Walk The Black Dog

Category: Background Braps

Sight
9th May, 2018

My Ninja 300 with Shane’s KTM 1290 Superduke, hours before I realised something was going very wrong with my vision.

I’d had a great couple of weeks. I’d just got back from visiting my Dad in Spain, along with my sister and beautiful niece (whom I had never met).

My sister and niece in Salobrena, Spain.

Yours truly in the hills of the Valle De Lecrin, Spain.

Spain had really inspired me this visit, and I dreamed of being able to take a bike to some of those pristine roads in Andalucia. Maybe next time.

A couple of weeks back home had seen the unusually long winter finally give way to rising temperatures, and the longer day allowed riding with friends after work again. I met my friend Shane for a short ride out and meal afterwards to see in the new riding season. During the ride I became aware of something in my left eye; what looked like a large vitreous floater; the kind of ghostly web that one sees occasionally, but much larger. Later on, in the pub, it came and went. I recall thinking that in a certain light it looked as if someone dressed in black was standing in my periphal vision. Due to a sense of optimism and well-entrenched morbid fear of hospitals and doctors, I thought I’d sleep on it and see how it was the next day. I wasn’t especially worried at this point.

Well, you’ve got some blood in there.

I awoke the next morning, and as soon as I sat upright that ghostly floater had turned an inky, impenetrable black. If you imagine your vision simplified as a rectangle, the bottom left-hand quarter was completely gone, replaced by a shapeless dark void.

Obviously this warranted a trip to the ER, which fortunately was just up the road. After handing over $100 (my ‘copay’) I was seen almost immediately. I described the symptoms and had to place a towel across my eyes, sit in the dark for ten minutes, and await the retinal scanner.

This machine, about the size of a coffee percolator, whirs and clicks as it locates your eye, then takes a picture. The ER doctor, a genial, middle-aged man looked at the images and said “Well, you’ve got some blood in there.” He suspected a ruptured blood vessel but was emphatic that he couldn’t say for sure. “We see about two per week. It’s common. Just not to you.” Fair enough, this was the ER, they were not going to be able to do much more. I needed to see a specialist at an eye centre as soon as possible, which as far as the ER were concerned meant the next day. There was no immediate urgency at this point; just a kind of calm hurry.

I called my local eye centre and was greeted by a receptionist with all the enthusiasm of someone that wished you were already dead. She told me they were full the next day, she’d have to ring around and would call me back (narrator: She didn’t call back). In the end I decided to call again and this time got someone useful that booked me in at a location the other side of town the next morning.

Sewickley, PA. 11th May, 1100hrs

Oh, that sounds like a retinal detachment. I hope not.

By this time, it had got worse. If I had to describe it in percentage terms, I’d estimate that around half the vision in the left eye was gone. I was scared, my family was scared, and I was starting to feel the onset of some panic. what could be wrong with me? Was it just my eye, or was something else happening?

The triage nurse was efficient, funny, and had a bedside manner that definitely needed a bit of work. She was also, as it turns out, right on the money. As I described my symptoms and she established what I could and couldn’t see by moving her hand around my field of vision, she casually uttered “Oh, that sounds like a retinal detachment. I hope not.” I could have lived without hearing the last sentence, but in hindsight (ho ho ho) I suspect she was referring to the fact this would not be a quick fix, rather than a gloomy prognosis. I was then left in the waiting room for an hour to ruminate (in an extremely anxious state, as you might expect) on what I’d been told. My eyes had some drops to dilate them, so I strained to read my phone (battery: 20%) to try and figure out just how much shit I was in, all the while sending nearly unintelligible text messages to my wife waiting outside with the kids.

Here’s Google’s card about retinal detachment, also featuring an image of an attractive woman in an art gallery, if you like that sort of thing.

When the wait was over and I saw the ophthalmologist, she was absolutely brilliant, warm-mannered and confident enough to greatly reassure me, and confirmed the triage nurse’s suspicions: It was a retinal detachment. I had three small tears at 9,11, and 2 o’clock, the most common form, known as rhegmatogenous detachment. Why? Age and plain bad luck (National Eye Institute, 2009). It would require an operation, and the Dr. told me she would be calling around to find a surgeon, and that I was not to eat anything as the operation might be that day. It was at this point I realised this was fairly serious, but the nurse and doctor confidently assured me I would be fine.

Word came I was to head to UPMC Mercy for surgery immediately. My wife, cool as a cucumber under what must have been enormously stressful conditions with two children to look after, took me there straight away.

UPMC Mercy, 1445hrs

You’re sitting there, minding your own business, and your retina just decides to go and detach itself.

I’d been lucky. I’d never had surgery. First stop was pre-surgery testing, which would typically involve obtaining blood for analysis, but actually turned out to be nothing but verifying paperwork in my case. No blood work required. Then I was admitted which was a matter of bagging my clothes and belongings, donning a gown and letting the scrubs-wearing ninjas get me ready. The surgeon and the fellow assisting him (both absolutely brilliant guys) came to see me, and he introduced himself with a jovial “You’re sitting there, minding your own business, and your retina just decides to go and detach itself.” They both examined my eye and told me the plan: A sclerical buckle, and probably a vitrectomy, due to the number of tear sites. A sclerical buckle is a small band that is fixed around the circumference of the eye like a belt (hence the name), the purpose of which is to apply pressure and help reattach the retina. Due to the offset of one of the tears, it probably would not be sufficient on its own, so a vitrectomy would be required. This involves draining the vitreous; the gel-like liquid inside the eye which maintains the spherical shape. Two precision techniques, laser and cryopexy are used to bond the torn areas of the retina to the wall of the eye. A gas is then used to form a bubble temporarily replacing the vitreous (National Eye Institute, 2009).

