Back to work tomorrow

Monday was considerably less frenetic than the preceding weekend. This was probably a good thing as I had a multitude of aches and twinges after two days of lopping, digging and hauling.

In the morning I got on the 'phone and ordered a tonne of top soil to fill the new raised bed. Then 30% and I headed in to Redditch to make enquiries about the hire of a wood chipper and also to take a wander around the aisles of Tesco. We were back home by lunchtime and then headed around the Three Miler with the dogs.

After the walk I felt that I should continue with the garden so grabbed a spade and the wheelbarrow and headed down to the far end under the other Yew tree …  A few years ago, when we had the patio block paved, nearly a ton of sharp sand had been left on site.  I had bagged it up and abandoned it under the aforementioned Yew … today I spent a rather painful half hour emptying the bags in to the barrow, trundling it a few yards to the fence and then shovelling the sand in to the void between the new wall and the earth bank. It was a quick win as an eyesore has been removed and reused as backfill.

As the afternoon drew to a close I checked my e-mail and Hitchcocks had replied to my enquiry. The had sent out replacement components that should enable fitment of the Trials Exhaust. A consequence of this was that I now needed to remove the standard exhaust studs. The first of these was straightforward as I had only installed it a few weeks ago, however the second had been in place since the bike was built. I tried removing it by using two nuts but it did not want to budge.

Being paranoid about snapping the stud I applied a few squirts of penetrating oil and heated the stud with a butane torch but it still resisted. I squirted more WD40 at it and decided to leave it overnight while I went away to research Loctite freeze and release spray.

As our Easter holiday draws to a close it is fair to say that there have been some very visible changes here at The Pile and it looks like we are going to have a very busy Summer tidying up the garden. A shed had been mentioned as a possible new addition to the garden. 30% also managed to get the flights booked for our next holiday so our post holiday blues have been somewhat dissipated by the fact that we know we will be heading to San Francisco on 20th August.