Last month, I hit the milestone. I’d been managing around one-thousand miles a month since I got the bike; Winter had caused this to slip in January, when I had lost most of that month to bad weather. I knew I’d get back on target when summer came around; and so it came to pass.
From this year, a number things have stood out:
Motorbikes are a lot of work. A lot. Like, fucking seriously.
Two sets of tires, a new chain and sprocket set, a valve inspection and adjustment, twelve quarts of oil, four oil filters, a set of brake pads and a replacement rear rotor.
Cheap running costs are obliterated by the amount of biking-related stuff you will buy.
Dealerships are full of worthless, lazy arseholes. The service departments are particularly well-represented.
At six months, I realised I knew nothing about riding after three months. At twelve months, I realised I knew nothing at six. This seems set to continue, and I love it.
Most people,here in Western Pennsylvania, do not accumulate one-thousand miles a month. Perhaps one-tenth of that is more common. I want to write more about this another time.
I don’t blog enough; that’s my fault, but as a fact if not an excuse, I have been very busy. Family, work, and riding.
Quite a bit has changed since my previous blog entry in March. My first full Summer of riding, for starters. It was wonderful. Of course, as much as I love my bike, I want something else now. I’ve been here before. We will see.
Predictably on the tails of my last entry, and because I am British, I’m going to moan about Winter. I live in Western Pennsylvania, and while it’s hardly Minnesota, it’s a somewhat harsher experience than my British homeland. The average January high for Pittsburgh is 37°F(US Climate Data, 2016); that is the average low temperature for January in my old hometown on England’s South coast(Met Office,2014).
The stats don’t tell the full story – it may be viciously cold when the sun goes down, but it’s usually tolerable for the morning commute, and crucially, usually quite dry, so there’s no frost to worry about, and a little less risk from ice.
What got me thinking about this is the last two days have seen cooler than average temperatures for my morning commute, around 50°F. I had to break out my waterproof mesh jacket liner (it traps heat), my Oxford neck warmer, and switch my Winter gloves for my thirteen-mile commute to work. I started to get that characteristic slight fogging of my face shield around the pinlock that the cold air causes.
There’s still a good four, maybe six weeks of good riding left for the normies; after that, the bikes get prepped for winter and put away, perhaps breaking them out on the odd sunny day, but generally, that’s it until April.
But not me.
Last October 19th, the morning temperature dropped to an unusually low 29°F. It would be the first time I had ridden in temperatures below freezing.
Below freezing, warming the donk up.
It was a rude awakening. The three mile stint on the highway caused my fingers to become, well, not quite numb, but extraordinarily painful. The wind blast forced its way past the gasket in my face shield, and hurt my eyes. My kneecaps hurt. I had real difficulty warming my gloved hands up again, and resorted to pressing them on the clutch and stator cover at traffic lights, which possibly gave the appearance I was attempting to mate with my bike.
I’d received a hard practical lesson in windchill, the theory of which I was only vaguely aware – this table tells the simple story, and it doesn’t even show figures above sixty mph.
Wind chill chart. National Weather Service
I was a bit despondent as I’d already bought some expensive winter gloves, but I now knew with certainty they wouldn’t be enough. The problem was the highway. I’d need something heated, either grips on the bike, or my gloves, but that’s another blog entry…
The weather has started it’s Autumnal swings. 36°F this morning. 36 is an interesting temperature for this rider, as last year I realised that is about the lowest I can tolerate without heated gloves. I don’t get numbness, just very sharp pain that I’m guessing precedes the numbness.
First frost of the year.
Of course, the afternoons are still too warm for a proper winter jacket, which is frustrating. Even with the full liner, balaclava, and sweater it is a little nippy, but will still be uncomfortably warm later. Also, the forecast is very warm (80°F, fuck yeah!) next week, so plenty of good riding left.
These last few days have got me thinking about wind protection more. I really like naked bikes but I’m wondering if they’d be good for my riding needs, if I had to have just one bike.
