It’s less pain…by train
Weekly Update 10
And so it begins.
I hate the bus. I hate it.
Its a smelly, stuffy, cramped, disease ridden journey at the end of which you get off and are genuinely relieved to get the hell out of that place. Bus drivers think it’s good to turn the heating up full blast in winter, but when you have 40 folk all cramped in, probably wet from the Scottish winter rain, then it all turns to condensation which makes it like a greenhouse. Because it’s winter, we all have our winter jackets on. So you can already see how torturous it is. Couple that with the tiny, OAP geared seats (knees around ears stuff), the sneezing, coughing, paper reading, light flicking passengers and the picture becomes complete…oh that and the complete inability of the bus driver to drive smoothly resulting in some serious frustration as your head goes bashing forwards and backwards, even quicker when sitting in traffic jams.
Yeah, what I said then is still true. It’s a shockingly bad way to travel, made worse by their slogan “It’s less fuss by bus.”
No. It’s not.
Anyway, with this absolute, flat out refusal to travel by bus, I have no alternative than to travel by train. And my, it’s a delight.
Gone are the cramped seats. I stand. It’s better. I sit all day in a seat getting a sore back, so I take any opportunity to stand. And it’s better.
Gone are the smelly people. There seems to be more business folks on trains, so usually its good smelly people. There are the odd smellers, but not the 10:1 ratio that you find on buses.
Gone is the on off stop start driving technique. The train is smoooooooth. Even when it comes to a halt, you can balance your weight appropriately so you all come to a nice gradual smooth halt.
There are still ill people on board, but as I stand at the doors (the ones that don’t open, across from the ones that do) I get a regular burst of fresh air every time the train comes to a stop, my own personal air conditioning if you like. It’s fantastic.
Gone are the waits between infrequent and mostly irregular bus timing. I used to run up the road to the bus stop, only for 2 of my buses to whizz past me with empty seats. I get to the bus stop and there’s a 40 person queue and we all cram on to one already full bus. If it’s raining, you get soaked. If it’s windy, you get cold.
With the train option, by the time I leisurely stroll up the road, albeit more brisk than a park walk, I arrive at Haymarket, slide my season ticket (a month’s worth of journey) in to the machine, saloon doors slide over, welcoming me to my pain free journey. I stroll down the stairs to the platform, which is roofed. I wait at most 8 minutes in the dry and a train comes along that will take me home. And I know, for absolute certainty, that in around 15 minutes I will be getting off this train, and in to my warm car with my Emma waiting for me. I know there will be no accidents on the train tracks, no fender benders, no peeping horns or stupid moves. There’s no roulette of how long it will take to get home. I know there’s not going to be head mashing going on and the driver certainly won’t turn the heating up to a million.
I get a book out and read it, in at least 2ft of room in all directions. It’s glorious.
It’s less pain…by train, that’s a damn assurance.
So anyway,
I’ve been train-ing it for the past week and a bit and it’s great. I like it a lot and it’s certainly taking the pain out of commuting without the bike. In fact, I’ve found myself thinking “I’m glad I’m not out in this weather” because it’s been pretty stormy here for the past week. Torrential rain, wind and cold has battered the East Coast of Scotland and it’s set to get worse.
In other news, me Em, Dad and his mate went to see the borderline offensively good Tommy Emmanuel at Perth Concert Hall. He took to the stage after a good, if not a bit samey Martin Taylor and just ripped in to his first song. He’s so animated and visually engrossed in every element of his playing that you immediately find yourself transfixed upon his lightspeed hands. His stage presence is fabulous, bringing each and every audience member in to his world by retelling stories of his travels and thus his inspiration behind his songs. Sense of humour is something Tommy has in troves, whether it be the facial “what was that?” expression when he played a wee squeak or slide, or his hunt for the band members around the stage and then playing every part that a band would play with his left hand, starting with the bass player, “here comes the drummer, he’s always late” he says starting his rhythmic slides and washes with his right hand on the sanded guitar face. “Here’s the rhythm guitar” as he introduces the guitar part on top of the still playing bass line, and the drumming and finally “And here’s the lead guitarist…..the most important guy” and off he goes, in to a full 4 part technical song using 1 guitar. Brilliant.
He loves what he does and as a consequence, we love what he does. I’ve seen a lot of bands play and they have never been this engaging.
I closed my eyes and knew that for the next hour I am in the presence of the greatest guitar player I will probably ever see.
He then had a guitar-off with Martin Taylor which was great to watch. Martin played a humongous up and down neck solo and then sat watching Tommy’s response, which was Tommy starting to play his solo, but taking his right hand off, whilst still tapping strings with his left, to pretend to de-tune Martins guitar whilst looking in the opposite direction. Oh how we laughed.
The highlight for me was the interaction between Tommy and the drunk bloke sitting in the front row. Every song was preceded by this bloke slurring something vaguely resembling english towards Tommy, who would either shoot it down or react with his guitar.
“Toooommmmyyy…….plllleyyy soooommmeeee bloooooooooooosssssss…………”
“I think you’ve got enough already mate!” Tommy replies, before playing the most fabulous blues song off the cuff, totally improvised.
We left the Concert hall that evening in a blaze of wonder. How can one man be so damn good? It’s just wonderful to be witness to that amount of talent. If Tommy ever tours the Scottish lands again, I will be first in line at the ticket office. Utterly breathtaking.
Sunday we played golf at St.Andrews New Course, and despite me playing the worst round of golf since starting a couple of months ago, I really enjoyed it. It was bitterly cold though.
News next week includes something small, yet long and full of economical things.
Cheerio all, have a great week.
Gordon
In 5..4..3..2..1…..twiddle thumbs.
Weekly Update 9 – 11/10 – 31/10
Well people. For the first time in 4 years of motorcycling, for the first time since I started, I will be putting my beloved motorcycle to bed for the winter. It’s been a short time coming around and I feel slightly bummed about it, but then I immediately remember the GSR and how much it cost me to run it throughout winter. And not forgetting the volatile riding conditions that once made me feel elite, now make me feel cold. I always said from the beginning, as soon as I start to not enjoy riding my bike I will pack it in. I have held that view throughout and now, despite my perceived “elite” status being relegated, I am giving it a rest over winter.
Last winter was particularly harsh if you lived in Scotland, certainly one of the worst in recent times. This led to my GSR needing yet another £500 worth of replacement parts and another large dent in our already beat up wallet. So after the GSR was sold earlier this year, I made sure that the MT wouldn’t be tempting to ride during the colder season, mainly by only getting 6 months of road tax, but also by running the front tyre in to almost oblivion. I have a story for you.
Last night I was heading home in the dark, as now it’s dark when I leave the office, which is just unbelievable. Anyway, I went for some petrol and then on to the bridge (after nearly being side-swiped by a Renault Clio) and off we went. The usual braking/accelerating tactics continued over the bridge and we got to the other side. I switched to the inside (overtaking) lane as a lot of the cars come off at the first junction after the bridge, causing a bit of braking action.
Once in the outside lane, I was following a white transit van, older generation model and as we came off the bridge they all started to speed up. It had been raining a lot so the surface was damp, bit of surface water here and there but generally ok. Then out of no-where the transit van did an emergency stop. We were travelling roughly 60mph by this point and unlike all other cases of slowing down after the bridge, this was a complete halt manoeuvre.
Instinct took over as I saw a wee puff of either smoke or water from the Transit van in front. The van was closing in quick and I was increasing the front brake pressure subsequently but then the rear wheel locked up (damn right foot instincts are slightly more meat fisted than they should be) so the back end started weaving about in a slow smooth side to side action, and as a result the engine stalled. It felt silky that’s for sure, totally controllable, yet completely out of control……..doesn’t make sense. Anyway I kept increasing the front brake, but the van was braking more and for every second that passed I got closer and closer to hitting him.
As a gauge to the amount of time I was in full braking/weaving mode, I was able to audibly say to myself, “Come-on Gordon, let’s get some stopping action here, come on… come on…come on…”
I would say it was a good 6-10 seconds duration from the moment of brake introduction, to the point at which I was absolutely sure I was hitting the van.
Add on to this scenario of silky weave, hard braking and me talking to myself, was the knowledge that my front tyre only has about 1.5mm of tread on it, so any surface water that would be dealt with, wouldn’t really be that efficiently dealt with in my current condition. As luck would have it, at the point at which I had submitted myself to be picking my bike up from underneath this Transit van, the van released his brakes and accelerated a touch. This gave me the life saving break as our wheel/bumper nearly kissed.