The surgeon marked his initials just above my left eyebrow. He described this was necessary to mitigate what is considered a ‘never event’. I’ll let you guess what…

I’d lost track of time at this point. My pupils were profoundly dilated. My watch had been removed and I could no longer read the clock above the nurse’s station. I was wheeled off to the anaesthesia area to prepare for the op. After a chat with the anaesthetist and a great deal of questions I was rolled into the operating room. An oxygen mask went on, the IV was started, and shortly after that, the lights went out.

I came round with no pain, intense nausea, and a big old bandage over my left eye. I had my face in a horseshoe-shaped pillow; until my follow up appointment the next day it would be necessary to keep my head down so the vitreous gas bubble would maintain positive pressure against the retina (Retinadoctor, 2018). The nurses were fantastic; one of them put something in my IV to relieve the nausea and it stopped in a snap. I couldn’t quite read the clock so I wasn’t sure if it was 915pm or 245am. It was the former, thankfully. My wife and kids charged into the recovery room and I felt a lot better.

The nurses helped me into my clothes and I was on my way, almost 12 hours after the day had started.

Aftermath

As I write this, it’s one week later. The follow up appointments revealed the surgery had been successful, now it was a matter of waiting for everything to heal. I feel pretty fortunate, as I never had much pain and the swelling (which was profoundly unpleasant) reduced rapidly. The vitreous gas bubble has shrunk as it is slowly absorbed and replaced by vitreous fluid; I can clearly see its circular shape in my eye. My sight isn’t quite there, it’s rather fuzzy, but it is improving, and it is all there. Best of all I have my peripheral vision back on the left side; I can drive again and I don’t feel dizzy anymore. There is a possibility of developing a cataract as a result of the vitrectomy (NCBI, 2014), which will require further surgery, but I’ll deal with that down the line. It beats being blind.

Some things fall into perspective at a time like this. One of them is, if you have a problem with your eye, don’t fuck about. I should have got it looked at immediately. It may not have changed the outcome, but it could have made things easier, and the extent of sight loss would not have been so great. I’m also fortunate to have such a great wife. We have no help, it’s just us and one or two friends. My wife looked after everything.

Life is short. One moment I was out having fun with a friend, suddenly I’m looking down the barrel of sight loss. Isn’t it amusing how many of these metaphors involve sight? I can tell you my sense of humour has had quite a workout in the last week.

I’m not dying (well, no faster than anyone else), I didn’t go blind, I’ll probably ride my bike this week. I’m pretty lucky, all told.
References
October 30, 2025
Why Scoobi Is Probably Doomed, In One Picture

UpdaTE:

March 2023: I was revising a lot of these posts from the previous WP blog and found out that Scoobi have ceased operating, as of August 2022: https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/inno/stories/profiles/2022/08/01/scoobi-shuts-down-electric-moped-operations.html

It is deeply unfortunate when any business shuts down – it’s jobs and people’s livelihoods, and even if I wasn’t enthusiastic about this scheme I’d rather they’d have at least stayed around.

These mopeds weren’t the right fit for the city, but instead we’ve got fucking hordes of these motorized scooters that are all over Oakland like a rash. The students – for the most part – seem to love them.

A Fish Out of Water

Utter madness.

I give it a very short amount of time before these are getting pushed over or vandalised by irate drivers. They’re all over the East End of the City, occupying car parking spaces. If you’ve travelled to London, Paris, Madrid or anywhere with a true multi-modal transport network you’d think this was absolutely absurd. Why don’t they use dedicated parking, or those nooks and crannies that so many cities have? Well, this is Pittsburgh.

Not Hotdog

Scoobi, in their own words:

Scoobi is a mobile application based on-demand mobility service for individuals in need of rides to their preferred destination by way of an electric scooter.

Translated, somebody has secured VC funding for a fleet of battery-powered scooters in a season-bound city that it is a textbook example of the primacy of the automobile.

I cannot think of a worse place to try this, apart from perhaps Antarctica. Somewhere with the cultural and legislative foundations like California, despite being worse for just about everything else, gets it right when it comes to two wheels. PA is still stuck in a time when two wheels means you’re either broke, a hooligan, or a dentist playing Easy Rider on a $30k Harley. Scoobi, for what it’s worth, is a great idea on paper. However, this progressive, environmentally friendly platform is in a city whose culture is heavily, but not totally (more on this later) dominated by the car. For example, here is an excerpt from the PA Driver’s Handbook:

A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle with the same privileges as any vehicle on the roadway.

Yes, dear reader. You read that correctly. And yes, these are considered motorcycles. Just roll that around in your head for a moment; savour the utter madness.

A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle
A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle
A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle
A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle
A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle
A motorcycle is a full-size vehicle

This removes the inherent advantages of a powered bike at a stroke. You can’t filter or lane-split; you are limited precisely to the same freedom as a car well over four times your size. There is zero dedicated infrastructure around the city for scooters and motorcycles. What could be a burgeoning market for deliveries and efficient commuting is stymied by totally backward legislation. Instead you wait in traffic and park as if you are a car.

The result? Individual scooters and motorcycles using a full car parking space, which – if you are familiar with Pittsburgh drivers antipathy to anything that isn’t a car – is not going to have a happy ending. Why use one? What you are you gaining?

The Exception that is BikePGH

BikePGH are little short of amazing. They have done an amazing job in cycling advocacy, and it’s fair to say they’ve successfully challenged the dominance of the car, at least in the city limits. Pittsburgh now has some dedicated bike lanes, and a growing cycling culture. It’s helped by some unusual unspoken privileges granted to cyclists; namely filtering and being able to sensibly roll some intersections; consequently cyclists that have overcome the fierce topography of Pittsburgh can get around more efficiently than anything else.

Realistically, powered bikes need their own version of BikePGH, or the roads will never be opened up in a manner which makes them truly practical. I can’t help but think Scoobi has put the proverbial cart before the horse.