Next post will have idle speculation about what I want next. I thought I knew, or at least had a very good idea, but that seems to change weekly…
As winter got underway, I started to consider whether I should get a second car. My reasoning was it would cut the mileage on the family Toyota (I don’t use the bike on snow or ice days, I might be British, but I’m not that crazy) and would limit inconvenience to the family when I had to take it for the day. Secondly, I wanted to take the strain off my Ninja 300, which was clocking up nearly one-thousand hard commuter miles a month at peak use. I really didn’t enjoy how much work it was in winter time; it isn’t the easiest bike to keep the weather off, and it’s surprisingly heavy on consumables like tyres and brake pads. Maintenance could be stressful if there were delays due to parts, my incompetence, or visits to the shop. It could really disrupt my transport arrangements, not to mention piss off my ever-supportive wife when I have the car for days on end.
I quickly dismissed the idea. I didn’t want to pay for another one; I could scarcely afford something decent, anything I could afford would become a maintenance money-pit (been there) and I would resent the thing for the majority of the year when I wouldn’t be using it and it would be sitting in the car park eating money.
I’d thought about a second bike, and reckoned I could make it work as long as it met some criteria:
It had to be cheap to purchase and run.
Simple to maintain and clean, the former more important than the latter.
Suitable for the rough winter pavement conditions present in Western Pennsylvania.
I’d been reading a lot about the various offerings from China, with the knowledge that you get what you pay for, and an awareness of the strong prejudice toward Chinese kit, but I’d been impressed by the commitment of CSC Motorcycles in California. They’ve built something of a reputation for selecting good bikes from Zongshen (a giant Chinese manufacturing concern) and applying some American customer service know-how with the proviso that the owner is part of the process (no dealer network, you wrench the bike with support from CSC). I’d been through a lot of wrenching with my Ninja, including the hell of shimming the valves, so I reckoned I could handle it with enough support and reading. CSC’s best-known offering nowadays is the RX3 Cyclone, a 250cc adventure bike which has carved out a market that was practically non-existent in the US.
However, the RX3 was not in my plans. It was a out of my budget (although clearly outstanding value) and a little too similar to my Ninjette in terms of my needs. I would probably replace my Ninja with something like an RX3, not supplement it.
No, I was looking at something like a dual sport. I liked the utility of it, and the fact that I could take it on some trails if the mood caught me, plus it would easily handle some bad back roads I had purposefully avoided beating the Ninja up on. Enter the CSC TT250
Here’s the TT250 as described by CSC:
The CSC TT250 dual sport motorcycle is rewriting the definition of affordable quarter-liter enduro riding! Featuring a digital speedometer (new for 2017), counterbalanced air-cooled engine and 5-speed transmission, the TT250 was identified by Motorcycle.com magazine as the best motorcycle value in the US! The lightweight TT250 has 18-inch rear and 21-inch front wire wheels, knobby tires, hydraulic front and rear disk brakes, inverted forks, adjustable suspension front and rear, a 300-watt alternator, handlebar-switch-controlled underseat accessory outlets, and more. The TT250 is perfect for riding around town or around the world on both paved and unpaved roads. When coupled with CSC’s free Service Manual and online maintenance tutorials, the simple-to-maintain and highly reliable TT250 is a great motorcycle!
I had actually toyed with buying a TT250 not long after they were released much earlier in the year, just for the hell of it, perhaps as a gateway drug into a different kind of riding. I hadn’t considered it would make a really good second bike in its own right.
I pulled the trigger one Saturday night over a few beers, and went for a great end-of-year deal. I’d considered waiting, but I didn’t know when CSC would get the 2017 consignment, and if they would have any issues – the 2016 model was now a known quantity. The snags had been worked out (minor things like the occasional wrong countershaft sprocket, or the odometer being in KM). Plus, it was nearly Christmas and my birthday, so screw it. Retail therapy.
One week later on a chilly December morning, a truck turns up outside and deposits a tidy-looking crate in a parking space I’d set aside for the purpose. I eagerly got to work hacking into the cardboard and freed the bike rolling it around to my patio. The bike ships ready to roll, with a small amount of petrol (I assume from a test engine-firing and drive) and a crank case full of 10w30 engine oil. You only need to attach the mirrors.
The CSC TT250, in the fastest colour.
First impressions? Build quality is good. I would happily say the fit and finish is as good as my Thai-manufactured Kawasaki. It looks the business. No loose fasteners, and the bike had been prepped properly. I wasn’t sure about the tyres, they had the look of ‘just good-enough no-name OEM rubber’ to me, but I’d soon learn that things aren’t always what they seem.