After starting the bike again I quickly down-shifted a few and shoulder checked to the left, shot off up the inside lane and had a wee glance back at the van driver, who then flashed his lights in a weird moment of complete understanding.
I let out a rather embarassing “WHEEEEEOEOOOOOOOOEOOOOOOOOEOOO WHEE WHEE WHEE, BLIMEY CHARLIE!” in order to release the insane amount of adrenaline that was being readied for a complete muscle melt-down, and got on my way. I find screaming or shouting stupid words after a life-threatening moment diffuses the adrenaline’s impact on the muscles (you know, that debilitating slunk that you get in your legs and arms, as if you are about to faint). That and sheer bloody determination to get on with the journey home. If you had a mic in my helmet and listened back to it, I’m sure it would be a good amuser, but for me it seems to be a good way to deal with the adrenaline.
I got in and told Emma who did her usual “…….I hate it when you ride your bike in the rain”.
It would have been a bit of a downer had I hit the van as it might have caused some damage to the head bearing area which could result in a write-off if the frame is damaged, but hey ho. So on Saturday 30th October 2010, the MT-01 will be in the garage, washed and dried, prepared for its storage for the next 4-6 months. In that time I will change the now bald front tyre, change the oil/filter, perhaps install a new chain and sprocket set and generally get it nice again.
The question now is, what will I write about in the meantime? Well I am now going to be getting the train every day, so I have no doubt that I will descend in to some mindless rant about fellow commuters and their idiocy, perhaps write about the failings of the public transport system in Scotland, or just shoot the breeze, with intermediate updates about the MT. Who knows. Perhaps YamYam will turn itself in to a Golfing blog over the winter periods!? Write in if you have a suggestion.
It will be sad not being the select few still on their bikes in Nov/Dec/Jan but then again, I might enjoy not having purple toes and some frostbite to the forehead.
Till then, for now,
Gordon
Flattery in a Bike Shop = Wrong.
Weekly Update 8 – 02/10 – 10-10
Hello all,
This week saw the first ever MOT done on a motorcycle that I have owned, surprising as I’ve had so many older bikes but hey, it’s down to timing I guess. I took the beastie for its first MOT on Tuesday at a place just up the road a Suzuki garage. I went there based completely on a colleagues recommendation (he’s had mostly Ducati’s but as there’s no Edinburgh Ducati dealership, he has to go here to get his bike serviced etc).
It’s easy to find but the actual area outside the showroom is a shambles. There’s bikes everywhere and the surface is similar to a place who has had a boo-boo with a cement mixer. Lots of quite high raised blobs of concrete make riding up to the service doors tricky. Winter services would be bum clenching riding in to there.
I head in to the showroom and am immediately met with two girls whooping and some bloke chortling. A good joke shared there then. I walk up to the service desks and a youngish looking chap says hello, and I mention I called him earlier about my MT. He seems a bit confused but his brain kicks in and he gets on to his computer. Sure enough there I am, “do you have the keys and we’ll get it in to the garage.”
I suppose the good thing about this place is they do this thing called the Preliminary Check, which is basically an MOT before the MOT but it’s free. This way
we can discuss the bikes needs with you and your needs. from here you have full control over the jobs direction, and with your input we can establish a very clear picture of the way forward giving you the peace of mind that costs are under your control and giving us enough information to prepare the job, ordering any parts required in time for a mutually convenient date that we can accurately forecast.
So I asked them to have a look at the front tyre as well, as it’s getting a bit low I said. No problems, 15 minutes they say. I hear them firing up the beast and they drive it in to the workshop and sit for a good few minutes just revving it. All the while the whole showroom is vibrating.
20 minutes later I am on my 8th rotation of the showroom. There’s only so many times you can look at a Suzuki Gladius before being thoroughly fed up. Anyway I get called over and the mechanic visibly winds up for his performance.
“Ok, well I had a good check and the tyre is adequate to pass the MOT.”
Great! I say. Just go ah….
He butts in.
“But. I had a look around the bike and noticed that, the Chassis was dry. The calipers too were dry and the chain is dry. It could do with a service”
Right. I don’t even know what the ramifications are with a dry chassis…is it bad to have a dry chassis? Will my bike stop working unless my dry chassis is quickly hydrated? “no thanks, I’ll just go for the MOT please.”
“I would suggest that your bike comes in for a service as soon as possible as these things tend to develop blah blah”
Well no, I think I’ll just stick to the MOT if that’s ok?
“…..yeah its ok but I just wanted to make you aware of these issues.”
Great! Thanks for that, and he starts writing down some stuff on a bit of paper (a print out job sheet thing) and rotates it around so it’s facing me and he walks away back to the workshop (which you can see by the way as it’s got a window in to it).
So I have a look at this sheet, fold it up and put it in my pocket. He’s away to do the MOT that should take around 15 minutes to complete.
“I could just sign an MOT sheet now, but I’ve got to run it through the computer and that takes 15-20 minutes.”
I watch him go in to the workshop and light up a cigarette, as he proceeds over to my f*cking bike!
So I begin my further 10 rotations of the showroom because I can’t watch, including a wee trip out to see the bikes in the lot. When I come back in I go back to the service desk/youngish looking boy and ask if he was able to get the Metzeler Z6 front in for me if I needed it.
“I know this sounds like a hard sell”…
Here we go
“…but I would seriously consider getting that tyre changed. I’ve had so many blokes coming in here with a tyre like that and they give it all the “nah it’ll be fine” and then come back the next day all sheepish like. You would be stupid not to change it. It’s only £100″
There’s something about this whole situation that I can’t handle. I don’t know whether it’s the cautionary tale, told to me by some youngster(!) or the fact that they offer this “free” check with the “free” advice only to pump all these advisory pointers in to your brain with their sausage fists. It’s like they are basically saying, because they are wearing a Suzuki branded T-Shirt in a Suzuki shop, they can tell anyone that comes in that they know best.
Anyway, I’m not going to make a big deal about it. I have ridden with no brake disks and a bald tyre before so I am sure I can get from here, back to my office with 2mm of tread in the dry thankyouverymuch.
The boy sits down and looks like I’ve just told him his mother is actually his sister, his face visibly angered.
Whilst I am kicking about, watching the lunchtime countdown diminish to nothing, I see this bloke getting his gear on in the showroom, followed by some Suzuki boy coming over and, in the only way I can describe, starts rubbing him off. It’s crude but it’s absolutely true.
“I love those boots on you”
“yeah they’re really comfy. I think I might get some Rizla Suzuki leathers as well.”
“oh yeah, they would look fab. really nice…”
Right. This is really awkward for me watching this so I decide to have a closer look at some Suzuki cruiser’s dials, with a bit too much enthusiasm.
The mechanic comes back in and asks me if I have seen the white sheet he wrote on. I take it out my pocket and he says, oh that’s mine…well why did you leave it on the desk?
Then I hear this almighty rumble and here, it’s this guys GSXR-1000 Rizla Replica. It’s sounds gorgeous and looks pretty good, with some Leo Vince double cans out the back. Two and two together and suddenly it all makes sense.
In between all this, a woman arrived, probably the manager I couldn’t really tell, and she was giving it the big licks, loud talking and tonnes of swearing. I mean every second word was the f-bomb. She was saying how the “Gixxer 750 was the one for her because it’s so manageable.” Even after I had walked over and stood there for 5 minutes waiting for her to finish so I could pay for my MOT, she still garbled on with this boy, occasionally looking at me to agree with her that race bikes are sexy. I have a 1700cc V-twin sitting outside love, you aint getting appreciation from me.
So the two blokes go out to this gleaming blue rocket and the Suzuki bloke starts lovingly running his hands over the tank, and the seat fairing. He notices the number plate is slightly squint and starts manoeuvring this in to place. He continues rubbing the non-existent dust off the seat cover before starting it up again.
They have a chat which is inaudible over the howl that this thing is making at idle and then the bloke gets on it and warbles forward a wee bit. I am a bit excited to see how he makes it out of this minefield of a garage surface and he opts for the tried and tested (amongst weekenders) run along with the bike between your legs technique. There’s a few high revvers as well as he makes it up the steep incline to the main road and then he’s off, giving it a bit of rev as he goes.
