Sportsters: turning riders into mechanics since 1957

I always wanted a Harley, since I was about 11 or 12 years old. Apart from a very short, sweet sojourn with a Shovelhead in the seventies, I rode more affordable Japanese bikes for close to 30 years....and I promised myself that one day, when I had the time, I would get one and learn how to repair and maintain it myself. The time came last year.

I've been tackling repair and maintenance matters as they come up. I've been learning a lot. I'm proud of the fact that, with very little experience, less aptitude and cheap supermarket quality tools as a base set, I've been able to get and keep my bike running better than it was when I bought it. We're getting to know each other.

One of the best resources I have is an internet forum for Sportster owners, I've had some good advice from them. I like to repay the favour by documenting my misadventures, which might stop someone else encountering the problems that I have. This is what I sent them today. Even if you don't know a wrench from a spanner, you should get the gist of it.

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I recently flattened two batteries in a week and after a bit of poking and prodding, I was told that my stator was No Longer Serviceable. Flushed with my successful elimination of gas cap rattle and replacement of rocker cover gaskets last season, I thought it would be a good idea to tackle the replacement myself and get to know the innards of my bike a little better while I was at it. And give you something to read about if, like here, the weather has turned inhospitable.

It was easier than I thought. Tracking backwards and forwards to the auto parts store to buy tools (a multi-meter, large 1/2" drive sockets, 3 separate sets of snap-ring pliers, red loctite, and a few other odds and sods) took more than its fair share of time, but between the HD shop manual, the Haynes manual and the odd website printout, I got it stripped down pretty easy for a novice Harley mechanic.

Thanks to all on the XL-List who offered advice last week about the chipped rotor magnets - I gave the rotor a wipe-over with petrol and a rag and reinstalled it after I installed the new stator, went for a run around the block in increasing circles, stopping to check the battery charge level. Ended up knocking out a brisk 25 miles around the local back roads before the rain hit...so far, the battery is holding it's charge, I'm still trying to figure out how to use my new multi-meter, and once the worst of this rain clears I'll take him out for a spin around the mountain, about 160 miles, and see if anything rattles loose. Once you've taken a primary cover off, it's not hard to see what interesting damage you'd cause if something - like a magnet - went flying about inside there....is this why some people favour open primaries?

Some things I learned, that might be useful to other wannabe mechanics and might save as many trips to the parts/tool store:

• a $50 bike/atv lift from your local auto parts store is a good investment if you're going to be doing big, time consuming jobs like this. This job would have been a real pita if I'd had to do it with the bike on the side stand.
  
• when you remove the primary cover, you'll be surprised at how much tranny fluid is left in the primary case after having drained it....quite surprised....rags and sand will soak up a fair bit, but not a bad idea to have a suitably sized container underneath the bike when you loosen that last bolt....
• I have learned that kitty-litter is a must-have in the amateur mechanics garage...it costs about twelve bucks for a bucket load that should be a few years supply....soaks up relatively large quantities of petrol, motor oil and transmission fluid in a short period of time.
  
• in order to remove the nuts securing the rotor/front sprocket and the clutch basket/rear sprocket, you need to stop the shafts rotating. If I hadn't just told you that, you'd realise it pretty quick. It's not immediately obvious how to stop the shafts rotating. Or, really, obvious after quite a while spent staring at it. Time to consult the oracle.
  
• as an aside, both these nuts are torqued on there pretty well, and as you will learn when you re-assemble they have been secured with red loctite. You can pretty much guarantee you're going to need a long breaker bar. I use my big torque wrench - it puts 'em on, I figure it must be close to perfect for taking them off.
  
• all that you'll get from the HD manual, with understated simplicity, is "Remove the engine sprocket nut"...well, it's the 'How' that we're really looking for, so no real help there. I've worked out that these guys really just don't want you working on one of *their motorcycles unless you're suitably qualified. HD manuals are a necessary evil, in my view, but a Haynes manual to supplement it has been worth every penny of the $25 I spent on it. Anyway, the HD manual does refer to a special tool, a Sprocket Locking Link (Part #HD-38362), but there is no immediately obvious picture or description of the tool or how it is used. Back to the drawing board.
  