Was there any China showing? Not really. Some of the plastics like the muffler guard and the fork covers appear a little shiny and cheap, but they are sturdy. A couple of design details are telling,- the rear brake master cylinder and pedal assembly is a bit clumsy, the shift lever is long and ungainly-looking, and some welds though solid enough look a little rough to my untrained eye. Generally though. this is a well put-together bike. The hand controls and switchgear are well made; the levers have no slop or play, and the throttle action is superb. The engine looks gorgeous with its smooth black finish.
As ever, paperwork is the boring part, and a nice lady at CSC does the hard work for you and sends you everything you need to make registering the bike as painless as your state’s bureaucracy allows. I hadn’t done this before, and I ended up going through a tag notary, sucking up the fairly high fee as the cost of getting it done quickly. I got my plates same day, and was ready to ride. More of that in part two!
N.B. this post originally appeared in edited form at chinariders.net
I bought my stainless ‘ebay exhaust’ – the one everybody uses – months ago but never had the chance to get it fitted. These kits almost fit the TT250, but there’s one definite modification required; you have to widen or cut the flange as it’s not drilled wide enough for the 229cc engine’s exhaust port studs. My neighbour (actually the maintenance guy for place I live in) offered to help me cut the flanges with his grinder and vice. On friday night we did this with the accompanying (somewhat terrifying to the uninitiated) shower of sparks.
I was a bit worried about the studs and cap nuts, already haven taken the bike through winter. In fact they came off with just a light turn of a ring spanner; however the bottom stud unscrewed from the cylinder block rather than the cap nut. The threads were in good condition; but I couldn’t get the cap nut off so resolved to get a spare. Autozone and Advance Auto Parts didn’t have anything suitable – they sold M8 x 1.25 studs but they were too long. A local hardware store had a good selection so I armed myself with a couple of spares. I also bought a nut splitter and some small locking vise grips, placed the grips on the smooth part of the stud and was able to turn it off. My cleaning and scrubbing the nut while it was on the bike had let a lot of WD40 penetrate in and gum up the threads, but it was basically fine, so I put it back on the bike, screwing it in with my fingers. No problems. I bought new nuts and lock washers.
Next challenge was the gasket. I’d ordered a new one from ebay and it’s basically a little copper ring, but I couldn’t see the existing one; I then noticed the exhaust port appeared to have some weirdly machined interior edges. The ‘wet’ spots are some cleaner I had sprayed on earlier:
The photo revealed these were deformed at the top, and I realised I was looking at the existing gasket which had a squared cross section, and had been pretty well squashed. I grabbed it with some needle-nose pliers and it popped out. I put the new one in (I dabbed a little grease on it to make it stick as it kept dropping out and tried the new header for size, screwing the nuts on finger tight to get an idea of fit.
Some people have got lucky with the fit of these things. I knew straight away the clutch arm was going to be close, and I figured it would be a little clearer when it was all tightened up, but for now it made a little ‘tink’ every time I let the clutch lever out.
Secondly on fitting the mid pipe and muffler, it cleared the frame by about 5mm and easily passed under the airbox, but there was absolutely no way I could get it to meet the bolt eye under the seat where everyone usually fixes it. It had about an inch to spare:
I could not move it up as this would bring the pipe into contact with the frame; I could try and bend or dimple it, but it really didn’t have much motion available at all. So I knew I had to make some sort of bracket.
I haven’t made anything out of metal…well, ever, really. I went to Home Depot and found a length of Aluminium ‘flat’ that was three feet long (lol) and two inches wide, and a mini hacksaw. It was .0125 thick, so plenty stiff. I reckoned that If I cut a simple rectangle 12cm x 5cm I could drill holes in it and make a bracket, so that’s what I did. Well, I sort of butchered the holes a bit (I didn’t measure well) but it fitted; you can see it here:
Exhaust clearance to the license plate holder is marginal (I used the included spacer and even bought some nylon ones from Home Depot in case I needed more room) but it’s fine. Lots of riding today, no melting:
I was still unhappy about the clutch clearance, so I Googled some advice about how to, er, ‘shape’ exhaust pipes and the most simple way appeard to be to whack it with a ball-peen hammer. So I got a regular ball peen hammer (6 bucks, Harbor Freight) and marked the spot with a sharpie where the clutch actuator was touching, and set about whacking my exhaust. A few blows made the material dimple enough to give about 2mm clearance (it actually increases when bike is hot) and it’s on the underside so not visible.