The Suzuki boy watches him ride away and gives himself a small smile, another good job done.
I couldn’t help but see him doing that when the beastie came out of its MOT and all I could imagine was me punching him in the face. Why are you feeling up my bike? Leave that numberplate alone. I am allowed to rub my bike, not you.
My MT finally arrived outside and I got my certificate of approval and my keys back. There was some awkward “eh…aye…tyre….do you want it?…..ah……oh…..£29.63 for the MOT then….eh….” from young gun.
I got on my bike already late for work, and I felt really harassed. Not only had I stood around for an hour and a half, been told that I couldn’t ride and I would probably fall off and have to come back tomorrow with a sheepish look on my face and say sorry to the childman and lick his feet…..but I felt a bit…violated. I seem to have a real connection to my bike, a relationship that is created the moment I first sat on it. I’m sure a lot of bikers will understand this. But my relationship is further developed than most, because I do spend a lot of time on my bike. So to have some bloke rubbing and treating it like it was his own, to some may be “good service” but I just felt violated. He looked a bit greasy as well.
I don’t know.
I had a parting thought about this place and it went as thus.
This Suzuki garage seems to be the place to go if you like the concept of bikes and biking, and like to stand around talking about how you did a wheelie through parked cars, or a burnout along the street whilst the police chased you. It’s a place to go if you like waxing lyrical about the beauties of carbon fibre footrests and the joys of getting your knee down, with leathers and helmet matched to your custom paint job. It’s a place to go if you have too much money to care or have no balls, because unless you know your way around a bike, or have done it long enough, I’m sure you would heed all their free “advice” and end up spending an absolute fortune in there. A dry chassis seemed a bit desperate as a reason to get a full service don’t you think?
I mean I guess he was only trying to keep me from decking my bike (and making his monthly target on sales) but he didn’t know that my bike is going SORN at the end of this month. And he certainly went the wrong way about it, by saying that they give free un-biased advice, and then make you feel so damn guilty or afraid to get on your bike that you get the jobs done to their recommendations. I said to him, “you’ve planted that subliminally in my mind, so I probably will go out there and crash now” and he smiled and said “no, I’ve just seen it all happen before. and you will come back all sheepish.”
There’s nothing more infuriating than having some guy behind a desk tell you what’s best for you.
So the MOT is passed without a hitch! I am glad that I will now be able to put the MT to bed without worrying about spending a lot of money. I can now do it all over the next 3-4 months whilst the MT is snug in the garage.
Phew! That was a biggie.
Speak to you all next week!
YamYam
p.s. Thanks for voting all my posts down whoever you all are. Please leave a comment as well if you don’t like the post, and tell me why so I can improve. Thanks!
The Pope is in town, and it’s the easiest commute to work I’ve ever had.
Weekly Update 6 – 30/08 – 16/09
Hi all,
I have a few good stories to tell you but I want to say firstly how quickly this year is going! Blimey guv, it’s whipping past at an incredible rate and boy I’m losing touch. The air is distinctly colder this past week, so much so that my face has been chilled by the time I get to work. If only I could fit my lunch inside my helmet, it would be an ideal fridge.
Yes, the Pope is in Edinburgh today for his runaround in the PopeMobile™. We have been warned the past week through email to “AVOID EDINBURGH” because it’s set to be so busy, you can hardly move your eyelids. Get the train, get the bus, get a plane or walk because what you don’t want to do is get stuck in the 50 mile long tailback and never actually reach work in time.
We’ll as always, I throw caution in to the wind and didn’t listen. And I am really glad I did. Not a queue in sight, not a panicked motorist or wailing horn. No pumping fists or swerving abusers, revving engines or flashing lights. It was by far the most uneventful and delightful ride in to work I’ve had in the 4 years of doing it. It was like coming to work at 4am in the morning. Except it was light.
So my suggestion is that the Pope comes to Edinburgh every day for a year…I don’t think that will fly somehow.
The MT is running well despite a funny knocking sound from the front of the engine. I am of the opinion that a suspension tune would benefit both myself and the bike immensely, so I’ll have to have a word with someone as its not just a case of spanner turns in the MT, it’s an unlock this bolt first, turn this one and then measure….complimicated.
So.
In commuting life you have two kinds of car commuter and they can be broken down in to folk who accept bikes, and folk who don’t.
Folk who accept bikes move over in traffic, they flash you back in to lane on the motorway, they turn and wave, often thumbs up or generally don’t mind you going past them. I love these kinds of commuters.
Folk who don’t accept move over in traffic, but the wrong way. They flash at you, but not to let you back in. They turn and wave, but it’s more of a gesture. It certainly is not a thumbs up and is almost always accompanied with a red face. They will do absolutely anything, until the point of metal to metal, to make your life a living misery. I do not love these kinds of commuters.
Which is why this next story is so funny.
I was coming in to work in really good time actually. I was early! I know!
Travelling up to the Barnton junction mess, I was filtering between the stationary cars, as I do every single day of my commuting life. I got so far up and the cars were too close together, so I came to a halt flicking the MT to neutral and sat waiting for the lights to change. I watched the usual lighting sequence play out and prepared myself to continue by flicking the MT to first, looking over my shoulder to make the guys in cars know I’m thinking about something. (This is a great tip subsequently for any keen biker. If you are moving your head, people will expect you to do something. So if you are planning a manoeuvre it pays to move your head (shoulder check works) and people know you are about to do something) Anyway, the cars in front move off and I wedge myself in to the right between 2 cars. I check my mirrors to see how far the guy is behind and he’s right up my arse.
I always keep tabs on guys like this, because at one point in the very near future I will be in a position to move forwards when he can’t. And I like to let them know this by either waving or turning my head to look at their burning faces. Anyway, there he was behind me quite close, and I saw an opportunity to dart in to the left hand lane, which I did and got about 50 yards forward from the man who was in front of me. The key to successful commuting progress is taking your chances. However this opportunity turned quickly in to a dead-end and as I turned my head to see if the gap was still available for me to quickly move back to the right, I checked my mirrors to see this bloke winding up to close the big gap I was about to fill. Seeing this happen I quickly whipped across to the right hand side and the bloke let rip on his horn as he travelled the remaining 40 yards to my rear tyre.
Nothing on the face of the earth irks me more than un-necessary use of a car horn. It could be peeping to say goodbye, hello or using it to release aggression, it’s all enough to get me going absolutely berserk. I slammed my brakes on with the biggest fist full I could manage, enough that the guy behind me had to move to the right in order to stop himself rear-ending me (this is how close he was) and his bonnet ended up parallel to my footpegs. He peeped his horn in one, very very long drawn out release of anger and I kept myself facing forward. I had my dark visor on so he couldn’t have seen my eyes firmly affixed on his but I was watching as the following scenes unfolded. Much to my absolute delight.
Once he had managed to prise his fist off of the horn area of his steering wheel, he then started talking to himself, albeit with a very aggressive jaw movement and a sharp shaking of his head. His right hand was whizzing about at his side as his window started to wind down. His seatbelt came off with the other hand and flew across his body whilst his face went absolute red. There is no redder shade of red in the world.
All the while my head hasn’t moved but my eyes have went from the right hand mirror with this berk filling it, to my left hand mirror where I make a note that traffic has ceased from the left and it’s clear.
I come back to the right hand mirror where by this point the berk has managed to lever himself out of his bucket seat (this was a Subaru Impreza) and he get’s his head out of the window but doesn’t stop until his whole upper torso is clear of the window threshold. His mouth seems to be winding itself up now as his words start forming in his mind.
And at the point of his release, (the very point that he is about to unleash all the pent-up aggression, the frustrations of life, the universe and everything, the point that his throat, lungs and tongue align with the stars to vibrate the air around him with such force that birds start dropping out the sky, the absolute moment of glory) I perform a flawless (thank you) MotoGP race start in to the now clear left hand lane. As the revs rise I hear the falsetto scream of a demented man shouting some garbled profanity faster than his mouth can form, but slower than his brain can generate.
Now amidst my anger about the whole situation, and the slight weakening of my muscles due to the “all too close” braking moment adrenaline which I must agree was totally stupid and I was lucky I got away with this one, I couldn’t help but find the scene I just left extremely amusing.