• the Haynes manual suggests reinstalling the gear shifter, putting the bike in gear, and applying the rear brake with the back tyre on the ground, which will lock the engine while you loosen the nut.....this is a cruel hoax....I reinstalled the lever and shifted up into second gear; sat on the bike which was still upright on the bike lift, braced the rear wheel with a wooden block, then put my right foot on the brake while holding the 2' torque wrench and socket on the engine sprocket nut with my left hand while controlling the bars with my right hand and trying to stop the bike falling off the jack with my left foot while holding the socket onto the nut with my left knee.........
• in anticipation that you will attempt this and fail, Haynes have a contingency plan: remove the sparkplugs, find TDC compression, back off 1/8 of a turn then fill the compression chamber with thin nylon cord, inserted into the spark-plug hole. Once full, you can then easily rotate the nut with the piston jammed up against the nylon cord.
• you can't really imagine what it's like to feed 48 feet of thin nylon cord an inch at a time into a spark-plug hole, it's one of those things you have to experience for yourself. I experienced it for myself five times. I'm no quitter. A little more each time, but never quite enough to stop the piston moving through its arc. If there is a trick to this, I didn't get it. I did get a smile at Haynes advising "Be sure the end of the cord is still outside of the engine" before turning the nut. I don't know about you, but I get an instantaneous mental picture of a guy who has just watched his compression chamber swallow the last inch of the retrievable end of a large ball of twine....enough people must have done it to make it important to issue the warning....
  
• enough messing around with manuals, time to CONSULT THE XL-List ARCHIVES! Not more than a few minutes later, a 4" brass door hinge (#HD-38362) is installed between the two sprockets, and the nut is off.
• the nuts are different sizes. The one for the engine sprocket and the one for the clutch sprocket. You'd think they would be the same size, really, they're only a few inches apart in there. Not many people have a 1 1/8" socket in their 42-piece Bi-Mart socket set. I didn't. They cost six bucks each. So, I'd glanced quickly at the two nuts on the way out the door to the parts store and figured they would be the same size, but I've never really been good at that stuff. Anyway, once you get the front sprocket nut off, you quickly realise that you need a 1 3/16" socket to remove the clutch basket nut.
  
• it's left hand drive, that's why the 4" hinge works both ways.
  
• the nuts are recessed, so I couldn't measure them accurately with a ruler before I went to the parts store. I ended up getting a piece of stiff cardboard and slowly cutting it down until it was exactly the same width as the nut, then measured the card. I doubt I invented this idea, but it worked for me both times and saved me from buying the wrong size sockets.
  
• you have to route the plug end of the lead from the stator through the side of the primary case and across the top alongside the starter then down through the inside of the cam cover and along the right lower frame rail to plug into the regulator on the front downtube, well...all I can say is that it's easier said than done...I tried tying a long piece of thin nylon cord (I had a bunch just lying around the garage) to the old plug, and pulling it back through the primary so I could pull the new lead & plug back through with the cord (another Haynes suggestion). This didn't work well. The old plug just kept getting caught somewhere up underneath where I couldn't see or feel. Even when I jacked the bike up and lay underneath with a flashlight, I couldn't see what the problem was. I ended up cutting the wire off the old stator just past the sealing plug, then braided the wires around the plug from the new stator, wrapped it tight with a lot of electrical tape until it resembled a small torpedo, then drenched it in WD-40...and pulled the old plug down and through the front, pulling the new plug behind it. Messy but effective.
• when you're almost done replacing everything, there's a point at which you'll encounter an internal spring retaining clip that holds the adjusting screw assembly in place. You'll know the one I'm talking about when you find it. It was pretty easy to get out, using a screwdriver as a lever. It's a little harder to get back in. If you don't own a pair of proper spring clip pliers, may I suggest you purchase some...and pay the extra couple of dollars to get robust, good quality ones...on the third trip back to Schuck's, I got the big, one piece pliers - I could not, for the life of me, get those spindly removable tips to withstand the spring tension without bending or breaking....
• now I come to think of it, the cost of the new tools was more than the cost of the new part....although I believe I saved several hundred bucks by doing the job myself.
  
