Andy Cocker

It’s done. I’m a biker. I know because on the way to work this morning other bikers I saw were giving me the ever so slight ‘you are one of us’ nod of the head as we past. Or they were riding over pot holes.

I’ve got one of these. It’s a Honda CBR250RR. It’s got a small engine but it’s 4-stroke so it’s zippy and fuel efficient. The petrol tank is 14 litres so I can fill it up for less than $20

Riding isn’t all chocolates and fuel economy. I almost sneezed this morning while riding. Narrowly avoided that disaster. My visor fogs up when I’m sitting at the lights as there’s no wind flowing through the ventilation in the helmet and I have to breathe exhaust fumes – I’m not a fan of traffic lights. I haven’t mastered lane splitting yet. I don’t ride on congested freeways, just narrow two lane roads so there’s not much room to sneak through, especially with trucks and buses. I’ll have to observe other riders techniques. It’s legally dubious too, and if I die I want to at least have the moral high ground. Although this training CD from VicRoads suggested it was better to not die at all — a novel philosophy. It’s also made me paranoid. Car drivers are crazy. Who knows what those cagers (as us bikers call those poor saps) are about to do?

I had a little trouble getting the bike registered. Between Tom’s unholy electrical draining power and the 28 day limit on road worthy certificates, I only had one chance to get to VicRoads for registration which my bike refused to start for. Several hundred dollars later, everything’s fine. Spark plugs were replaced, carburetter balanced and the wallfor reoiled.

But that’s all over now. Vrooom!

Tonight marks the start of Stage Two. Three quarters of the matches have been played so I imagine you’ll all have piles of boodles by now, especially since I gave the second lot of boodles three days ago. Hmm, Shannon’s up 26 boodles, Daniel’s up 3.5 – not bad.

Everyone else: I’m very disappointed in you. I see Matt’s squandered the boodles he made with his lucky bets and his second fifty boodles already. Jackson hit 0 boodles when the Sparrowhawks, aka Togo, didn’t make it to Stage Two. I hope people are noticing that betting large amounts of boodles is not successful; or was not in the past. Maybe in this new stage will be more amenable to large bets. I’m putting 50 boodles on Argentina to win v Mexico – 1.33

Jackson tells me he wants 40 boodles on Germany to win v Sweden – 1.61

Something to note about Stage Two: If you pick a team to win, I’ll assume you mean in normal time, not in extra time or with penalties. If you’re betting to go through make sure you pick the to qualify bet, or extra time or penalties if that’s what you want.

You’ve got your orders, now wager your hearts out. And hey, let’s be careful out there.

(There used to be a table here but the website hosting it died. So it’s not here now.)

Round 4: We were licked clean! The four spring traps set up with peanut butter have been cleaned out. They’re sparkling even. He’s a little bugger. He might be too light to trigger the trap. Or too clever.

Seb hasn’t eaten the peanut butter in the catch-’em-alive trap. Maybe he doesn’t like the look of it. Or was full from all the peanut butter from the other traps.

For round 5 I’ve got ham rind stuck to the trap as well as this device.