In my mirror I could see a car at a 45° angle across the right hand lane, with a driver hanging mostly out his car window shouting something at the top of his voice and shaking his free arm wildly, to a motorcycle now 200 yards away. What’s funnier is he would have then had to get back through his car window, in to his car, put his seatbelt on and then stop at the now red light in front of him, all the while fuming about not getting his release that he deserved thus making him even more angry. I only hope no-one at work looked him in the eye when he arrived because the force of his now doubled aggression would have instantly evaporated anyone in the vicinity.
It was spectacularly funny, but also very sad that someone can get that wound up about driving his car.
Anyway, these are some of the fabulous things that motorcycling can offer!
Winter is soon to arrive, and that means the MT is garage bound for its first big service (by me!) and a good once over.
Thank you all for reading and commenting. Please keep it up!
Gordon
Some deep contemplation went in to this…
Weekly Update 5 – 15/08 – 29/08
Hello.
Yet again I have been very busy this past week with work, meaning that for the first 3 days of the week I was not on my MT. Instead I was in a white van for 2, and on the train for 1, and whilst I was away from the MT I had a chance to think about this coming winter and what winter entails for YamYam and his bikes.
Now the reason I got my MT was on the basis that 2 bikes means that one can go away for the winter and stay nice, and the other can be run in to the ground thus saving money in the long run. I believe differently now and the reasons are to follow. But I think that this decision is a good one because the main motivation is that we wont need to be replacing £600 worth of bike parts every January.
As of Thursday 26th August 2010, YamYam is minus a Suzuki GSR600S K7. I sold it. On eBay…
When I was looking at getting a MT I had asked the question “what would I get as a part exchange price for my 30,000 mile Suzuki GSR600s K7?” The answer was “Nothing.” The bike dealers obviously have to have some scope to mark up the bikes once they have bought them from customers at ridiculously low prices…so what can you mark up from a purchase price of £0? £500? Whatever it was, the dealer didn’t see any benefit in taking in my faithful steed.
So I decided that instead of keeping it and running it in to the ground completely, where I would eventually have to either scrape it, or myself, off the tarmac….I would sell it, and whatever I got for it would therefore be a bonus!
So to cut a long story short, I sold it for £1200! I was pretty chuffed with that, and the guy that turned up to collect it was equally chuffed, mainly because he thought it was in a lot better nick than he expected, even though I had clearly detailed in the listing that it was pretty rusty.
I am quite relieved actually. Not for getting shot of my then winter hack, but for the money that we will save not having to service (or not) two bikes, replace 4 tyres a year, petrol, wear and tear etc etc. It equates to around £100 a month saved if you compensate for wear and tear, replacing corroded and worn down parts. So what then shall I do during the winter, when I would usually be shivering in to work or sliding about on ice?
The Scotrail Fife Circle Train is what.
During my 3 days of non-biking I drove a white van around which in itself was quite fun, if only to listen to the radio on the way. The third day I didn’t have my van, but I got the train. It was at this point that I thought actually, it’s not that bad? I usually, when it’s really bad weather, get the bus. Its a smelly, stuffy, cramped, disease ridden journey at the end of which you get off and are genuinely relieved to get the hell out of that place. Bus drivers think it’s good to turn the heating up full blast in winter, but when you have 40 folk all cramped in, probably wet from the Scottish winter rain, then it all turns to condensation which makes it like a greenhouse. Because it’s winter, we all have our winter jackets on. So you can already see how torturous it is. Couple that with the tiny, OAP geared seats (knees around ears stuff), the sneezing, coughing, paper reading, light flicking passengers and the picture becomes complete…oh that and the complete inability of the bus driver to drive smoothly resulting in some serious frustration as your head goes bashing forwards and backwards, even quicker when sitting in traffic jams.
OH DEAR, I am getting annoyed just thinking about it. Well the train is different in that firstly, you’re on rails. So there’s no bumpy bits. The seats are a bit more spacious. There’s no queues. Yeah the passengers may still have colds and read papers, but the journey is a flat 25 minutes regardless of what the weather is doing. So you’ve not got to sit in a 2 hour long traffic jam because of the complete inability of the rest of the driving population to pay attention when its dark and raining.
It’s a bit more expensive, around about £40 more a month, but when you see how much different the experience is with the train, it’s worth it and I’ll still be saving money than if I was on my bike.
So yes folks, YamYam is turning in to a Spring/Summer/Autumn rider, and is dumping Winter from his repertoire. It makes both logistical and financial sense. I just need to let go of the slightly immature “I’m better than you because I can hack Winter” attitude that’s unfortunately consumed me for the past 3 years.
In other news then, Blair is selling his GSR too! Hahaha. It’s a Fraser exodus.
Blair, as you know, had his first child in December 2009 and as always is with bringing small humans in to this world, there are sacrifices. He fought it for longer than we all expected but he’s given in to the inevitable, even if it’s for the greater picture. So his bike is on eBay right now too.
It will be sad not having Blair to go out riding with every so often…yes we’ve not been getting out so much lately due to me working and Blair daddy-ing. But then again, I’ve invested a lot of my GSR’s money in taking up a new hobby, one that will allow me, Blair and Dad to get out more often together. Golf.
It’s a traditional Scottish sport that I’ve watched Blair and Dad play for years, whilst I walked along beside taking photographs. But now it’s time to get myself behind a club and start getting out in the fresh air in my spare time. I am so excited about it that it’s borderline obsessive already, for I have spent the past 5 days relentlessly scouring the web for the best deals, going up the driving range to test clubs and generally being really sad about it. But it’s a Fraser trait so I can’t feel to sad about it.
I have a funny story regarding a man in a car that is so angry that he felt compelled to hang out his window and shout abuse at me. Next week for that.
Cheers all, and sorry for the 90% non-biking post.
Gordon
Its a big old bus this…
Weekly Update 2 – 03/07 – 28/07
Hello everyone.
It’s been a busy old month in the life of YamYam. Firstly I had my meeting with Glen Richards, to get my artworks signed! It was a nervous time for me for some reason, but anyway it went without a hitch and it was a great experience, Glen is a fantastic bloke. I gave him his complimentary canvas and off he went with it under his arm, to show all the HM Plant boys during his tea! I showed him the Bayliss as well and he loved it, so hopefully the word will spread and I’ll get some more orders!
I’ve been commuting to Glasgow the past couple of weeks on the MT and boy oh boy does it fatigue me. It’s not the riding position at all, in fact it’s the most comfy bike I have ridden. It’s the vibes through the pegs, coupled with the lack of foot movement (on the motorway) makes my feet fall apart after half and hour. It’s not the best and it’s certainly needing some kind of foot restage botch if I wanted to use it as a proper touring bike.
“There is something about traveling at high speed a few feet above hard ground that gets your attention. When the body is right there, the brain tends to be right there with it.”
I was planning on writing a story about the reasons why I believe motorcycles to be safer than cars, but having typed just that in to Google, I found this article here. It pretty much says exactly what I was going to, so there’s no point in regurgitating, I’ll just link to it and write something else!
I have been working extremely hard these days at work…obviously. I have been doing some serious hours an it’s left me with zero time for well, anything. I get home at 3am, I am more concerned about sleeping than updating yamyam or other important things like eating.
After a weekend to forget, even though I already have due to exhaustion, I am now on the recovery and have some free time to do all the things I haven’t been able to do for the past month.
The other night I finished very late through in Glasgow and had forgotten to put my clear visor in my Kriega so had to ride for an hour and a half in the pouring rain with my dark visor on. It wouldn’t have been so bad had it been dry as I could go along with it open to see the road, but because of the rain it was near impossible. But after an hour on the bike and getting saturated through, I was suddenly aware of the cats eyes on the newly laid stretch of road near Kinross. They lit up so brightly that through the dark visor it was almost like a landing strip leading me home. It was amazing, as pretty much that’s all I could see through the visor.
That happened several times over the coming weeks, me forgetting my clear visor, me riding home in the dark, sometimes dry, often wet. I would always love getting to that stretch of road, as it meant I was almost home; the place I have grown to miss through not being there at all the past wee while.
One thing is for sure though, the MT is the best bike to be on when you are knackered and wanting to get home. Once you are in top gear, you just chug along. Nothing else to really think about. That’s what I love about it, if you want to get a thrill, open the throttle quickly. If you want to cruise, just sit back and enjoy. You feel amazing regardless of what style you feel like.
I will be sad when winter comes around again (and at this rate, it’ll be tomorrow)
Washed it for the first time in two weeks today, it was pretty dirty all over and I was secretly worried it had been damaged or rusted, but it was brilliant. All the dirty stains and rusting parts cleaned up a jem and it’s sitting outside my house gleaming in the evening sun.
