Dgr 2025 (for Want Of A Nail)

So, what have I been doing with my Street Cup over the last week or so? Getting it ready for the 2025 DGR, this year I'll be doing the Chester Ride.

Those of you who read my post on page 1013 of "What have you been doing with your triumph today?" will recall I found a tiny nail in the middle of my fairly new Avon Road Rider 2 rear tyre after a charity ride, which was the cause of a slow puncture.

I have to intersperse two wheeled tasks with a busy work life. First was to clean the bike last week (boring) and then remove the wheel and take it to F and B Motorcycle Tyres in Wheelock to repair the puncture (about a 45 minute drive away which turned into 1hr because of road closures). Steve is an absolute gent, the nail see below was an absolute pain to get out.



Only 2mm wide, it had gone in at an angle just deep enough to create a small leak, but not deep enough to come through the carcass. He couldn't push it in because of the angle and so had to grind just enough of the inside of the carcass away to get the tips of his pliers on the nail and push it back just enough to tug the nail out the way it went in. ~30 mins start to finish.

"How do you want paying?", "cash please." "How much?" "Ten pounds please." "You're joking?!" "No. You brought me just the wheel, that saved me a load of work." I'd already decided that he'd do all my tyre work after he sourced my Avons at a very reasonable price, this just confirmed it.

Anyway had to wait a day or so to refit the wheel and clean and readjust the chain. What an infuriating faf! Street Cups can't take a centre stand, the mounting holes are there but the silencers are too wide. But I have a Triumph T100/120 one that I fit for this task. Then crawling my decrepit ancient body around the floor, getting greasy scraped knuckles, to get the chain clean tensioned correctly and the wheel aligned. Several hours later (my laser monkey alignment tool batteries died) and I had to go and buy more. Job done.

Now the bike is ready for the DGR.

Given all that hard dirty work, I'm going to blatantly plug my DGR giving page and hope that some of you wonderful souls will find it in your hearts to sponsor me. I know from experience how vital the charities DGR supports are.

Here's the link:- https://gfolk.me/PaulWithington440108

Enjoy the ride . (I will)

PS if anyone else is doing the DGR we could use this page to show photos and share experiences.