Some of life's little lessons.

Life Lesson #1
When your motorbike has been on 'reserve' for 25 miles, don't go past
an open petrol station at 10:30 pm because you know the one 2 miles up
the road is cheaper.

Life Lesson #2
When your bike has run out of petrol, don't push it to the closest
petrol station, push it to the closest OPEN one.


=================
Here's the scene. Picture it if you will. A man (we'll call him Dick
as he obviously is one) pushes a motorbike along a road late at night.

10:45pm. Dick is tired.
Dick's bike is heavy. It is hard to push along the road. Dick has
been pushing his bike for a long time. He is very hot and tired.

Dick pushes his bike around a corner and sees a big sign showing
petrol prices 100 yards away. Dick knows that petrol price signs
usually mean petrol stations. Dick is happy.

Then Dick sees that the sign is not lit up. Something is wrong.
Dick's overheated little brain slowly gets to work and he thinks,
"Poohead." (Or possibly some other words that have the roughly the
same effect.) The petrol station is shut. Nobody here will sell him
any petrol. Dick is sad.

Life Lesson #3
Don't live alone.
Instead, live with someone you can ask to deliver a full can of fuel
to you when you are stranded, otherwise you will have to do the
following when you run out of petrol:
1. walk 2 miles home with soft luggage (#4 - buy hard luggage with
your next bike?)
2. get in car with petrol can
3. drive to an open garage and fill can
4. drive to bike.
5. fill bike, empty can. start bike.
6. ride bike home. (damn! where's the car?)
7. get on bicycle
8. bicycle to car
9. bicycle into car.
10. drive home.


Paging KoTL PM?

 

Sorry it wasn't on a UKRM run so it doesn't qualify for a PM number. If they
were given out just for running out of petrol you'd probably have been
awarded PM#2.9465732x10^472.

Amusing story though.

 

Unlucky. On a related theme, this happened to a us once:

1. Convoy of 3 race trucks (ie rusty old 7.5 tonne IVECO's) and 1
Transit towing a shite old caravan returning back from a week's bike
testing in South of France.
2. We all fill up with deisel.
3. 5 or so miles up the road matey pulls over so we all stop.
4. "Is your wagon running OK?" he asks. "Yeah fine" I reply. "Mines
like a sack of shit." he responds.
5. Transpires he misread the pumps and filled up entire tank with
unleaded.
6. We syphon out the whole tank full of unleaded into the ditch at the
side of the road.
7. No-one lights a fag.
8. Another mate goes off in search of petrol station and fills large
gerry can with deisel.
9. Full up truck.
10. About 15 minutes of churning engine over (thanks to 24v and two
massive batteries) follows. Plenty of coughing, spluttering & banging
but no go.
11. We contemplate what the **** to do to get a 4.5 litre, 6 cylinder
turbo-deisel engine to work when its had petrol through it, in the
pitch black, somewhere in rural south of France.
12. We have one more crack, churning engine over for ages, throttle
wide open, cough, black smoke, cough... Brooooooommm. Clouds of shite
out the exhaust. It goes!
13. Several hours later we're lost, and we're all on last dregs of
deisel. We all virtually have ran out and its 3am.
14. We spot a tiny petrol station in some little village, all park up
in layby beside it and kip until morning when we'll fill up.
15. We're all awoken at 8.30am by commotion as we discover we've all
parked our dirty great rusty pikey trucks in the entrance to a primary
school and no-one can get in.
16. Before the police arrive we fire up, fill up and **** off for the
ferry.

 

tbh I'm not in such dire and desperate need of sig numbers that I'll
wait for a UKRM run and do it again....

Glad I'm not alone though.

Never run out before, (and don't intend to again!) and I felt an utter
fool when I realised I had.

In fact I distinctly remember thinking, "You muppet."

Life's full of 'em.

 

On a similar note, but this being rural Wiltshire, my mates Transit
towing one of that weekends banger racers started to run out of diesel.
So we drained the petrol from the race cars into his van.

It ran like shit, but well enough to get him home.

 

(Steve Bullimore):

cue the environmental police.....
belay that: you're in France!

also clever

Ah, the indestructibility of diesel engines. Try diesel into a petrol
engine and you're donald aren't you? (Paging swk?)

heh. So the lower class averages for French children over the last
three years are /your/ fault then?

 

On a similiar note - I once stuck half a tank of petrol in my diesel
company car. I realised my mistake, swithced pumps and completed the
fill up with diesel. It was a bit lumpy, but seemed to run ok.

 

037 wrote

Fucking wuss.

The last time I ran out of petrol was during that brief period of time
after I was diagnosed as having a serious heart problem and actually
having the bypass operation.

Mind you the pains I ended up getting in my chest from the ensuing
exercise convinced me never to go more than a few hundred yards once the
bike has gone into reserve, so I suppose I did learn something from it.

 

wuss is right.
The road was flat, and I only had to push for around 15-20 mins:
probably something in the region of half a mile?

I think I've reached that age where the choices are either
a) get off my fat arse and do some regular exercise before it's too late
to be able to actually stand up, or
b) sit back and let nature and yorkie bars take their course.

 

037 wrote

A no brainer really, "b" every time.

 

You used to be such a slim, fit fellow.

fwiw, last time I saw you, you didn't strike me as particularly lardy.

 

Lessons well worth learning, dear chap.

<eyes narrow>

Have you been talking to Cane's kids?

 

Cool! You ran out of petrol during a bypass operation.

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the

Too much petrol for too long and you'd be looking at expensive injection
pump wear due to the lack of lubricity of petrol. I'd hazard a guess the
combustion chamber temps might be a bit high also. On a company car/van,
though, who cares?

Sortof, but not really. I don't see it causing any lasting damage, but
the system would have to be drained and cleaned out with fresh petrol if
the diesel content was high enough to stop it running.

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the
drugs began to take hold. I remember Old Fart at Play

The petrol station on the bypass was shut.

--

Dave

GS 850 x2 / SE 6a
SbS#6 DIAABTCOD#16 APOSTLE#6 FUB#3
FUB KotL OSOS#12? UKRMMA#19 COSOC#10

 

Grimly Curmudgeon <>:

Nice to know. Ta

 

Knackered kneeds and putting an engine in the bike. That's what did it.

yebbut wasn't that when you were wearing your SARS mask, had had no
sleep for thirty hours and had what looked like your third pint in your
hand? I probably looked drop dead gorgeous.

 

Are they utterly buggered, your knees? No hope at all?

I suppose with your love of chocolate, if you can't exercise you're in
trouble.

No no, I'd have remembered that, old boy.

 

They're OK really. They work up to about 4mph walking. It's running I
can't do.

(That plus I'm just lazy.)

 

I just remembered - I ran out of petrol once on a Botafot. It was just
before that village with the big hill sloping into it with a roundabout
halfway down[1]. It's nicely placed so that you have to coast down the
hill, play death-lottery by hoping nothing's going to come across the
roundabout and then coast into the village.

You get just enough speed up to stop outside the old, shut petrol
station, and not quite enough to get you round the corner so you see
the new, open petrol station, which will stop quite a bit of panicking
as you don't know where you are and the bloke you were following has
long since fucked off.

[1] you know the one.