Natural Gauge

It occurred to me, while working (no, honestly, I was working) in my office yesterday, that the cobwebs that sway lazily from the ceiling are black with dust. But when you see spider webs in the country or even in most regular abodes, they appear silvery-white and even clean-looking just the way they should.

So in a way that's evidence of the horrid air I have to breath when I'm stuck in that cramped shoe cupboard all day. It's bad enough when you look at the air intake on the fronts and backs of the servers and they're covered with dark, fluffy, dusty particles. But even the spiders have died out thanks to the choking atmosphere.

So, if you want to see how clean the air is in your home or office, let the spiders in the dark corners continue to spin their webs and show you just how much crap they can trap in their webs apart from flies.

In other (real) news: Nick passed his CBT and stuck L plates onto his bike. So we went out for a ride yesterday evening. He did pretty well except for one or two common errors. I recall him saying he wants to go out for a solo ride today while everyone else is at work so after that perhaps he will have ironed out some of those creases that we all have when we start riding.

After the ride, I took his bike (which used to be Richard's and has more than 15,000 miles on it) up the road and back and I just want it to be known that I would not be comfortable sitting on that thing for any length of time. Despite being the same make and model as my bike it seems very different; the rear wheel feels like it could slip at any time, the rear brakes aren't responsive enough (probably thanks to the wheel), the gear box is getting on and really jumps from 1st to 2nd, the handlebars are too low, and the gear pedal/lever is set too high. Well, the last two won't really effect the performance of the bike, but it was still strange to ride it. Hopefully Nick will just save up enough to take his direct access test (which, incidentally, is my plan too) and get a Bonneville before Richard's old CG breaks down completely. Then again it is a Honda CG so it will probably keep going for a few decades before the engine needs replacing.