Last job was to take the carb off and fit the 115 main jet (already had a 27.5 pilot which I knew is a little rich so should be fine with a more open pipe) and put it all back together.
It sounds great, and the bike pulls strongly throughout the rev range. I was pretty pleased with the result.
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.
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.
It’s about six months following surgery for the rhegmatogenous retinal detachment of my left eye. The good news is that the retina has recovered very well; at four months an Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) scan of my eye showed nominal recovery. I was somewhat relieved.
A complication of the surgery, which involves a vitrectomy – a draining of the vitreous fluid in the eye – is a subsequent development of a cataract, in about 80% of cases. This has begun for me, and the brief moment of improvement in my eyesight is now stalled. My central vision in the left eye was slowly returning, but is now partially obscured again. I can’t do anything about it until March, which is four months away.
I have also developed age-related presbyopia in my right eye, so I now require reading glasses. It’s not been a great year for my peepers.
Still, there’s much to be positive about. I am likely looking at a full recovery for the left eye, assuming the cataract surgery is straightforward. We will see.
“Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches.”
Hyman G. Rickover
The time had come. The band was breaking up. P was heading back North, to begin a new adventure in Leeds, Kevin would stay in Southampton with his fiancé, Rob would eventually wind up back in his beloved Wales, and I was starting a foundation degree at the university. I have a distinct memory of helping P load his parent’s car for the journey home. I rather stupidly wondered if he’d ever return. I knew he didn’t love Southampton, was entirely unsentimental about it, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he never looked back, but I would see him – and everyone else – that Christmas.
I would stay with my then-girfriend until the start of Semester, in October. Like the year before I recall it was a bright and sunny summer, all the girls wore designer sunglasses and cargo pants, tramp stamp and visible thong seemed to be the thing. The All Saints look, as I thought of it. The lads all looked like they shopped at Fat Face because they did.
There was a definite feeling of change though. I was equally excited and apprehensive. I was 26, technically a mature student (anyone would testify I was anything but mature) and I was a long way out from any kind of academic study. I was wondering how I’d get on. There’s not much time between school leavers and 26, but it’s also another world, and I’d be living among them. Would I hate it? The work I wasn’t too worried about. I was telling myself I had done enough.
I would discover under the most difficult circumstances, that I hadn’t.
I’d wanted to live in halls, but the only availability was in catered; in other words they served breakfast and dinner, which was easy, expensive, and kind of novel. I wouldn’t have to worry about cooking, which is fortunate, because I couldn’t, as the lads would testify.
My move-in day was Monday October 2nd. Most people were already there. I pulled all my belongings out of the boot of my friend’s little Peugeot hatchback, got my keys, and took stock.
The university accommodation fruit machine had allocated me a room in K Block, Glen Eyre Halls of Residence. Glen Eyre was a large housing complex just North of the Highfield Campus, featuring several blocks of varying vintage. K block was part of three identical blocks, 3 stories of concrete in brutalist style. It could have been made in Minecraft. In 2005 they were extensively redeveloped with an additional floor and extra wing changing their plan shape from a ‘C’ to a square. Back then, I think the fixtures and fittings were all original, it had a distinct 1960s feel to it. Shared bathrooms on every floor, blue-tiled kitchens (2 on each floor), white hardwood cupboards, knackered microwave and cooker, and the hot water came from a small electrical header tank over the sink.
The corridor was grey carpeted, seemed perpetually slightly-too-warm, and varnished wood panelling punctuated the painted concrete walls. It was all very beige. My room was tiny with the window looking out onto the middle space of the block, a single bed, scuffed-up old wardrobe and a basic desk. There was a telephone socket and an RJ45 port but these were extra, and not cheap. and I don’t think anyone I knew paid for them. No internet otherwise. Seems unthinkable now, but that’s how it was. A single computer room on the first floor allowed access to the delights of email and the web. If you needed to download something substantial – say a large patch for Half-Life – you had to use sneakernet – walk to the labs on campus with a writeable CD-R.