• don't forget to refill the primary when you're done. A long skinny funnel (I use an empty Bloody Mary Mix bottle) is a help. I'd only changed the primary fluid a few hundred miles ago, so I saved it and reused that. I note that this means that the primary now has 4 ounces less than it had in it before, the 4 'secret' ounces from the primary going on the garage floor, so for the sake of $5 or $6 I'll trundle down to the dealer tomorrow and buy a quart, which will be enough to top it up and have enough left to do a complete change next season.

I get the impression that having to replace a stator isn't uncommon. It's a bit of a time consuming pain in the arse to do, but well worth the effort. Thanks again to the list, without whom I'd be super-gluing magnets back together and waiting for the special tool to arrive in the mail.


Jack the nomad
2001 XLH1200, tax paid

NOMAD'S PEA & HAM SOUP

I was talking with my son about stew the other day. Where he is, spring is just starting after a long, wet Australian winter, and here in America we're starting to see Autumn...I can't recall if I've mentioned it, but I like the Autumn here, the sting gone out of the sun, long enough days and pleasant evenings, just before the leaves start to turn...then we get a real winter, snow and all...comfort food season...

Anyway, I like stews...sometimes they started off as soups, they might officially be called soups, but really what I cook are all probably more like stews, given my own criteria that if it has more lumps than juice, it's stew....I started making them way back in the dark ages (before microwave ovens ) when I'd be home alone on school holidays mid year and needed something simple, cheap and easy but good for you.....no, it would be too obvious...

As the years have passed, I developed a few favourites that have stood the test of time...my philosophy from the word go has always been that nothing should take longer to prepare (ie, peeling and chopping) than it does to eat...I clean as I go, I love being able to see something all the way to "Simmer for a really long time" and have a clean kitchen...time to sit on your arse with a pint and smell the food cooking....

My young bloke asked me to send him the recipe for my pea and ham soup, which was an after-rugby Saturday lunchtime staple...for 6 or 7 years I took him to junior rugby on Saturday mornings all season, and then it was home to my place for a hot shower and a bowl of stew...always served with a buttered crusty roll, with real butter...and pints of Guinness, if that's to your taste...red wine goes well too, a nice heavy shiraz or a cab sav that you can chew and then spit out the skins....but I like it with Guinness best...

Meals can be something special. A lot of my best memories are based around food, with good wine and good friends...and it's been nice while I type this out for a son who's all the way around the world, to find myself smiling and thinking about all those Saturdays standing in the sun and the wind and the rain, steam on our breath, waiting all match for that one blindside pass to the wing and the winning try in the corner....then home and hot showers, rolls, Guinness and a couple of bowls of steaming pea and ham soup....life doesn't get much better than that, so I thought I'd share.

Good eatin'

NOMAD'S PEA AND HAM SOUP

Ingredients:

500 - 750g 'boiling bacon', diced or 1 - 2 bacon hocks or a bag of bacon bones

1 bag dry green boiling peas or split peas

3 - 4 medium potatoes, white or yellow brushed, diced big

1 large sweet yellow onion, diced big enough

3 - 4 cloves garlic peeled & crushed, or equivalent...the stuff in jars is alright and it keeps forever. Avoid the powder.

1 tsp salt

Worcestershire sauce to taste

Tabasco to taste

4 - 5 litres water

Method:

Put all ingredients in large pot.

Bring to boil.

Reduce heat to low.

Simmer for 3 -4 hours until it tastes good

Tip: If using bacon hocks, take out the skin once it peels away from the bone. Otherwise, it's like leaving the teabag in the cup. Except it's fat. Throw it away.

