Broken Down on the Side of the Highway

On Monday, my mother flew into town for the week. Then I had to jump on my bike heading to London to help my brother unload his moving truck into storage. I decided to spend the night in London since we finished unloading at 10 pm and I was exhausted. We had a few well-deserved drinks then went to bed.

The next morning, I wanted to get on the road quickly, so I skipped the shower, had a coffee and got underway. Everything went fine until I passed Woodstock. My bike started losing speed and my throttle became unresponsive. I pulled over and let the bike cool down. Then tried to start it back up. It did, but soon stalled out again. Using the toolkit from the bike, I removed the speedo and signals to see that my coolant was empty. On the side of the 401, I called my brother, who was still sleeping. He offered to pick up coolant and drive out to me. When he arrived, I filled the coolant reserve (over-filling, as the case may be) The bike started up, ran a little rough, then smoothed out. Stuart said he'd follow me along and make sure every thing went well to the next rest stop. Unfortunately, I didn't make it more than a km and a half before the bike died again. Once more, we took to the road and once more, the bike died.

Finally, after this, I called a tow service. He came in good time, meaning it took another hour to show up. So, all told, I spent 4 hours on the side of the road getting a bad sunburn, spent more money than I ever meant to and at this point, my bike still doesn't work.

However, to look on the bright side, it wasn't raining. If I'd left the night before as I initially intended, I'd be on the side of the road, in the dark and alone. Stuart would have been drinking and wouldn't have been able to drive. I also may not have got the same tow truck driver (who turned out to be a really good guy and managed to get me a really good deal for the tow). So... silver lining.

Has It Really Been A Month?

Shocking. I haven't posted to my blog in over a month. Is it just that nothing's happened? Or that I've been far too busy to post? Take a little from column A and a little from column B.

It seems I get home from work fairly late, just in time to catch a half hour with Declan before he goes to bed. If I'm lucky, I can sneak out in time actually feed him.

I lost my rear brake on the way onto the Gardiner and barely avoided splattering myself on a highway. Ca-ching! A hundred bucks later and I'm back on the road.

Recently I've been consumed by a project at work that just isn't giving me much time to think of anything else. It launched, as far as I know, this weekend. So chances are, I have a week or so of bug hunting. I don't know what's next on my plate.

I've got my trip planned for FotB. That's exciting.

My friend Simon is getting married next weekend. Coincidentally, my mother and one of her sisters is also in town that weekend. Besides the fact that it's also thanksgiving weekend. And I'm his best man. SO i don't know what the hell I'm doing.

Oh, on the plus side, Showcase Action has been airing the cancelled show, The Black Donnellys. I haven't decided whether or not I liked it, but I didn't like the fact that it was cancelled before I could decide.