Department of daft things to do

My father tells a story of when I was three. Apparently I noticed a box in the wall with holes in it, and, as three year olds are wont to do, stuck my finger in one of the holes. The box was a round pin unshuttered electric socket, and the resulting sensation threw me back a bit. Even then, said my father, he knew I was going to be a scientist, because I went back and repeated the experiment to see if it yielded the same result.

I was recently reminded of that episode. Having acquired another bike of a somewhat heavier disposition, I was still being a bit cautious about taking it into a corner, a caution which was magnified by embarking on a slide around the Cockpitt roundabout when progressing at all of 20 mph past the car park entrance. (Derby City Centre, for the unenlightened.) There is a rough bit of road surface just there, though it did not seem to be bad enough to slide on. It must be diesel, I thought, and waited for the rain to wash it away. However, the same lorry with a fuel leak was obviously going past each day, and matters were getting worse.

Then came the wet day when I could not hold it in a straight line on a straight road. Not just the white lines, but every fag stub on the road had me fighting the steering. Somehow I got home without departing more than 0.5° from the vertical, and light dawned. The manufacturer's handbook recommends a minimum of 3 mm of tyre tread at the rear, which is ridiculously restrictive, seeing that the legal limit is 1 mm (less than the 1.6 mm demanded on a car). I had been conducting an experiment to prove the manufacturer wrong. My tread was still well over 1.5 mm deep and the pressures were fine.

The diesel went away when I changed the tyre. Needless to say, that is not an experiment I am going to repeat.

Copyright PHP Harris 1999

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