October 30, 2025
YouTube, Vlogging, and Filthy Lucre.

I can’t get a job, because if I had a job I wouldn’t have enough time to vlog.

The above quote isn’t attributed to anyone in particular, it’s rather a sentiment I’ve seen expressed a few times recently.

Motovlogging culture – those guys that go out on their bikes and record it for our entertainment – has become a big part of the motorcycle media landscape in recent years. I won’t namedrop because it’s vulgar, but like most entertainment media, the majority are forgettable, and a very few are excellent. Like most media, there is not always a correlation between quality and a channel’s success. In short, there are some utter clowns that have become very successful, and some truly great channels that languish with low views. If I understood why that is, I’d be vlogging myself.

That success has brought financial rewards, although it’s difficult to know how much, as both Google and the channel owners are cagey on the subject; it’s fair enough – it’s nobody’s business but their own. However, the mere suggestion of money can be ruinous to men, and creates something of a gold-rush mentality. I’ve seen a couple of vloggers give up their day jobs and chase YouTube money, and when it hasn’t quite worked out,they resort to asking their viewers for help with the bills. I believe one of the drivers is they’ve done just well enough to convince themselves it’s viable. I dislike myself for it, but this brings out the cantankerous old fart in me. Nobody’s owed a living, and if you can’t make it work you’ve got to be realistic and think about how to go forward. That might well involve having to take a regular job for a little while to make ends meet, and taking stock of the fact that you’re choosing to compete in a phenomenally crowded market which, to make matters worse, is only getting more competitive.

This reminds me of conversations I used to see on photographer message boards in the early 2000s; specifically the ire of professional photographers towards amateurs giving their work away either for free, or well below market value. The rush of consumer DSLRs and affordable pro-grade editing tools meant their world had changed; the barrier for entry was lower, their slice of the pie just got that little bit smaller.

YouTube is no different. The barrier for entry is again very low, and the productions standards on many channels are really very impressive, and this can only mean more competition for views. Some of those guys that are at the top of the pile now would certainly struggle if they were just starting out, but that’s capitalism; ’twas ever thus.

I feel bad for a lot of these kids, because they’re talented and they are entertaining enough, but YouTube’s model is based on a tiny number of winners and a lot of losers. Is it fair? No, but when was life ever fair? I suspect if you crunched the numbers, it would not be that different to the rest of the entertainment industry

Should they be paid? Unfortunately, that decision has already been made. You can consume gigabytes of video entertainment on YouTube for the cost of an internet connection and a device to watch it on; you just have to put up with the ads. Where that money then goes is up to Google, but you can be sure they’re the biggest winners. That leaves Patreon and similar services, but given the huge number of free channels out there I’d be surprised if there’s much money to be made there if you’re not already a giant channel somewhere else.

October 30, 2025
Looking back

I’ve had a rough year, health wise. I’ll write about it at some point. Consequently I’ve had lots (too much?) of time to think, and as is human nature I’ve looked backwards a fair bit, so excuse the nostalgia.

I’m not sure what prompted it, but I got thinking about my college days. College in the English sense (further education, 16-18yrs) as opposed to university. My first run at university was abortive, so college took on particular meaning for me as it would become the closest I got to the 3yr university experience.

I’d been at a rural grammar school in East Yorkshire for 3 years. I absolutely despised it. It made me miserable, shattered my self-confidence, and I struggled academically. I had been in and out of schools my entire childhood due to frequent relocation around various parts of the world; I was already behind when I started secondary education and the truly shitty school environment only made things worse. My GCSE performance was predictably poor. I hated school, I didn’t want it, and it apparently didn’t want me – I was not invited to continue on to A-level study.

I moved to the city of York in summer 1990. I was to attend York Sixth Form College, but as my GCSE results were poor I had to complete a foundation year, which would mean I’d be there for three years in all, assuming I continued on to A-level; not everybody did, as there was a technical college (vocational) down the road that was also on the foundation year pipeline. Some people simply went straight into employment, with no continuing education.

The college was located on the southern edge of the city, next to the green belt. There was little beyond it but fields and the motorway. It had been operating as an FE college for 5 years, prior to which it had been a secondary school. It had around 900 students (the number surprised me. I would have guessed less than half that) and in hindsight with the benefit of years of FE/HE experience from the inside the college was small, utilitarian, and dated even by 1990 standards. And yet, it was more than the sum of its parts.

Front of the College, photographed 2005 by Neil Turner. Source

I had a lot of questions; and I was quite apprehensive. It was the first state institution I’d been to since primary school. I told myself I was worried I wouldn’t fit in, but the fear was deeper than that; would I even survive? It’s stupid and laughable now but having been in private educated for previous 8 years I picked up some completely stupid stereotypes about what to expect from state schooling. I considered it perfectly likely that on hearing my accent I’d probably get beaten up. I had an intake interview with the college principal and he seemed so kind and welcoming. Honestly, the fact he wasn’t a complete arsehole already put him ahead of much of my grammar school staff experience. It was a decent start. “See you in September!”.

I needn’t have worried about anything. My first year had some difficulties; I’d been relatively sheltered and I faced a period of shrugging a lot of that baggage off; I had to relearn who I was, loosen up a little bit, but the environment was simply amazing to me. You were treated like an adult; you could dress how you liked (within reason…) and were encouraged to be an individual. The teachers were fantastic, even though I didn’t quite recognise it at the time. The students came from everywhere, but predominantly secondary schools within York itself. A fair few of them knew one another, but generally making friends was pretty easy. The biggest eye opener was nobody gave a shit where I was from. I think I’d totally forgotten about my old school by the end of the first term. I felt like a different person. I grew my hair out, had a few illicit beers (sometimes during lunch!) and generally had a blast.