I am glad I am so fortunate to own such a bike. I see a lot of bikers on the road on bangers and old bikes. I don’t feel bad for them, because they are probably loving it. I just feel fortunate to be able to walk out to the MT every morning, knowing that it will soon be locked up and still gleaming, as the GSR is brought back in to active service. I too will soon be riding around on a banger, but I will also still be loving it.
Sorry for the complete lack of update. It couldn’t be helped.
Cheers
YY
Weekly Update 1 – 21/06 – 02/07
That’s more than a week of update but only this once.
Hello and welcome to my revamped YamYam for the 2nd time this year…the reasons for my changing of the look twice are that I feel YamYam is only seen for the big feature reviews, namely the AGV GP-Tech, MT-03 and the Kwak ER-6N among many. Only the dedicated followers and RSS feeders see any of my other posts, so I think it’s time to shake things up for the benefit of both myself and possibly the readers. I remember starting YamYam as a way to share my experiences on 2 wheels with the world, and as of late it’s turned in to a place to dump my aggression and annoyances. There’s still going to be that but I will try to get back to the good things about biking and my new bike will aid that.
I had my summer holiday the week leading up the 1st of June and since coming back to work 2 weeks later I have been full steam ahead. So what has been happening of late then…?
Last Monday (21st) I got a call to say that the MT was ready. Excitedly I went up Tuesday morning with the intent to leave the GSR with the garage to get the bearings fixed/replaced if it wasn’t too expensive. I arrived seeing the MT sitting outside and got the same thrill I had when I saw it. There’s just something primal about the way the MT looks; beastly, hunched and taught.
Heading in I got the keys for the MT and asked about the bearings for the GSR, around £100 was the reply, ok doke was mine.
We went out to the MT which was sitting beside an enormous Harley Davidson trike. It was absolutely disgusting to be honest, sickly candy blue, big seats, flat dash with radio, sat nav, heated grips etc etc. Then the bloke mentioned that the guy riding it hasn’t got a bike licence…
Apparently if it’s a 3 wheeler you can ride it on a car licence, which was extremely worrying. Anyway, we said our last pieces of “friendly banter” and I got on with my day.
The MT is glorious. I don’t know if you have realised yet, but I love my bike.
When I first got my bike I was sitting at the lights in the middle of Edinburgh and a bloke on some Fazer iteration pulled up and immediately shouted “I want that bike” to me. I opened my visor and laughed. He said something to the effect of:
“Aye, you should have seen it, the other day I got my bike out the garage after the winter, very same day slipped on some diesel and wrecked the whole right side” he said, pointing to the sorry-looking indicator, sadly dangling by it’s wiring out the side of his fairing.
“Aye? That’s a shame” I said.
“Aye. Anyway, want to swap?”
I laughed, this time with more meat. “Aye, why not” I said and turned to see what stage we were at with the lights. Pedestrian is now red so we are about to go.
“Take it easy mate” I said and he returned the wish.
First gear, click, let’s rock. Summer Luvvie #1.
A few days later I was at the very same set of light and I drew up beside a guy sitting on a Varader learner bike. I noticed he was looking at the MT but I am really not the kind of guy to blow my own trumpet, so just let him get on with it and didn’t offer a “what d’ya think partner” look.
He then shouted “WHAT SIZE ENGINE IS THAT!?” and so the conversation begun.
He was a really nice guy, from what a 3 minute rapid traffic light conversation reveals, but you could tell he loved his bike, or rather the biking experience. He excitedly reported how he had just passed his theory test and was about to sit his practical test in a few weeks. He lovingly tapped his tank as he spoke about his commute from Fife and how he loves being out and about on his wheels. It reminded me of when I first passed my test, the sudden freedom and exclusivity that biking brings.
I mentioned I ride from Kinross, wished him well on his journeys.
“Once I pass my test I’m going to get a man’s bike…like that one.”
He offered me lead position and off we went, with a nod goodbye.
It always amazes me how quickly you can have a conversation at traffic lights. It’s one of biking’s great exclusives.
Riding the MT isn’t something for one who doesn’t like attention, for everywhere I go people stop and stare, bikers ask questions, van drivers put thumbs up at dirty windows. It’s a real moral booster, that’s for sure.
Riding from the Forth Road Bridge in to Edinburgh at 8:30am you encounter a set of traffic lights that I like to call “bum clenchers”.
These are the lights that have a habit of changing to amber just as you pass the point that you could have stopped for them. The result is either a bum clencher through the rapidly approaching red light, or an extreme-to-the-point-of-stoppie anchors out braking manoeuvre that one day will inevitably end in a face plant scraper.
Anyway, I was sitting at these lights having filtered through the traffic and I saw a guy approaching behind me. He got alongside and opened his main visor of his Caberg, leaving the Top Gun internal visor down and shouted to me,
“ARRIGHT! THESE LIGHTS ARE SO F*CKING DANGEROUS MAN, SERIOUSLY.”
I nodded, having not bothered to open my visor because in the time it had taken him to stop, open his visor and think of what words to spit out, I had looked at him and his bike.
He was on a Repsol Honda rep, with a top box. There’s a contradiction itself. But then looking along you see that he is wearing jeans and trainers. His choice. Textile jacket, Caberg helmet.
Now I don’t generally dislike folk who wear jeans, hell I’ve worn normal jeans on my bike before. But I didn’t do what he did next.
Seeing my acknowledgement to his spurt of fury over the bum clenchers, he then cracked his main visor down, watched for the lights to go to green and then waited for me to go.
I gave my bike a wee bit revs as we had missed the immediacy of the green light so off I went sounding glorious as I did. He then, and I’m not exaggerating here, ripped past me, red-lining it. He then weaved through all the traffic, top-box shaking from side to side, full bomb only to screech to a halt at the next set of lights. Again he fired off from these lights and continued his high-speed filtering in to the sunset.
Summer Luvvie #2.
Anyway,
I’ve got my meeting with Glen Richards on Friday, with him signing some of my artworks of him on the HM Plant Honda. Should be good but I’m nervous about it. Will take up the Troy Bayliss/Ben Spies to show him as well, I just hope the weather stays fairly decent.
Emma and I went away on the MT on Sunday Night to watch the sunset on top of Cleish Hill, it was pretty nice but the midges and flies made it unbearable so we went for a quick spin round by Kelty and then home again. It was fantastic heading out at 9pm in lovely warm sunshine. I took the main photo from Cleish Hill.
I think that’s it for this weeks update.
Let me know if you like the new look/format.
All the best
Gordon
50,000 miles and counting
On Sunday the 2nd May I crested the 30,000 mile mark on the GSR, just over 2 years after buying it. It was a weird feeling really, I was excited about it, enough to show Emma whilst we headed down the motorway sliproad (“Aye, very good” she said)
But at the same time as being excited about crossing another milestone I couldn’t help but remember what 30,000 miles has done to the GSR’s health. Anyway,
Since Jan 2007 I have covered over 50,000 miles on 6 different motorcycles: Yamaha MT-03, Buell Xb12Ss Lightning, Kawasaki ER-6N, Suzuki GSR600 and my latest Yamaha MT-01. It’s a good feeling knowing that I am beginning to get in to territory that relatively few bikers (in the UK anyway) reach, and I’ve only been riding for 3 and a half years.
It’s funny how I’ve come full circle from first getting my MT-03, and then swearing never to return to Yamaha after the way they treated the “incident”. But I am so glad I did, because my excitement for motorcycles and love of being a biker has been reignited, and it’s raging out of control. I had become complacent and the daily drudge in to work on my bike resulted in it being just another day whenever I sat on it.
I am also glad that I chose the MT as my new steed. It’s crazy how many people have gone out of their way to comment on it since I got it 2 weeks ago. I’ve never had anyone come up to me like that since owning the Buell 2 years ago. I think it’s something to do with the V-Twin roar, or the oddball looks but whatever it is, people warm to it.
So I shall continue on and on, sitting upon 2 wheels every day as my A to B.
I must say a little word about the tragic death of a biker just down the road from me. Saturday was a glorious day to be out on the bike, and we were out as well. It seems that no matter how nice the weather there are still people dying on their bikes. I always feel sad for these unfortunate people, but always always sceptical. I don’t know why really, but whenever I hear of a biker dying, I always think of the biker doing something wrong or riding beyond theirs or the conditions limit. Sometimes its just a freak coming together in the middle of nowhere.
