Europe.

We went to the performance straight from Mrs Av's mosaic class, also sponsored by the Women's Club of Naousa.

The island is a hotbed of cultural activity.

Spent today wandering around Huntingdon and Cambridge with Froggieposition. Great fun, too much food and cider and Tracey won on the Grand National.

It was an awesome day! We almost had our horse Pepy! Thank you so much.

Beaulieu Motor Museum was very average indeed.

I was going to suggest it for a future Kok meet but it wasn't really worth the journey.
It looks like they havn't updated their displays in years and the Top Gear exhibit was cobbled together in a joined up tube of plastic huts.
Sadly the motorcycle section was being refurbished although were a few classic scooters dotted around to make up for it.
The highlight of the day was riding through a pack of donkeys in the New Forest even though I was getting rained on.
I'm not sure what the collective term for donkeys is so pack just sounded right.
Once again the BV excelled itself.
If it wasn't for the screen and the over ambitious fuel gauge it's close to perfect.

Bill xxx

Being not-so-closet anglophile, I loved, loved, LOVED this:

Oooh, that looks good.

Dont know if anyones interested, We always go to Duke's Meadows Chiswick to watch the race. If anyone wants to meet us there, we will be in the campervan with the kettle on, so tea and coffee will be available.
Should be there about 5 ish, race starts at 5.55 pm

We will be by the bandstand

http://www.dukesmeadowspark.com/files/am/dmam001a.jpg

And you didn't come and visit Stamford,"the finest stone town between London and Edinburgh" humph, I give free tours if you want!

You could also have come on the peterborough Easter egg run.. 200 to 250 scoots.. It was a great day out with my daughter, Georgie, as pillion.

Hey we're riding right by you on the morning of the 10th of May if you want to ride a section with us as we head North for Leeds.

Just saying.

After many contradictions ( sorry Martin) it looks like Maidstone,Walderslade,Dartford,Cambridge,Peterborough,Wakefield,Solihull, Bristol,Cardiff,Bristol,Exeter,Sennen Cove, Exeter,Honiton,Andover, Basingstoke then pick up J12 on the M25 and home.

We won't really visit any of these places but we may point at some signs with them on as we ride by.

Bill xxx

I will bank that one for next time if you don't mind mate. 8)

Sammy Miller museum (New Milton) is far better IMHO.

Yeah, should have really gone to that.

Oh well, you live and learn eh ?

Bill xxx

Got stuck in a mahoosive gridlocked jam on the A14 coming back from Cambridge Friday. Couldn't bear sitting huffing away like all the other motorists, so with a paper map and the Sat Nav, found a back route home, flicked the Alfa into Dynamic mode (more responsive acceleration, stiffer suspension and enhanced braking), fingers on paddle shifts, and with the sun gradually going down and empty B roads, had about an hour of huge grin wooohooohoooo driving getting home. Crackin' fun. And found some great twisty tarmac for a Skok rideout out that way sometime. Every cloud has a silver lining

Grahams new waterpump for the GTS arrived at mine from SIP. Damn efficient those Germans - the UPS tracking number pushed me to a web site with a complete journey breakdown of how the package travelled the 775 miles from SIP to my place. Vorsprung durch technik.

If you are looking for scooters, Haynes Motor Museum near Sparkford would be worth a trip - not sure if they are all installed yet as the museum is still under going development work. Hour 45min fromLondon acording to their website
http://www.haynesmotormuseum.com/home/your-visit/planning-your-visit/how-to-find-us.php

I'm sorry Trepp, but all of those accents were REALLY badly done... the NornIron one (my local) had me squirming...

You all sound like the queen to me.

Never has a truer word been spoken

I wasn't looking for scooters as such, just a decent array of motoring history.

There's a car museum in Brussels where they used to hold the annual car expo that had a greater variety of vehicles than Beaulieu had and it was only 6 Euros where as this was £20.

Nice donkeys though.

Bill xxx

We went to Beaulieu about a year ago. The best bit was the monorail...

The motor museum in Coventry is much better and it costs zilch.

I've been to the one near Gaydon and the Motorcycle Museum in Coventry and both were brilliant.

B x

We did Coventry in late 2012 when they had the British Scooters Expo running.. UK ScooterMania Exhibition - Coventry Transport Museum Pretty good, I'd probably go back to Gaydon before Coventry. Useless fact - I once drove the Jaguar test track at Gaydon and had a silver service dinner in a marquee courtesy of Land Rover Hospitaility. It was verrah nice.

It's my birthday today

Happy Birthday Matey!

Many happy returns

Happy Birthday, you don't look too bad for 50.

Happy birthday!