Academically I did better, but not much better. Just good enough. I was absolutely distracted by a new found social happiness and was for better or worse not worried about the future. I progressed onto A-levels, grew my hair even more, joined a band (We were shit. That wasn’t our name, but might as well have been) and just kept going. I had lost a few friends after foundation year. Some went onto apprenticeships or ‘The Tech’ down the road, but this wasn’t an impediment at college, largely due to the fundamental layout of the place.

Floor Plan. From Yorkstories blog

The building featured a large room named the ‘social area’. It was really the focal point of the block. It wasn’t huge, less than 100ft long and about half as wide, and was open plan, with moveable bench seating. They were beige and pink, as I remember. Before classes started in the morning and during lunch, it was absolutely rammed. Because of this, boundaries really broke down; it didn’t matter much what year you were in, or what you were studying, you could get to know people. There were certainly cliques, but everyone pretty much got along. It amused me how that room could change in character dependent on the phase of the timetable. During free periods it occasionally took on a monastic quality with just a handful of people in it. It wasn’t anywhere near large enough for the entire student cohort at one time, so people spilled out into the corridors and the canteen, but generally the social area or the immediate vicinity was where it was at.

Time continued its march and in June ’93 I completed my A-levels with fairly average results. A decade later after some epic fannying about, and in a different part of the country, I would end up working at an FE college. I never really made much of a connection before, but thinking about it, just being in that kind of environment felt right to me, and I’ve been working in education ever since.

York, March 2007

I’d been visiting my dad who had recently moved North again. We’d taken a trip into York on a rainy Saturday. It had been my first visit in about 8 years. He asked me if I wanted to go out along Tadcaster road, “go past the college” as he put it. Sure, why not. I already felt a bit subdued by the grey weather, and that odd feeling of knowing a place but not knowing anybody in it anymore.

It was gone. Completely gone. A huge, modern building was in its place. I was surprised to feel really quite emotional about it.

When I got back home I looked it up, emotion giving way to curiosity. It was a brand-new campus opening that September. In 1999 the College and Tech had merged. In 2005 the complex as I knew it was demolished to make way for the new buildings.

Demolition underway in late 2005. By Neil Turner. Source

It looks fantastic, and was quite necessary. I was sad to see the old building go with all those memories, but the college most definitely needed more space, not to mention the facilities offer for teaching. Like most further education colleges, there’s a strong vocational emphasis now, rather than the original purpose which was essentially a finishing school for university. The original college could only deliver so much given its origins as a modest school.

I wonder if it has a social area?

Google and a rose tint

York Sixth Form College existed largely before the digital epoch, and definitely before social media/web 2.0 (sorry) took off. There’s depressingly few photos of the place as I knew it. I have some envy for students nowadays as they have a glut of images to look back on when nostalgia descends.

I found a few on Flickr (which I’ve already posted), and some unlikely sources: Writer and journalist Sophie Heawood popped up from a Google search; I immediately recognised a photo she had posted in an article as being the bike shed/smoking area (the official one, anyway…). Those Portakabins in the background were ostensibly temporary. I suspect they remained to the bitter end. Anyway, It’s a good read, and if my arithmetic is right based on what she wrote, I may have been there during her first year. It’s a small world. A friend was also, er, kind enough to share one of me. Christ.

Askham Bar Park’n’Ride, 1993ish. Oh dear. Courtesy Stefan Berry.

Of course, not everybody feels the same way. My best friend from college was very frosty on the whole experience, and I suspect he thinks I’m mad for being remotely nostalgic about it. For most others I would think university superceded it in terms of sheer living experience. For me it was pretty special, and while I don’t wish to sound like I’m living in the past, it’s a nice place to visit once in a while.

October 30, 2025
Emerging From Winter.

My CSC TT250 wears the typical makeup of my winter commute; the usual mixture of water and mud, baked onto the engine casing just after I arrived home.

The TT250 has been an absolute champ, an I’ve done most of my winter commuting on it. Next year I think I’ll store the Ninja 300 in the bad months as I barely used it.

I will make the time to do a more thorough review of the TT250, I just haven’t had much spare between work and virtually continuous family sickness…

October 30, 2025
Spring has sprung…
The weather did not get the memo, however.

Bollocks

It’s just for a couple of days, and it’s not actually been too bad. I took the Ninja out yesterday for the commute and the bike felt really good. I’ve been fighting surface rust on the chain for weeks on the Ninja, largely because the expensive new cover I bought fits tightly due to the taught elastic and tends to wick moisture up around the bottom 3-4 inches. Next year I’m going to store it over winter and just use the TT250, as that’s one of the main reasons I bought it.

Speaking of which, I have a few ambitions for the Chinabike, as I’ve got an aftermarket carb working really well on it. In no particular order:
- An aftermarket exhaust system. The stock one is doing the standard OEM cheap job of oxidising heavily around the downpipe, I really want some stainless steel on there. You can get a decent one for about USD 120. I will have to find someone to drill out the flange and make a bracket though; I lack the necessary workspace at home.
- Stainless spokes for the rear wheel, which will also mean a truing stand and some other bits.
The bike has survived winter pretty well, however the exhaust header and rear spokes (and it is just the rear) are determined to return to nature, so I’ll deep clean them for now, but spending a couple of hundred bucks on a more permanent solution sounds better than constantly trying to clean them up.

The weekend is looking good for a long ride; it will be the first since October.
October 30, 2025
The CSC TT250: Smiles per Gallon

The CSC TT250 review. The background to my decision to get a TT250 is here.

I’d put on around one-thousand miles on the CSC TT250 as the first green spots started to emerge on the the Pennsylvania woodlands. The bike held up well over Winter, and between the endless rain and salt, winter is a harsh environment for machinery. I’d gambled on the TT250 being a dependable winter warrior, and thus far it has done well. It’s surely a sign that I often choose to ride the bike on my commute over my Ninja 300.

