Tuesday September 14th 2010 ~ More Visitors !

It is not often that I mention the basics of running a blog like this. Firstly of course, you need to find a provider who will carry this sort of trivia - this is quite easy and I must say that Google Blogger is excellent. Then, assuming you wish to know how many people are reading your ramblings, you need to install a visit counter - like the site meter I use at the bottom of the page.
You can re-design your blog at will and Blogger offer a variety of styles which you can switch to quite easily. Probably the most difficult aspect though, is the chore / pleasure (depending what sort of day you've had !) of keeping up daily entries. I quite often go through periods of updating a day behind. The advantage of this with a blog of this type, is that you can account for late changes which would otherwise mean a lot of corrections the following day. I'm pleased to say that August was the most successful month yet for the X1 blog and we had more visitors than ever (about 1400 in fact). Some of you will be quick to point out that in fact this only equates to around 45 people each day, but that would assume that every one of those visits every day, which - even though I do my best to entertain, and believe me, that is sometimes very difficult - is very unlikely.
Anyway enough of blogchat. Today followed the pattern of recent days, with little of note to relate. Timekeeping seemed again to be very good and light traffic would seem to be a governing factor, the schools having returned now.
 In the days of the B12 Paragons, we quite often mentioned buses which had been out for long stretches of consecutive days. Lately, this has not happened for several reasons, but Gemini 37574 has quietly gone about its business each day since departing from Lowestoft on Monday August 2nd and hasn't missed a day, Sundays included. Tonight though things were looking bleak as it had been sidelined at King's Lynn garage after starting the day on K15, only to have 37577 take over the turn because 574 had a broken driver's seat ! This has been an issue before as blog regulars will know and not one which has, in the past, been readily remedied. Tonight 574 was parked in Vancouver Avenue minus its front panel, indicating that may be it has other problems. For the record it had done 43 consecutive days in traffic.
37157 was used on K14, the first eastbound departure from King's Lynn today and it is thought to have had a new tyre fitted. When this happens, a check has to be made at the end of the first journey to ensure that the wheelnuts are still secure, so today 157 was replaced by 20107 for the second part of K14 departing Lowestoft at 08.55. Thanks to our man in the driving seat for the gen on this.
As briefly referred to in Monday's blog, 37564 is back and today was used on K4. Although it is based at Lowestoft, because it failed at Thorney last month, it was delivered back to King's Lynn and this is normal practise. In previous instances, where a Lynn bus has expired at Lowestoft and needed to visit Volvo for attention, it has been released to where it came from.