I was the oldest person on my floor, but nobody really cared. The kids, as they say, were alright. My previous experience at Southampton was at the Institute, which some people unkindly referred to as the Chimpstitute. It was a different class of school. One morning Sarah (a neighbor on my floor) told me she would be spending the day in the Library. I laughed, assuming she was joking, because obviously going out for a daytime pint or two was a better idea. She wasn’t. She pulled 8 hours in there like it was nothing. She did this often. These kids were dedicated.
Here there were lots of Harriets and Tims, rather well-to-do kids who were also very, very bright. The first person to introduce himself to me was Joe, who is still in touch today, and was my closest friend there. He seemed shy, talked himself down too much, but also possessed a keen and sardonic wit. Josh was a tiny computer science nerd from London, Ellie was a very sweet girl from the home counties somewhere, and Tom reminded me of every kid I went to grammar school with. All confidence and tall good looks. Sally was 17 and at university early because she was super clever or some shit, and Nina was the most local, from Bournemouth, and super cool, when you could get a word out of her. Sarah was striking, a bit plummy, very bright, and carried herself as if much older. Alex was a bear of a lad, awkward, but a heart of gold. Joe told me he thought Alex looked up to me. I didn’t even look up to me. There were plenty of others but these are the ones I remember the most. Joe recently reminded me about Rachel, who I didn’t remember at all until he mentioned her, and she lived on our corridor! Memory is a funny thing. It’s not as reliable as you might think.
The floor was its own self-contained entity – we did not know anyone upstairs – and had further subdivision into different corridors, forming cliques and alliances. There was a kid called Tony from the other side (the floor, not the spirit realm) who had seen too many Guy Ritchie films and talked like Danny Dyer. He walked around repeatedly with his hand on his crotch like an Italian pimp and was a bit of a plonker, but definitely amusing. I think he was from Tunbridge Wells. People we didn’t know but saw regularly (the entire block had breakfast and dinner together) acquired nicknames like ‘badly-dressed girl’ and ‘ponytail twat’.
People slowly figured out I was a little different due to background (but not a serial killer), and I was really quite fond of everyone, which was fortunate, because I didn’t really like anyone on my course. The first week was full of things like orientation (“this is what a bus looks like” etc) and motivational talks from course leaders. The actual classes would start the following week. There was an orientation day at City College (foundation year is delivered there, but run by the university) giving me the odd experience of forced trivia about a place I knew back to front. The rest of the time was spent exploring the union bar (really very nice) and the Glen bar (local to the halls) watching South Park and The Matrix about 2 million times and generally enjoying myself. The difference in age, while small, melted away completely.
Monday morning would be right into it with double maths. About fifteen minutes into class during which some fundamentals were rattled through – simultaneous equations, quadratic identities and so forth – I realised I was in the shit. I wasn’t up to speed on this stuff. Not enough. The remainder of the day featured physics (which went a little better) but my apparent lack of preparedness for the maths had given me a sharp jolt. I returned home to halls and went over the material. I could do it, but not anywhere near quick enough – and it was only going to get more difficult – and there were some concepts I still had trouble with. I lacked confidence.
The rest of the week was more of the same, logarithms, binomial theorem, polynomials…I was struggling to keep my head above water, and more complex physics theory started being introduced. I enjoyed Stress and Strain (irony) but struggled with some of the electrical theory. The big problem from my point of view was the tempo was crazy fast, I felt like I was drowning. My habit was to retreat back to my room and figure it out in my own time – I got very stressed out trying to make progress in class with someone standing over me.
The college had a half term in its own timetable, during which it was closed. The university called this a ‘reading week’, essentially a break from class. I got endless shit from my K-Block mates for this, perceiving it as a holiday (which it was) but I knew it would have to be fruitful or I was fucked. I resolved to head to my parents, by now in Cambridgeshire and take a breather. This may have been a mistake. I still don’t know. I should probably of got my head down and stayed in Glen if I was to have any hope of avoiding what happened.
At my parent’s place, I had something approaching a nervous breakdown. I was suddenly fixated on the idea that I did not want to go back, that I could somehow stay in rural Cambridgeshire indefinitely. I discussed it at length with my mum, and my dad tried his best to assure me it was just a wobble. He told me stories of his own experiences and It helped, but I was having an almost complete failure in confidence and I could not see past it. I think I completed one homework assignment (of two) and could barely stand to look at the reams of printouts of algebra worksheets for fear I might burst into tears. I overcame the panic and returned to Southampton.