RETIREMENT ISN'T WORKING

"The work is hard
The pay is small
So take your time
And sod them all"
- engraved on a china plate on my father's wall

Work was pretty much always a means to an end for me. That end was generally money, although I've been known to take jobs because of their location, to get experience at something so I could get a job doing something else and, on rare occasions, because I enjoyed the work. But mostly it was money and what money could buy, and work was the unpleasant crap you had to do to get the money. If you were lucky enough to be bright or talented, you could make more money for each hour, but I never really could think of a job that sounded like it would be better than sitting on a tropical beach somewhere, with blond chicks in bikinis bringing me champagne on ice......sorry, where was I?

I remember dreaming of retirement when I was still in high school. I read stories of men who started out selling oranges from a barrow at 13 and ended up being billionaire owners of supermarket chains...I heard of people retiring at 35, of people becoming millionaires in their twenties.

I was pretty good at mental arithmetic as a kid. I knew how much a million dollars was. In cash, it's a thousand dollars a week for twenty years. And they say you can't retire on that? Try me...

Success seemed like a natural progression for me. I'd known I was smarter than the average bear from an early age. I didn't feel particularly gifted, and I was crap at anything that involved hand-eye co-ordination or any activity associated with the generation of sweat. But I can't recall a time in my early years when I didn't take it for granted that I would attend University and roll into some very well paid job that allowed me to live the life of luxury to which I'd quickly become accustomed. The dreams of an eleven year old kid...the downside was that no-one - at least no-one I was prepared to listen to - wised me up that work was involved. I knew I had talent. I knew I was bright. The education systems in two different English-speaking countries taught me to be brilliant at passing exams. Once, on a good day, I scored 148 on an official IQ test. Ask me to catch a fish or change the tube on a bicycle and I'd have floundered.

My own belief in my ability was sufficiently confirmed by secondary education, however, and I had that mental picture of the hammock on the beach and the champagne....I would have taken up smoking just so I could light a cigar with a $50 note...

School was mundane, I was smart enough to be able to cruise and still get decent grades...through high school, I had a different dream every week of what I wanted to do when I finished school for good...travelling loomed large as an idea, but what to do to pay for it was a blank wall...when I'd started high school, guys leaving the senior years were still getting drafted to go to Vietnam; by 1975 and my senior years, the war was over, conscription was over, the best of the hippie era was still hanging around, the sexual revolution had switched from free love to porn and swinging in the suburbs, and pot and acid were making way for speed and coke.....there was a darker edge to the world after the innocence and naivete of the 60s, and Life was just starting to open up for a kid in his mid-teens....ambition? ask me later....a lot later.....to cut a long story short, I cruised all the way to a bare fall-over-the-line pass in my University entry exams, gave away the whole idea of higher education as a bad one, and took a job loading clay sewer pipes on and off trucks... I learned to drive a car, a motorbike, forklift and four ton truck within a year and a half...for over 30 years now, I've looked back on that time, that job, as a watershed... one of those Sliding Doors moments when the path I could have taken took a sharp turn into a whole different life...by the time came around to try the Uni exams again, I was too used to the freedom and to the money.

Well, for a kid who had always been soft and clumsy I took to manual labour like a man possessed...after 3 months, I took up rugby union and played my first senior game the day before my 18th birthday...on the way out to my first game, I asked a mate what a 'second row forward' was supposed to do - "Do what the older blokes tell ya. And if you see a bloke from the other side with the ball, knock him over and kick shit out of him until he lets it go"...I played two seasons, ended up playing men's A Grade alongside ex-internationals, and that was the only rule I ever knew...

The die was cast...I was born-again blue-collar...I worked semi-skilled physical jobs for another 5 years, until my first child announced her impending arrival a few months hence. I dusted off my brain, and went back to being paid for what I knew rather than for what I did...in what could be seen as synchronicity, I got my old bosses job at the sewer pipe yard....less than a year later, I'd moved to the Big City and got me a collar and tie job, and notched the hamster wheel into 4th gear....