The Good

The TT250 is a well-made bike. The finish is excellent; the frame shows little aggravation from the ravages of winter, though I was decidely liberal with my application of anti-corrosion ACF-50 spray. Some fasteners inevitably dulled, but this is no different from my Kawasaki (which I rode through last winter) and generally speaking I am pleasantly surprised how durable this bike is.

Cold and wet, a typical morning commute for the TT250.

The warpaint of a typical winter commute

The engine, an air-cooled 229cc single, is absolutely superb. There’s only around sixteen horses, and about 18nm of torque at 5.5k rpm, but there’s more to it than the numbers. The power band is sweet, and considering it’s a relatively unsophisticated single, it’s very smooth. Western Pennsylvania is not short of hills, and the engine deals with everything with little complaint. I average about 55-60mpg, but this figure has increased over engine break-in, and includes my commute which is terrible for fuel economy.

Once I got my carburetor dialed in (I fitted an aftermarket Mikuni VM26 clone, commonly available on Ebay) the engine started with little hesitation in temperatures right down to 17F. The stock carb was satisfactory, if a little hard-starting when cold, propably due to lean jetting, and by ‘cold’ I mean less than 40F. I chose an aftermarket carb to allow more adjustment should I fit an exhaust system, and the carbs are as cheap as chips. Tuning them is a pain in the arse, but there’s plenty of help at Chinariders if you get stuck.

Stock gearing is 17/50, which isn’t too bad, but if you’re riding mainly on the street I would pick 17/47, which is less hectic at 55mph. Apropos of top speed, you could take this bike on the freeway, but I wouldn’t, unless traffic truly moved around 50-60mph. It’s superb as a back road basher, and absolutely devours city pavement. CSC offer a 49 tooth rear sprocket as an option, and I did actually purchase one, but after researching the forum and the ever useful Gearing Commander site, I went with fitting a 47.

The five-speed gearbox is smooth and precise, but you must ensure you allow the gear lever the full range of movement – that was new to me and before I got used to it I suffered the occasional missed shift.

229cc of fun

The tyres are seemingly generic dual-purpose ‘knobblies’. Conventional wisdom says you should get rid of them and fit some rubber from one of the big brands that you trust.

Don’t.

They are quite simply fantastic road tyres, within the performance envelope of the bike. I have ridden these on soaking wet roads, on gravel and salt, on roads with a film of mud on them, and they have been absolutely marvelous. I have taken them on mud and grass, and they’ve been wonderful, confidence-building tyres every step of the way. When the weather is crap, I will take the TT250 because I know I can trust those tyres. By comparison, my lightweight sportbike with Michelin Pilot Street 4 has excellent traction wet or dry, but as soon as the road surface has any artefacts like gravel or mud, it’s terrifying; see this gif as an example of what mud and a wet road can do:

Looking at the wear rate, I’m not sure I’ll get much more than 2000 miles out of the rear, but I think that is reasonable for a general-purpose tyre that will do asphalt and any off-road riding the bike is capable of.

The TT250 after some fun on a muddy forest trail.

The TT250 is exceedingly comfortable in stock form; I’m 6’3″ and around 210lbs, and the rider triangle is pretty much perfect for me. I didn’t realise how cramped I am on my Ninja until I started riding the TT250 frequently. The stock seat is very comfy. I haven’t ridden the bike that far, but on many weekends I’ll routinely spend a couple of hours riding pretty hard, with no discomfort.

Handling is superb; really very, very good. It feels at times like a giant mountain bike. It’s very easy to hold a line, and turn-in is sharp, perhaps not surprising on a bike so light. Off road (I am by no means experienced here) the light weight and easy manners translate into a stable, well-mannered platform. The bike encourages you to have fun, and this really is the strength of a dual sport. On some back roads and see an open trail, or a gravel road? What about that nasty looking back road? Go check it out. It’s great.

Here’s some video of me riding the TT250 on its second day in my possession around the wet roads near home:

The Bad.

I’ll say up front these are minor gripes, but it would be remiss not to mention them, lest people think I’m taking money from CSC (I wouldn’t do that of course. Though if they wanted to, I’d accept an RX3…:D )

The brakes are well put-together. You get steel-braided lines (I don’t even have those on my Ninja!) and lever feel is firm, but if you’re giving them a workout (for example: aggresive riding on downhill twisties) and it’s a hot day, they can fade pretty quickly. Not an issue if you’ve trained yourself to use both brakes, but if you’re heavy on the front brake only (like a prototypical supersport rider), they’ll fade. They do recover rapidly. Of course, all bikes will do this to a degree, but it’s more pronounced on my TT250 for sure. My front rotor has also had a little runout from day one, and I think I will be replacing it soon as I believe it’s getting worse.

The brake system is well made, but don’t expect to be able to push it like a sportbike without some fade

The clutch isn’t great. I have probably been a little spoilt by the Ninja 300’s clutch, which is just superb. The TT250’s clutch is durable enough, and I suspect it’s a consequence of uprating the clutch to cope with the 229cc’s higher torque (the original CG was 125cc) but once the engine is up to temp, it can be a grabby, snatchy affair until you get used to it. I struggled for a while to get the lever adjustment right and actually ordered a replacement clutch cable, as I wasn’t certain mine hadn’t prematurely stretched too much. In fact, the adjustment is very particular and in my case is better done with the engine warmed; setting it while cold will result in very slight drag once the engine is warm.

These issues won’t present themselves most rides, but if you’re in stop-go traffic on a warm day, the clutch pack’s tight packaging and air-cooled character of the motor will begin to make themselves known. Get used to fighting a little bit to get neutral, and I’d recommend 15w40 synthetic (once you’re past break-in) if you’re running the bike in a city during summer.