At this time I did something very stupid. I stopped going to class. I spent my days idling around, very occasionally looking at some work before changing my mind, and shooting the shit with my neighbors. There was always somebody around, and something to do. Get lunch on campus, spend the afternoon in the union bar watching MTV, anything to avoid thinking about work. Nobody knew what was happening. I kept it all to myself.
Eventually, inevitably, the system caught up with me, and I started getting pressed to go and talk to one of the tutors. I put it off for as long as I could, before going in. He was very understanding, told me to keep my chin up, collect the work I’d missed and knuckle down. I came back armed with an enormous amount of course material (they continued to move fast) and after Christmas there was the first final, a maths exam, which would determine progression. A retake was possible for this one, but what I’d need was a miracle.
It was December. I’d started to seriously consider finally fucking it all off. I was not so far in that this would cost me much, I could quit and cut my losses right now. I decided not to do anything too hasty, see how study over Christmas went and assess if I had the slightest chance of passing the first assessment. I was nowhere near where I needed to be. I’d started behind, and it was only getting worse.
Fate also had a part in a particularly terrible way. On the evening after my birthday, during a reunion with my old housemates, there was a serious fire at my girlfriend’s place. It is believed a candle had started a fire near the sofa, causing that to be completely destroyed, and the whole apartment contaminated by smoke damage. We had to live with a friend for a couple of weeks, while the flat was completely redecorated. It was just one more thing on the plate, even though it was sorted out remarkably quickly.
I tried to find a way out of things.
The best analogy I can make is being able to run a competent 5K, and entering a marathon. You’ll never make it, have no hope to get up to standard during the race, and are just going to damage yourself trying.
I started to let people know that I would be leaving after the break, in January. Everyone was great about it, we’d all keep in touch, all the usual platitudes. Dr. Barney, for her part, expressed absolute confidence in me and insisted I re-apply the following year. She said I just needed more time. And with that, I withdrew. My return to education, the thing that was meant to change my life, my big opportunity to really do something for myself and launch a career, had completely shattered, after just three months. I felt completely defeated.The experience was so wounding, and left me so soured on it, I would never return, and resigned myself to finding another path. It haunts me to this day.
Writing it now, with the clarity of hindsight, I should have bailed much earlier – the moment I realized I wasn’t ready – and come back the following year. It was a much more realistic plan, but at the time, I just had no sense of it at all.
Over the years I asked myself if I could have pulled it out of the fire. I just didn’t have the right mindset to even begin to do that, it would have taken a work rate I had never demonstrated, confidence I didn’t have, and aptitude I thus far hadn’t shown. Adrian Newey, Southampton Alumni and world-famous aerodynamicist for Red Bull Racing, struggled badly with maths during his engineering degree, and the answer he discovered was for him to simply knuckle down and try harder. So really it is simple, but also not so simple, unless you’re Adrian Newey.
More preparation was required, but I didn’t realise it. All the clues were there, I just had failed to notice the competencies – in black and white – were absolutely literal. I had a false sense of security from doing alright in the initial assessment and had made the fatal error of believing it would be alright on the night.
P had got it right, he’d done an A level, and this gave him practice at the standard near where he’d be starting university at. I should have done the same, because A level mathematics was pretty much the starting point of the course. I wasn’t used to academic work, to study, to organizing my time, or to pacing myself in lessons. It had been a long time for me and the level I’d achieved off my own back was only really a starting point. I should have done ten times more.
I packed up my stuff and moved back to my girlfriend’s newly refurbed flat, and would try and pick up the pieces. For her part, I think it planted the seeds of a perception of me that would eventually cause the end of the relationship, because from her point of view, I was going nowhere.
The cafeteria is little more than a small concession up on the first floor, sitting in the atrium between treatment areas. I’m aware that I’m sitting with a slump, my left arm covered in a half-dozen gauze pads. I look absolutely defeated, and crack a half smile at the pathetic figure I must be cutting.
I am inhaling a bottle of chocolate milk, a protein bar, and a sandwich because I’ve not eaten since 6pm the previous day; my blood sugar is on the floor. I have already passed-out from the repeated needle sticks (apparently this is my new thing).