I've changed jobs a lot. Regardless of what field it is, as soon as I reach a level of competence that I think is sufficient, the interest factor starts to plummet...in my experience, we learn 80% of all we need to know pretty damn quick if we put the effort in...and in the vast majority of cases, in my book, 80% is plenty good enough to get the job done.

I've never aimed for 100%, not that I can remember...I recognised a long time ago that if Perfect was my bench mark in life, I'd spend a lot of that life being frustrated, angry and disappointed....at University, a 70% mark on a paper will get you a Distinction; 80% gets you a High Distinction...it's the professorial equivalent of awarding a gold star or an elephant stamp on the back of your hand...for all that I've read that adults and kids learn differently, I disagree - you stick 30 adults in a class room and they will revert to acting like school kids before lunchtime on Day One...I digress...so, if I get a 90% for anything in life, I think I'm doing extra-ordinarily well. To me 90% is more than most of us are capable of achieving on a regular basis, even on an occasional basis to be quite honest; frankly, there are times when you'd be happy if you could get staff to turn up....so, from where I'm sitting, once we have achieved 80% of our ability to do a job perfectly, it will take 4 times more effort from here on in to learn and develop that last 20%, and I often question the opportunity cost of being an expert....being an expert isn't something I think I've ever aspired to (although I guess I've had some expertise thrust upon me....but that's a whole other story...)....bottom line, when I get to 80% of my potential in a particular job, that's as close as I need to be, I'm competent, and from here on in every day is going to be pretty much the same....in other words, it's time to move on to something else I know nothing about, yet...that's just me...

It's only been recently that I've been turning my head to this all over again...after a few decades of personal finances booming and busting and booming again, back a couple of years ago I made The Big Decision, the one where I finally put my money where my mouth was and got off the hamster wheel..my kids were grown, owning my own home again wasn't that important to me...so, for those who came in late, I put everything I needed into a backpack, boxed a few sentimental favourites, sold everything else, gave away what I couldn't sell, and flew away...

These days, I have everything I need and I don't need much...I have enough put away so I don't have to sit in the dark eating dog food when I'm in my 80s, but that's a few years off yet....my home renovation skills allow me a roof over my head and all the food I need....but I could do with some pocket money, you know? And there's the rub - after so many years of resenting work as an intrusion on my time, looking forward to an early retirement or at least semi-retirement, and being able to do a lot more of what I want, more often - I'm finding that I enjoy life more when I've got something to do, a reason to get out of bed every so often, a challenge to put myself to and maybe learn something, something new...

I find that I enjoy making things more than I used to....I take my time more, and try and do it right the first time...it's for me now, and I have the time....I've never enjoyed gardening so much...I've never enjoyed gardening, really....and after years of believing that I had the mechanical aptitude of a goldfish, I am actually cultivating the ability to take things apart, fix or replace the broken bits, and put them back together again...I've been riding motorbikes since the mid 70s, mostly Hondas and Kawasakis....I would have been happy to learn how to fix them, but they just never really broke down....hmm...well, last year I bought a Harley Davidson, and things have changed a bit...I've done more motorcycle mechanics in the last 14 or 15 months than in the previous 35 years put together. And I love it. "Sportsters - turning riders into mechanics since 1957" Harleys are very simple to work on. They have to be.

It's something special to take a broken motorcycle, work out what's wrong with it, take it apart and put it back together - and then demonstrate your confidence in your work by taking it down the street for a ride that's fast enough to kill you if you forgot to tighten up something important....it's been a late addition to my enjoyment of motorcycling, but not too late to be put to good measure...