My scepticism isn’t helped much after witnessing a bunch of high-vis clad bikers wobbling all over the road on Saturday, one of which left his indicator on for 10 minutes. I want to stop these bikers and slap their dishes. Get a grip. Ride safer. But then why should I?
Take care out there please, and keep your head screwed on.
Onward.
YY
How to keep warm on a motorcycle…
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Hello y’all,
Things have been quiet on the yamyam front for the past week or so due to me starting another artwork. However this one is zipping along nicely so I should be able to get some posts up soon. Anyway, as I was trawling through backlogs of stuff I found this and thought you should see it!
Well…it’s certainly one way of keeping warm. I saw this in Glasgow last year around November.
Brilliant.
Check out www.gordonfraserartwork.co.uk to keep up to date on my artworks.
All the best
Gordon
Honda VFR1200F. A Possibility?
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Well then folks. Well then. In my last post about my future bike choice, I talked about 3 options to consider when buying a bike. The options were you get a house with a hose and a dry garage, you go wash it at a nearby garage before you get home or you buy a bike fit for purpose.
I ended my post with
“This also means repairing the GSR yet again, and who knows, that may be anything from a clean service and new caliper seals, to a new ignition block if they can’t unseize it. And who knows how much that’ll cost? By my experience, £100 won’t cover it.”
Well I still don’t have my bike back yet (it’s due to be completed tomorrow) and on top of the caliper seals needing changed, I did indeed need a new ignition block. I also needed a new sprocket and chain because it was “a good one” said Stuart. All the teeth were pretty much half the size and the chain was rigid.
£100 won’t cover it, and it’s another January of financial drain.
So anyway, I said in my last post that the answer to all my problems was getting a BMW R1200GS. But then one day at lunchtime I was browsing the Honda website and remembered the VFR1200F was about to be released and sure enough, it had been. As I poured over the various infos and pictures, I suddenly started to realise that hey, this might actually be the bike for me. I will now go through the reasons why.
(All images below are from http://www.feelvfr.com)
At first I noticed how nice it looked. I remember when I first saw it, I didn’t really like that huge fairing. I must have grown to it, because now I quite like it. I like how aerodynamic it looks and the unbroken lines make it very sleek.
Reading through the specifications I noticed a lot of things that fitted my requirements. Shaft drive, build quality and quality materials. Good winter accessories. It has a V4 engine, single sided swingarm, radial brakes, chunky rear, nice seat, good riding position.
This thing looks like it could do a lot of miles and not complain.
I’ve read a lot of reviews about this new Honda shaft drive and how it works. It certainly removes the need for any maintenance, which when riding in winter is a massive draw.
It has a centre stand which would be superb for cleaning the back wheel. Would remove the need for me to get my buckled paddock stand out of the garage every time.
Honda seem to have really thought about what a rider wants out of a bike, and especially a rider that will ride his bike a lot. The 12v cigarette lighter would be superb for SatNav or other accessories that you would use on a bigger trip.
So after having a quick whip around the details, I gave Blair a call and asked him about it.
He agreed it would be nice and said there was a review in MCN that week about it. One of the things he said was that the shaft drive seemed to skip when going fast over bumps. Not really an issue unless you are a knee down kind of rider. He also said that it was 170BHP and would hit around 160mph…
And this is where my interest ended.
One Hundred and Seventy Brake Horsepower.
Imagine if you will a nice winters morning. You are riding to work and aye, it’s a bit cold and overcast, but you knew this yesterday and yet you still got on the bike because you love it. It’s in your blood and you would never take the bus unless your bike was physically immovable. You made your bed when you signed up to the 365 biker club and you never think about quitting.
Then it starts to snow. There’s nothing you can do about it, you are halfway to work. You can’t turn around. You just have to keep going. But the snow is lying.
So you get to work and as you travel down the cobbled, wet and snowy surface you get to the hill before your garage. And therein lies the problem.
You now have 170bhp to try and baby along this street. There doesn’t seem to be any GSXR style ABC power control. There’s no traction control. Your only way of dealing with it is down to what your right hand does.
This neatly leads on to the next problem. The fairing. Although it’s beautiful to look at and really shiny, there isn’t upon inspection any holes or places to fit crash mushrooms.
We all know how expensive wee fairing panels are and that’s some of the reason why they are all split up, so you don’t have to replace a massive plastic panel if you are unfortunate enough to drop it.
The VFR1200F has this problem. And believe me, when you are going down this cobbled road with 170bhp under your right hand, you will be thinking about it.
Why make a bike so powerful, when it’s intended for touring and bikers who ride their bike? This isn’t a track bike Honda. So why are you giving it so much bloody power?
The speed limit is 70mph in the UK and yes, at some point we are inevitably going to break that. But not by over double. So why can this bike go 160mph?
It’s baffling really. And this is why the VFR1200F is immediately obsolete for me. There’s no way I will get insurance on this bike, not without a severe heart attack and some ball crunching from Emma. And inevitibly if you ride a bike in the shit weather I ride in, it will be dropped, and that beautiful fairing will be reduced to a blabbering mess within 2 feet of asphalt contact. Not only that, but it’s over £10,000!!
It has the credentials for a marvellous bike, it really does. But it’s been ruined by whacking in an absurdly powerful engine, stupid design and amazingly stupendous price.
I haven’t ridden it and I never will. It’s pointless.
Blair had a good point. He said,
“Why get a brand new bike, especially one so damn expensive, and watch that rot away to nothing in the Scottish winter? It’ll be even more painful watching a £10,000 bike rust than it will your current bike. And it will rust and it will get manky, because you will ride it. What you need to do is get a bike for summer and keep the GSR for a winter hack-about.”
He has a good point and one that I am now seriously considering. I could have a bike that I ride from say April to November, and my GSR for November to April. This way I keep a bike in great condition and I reduce the mileage on both bikes. This means less servicing, less miles and more value. It also means I wont be using the same bike every day all year round which should bring back some of the enjoyment of riding a motorcycle for me.
I really need to have a think about it, but for now the VFR is so far beyond reality it’s actually quite funny.
Thanks for checking YY over the past month, the view have really been good!
All the best,
Gordon
Welcome to 2010!
Well welcome one and all, for it’s two-thousand-and-ten A L R E A D Y.
The weather here is atrocious at best, so because of this my bike has been constrained to the work garage, as I couldn’t get it home. Because of this, my bike has sat for a week and now that I have returned to see it, the ignition is seized stopping the key from turning (you can still get the key in though…) and thus I can’t start it, thus I can’t unseize the rear brake that’s now jammed on.
Ace.
It’s going to be a few weeks I would imagine, before this snow and ice clears up. This isn’t good because my bike needs to be in active service asap. I think what I might do is get Stuart to come and get it and do a service. Then I can just wait until the weather is a bit kinder to 2 wheels.
Anyway. I hope Santa was good to y’all and you had a great and happy new year’s celebration. We had a great time, with a new Fraser in the family (Lily, both mother and daughter are well!) and some nice relaxing fatty-eating-chocolate-and-other-leftovers joy.
2010 has to be a good year, because 2009 wasn’t. And for this reason, I have made a promise to update YamYam at least twice a week. Let’s see how I do.
Oh and the 25th of January will celebrate my 3rd year of YamYam and 2 wheeled joy. Insurance AHOY!
Cheerio for now!
Gordon
YamYam’s Top 10 Posts Ever.
So whilst I await the melting of the Fife Ice Caps, I shall collate some data…Geek Style.
I am always amazed at how sparse reviews are for products, or how biased a lot of reviews seem to be. Motostrano Blog said it excellently:
“I rarely read product reviews these days. They are all advertisements and we know it- pure fantasy. On the other hand, there’s the ‘discussion forums’ where you can read countless essays written by lonely males holed up in their mancaves about the products they’ve purchased, sharing with others the ins and outs of why the product they invested in is so great. Of course it’s great, you bought it and you’re actually wasting life hours writing about it. We beat our chests about the little gizmos and gadgets we’ve been able to scrounge up on our hunting and gathering missions out in the shopping wilderness. Heading back to camp with our gear speared on a stick- which is really a lonely little desk away from the kids or wife – we review the goods, inspect it, try it on, pose in action shots in front of the mirror, perhaps in our underwear, perhaps dressed up in our leathers in the garage. Then, as if to map out a terrain that no other fellow savage has explored, we set up to transpose our inner most thoughts on digital paper about whatever it is we just bought, signaling to other tribe members where to go and what to see along the adventure.”