Oncology. I came back here to this place, having been away for a year, because they asked me to. I didn’t want to; I’d had enough of it. It had been four miserable years of my life and I just could not do it. Nobody seems to understand, not even people closest to me. You get pulled into the machine and ‘care’ starts to feel like an elephant on your chest.
The facts are I had a very dangerous cancer, my chances of survival weren’t great, but the treatment worked, and I am still here. However, I started to feel a sense of dread and suffocation around doctors. I barely saw a doctor for most of my adult life. I’d like to go back to that, thanks. I can’t for now, because as a result of diagnostics they’ve found things they want to look at, so now I am looking at a surgical procedure to take a lymph node out of my neck because the scan pinged it. I don’t think it’s anything. I hope it isn’t anything. It’s fun, isn’t it?
I have a little joke that oncologists cause cancer. “I was fine when I walked in there, I leave and I have cancer. I don’t make the rules.” I think it’s funny, fuck you.
My PCP (GP for the NHS people out there)…God bless him, nobody tries harder, but people keep asking me why I don’t go back to see him. Well, it’s because he is obsessed with things going up my arse. He’s become a colonoscopy salesman. Yes, I know I should, but there’s a key concept here: I don’t want to. Change the fucking record mate, I don’t want things up my arse right now. Maybe in a year or two I’ll feel the need. Until such time I’ll rely on the radiology surveillance and take my chances. No, I’m not being reasonable, it’s okay.
To top off what has been a stellar week, I was waiting in my car at a red light when a young man lost control of his vehicle, smashed into mine from the left side, then got out of his car and ran off, like a sort of crackhead Forrest Gump. Police caught him further up the road as a witness called it in almost immediately. So there’s that to deal with. Police and insurer have been great, less I have to deal with right now, the better.
By March my vision had continued to deteriorate to the extent I was becoming quite afraid. I made an emergency appointment to try and figure out what the hell was going on. I got a visit with an ophthalmologist that just happened to be a retinal specialist. She is French, had only been in the country a few months, as luck would have it, she was absolutely brilliant.
Generally speaking, nost of the senior female medical professionals seemed better listeners, and thus far I wasn’t convinced I was being heard. My wife describes this as a ‘specialist trap’, in other words if a doctor can’t diagnose a problem, they become indecisive and fail to advocate for the patient. You must see the right people. The right doctor at the right time makes all the difference. In the US system in particular, you must learn to stamp your feet. It’s very hard for me, as I am a classic British never-complain type, but when you’re really sick, that attitude can kill you.
This particular specialist took complete ownership of everything, and the more difficult the case got, the more interested she was.
I had some images taken of the eye, and she immediately identified inflammation of the nerve bundle behind the retina. This is generally known as posteriour uveitis, and it’s potentially very serious.
I had to undertake a lot of tests, includng tuberculosis and syphilis,(symptomatically similar) which amused me (yes it came back negative, you shits).
I ended up being prescribed an oral steroid (prednisone) in a shock dose, tapering off as time went on.
Steroids do odd things, it felt to me like I was highly caffeinated; I couldn’t sleep, put on a load of weight (yay!) but avoided going crazy -Apparently some people don’t respond well to them.
My vision stabilised, you wouldn’t call it good but at least it wasn’t getting worse. Uveitis is idiopathic in about half of the cases. In simple terms, it it not known what causes it. At this point it was purely hypothetical that my vision problems were linked to whatever was growing under my arm, immunology is complicated and requires highly specialised domain knowledge, there isn’t a magical test for it. The test is basically ruling out everything else.
Tumour won’t wait
The mass under my arm was no longer leaking, had fully re-accumulated, and was now starting to press on surrounding tissue, which caused pain. Around 1am on the 3rd of Aoril, I realised I could no longer sleep. Heat, painkillers and and ice-packs did nothing. I remember sitting on the bed in front of the wardrobe mirror thinking that I have to do something.
My wife had a continuing concern that it might burst, which could be life-threatening. My plan was to go to the ER, perhaps they could drain it, or at least get me some pain relief.