You'll see that at the time of posting, I'm currently wading through 'Shop Class As Soulcraft' by Matt Crawford...his writing style isn't grabbing me, but he and I are on the same wavelength - life is about more than just what's in your mind. There are few things more deeply satisfying than the physical creation of something, whether it be a quilt, a basket full of fresh vegetables, or an armchair...it's a feeling that our high paid desk jobs lack....there's a lot of things I could turn my hand to right now, and I'm as sure as I can be that I could go back to my old life and pretty much pick up where I left off....but I can't think of any good reasons to do that....give me a job that doesn't take up all my time, and pays me enough to pay for gas and put a bit aside for parts, coffee and hotel rooms....preferably a job that, at the end of the day, I can look at something and think "I made that".

Yes, that would do nicely.

FORREST'S FEATHER, A NERVOUS NOMAD AND THE RESURRECTION OF A WORK ETHIC

People ask me how on earth I ended up here, in the big timber country of North America. My son, who is living in New York, has the same experience, he can't understand why people ask "What the hell are you doing in Brooklyn?" Locations that he and I find incredibly exotic, foreign and interesting are seen by many locals as a place for coming from rather than going to...we had a 3-way 'conversation' on instant messenger the other night, he, his brother and me...across a 15 hour time difference, it was a lot of fun...and significant for me to see how well they'd learned from some of my mistakes at their age...I was in my forties before I was as well travelled as they are in their early twenties....all of which has had me thinking over the last few days, how different my life is now in every way from where I came from, from where I was five years ago....how grateful I am to have stepped out of the mainstream, where I had never really felt very comfortable, and made a life of being a wandering sage....if I could only play the lute, I'd have it made...

It's about five years since I stopped planning and started throwing the dice. In 2004 I had a remarkable job for a while, one of those rare jobs where you looked forward to getting to work every day...conducting a review of emergency preparedness for a major metropolitan area...it was fascinating, and I spent my days interviewing emergency service managers and local heads of government and industry, attending local planning sessions and an interesting anti-terrorist exercise at an abandoned factory complex...not many people get to see that kind of thing...and I realised quite suddenly that this job had fallen completely unheralded into my lap...the position hadn't previously existed, and I barely knew that the field existed...and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that the best things that had happened to me over the previous year or two had all just fallen from the sky - often in spite of my planning rather than because of it...I have generally been against the whole idea of Fate and Destiny most of my life, but I started reading more about astrology, synchronicity, Wicca, chance, witchcraft, chaos, spirit guides, shamanism and Norse mythology, to name a few...anything that had a take on what, if anything, effects the path we end up on - and whether or not we can or should try and influence what the Universe has in mind...assuming it does...it's an argument that's easy to get lost in...I think...

I moved from the city to the Australian Outback for a while....after 35 years living in Australia, I got to see for the first time remote Aboriginal Communities across the Top End, from Broome to the Rock....very few white Australians have or will ever see a desert Community, and few want to... to a big-city white boy like me, it was like landing on Mars...I fell in love with the country and a whole new world started opening up....the money was pretty good too, and there was nothing much to spend it on...the idea of stepping further out into the void was becoming more attractive...

I started opening up to the idea that somehow, something had been presenting me with the same sorts of opportunities over and over again...and that although I couldn't see where it might lead, I did have the strong feeling that it had all been, and still is, leading somewhere...and although I don't appear to have any better idea now than I did then, it's an interesting life, notwithstanding that it's not a particularly secure one...in a way akin to quitting smoking, I just decided to forget to worry...so far, it seems to be working...for the most part...

I love the movie 'Forrest Gump', I must have watched it dozens of times....I love the symbology of the white feather, drifting in and out of all sorts of situations, lighter than a duck on a pond, unawed by the immediacy of the moment and unencumbered by plans, present but unaffected....simply, like Forrest himself, floating on the current...it all seemed very Zen to me at the time, and it's become a practice that's served me well...

