Of Spiders and Motorcycles

We welcome two additions to our household this week. The first is Richard the Rain Spider, as pictured below, who has taken up residence in the kitchen. Seems fairly demure so we are letting him live there, hopefully the cat or the maid doesn't get him. Kinda out there having a wild spider living in the kitchen. I wonder what the famdamily is going to say when they come over for supper on Saturday.


The second addition to the family hasn't actually arrived but her arrival is inevitable.

I was sitting in the traffic on tuesday and after 45 minutes I was only 1/2 way to work which is just such a waste of time and it was the straw that broke the proverbial camels back. The time has come to move to two wheels. Instead of going to the office I went to the local BMW dealers and bought a BMW F650GS which is a on-road off-road, single cylinder thumper. This move is not as sudden as it might seem as I have been toying with the idea for a couple of years but the timing and frustration levels weren't right. There are actually a few of reasons that I have bought a bike, firstly so that I don't have to spend so much time in the traffic every morning and evening. Secondly, they pollute the evironment less than cars, thirdly, I want to see whether we can move to a one car family and fourthly, they are great fun. At the moment, we will be keeping both cars and seeing how it will work out but if I look around me in the traffic, almost without exception, each car only has one person in it, the driver. And these are all the people that complain about the traffic when they themselves are responsible for the problem in the first place. I would definitely be in favour of some kind of legislation that penalises cars that only have one person in it. I find it ironic that the cars which are creating the actual pollution and congestion problem are also preventing its solution. Most people commuting would be able to cycle to work and if that doesn't suit them, ride a motorcycle to work but a large part of the reason that they don't is that it is too dangerous because of .... the cars.

It is over a decade since I last rode a bike on a regular basis so I am a little nervous about getting on my brand new, scratch free, beemer but there isn't any other way to do it than just jump on and go.