The Ugly.

Everything here is a function of where I live, and the fact that I ride my bikes whatever the weather. Except ice and snow. Sometimes even then. I’m British, after all, and we’re a bit daft like that.

The wheels look great, but the spokes aren’t stainless and it’s a fight to keep the weather off them. At some point I will probably replace them with stainless spokes (the rims seem fine), of course, this will cost, but it’s a function of the climate here, and I need something that will take the weather a little better. I don’t think this will be an issue for any owners that aren’t in the rust belt and ride all year round.

I did strip one of the sprocket carrier bolt holes when swapping the sprocket out; I suspect this was because they were very tight from the factory. It was a straightforward repair, but I’ve read of a couple of other instances of this on the Chinariders forum. The bolts are hard, M10x1.25 steel and the hub is pretty soft; I think studs might have been a better choice. Still, if you potter about with bikes, this isn’t unknown by any means.

Also – and this is by no means an uncommon problem on most OEM fitment using steel pipes – the stock exhaust header is looking worse for wear, and I will probably replace it soon with a stainless system, but this is a largely cosmetic concern.

Is it worth it?

Unreservedly. You really can’t go wrong, and I’m looking forward to many more adventures on the bike, especially now the good weather is here. Put it another way, I’m strongly considering an RX3 Cyclone as my next bike, possibly as a replacement for the Ninja. That’s my faith in the company’s product.

October 30, 2025
A Place, A Time

Kiski Junction Railroad, Pennsylvania, June 26th 2016.

I’d taken my family to ride this little railroad just the week before. On the road down I’d noted the last few miles would make a good bike ride, and so one week later I took my Ninja 300 there.

It was a boiling hot day, but a curiosity is how it’s the details of the bike’s life that stay with me: That chain was on its last legs, and had a tight spot I just could not massage out. The rear sprocket would soon be gone too, but the greatest recollection of all was the valve adjustment. just a few days later over the July 4th weekend, I tackled the valves. The diminutive Ninja had about 8000 miles on it; the recommended check was 7600; conventional wisdom on the Kawasaki Ninja 300 forum was to leave it to 15000, I did not want to leave it to chance.

It actually turned out to be a long undertaking, and the exhaust valves were indeed out of spec. I got the job done, and the bike still runs today. It remains the most complex thing I’ve done mechanically.

The joy of bike ownership, learning to do things you never thought you could.

October 30, 2025
Dream Time

The North of England.

It’s a Sunday. My trip is over, and it’s time for me to go. There is a familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach – some call this butterflies – and I can feel the minutes tumbling away, as a veteran procrastinator can.

Somehow, It’s now the afternoon. I have of course been putting the return journey off. I am all too aware of the clock turning past 1pm. I’ve a long journey ahead of me, around six hours. I look at my mum in the kitchen, her soft smile invites me to stay, at least that’s what I want it to mean. If I leave now I’ll be home around 7pm. Plenty of time. And yet…

The sky dims ever so slightly, it’s later, I think around 5pm. I can still get home in time for bed. I’ll have to drive in the dark, but it’s not really a problem, but then I realise I have to retrieve my car. I know it’s parked further away, for whatever reason I couldn’t park closer to home. Where did I put it? I can picture the street. It’s somewhere in Pimlico, in London. I need to go and find it, so I set out, the journey and the confusion about the whereabouts of my car and the anxiety of the long drive ahead race around in my head. Do I even know the way home? I’ve done it so many times, but suddenly I realize I have no idea how to navigate home.

London is about 300 miles from where I supposedly am. I don’t question the spatial impossibility. I don’t question the fact my mum’s alive. These are the considerations of daytime; things just are in this dream world, and my higher functions don’t get a vote.

Wilson Adams / M2 Motorway at Night https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

If I leave now, I can just get home in time for work tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll drive through the night. I just need to find the car. The dream – of course – becomes all about finding the car.

In the dream the journey never actually starts. Other times it starts, but I never get to where I’m supposed to go (I remember being stuck at a motorway service station, an actual nightmare of dour buildings and expensive shite sandwiches) It is the state of needing to be somewhere that prevails. The missing car is funny; this is a common theme, in another dream it was in a parking garage so tall and labyrinthine It was like a Terry Gilliam creation. There is always some obstacle to making progress, like Clockwise with John Cleese but deeply, deeply filled with anxiety. It’s closer to Mark Corrigan, honestly.

I’ve never felt these problems that much in real life, but I have always had butterflies about travel, a restless urge to get going. Friends and family have said that when I have somewhere to be, I get antsy.

London: somewhere on the underground.

I have to get to Waterloo railway station,I know I’ve got to change trains, this London Underground station is vast, with seemingly endless stairs and walkways. There’s people everyhwere. I need to get a through ticket to Southampton, too (why don’t I have one already?) I go to the ticket office – which is impossibly, ridiculously far away – but it’s all confusion and queues. I am certain that if I join a queue I’ll never make the train I need. I decide to go upstairs and outside. The outside of the station feels familiar but I don’t recognise it at all, it’s open like a city square, spacious and absolutely not anywhere I know. It’s like a version of those huge open spaces you see in places like Pyongyang (which I have also dreamed of…another story!)

By Yoni Rubin, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58951668

I am again not sure where I’m supposed to be going. I did know, now it has left me, and it’s just the feeling of whirling anxiety and disconnection. I have to be somewhere. I’ll never make my connection, I don’t even know what time it is, or where It is going. I’ve tried to catch connecting trains at stations so vast it’s comical when I think about it. The overground train of my dreams in London ran on on tracks so vast they were like a huge metal belt over the city, 10 lines wide and undulating like an old wooden rollercoaster. You could also walk on them, if you wanted to. I (as usual) never really know how these end, but I don’t get there. Sometimes it’s a bus, but the stories the same – I am racing a clock, and sometimes the specifics of time don’t matter, I just know I’m running out of it.