I look at anchors differently now. I used to imagine a house, in the middle of nowhere, with a verandah all the way around...large Balinese day beds overlooking a body of water - lake, river, even the ocean. I'm not that fussed...peace and quiet and lots of trees...when I think it through, though, as I've said more than once to Fred, if I won the lottery all that would really change for me would be the view...sure, I'd love to see the view from the balcony of a stone cottage overlooking the Mediterranean, but I can guarantee that sooner or later someone would ask "You could live in America, why do you want to live here ?"....hey, don't get me wrong...if you were thinking of naming me in your estate, well, I won't knock it back...but money doesn't always buy you much security, not really....I always feel sorry for the poor buggers who invest their retirement savings in one basket and lose the lot...or those who wait until their sixties to travel and find they're too frail...for five years now, I've spent every penny I've earned....with the exception of my bike, I can still fit everything I need in my backpack, Matilda...yes, I know it's corny and predictable, but it was that or a volleyball called Wilson.... she's a redhead, for the record...

I don't believe in sitting on the couch, bitching about how crap your life is, how no-one could possibly understand how bad you've got it. After the first time - and even then, only if you're buying the drinks - no-one really wants to hear it. I am particularly annoyed by those who see the gate of the cage open before them yet refuse to walk free...I have nothing personal against those more settled, the Cains of the world, to each their own...but, to me, no matter what it is in life, like it, learn from it, learn to like it, or change it...don't whine about what you've chosen...at some level, we have to take responsibility for the particular type of harm of which we choose to put ourselves in the way...

So, this past couple of days I've been getting rattled - I've had a relatively small but clear reminder that, as a direct result of casting in my lot with chance, I'm no longer the master of my own destiny...and it's easy to forget why and how I signed up for this nomadic gig in the first place...a short-term, part-time job that I have been enjoying immensely, has just come to an end, albeit not unexpectedly...a manual arts job that was a great learning experience in a field I want to learn more about...I made a few dollars to buy the odd trinket and I got to make and repair things with my hands, an endeavour I've rarely shown a lot of aptitude for, but to which I'm becoming more and more attached...and it's come to an end, now, and the ground under my feet feels less steady...

I don't need much money these days, I'm cheaper to keep than I've ever been...and the weird thing is, despite my long bouts with ergophobia, I've realised that I actually do enjoy having work to do, regardless of how much I need money...that's something I didn't expect...a great deal of the work I've done in the course of my life has been a means to an end, and I've never had the same job for more than a couple of years...when others around me aspired to promotion, I aspired to win the lottery...and now, all of a sudden, I'm unemployed again, my nest egg is still a few years away, and the cash in my wallet will only last so long....

That lurch in the deck every so often almost always leads to bigger and better things, but it can be scary at the time...the less trodden path means less help, and very little certainty....this morning, the first of September, I sat with my coffee and my treasured old 49ers coffee mug - a favourite portable anchor - looking out my freshly painted window at the gentle sunlight drying this morning's light rain, relishing the onset of Autumn, a season barely noticed in Australia...I have two full northern Autumns behind me now, and I'm more prepared...the house and the garden are better prepared to withstand the cold and wet, and they look like someone cares about them now...there's a different feeling in the air...and I stop and think about my job having ended, and that I'm going to have to be a little more careful with what money I have left...I think about getting into it tomorrow and getting my bike ready for one more long ride before the cold gets crazy.....and I think about an ordinary English kid who lived in Australia for most of his life and wonder how on Earth he ended up here in America, looking forward to the Autumn...and I smile and wonder what's going to happen next...no doubt the Universe really is unfolding as it should...

TRAINING THE BLACK DOG

I have been thinking of some of the techniques that I've come up with to help me identify when I'm heading for a bad day, and how I try and turn them back. They may or may not work for you, hopefully they'll give you food for thought.

· Remember the acronym HALT

o everything seems darker when you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. When you are all four, it does take a conscious effort to keep the negative thoughts at bay.