So it’s with great satisfaction and indeed pride, that I have been complimented on my reviewing technique and detail. This is probably why (and you will see soon enough) my reviews are the most popular out of my posts. Naebody cares about me seeing a plane almost hitting the Forth Road Bridge. They want to know why I think the Puma Desmo’s were the best boot ever made.
Anyway, lets move along. I give you the top 10 favourite posts on YamYam ever (in descending order):
#10: Review: Respro “Foggy” Anti-fog Mask
#9: Review: Puma Brutale Gore-Tex Boots
#8: Update: AGV GP-Tech Helmet
#6: Review: Shark RSI “Eden” Helmet
#5: Yamaha MT-03
#4: Review: Puma Desmo 800 Boots
#3: Tutorial #1: How to change grips and handlebars
#2: Kawasaki ER6n
The most popular post on YamYam ever is, surprise surprise:
#1: Review: AGV GP-Tech Helmet
So there you have it. I think the reason is I got the GP-Tech really early, as in first batch. This allowed me to get a head-start and offer the viewing public a chance to see what this new helmet was like before going out to purchase it themselves.
It’s a good indication of what people are after when looking around the interweb for motorcycle type stuff.
I hope you enjoyed reading the top 10 posts, but also have a wee look around the archives at the non-review stuff. You might be pleasantly surprised…or endlessly bored.
All the best
Gordon
Winter Hack
What what what.
My last post to have the blue banner of information said that I was in a so-so mood, had done 24486.3 miles on my GSR and…go to yamyambiker.com.
Since then, as you can see with my new blue banner of information, I have increased in mood by 3 bars, I have covered 2619 more miles on my GSR and you’ve still to go to yamyambiker.com.
So what’s the chat? What have I been doing that’s so damn interesting to keep me from my YamYam duties. Well as you know, I sometimes go for ages and then end up writing a long assed post, so perhaps this might be one of those moments. I’ll start from where I left it…that is I had just reviewed my current jacket (Wolf Titanium if you ask), I had been told I would be better suited to a scooter because I couldn’t handle my Kwak ER-6n and I was off to Tenerife. Not before emailing West Coast Harley about their current Buell stock, a small yamyam probe to see what the deal was (deal…get it?)
Well I got back from a spectacular 2 weeks of sunshine, sleeping, eating (a lot) and bobbing in an extremely cold pool. Like a true Scotsman, I sucked it up and I was in there pretty much every day, floating like a fleshy coloured iceberg, whilst others sat shivering on their sunbeds. I didn’t care. I wasn’t thinking about work, I wasn’t thinking about the thousands of troubled thoughts that plagued my mind on a daily basis. For 2 weeks (well, 1.3 really) I was awol from my mind, from my life back in Scotland and all that was really to do was decide what to eat (crisps or bread), what to wear (usually just shorts…easy ladies, and a t-shirt) and what to do; float or read…or watch a film…or go for a walk.
We arrived back in Scotland to an extremely cold, windy, wet Saturday morning, having had our plane delayed a wee bit. I sat on my couch at 6am deliberating whether or not to go to bed or just ride it out and see how far I made it. I went to bed.
It was great being back really. I love Scotland and no matter how many Hunters Chicken I ate (a delicious meal prepared by someone other than me in a restaurant filled with alcohol and sunshine), it’s still no match for the stiff, crisp Scottish air. Refreshing some might say.
Before heading away on holiday I had realigned my broadband duties from Virgin to O2, because I found Virgin’s internet to be slow in the evenings, slow enough that I had to buffer some films from Sky Player a few times.
What a mistake that was. From the get-go O2 were dismal, utterly dismal. Think along the lines of trying to open a YouTube video, only to have someone actually come out of your screen and scream “Who do you think you are!?” at you for even trying. I couldn’t load any videos, surfing was a task and I was totally fed up. However I had a 30 day “Happiness Guaranteed” period where I could opt out and nothing would be said of it. I gave it a little while as I was promised that the service would start to pick up shortly because of some maintenance they were doing to the lines or something.
Well guess who got their math wrong? ME. I got back from Tenerife thinking I had a good week left of my 30 days, only to find that I was actually, from Saturday of my arrival onward, 1 day in to my contract. The service was no better by the way, still as crap as always. I should have been getting 8mg. I was getting 0.3mg.
So with no time to lose, I called them up and got my MAC code, then requested my account be cancelled to be told that I am now “within contract period and it’ll cost £160 to get out of it.” After much argumenting and deliberating from O2 I got out of my shockingly bad contract and luckily I was able to go to a more safe bet, BT. Now that I have, my internet is ace, I can watch films, watch YouTube and I’ve even updated www.gordon-fraser.com to celebrate.
But all this has taken it’s toll on my time available to post here, that and just getting on with riding my bike every day with pretty much no incident.
Since getting back the weather has steadily decreased to the point of no-feely-handies. So I decided that it was time to forget looking swish, and buy some hand guards for my Gisser. I did buy them (£38) and fitted them with Dad with a little trademark Fraser persuasion.
What a difference, my hands are now wind free and really a lot warmer. Then the weather got to the point that in the morning my bars would be iced up, so really even though my hand guards were preventing wind and rain from chilling my fingers, I was still holding on to a frozen piece of metal, so my hands still got numb. The ride home however is a different story and I am ever so thankful I took the plunge and fitted them. I also re-fitted my screen unit and it’s keeping a lot of the rain and draught off me so that’s ace. The only problem is the increase in ease of speeding. I am always so used to having the drag on my body that the position I sit at naturally on the throttle is causing me to cruise faster with the aerodynamic advantage of the fairing. It has been a few times I have glanced down to see that I am not sticking to the speed limit without knowing it. ANYWAY.
Hand guards were from a V-Strom 650, for all you like minded GSR riders, and can be picked up from your local Suzuki dealership.
I mentioned the email to Buell Glasgow.
Well I sent a wee informal “Now that Buell is going south, what deals you got?” email to them and I’m not exaggerating here, 8-9 calls later they are still trying to get me in to have a chat. I’ve decided to forget going for a new Buell because I spoke to Stuart @ Jacksons Bikes about it and he said that because of the miles I do, I could quickly find myself in a position that I need a part and they can’t supply it. Say if the engine management computer packed in, and I couldn’t get a replacement, that’s my bike written off, even if the rest is in mint condition. So aye, even though I LOVE LOVE LOVE Buells, I just can’t justify it really. I’ll stick with the pain in the arse and rusty boy until it packs in (it’s been a while so touch wood nothing will happen…)
So that’s really where we are at. It’s a week until christmas, Blair is soon to be a Daddy (it could hit off anytime now) and work is busy as feck.
In a week there could be a small, brand new Fraser in this world. After a year of utter SHITE, I am desperately holding on to the hope that it’ll end well. I am hoping.
2010 is a new year. It’s a fresh start. One things for sure, it really couldn’t get any worse than what 2009 was. If it does, there’ll be bigger problems than my hands getting cold, or BT internet. 2010 could be the greatest year of everyones lives, purely for the fact that we had one of the worst years just before it. I hope for all our sakes it will be.
AHHHHHHHHH
It’s definitely time to draw a line under this post. Word count is 1308 as of this word HERE.
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Go check out my home website WWW.GORDON-FRASER.COM and feedback me.
All the best for the remaining 2009. I will speak before the bells.
Thanks for visiting all,
GORDON!
Fuel Light Challenge #1 RESULTS!
Read it and weep.
As Aaron said on the first post, this was quite a hard challenge to stick to, not to mention boring. It was amazing just how slow it felt going 70mph, not because I am so used to bombing along, but because everyone else was bombing past me at ridiculous speeds. Does anyone stick to the speed limits these days?
I would be tooting along at 70mph and I was able to look about more, noticing things I hadn’t even seen previously. An added benefit to watching your speed: you get to sightsee more. 
So how did it all work out then? Well from the chart you can see that I did 39 more miles, it used 2.2l more fuel and returned just about 10mpg more. I used the MPG calculator here to calculate these figures.