Spain

It’s the last evening at my dad’s place in Spain. But it’s not anywhere I really know, it’s a strange little world I dreamt up. There’s a large hillside behind it which is actually from a childhood holiday In Scotland (try harder, brain) and a beach that I’m pretty certain is Dubai, and the dream shifts seamlessly to these places when I look at or go to the location. On the hill? Back on the isle of Skye. On the beach? This is Dubai. Again, I do not question it. It is my dad’s universe and I’m floating around in it. But what’s this you say? Yes. Time is running out. Of course it is. Don’t enjoy the scenery too much because you have somewhere to be, young man.

I have to get to the airport. I habitually (in reality) like to leave a couple of hours in hand for a flight. I haven’t really packed anything, so I tell myself to get on with it. Imperceptibly, moments pass and I suddenly realise time is now very tight. am in the car with my dad, I don’t think we’re going to make it. We cannot possibly make it. What flight is it anyway? I don’t remember. I’ll find out when we get there. I get to the airport and realise I didn’t even book a flight, so I set about organising one, as if it is like taking a train. The lines for the counters are so massive that I wonder if I will ever leave that airport. Sometimes i get on the plane, and the dream breaks completely; we have to drive down the road because there’s a problem with the runway. That’s right – the plane drives along the road, like a bus. This has happened enough times I don’t even question it.

University

I’m in a hall of residence (a dorm, in American parlance), my room feels familiar, but I do not know this place. It is an amalgamation of many places I have known, but again large and complex in the way only an imaginary thing can be. I can hear my neighbours running around. They’re all aged about 20, and apparently, so am I. I remember that I haven’t been going to class for weeks on end, and at some point somebody is going to realise. I’ve got a mathematics class this morning. I decide not to go. I don’t know if I’ve ever been, It’s impossible for me to pass the year now, this must be catching up with me. What am I going to do?

I walk out into the corridor and chat with friends. I am extremely anxious about explaining all of this, when the time comes, and come it will. I’m sure of it, and it is the only thing I think of as I contemplate the magnolia walls and beige carpet. There is a smell of disinfectant and stale beer coming from the kitchen, which doubles as a common room. I’ve never had a recurring dream that actually goes anywhere near a classroom, it is always a version of this place, but the place is different every time, but it has the same look and feel.

Sometimes it’s York university campus (of the 90s), or a version of it. Artificial lakes, paved walkways, 60s concrete buildings everywhere.

Arian Kriesch, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s huge though, far bigger than the real thing (see a trend?) and seems to go on forever, and I never get beyond walking around the little paths going from building to building. The dream always ends in this transient situation.

Sometimes it’s an obvious replica of the University of Huddersfield central services building (which I knew), that held accommodation, except the elevator is gigantic, like a living room, and as you go downstairs it becomes a rural hotel, but outside on top of the building are little rotundas with more accomodation in them – a total figment of my imagination, almost like science fiction but rooted in a sort of brutalist aesthetic. The places all start real enough but then my head doesn’t keep it all together and it becomes disconnected and ridiculous, but there is always the pressure, and the worry, about something that is like dreaming of having no clothes on at work or something daft like that. It’s this panicked feeling of missing work and classes and being found out.

Mtaylor848, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

. So what does it all mean? Well it’s pretty obvious, innit. It’s anxiety. These dreams come along like buses as soon as I have something on my mind. Just before I moved to America, I would have the travel dreams daily. Whenever I get busy or stressed they start up, and they’re a good indicator of that.

I also dream of the past a lot. Friends, exes, and loved ones. Sometimes it’s about being back in a living situation I’ve long since moved on from, and weirdly they’re almost always in England. I just don’t dream of America, and I’ve been here a decade, so this is very much my head ruminating on the past, for whatever reason. It’s a life I let go of. Or did I?

October 30, 2025
The Tool As The Work

I’ve been using Linux in some capacity since tinkering with it in a lab at my old job in 2005. That’s not a long time by enthusiast standards, but it’s not nothing, either. I saw this post on Reddit and the sentiment stuck in my throat a little bit.

I’m a bit of a distrohopper – not on my main PC, but I have the “luxury” of having literally dozens of older boxes laying around my house and I’ve tinkered with a lot of distros since 2009, when I went full Linux.
For the past few years I’ve been thinking what changed in Slackware to turn it from my favorite distro once into the one that is immensely frustrating for me to use – and I don’t think anything has changed about Slackware itself.
The concept of “slack” in “Slackware” stems from you not having to install anything – it has you covered with all that software it provides. But am I wrong or is that a really “mid-2000s” thing to want? As Internet speeds grew, it became quicker and easier to just get everything you want from repos – not stuff preselected by the distro either, the stuff YOU prefer.
And you can use Slackware like that – build up from base system, install package by package with Slackbuilds, tracking dependencies yourself. I know, because I have built my OS like that in the past. And the results can be great! But Slackware fights you on that. It recommends you install a whole lot of useless crap, it doesn’t provide any tools to get rid of unneeded dependencies automatically when you delete something you no longer need (sbopkg does, but slackpkg doesn’t). It’s a good learning experience, but it’s frustrating and hard to do – especially compared to most modern distros, where you can get a minimal system with the selection of packages of your choosing in minutes.
I think Slackware may still have it’s place somewhere with limited internet speed/access (similar to endlessOS, perhaps). Personally, I just can’t really justify using it any more – between either accepting a bloated and arbitrary default package selection, going through the long and frustrating process of deselecting individual packages during installation or building from base system, which feels like working against the flow of what Slackware wants to be.