· Negative self talk

o stamp on this as soon as you realise you're doing it. It helps no-one to continually call themselves names, or dwell on their negative qualities: and the reality is that most negative self talk is garbage, it's simply not true. We have all made mistakes, we have all done things we regret, but that doesn't mean that doing bad things is our natural state. Depression, or The Black Dog as Winston Churchill used to call his, is a liar and a thief, and it tries to convince you that one mistake is evidence of a lifelong course of conduct. It also conveniently disregards all the good things we've done. Whenever I catch myself indulging in negative self talk (and it is an indulgence, and one that you can't afford), I say to myself - and sometimes out loud when I'm alone - "NO I'M NOT! I'M A GOOD PERSON WHO TRIES HARD!"

o negative self-talk is insidious and spiteful and you deserve better. Stop it in its tracks each and every time you realise that you're doing it. Concentrate on the donut, not the hole.

· Illogical anger

o it is always a flag for me when I start getting pissed off for completely irrational reasons, like getting angry at inanimate objects. I sometimes amaze myself at the venom I can muster for an object which, in some dark recess of my noggin, appears to have manifested the ability to make cunning plans to deliberately piss me off. It's an indication of how ridiculous our logic can become when we find ourselves tempted to break things because they won't do what we want them to. I seem to find that this applies equally to complex machines like computers and dvd players as it does to hammers. Those damn hammers. I know they're doing it deliberately to piss me off and make me look bad. Who would have thought that wood and metal could be so devious.

· Denial of your good qualities

o I know I'm heading into a bad place when I start to think or say "I've never been anywhere or done anything"...yep, it is not unknown for me to look back on my half century and start beating myself up because I haven't achieved as much as Brad Pitt or the Dalai Lama...it takes little effort - none, really - to identify people who seem to have done more than we have...although, surprisingly, that black dog tries to block us from remembering the 80% of the world's population that cannot even dream of the wonderful and interesting things that we have been able to achieve...and we conveniently neglect to make the same connection regarding our relevant worth when the object of our envy falls spectacularly from grace.

o Churchill slipped heavily into depression in the 1950s. I once saw an interview with a friend of his who used to drop in and say howdy, and when he asked Churchill why he was so down, Churchill replied that he had wasted his life and had never achieved very much. When the friend reminded him that he had saved England from invasion and was instrumental in the Allied victory in WWII, Churchill replied "Anyone could have done that". When you find yourself denying, internally or aloud, that you are a good person, stand up and take action - it's the black dog whispering lies in your ear.

· Avoiding solutions

o there's a great dialogue in the book The Road Less Travelled between the author, Scott Peck, who was an Army psychiatrist, and a sergeant with a drinking problem that's damaging his career. In essence, Peck asks the sergeant why he drinks so much, even though it's getting him in trouble; the guy replies that there is nothing else to do in Okinawa, where he's stationed. Peck then lists one thing after another that the guy could do instead of drink, and every time the sergeant comes up with an excuse why they aren't doable, all of which are bogus. Recognise when you're doing this, and cut it off at the pass.

· Don't forget the physical. Mental, emotional and spiritual issues can be complex and longstanding, and can take quite some time to sort out. When it comes to putting yourself back in the driver's seat of your own life, the quickest and simplest way to regain a feeling of control is to do something physical. That can be as simple as making yourself a cup of tea or having a shower. Sometimes you have to eat the chocolate elephant one small mouthful at a time.

· Believe in a higher power. Whether you believe in the christian God, or mother nature or destiny or the spirits of your viking ancestors, it is always a comfort to believe that there is a metaphysical force at work in your life that has your best interests at heart. None of us - religious visions, near death experiences or watching City Of Angels on acid notwithstanding - can know for sure what is really going on behind the scenes while we are living this mortal life - that's just simply not how it works...when it comes down to it, the detail doesn't really matter. Something, or perhaps several somethings, is looking after us personally and is trying to help us get along. I no longer believe as I once did that Jesus is the one and only answer, no offence intended...but whatever name or form you want to give He/She/It/Them, I agree with Ralph Waldo Emerson - "For all that I have seen, I trust the Creator for all that I have not seen"...and churches can be really cool places to just sit and think things through, they often have a good, safe feeling to them. And they're usually cool inside on hot days. Maybe that's no co-incidence.