The emergency room reception wasn’t busy, a TV played one of house-hunting shows where a couple have an incredible budget. It was set in Fareham, just a few miles from my previous home, which made me laugh at least. I got triaged quickly. The feeling of the nurses – rarely hesitant to give an opinion – was that this thing needed to be out. No shit. A young doctor told me she couldn’t do anything invasive as if it was potentially malignant as that could be harmful. so, no drain. In the meantime she saw me wincing with pain and suggested an analgesic. I got a long lecture about opioids “You’ve seen the news, right?” And then they injected something with a long name into my IV
It felt a bit like the drop off the lift-hill on a rollercoaster, I actually held on to the sides of the bed, I felt a kick of nausea, thought I might throw up, then it passed. I was now, to use the medical term, as high as fuck.
The doctor got on the phone to the surgeon (I think it was 3am) and got it done – I would be operated on the next day. My bed was moved to a remote end of the ER and I entertained myself sending Beavis and Butthead gifs to my sister.
I don’t really know why, when you’re stoned everything is funny. It had to bag up my clothes and belongings and put on a gown.
.
Dark, dreamless sleep
I got visited by the anaesthetist, who explained that I would be asleep through it all, and a reflexologist, as the surgeon was concerned my nerves were getting damaged by the tumour, but this was luckily not the case.
My abiding memory of ‘serious hospital stuff’ is the flourescent lighting scrolling overhead as you are moved on a stretcher,that and the smell of alcohol swabs and the chirp of ringing telephones. The operating room actually resembles a hotel kitchen, lots of stainless steel, aluminium, and dark tiling. Only the huge overhead lights set it apart, and large pieces of equioment that go ‘beep’. I had to move laterally onto the OR bed and had my inflatable stockings switched on, which feel a bit like a python constricting around your shins. That’s all I remember
Waking up from a general anaesthetic is abrupt, it sounds like people are shouting.You wake up with a start, It’s such a deep sleep. I wasn’t aware of any pain, but my armpit felt like it was completely gone, which was weird but also a relief. My treat was a cup of crushed ice. I hadn’t eaten in about 17hrs.
I spent a night in the hospital in a very pleasant room, and stood up for the first time in hours. I had a drain fitted, which is a plastic line from the surgical wound terminating in a rubber bulb.
Wound and drain line
This fucking thing would be the bane of my existence for a week. A fwwnurse ran in and told me if I needed to urinate it had to be into a plastic flask about the capacity of a litre. I filled that fucker to the brim, handed it to her and said “enjoy”. She didn’t even smile- heard it all before, I expect.
The surgeon visited and instructed me to monitor the drain, as he did not want it in there any longer than necessary, as it’s an infection hazard. He also explained the surgery was a success apart from having to leave some tissue which had tied itself around a vein. This would cause almost 5months of discussion as nobody seemed to think anything should remain in there, given how fast the tumour developed, but that story will have to wait.
At home, I had to learn to live with the drain, which was a great annoyance as the slightest pull on the tube was sharply painful. I had to sleep on my back (which I never do) so it was a tough few nights. On the very day I had just got used to it, I made the appointment to have it taken out.
It would be many weeks, and several labs before the tumour’s classification was known. In the meantime my oncologist wanted to discuss options. At that time it was possibly some radiation therapy along with some chemo. Great.
Black May
I had so many appointments in May I lost count. I’d had my drain and stitches out, my oncologist informed me that the mass was classifed as a ‘metastatic melanoma of unknown primary’ in other words, skin cancer, but no skin lesion would ever be found. This supposedly true in 10% of cases. I had the feeling the onvologist was not that convinced, but genetic markers gave him treatment options. I would be put on immunotherapy, which had the reputation for miraculous results.
I would require immunotherapy every three weeks for a year. I watched an educational video about chemo, and I mostly learnt to be grateful I wasn’t having chemo. The treatment building is a squat, brutalist structure near the mall. It struck me that nearly all of the people there looked very worse for wear. I asked the nurse if they looked like me when they walked in, but I don’t think she saw the funny side. </p
These kits almost fit the TT250, but there’s one definite modification required; you have to widen or cut the flange as it’s not drilled wide enough for the 229cc engine’s exhaust port studs. My neighbour (actually the maintenance guy for place I live in) offered to help me cut the flanges with his grinder and vice. On friday night we did this with the accompanying (somewhat terrifying to the uninitiated) shower of sparks.
