Friday 21st May
I spent all morning checking and re-checking that everything was packed OK and we set off at around 3pm planning to reach Hull for 5ish to avoid the worse of the rush hour traffic.
Unfortunately we had to stop at the bike shop on the way out of Bradford as Daz had forgot his chain lube and then it took us another 45 minutes to get onto the M62 - the traffic in Bradford was horrendous. It was a nice day though.
We got to Hull around 5.30pm. As we were in traffic working our way to the port, a white van pulled along side and shouted to me "You've got a leak mate." We pulled to the side of the road and sure enough petrol was pouring out of one of the overflow pipes from the carburettors. This was not what I wanted to see! I thought our trip would be over before it had even begun - I rang my girlfriend Jane to let her know what was going on.
We decided to push onto the port anyway and put the bike on the ferry, even if it was still leaking as we could then get it sorted in Holland and the trip would still be on. I adjusted the overflow pipe so it was pouring onto my boot rather than the back wheel and then rode the 2 or 3 miles to the docks.
In the mean time, Jane did us proud. She got us the number of a local bike shop - which unfortunately was closed, and rang a mate - Steve - who is into bikes. She also let our neighbour Mark know, who had helped me no end with sorting the XJ out. Mark rang and told us to give the carbs a knock as the floats were probably sticking, and Steve rang to say he was sending one of his friends who was a bike mechanic to see us at the docks!
Following Marks advice - we used a socket extension bar and my disk lock as a hammer of sorts to knock the carbs. The leaking stopped! Steve's mate, Dave the mechanic, turned up and checked the bike anyway, but he said we'd almost certainly cured the problem. We were all smiles again. Thanked Steve and Dave and rode to the ferry check-in and onto the boat.
On the boat, it being the first day of the holiday and all, we decided to have a couple of beers. A couple turned into a few and it was 1am before we knew it. That's 1am UK time, 2am Europe time - we docked at 7! Daz didn't sleep much at all as he had worked the night shift on the Thursday and his body clock was all out, I on the other hand slept like a log!