I started out with Lindows (now Linspire), which was a highly beginner-friendly distro of the time, intended to tempt the Windows XP refugee. We couldn’t get it to work at first (lol). Went to Debian after a battle with the graphics card in the aging IBM desktop I was using, discovered Ubuntu (Swahili for ‘Can’t Install Debian’ as The Register quipped) which was manifestly an easier experience (Wifi worked out of the box, a miracle at the time. You kids have no idea how good you have it) and realized I wanted to learn more.

So I tried out Arch Linux. Arch, I will say up front is a fantastic distro, probably one of the best around (still). It gives you nothing but a boot disk and excellent documentation, and following the install guide to the letter gets you a working linux system, and the means to do what you want thereafter. It’s an incredible learning tool (what it teaches in terms of basics is a foundation you can use everywhere) and has the distinction of now being a meme.

There’s nothing difficult about Arch; if you can follow instructions you can install it. The community is mysteriously up its own arse. They can be proud of their distribution, if not themselves.

I was fortunate enough to find a career involving Linux. System Administration has a way of really getting to the root of just how simultaneously difficult and wonderful open source can be, but also – I have to say – how irrelevant desktop Linux is to it all. I tended to try and follow the open source way, minimizing proprietary software and dog-fooding a linux desktop just to force myself to always be learning something.

For the most part, I loved it, and still do. If all you really need is a terminal and a web browser (a mail client at a push…) you can’t beat desktop Linux. It’s reliable, flexible, can be left alone and just stays out of the way. For the most part. Those last two represent one of the challenges of ‘enthusiast’ distros.

That is to say, if you’re spending more time trying to get your distro up and running and maintaining it than actually using it to do a job of work, it will start to get on your nerves sooner rather than later. As with relationships and cars, high maintenance becomes tedious and annoying.

I ran Arch for a little while. An update broke it (it happens; the forum will usually chide you for not reading the news items on the front page which say something like “Because we can, this latest update will cause breakage because we really like yelling at people on the forum for not reading this”)

Arch’s news items often contain critical notes about frangible package updates.

It wasn’t broken badly, but I did not have all day to sort it out, so off it fucked. I replaced it with Slackware, which is the longest running Linux distribution still in development, and the subject of the Reddit post above.

Where Arch gives you the building blocks and a framework for building out a system for whatever purpose you want, Slackware provides a working system with software as the standard install. You can get cracking wherever you are, internet connection or not. There is a package manager, but uniquely in Linux distros it does not handle dependency resolution. This is not as crazy as it sounds, as the base system has most of what you need to work, and most of what you need to compile packages from the extensive Slackbuilds project (which uses the same system to build packages from source that the distro does). You can say Slackware is not just a distro, but a whole way of thinking about a distro. It is both cutting edge (if you run the current branch or are close in time to a stable release) and conservative in that things should be simple, and they should work. You’ll find plenty of ostensibly old software in Slackware, but if it works (and has no vulnerabilities) it gets included. It is utterly reliable and stable, in my experience.

I ran 14.2 on my work desktop for ages, until the day my desktop hardware got refreshed and meant a switch to something newer (the Xorg stack was just too old for the GPU and I was not going to take the time trying to sort that out) and I could not get the migration to the Current branch to work without a full reinstall. I needed to get working, and that was that. The fact that basic internet these days allows one to ‘get anything they need’ (which is actually how you build Arch Linux up from base) doesn’t mean Slackware’s approach is redundant, because choice is still going to be constrained by your distro’s package manager or your ability to build it yourself, which isn’t particularly easy if you’re unfamiliar.

Good luck maintaining your system when it’s composed of a mix of official packages and source-compiled specials (ask me how I know…) Slackware’s philosophy of adopting the Slackbuild system (a simple shell script) to create a standard package is a really nice approach, and you appreciate the beauty of it over time. If you take a bit of effort to organize things it’s not hard to stay on top of it all.

I ran Ubuntu 18.04 LTS for a while, and it worked really well. It was simple, had everything I needed, supported things like Zoom which became essential to my job, and ran without fail for a long time, I was able to integrate it with some other proprietary tools like our endpoint protection and backup agent which made life easier, if taking me a bit from ‘the way’. I do not love Canonical’s drift into increasingly restrictive proprietary practices, like fencing off updates to a subscription model after five years from LTS epoch. That can be a pretty short period if you’re mid or late cycle.

The point is if you want to tinker with distros that’s a pursuit in and of itself, but it’s fuck all to do with productivity. I have to emphasise It doesn’t have to be, especially if that makes you happy. Slackware is great for just getting to work and being exceptionally easy to maintain once you know its ways. It also has the loveliest people behind its development and community.

I built KISS Linux on a laptop recently just as an exercise in faffing about, and honestly going back to basics (though getting it working was anything but basic) was really interesting in reminding me what I enjoy about Linux and open source, but also how far Linux has come in terms of bells and whistles. You lose a lot in a simple WM environment. Do you need it? No. Is it nice to have? Absolutely. I really got sold on i3 and its Wayland derivative Sway as a working environment, it’s really efficient. Would I attempt it as a productivity platform? Not now. Too many compromises I’m not patient enough for at this time, but it’s good to go back to basics and I have a play on the laptop when the mood takes me.

Bloat is a common complaint of much in computing, and open source. But you can’t escape it really. Even KISS has to use the Linux Kernel, which is an absolute nightmare of LOC chonk. It also amused me that Dylan Araps (author of KISS Linux) made Flatpak available as an optional personal package, Flatpak being the absolute total fucking antithesis of keeping things simple, But it works, and users like what it provides (I even built it on Slackware as I wanted things like Spotify and Plex Desktop because I’m a tart. Sorry, Pat!)

Don’t worry about the thing, use the thing. That’s all that matters.

October 30, 2025