So in the end was it worth it? Well I have to say yes. It got me further on less fuel and I was able to relax a bit more on the journey. It would save me £300 a year as well which may not seem like much but it’s something.
Hope you found it useful!
Gordon
Fuel Light Challenge #1
So this morning I go out to my bike and look at the dash when I turn the key. 2 bars of fuel left. Hmm.
Now usually the way it works out is that the day that I need to fill up, I usually have 3 bars left that get me to my work and then to the petrol station afterwards. Today however was different and instead of going to the nearest petrol station to fill up I decided to see if I could conserve my petrol in order to get to work on 2 bars.
My work is 34 miles from my house and I knew that really, it wouldn’t be an issue, but I didn’t fancy playing the fuel light challenge so played it cool and done the eco thing.
Sure enough I arrived at work with still 2 bars, where as normally I would have been on total flashy (reserve tank in GSR terms. The petrol pump symbol flashes when you have say 5l left in the tank, and the whole gauge flashes when you are down to your reserve 3l ish.)
It got me thinking. If I can get to work on 2 bars driving at the speed limit and keeping accelleration to a minimum, what would it be like if I always did that? In other words babied it about from full tank?
Well here we go then, the start of the test. See chart below.
Ok. So usually I fill up my tank and then bomb it. Not in town necessarily, but on the motorway or dual carriageways etc. My full tank gets me home from the petrol station, then a full commute the next day, then in to work the next day after that. I then go to the petrol station on the way home with around 5.1litres left in the tank (even though it’s on half flashy, I am too chicken to play the fuel light challenge.)
Tonight I filled up my tank to the brim, 10.9litres of fuel. Calculating (roughly) the MPG, it seems I get 44.5mpg in rip-the-arse mode. From the second I turned on the ingition, I was in eco mode, so pull away and immediately to 2nd gear, then change up through the box until 5th doing 30mph. Easy on the throttle and no hard accelleration.
It’ll be really interesting to see just how long my tank lasts, and I might take it that one step further and strap a jerry can to my seat and really run it dry to see what the mileage I can get out of it is like. I will then compare that to the normal use data.
*Normal Use = hard accelleration, very fast cruising speed on motorways and occasional red-liner.
** Economy Use = quick shifting up to high gear, soft accelleration, low revs, speed limits everywhere with occassional lower than, and general eco mindset.
So I got home tonight with full bars. I will bet that tomorrow I will still have full. Let’s Rock!
New Logo, British GT’s @ Knockhill
So did you notice then?
For those that didn’t, here’s the old logo:
and the new one
What do you think?
I am heading to the British GT practice session tomorrow at Knockhill (Friday), armed with my camera so I should hopefully get some good looking photos.
In other news, and if you had been watching again, I am 9 miles short of the biggie: 20,000 miles…well, not that big but still unbelievable. I have been carting my point and shoot about with me in the hope of capturing the exact point I hit the 20k. I’ve been lucky as I am 9 miles off the mark with my bike at home, it’s not like I am halfway to work on the motorway when I suddenly realise I am 1 mile away from it, with nowhere to park.
I will update tomorrow night with (hopefully) some fabbo pictures.
Thanks again y’all and check out this blog which is runs the same vein as yamyam.
Gordon
Suzuki GSR600s K7 – The Big Review
Hello.
This post would have been done a looong time ago had it not been for my bike breaking so much, so apologies for that.
It has been more than a year now of owning the Suzuki GSR600 and I am about to review it. It won’t be positive in any sense of the word so if you are in a good mood, please navigate to another post on YamYam until you are angry enough.
I guess I’ll start from the start then.
I bought my GSR600s K7 in January of 2008, it was my 4th bike and the last chance of a bike for the next couple of years. I had a Yamaha MT-03 (which melted), a Buell XB12Ss Lightning which costed £2000 for insurance and a Kawasaki ER-6n which was crap and I crashed it and then sold it. The GSR was the bike that I had to get on with as I wasn’t able to afford anything else.
Brand Spanking New.
Blair had one since November 2007 and after having a sit on it and seeing it going etc etc I liked it. I had never had an in-line-4 and had never had access to these kinds of rev’s so was looking forward to it…actually the only thing I haven’t had is a triple.I picked up my bike on the 24th of January 2008 and it felt good. The ER-6n was away and stability was finally here. And it stayed that way for 3 months.
The first thing to go was the electrics. And when I say the electrics I mean the whole thing. The garage replaced the whole wiring loom after a week of diagnostics turning up nothing. It was highly frustrating as we had booked our Scotland Tour for the end of May and I didn’t want anything to stop us from going.
Turns out that they couldn’t find out what the problem was but it was working now and I was happy. If I remember correctly the warranty bill came to something like £600 odd.
Debugging
A couple of months later my bike suddenly failed to start. After many attempts at the house to start it I was off, however on the return trip from work that evening I went to the petrol BP at the Forth Road Bridge and it wouldn’t start for love nor money. After half an hour of attempts it fired up and all was ok for the rest of the week. But then it totally failed to start and it was buggered. After another few days of non-biking bus journey to work the garage had fixed it, with a dirty starter coil or something like that the issue.
My bike then developed a knocking when accelerating in 6th. It wasn’t any other gear, just 6th. As you twisted the throttle I could feel through the pegs a “knock knock knock knock” which sped up as I accelerated. This grew over time in to a knocking at all revs and gears.
My indicators also broke but strangely started flashing really fast. A new indicator relay fixed this. An annoying trait started to appear as well with the mechanic at the garage. He was completely unable to fit my indicator pods back on properly, leaving a huge gaping hole between my tank and the indicator pods. Hair pullingly annoying to say the least.
The knocking became so loud that I had to do something about it. I bought a new Renthal chain/sprocket kit and got it fitted. Turns out my chain was totally feckered and my sprocket had 3-4 teeth missing. Problem solved and the shitty GSR stock drive system was OUT.
Whilst this problem seemed to have been solved, another problem was rearing it’s ugly head. The throttle.
Now I was fully aware of the throttle issues with the GSR and how it lurched forward and back when you accelerated/decelerated, but this was different. The throttle was sticking and I had to force it open and closed if I wanted to get anywhere. This was crap for a few reasons, the first of which was that it’s really unsafe to have to shut the throttle off manually whilst trying to slow down. A number of times I found myself having to brake harder to try and overcome the throttle being slightly open. Also when I am changing gear, the throttle will stick open and rev the bike to 8-9000 revs, which is shit if you are trying to be smooth.
After months of putting up with it I took it to the garage. A week and a half later the bike was fixed. The throttle bodies were siezed, making the butterfly’s stick open. This accounted for the need to force the throttle open and shut and after they were lubed/released the bike was running sweet. This also solved a problem with the bike cutting out in the morning. I would start the bike, let it warm up and then start off to work. I would get to the bottom of the road and change down the gears only for the bike to cut out. I would then have to restart the bike whilst still on the move. I had a suspicion this was to do with the idle speed and I was right.
How my GSR looks now, 2009
The brake switch in my front brake lever broke as well, rendering cars behind me oblivious to my slowing down. The back brake pedal had siezed up due to excessive lack of brake pad so I only had my front. This was replaced under warranty.
January 2009 saw me falling off my bike in the office carpark. This would have been a minor spill had it not been for the engine casings on my bike being corroded. And it was on both sides, and it was leaking oil. The first was fixed under my dollar, but the second corroded engine casing was a warranty job. The spill damage (rear brake lever, engine casing) as well as a 16k service came to £580, which was irritating as the only reasoon I fell off was because the office had left the entrance to the carpark un-gritted. There was not a sausage I could to to stop my front folding from underneath me.
How my GSR looks now, 2009 - The new non-corroded engine casing.
The rear left hand pillion footpeg mount then suspiciously cracked. It’s bizarre but the bottom of the casing has a big crack along it. I thought it would be covered under warranty but no it aint. £160 for that to be replaced by me and Em can’t get on it until a week today. What with the excellent spring weather we are having at the minute, this is a major annoyance.
How my GSR looks now, 2009 - Rusty. F*cking Rusty.
The finish on my right hand mirror is gone. This is frustrating but will be replaced under warranty with some K8 mirrors, which anyone who rides a GSR can do. There is a deal at the minute whereby anyone who has a GSR can get their mirrors swapped under warranty due to excessive vibration. I never use my mirrors for anything but seeing what’s directly behind me, so I wasn’t bothered. However for those who like to look at themselves or read the car numberplate behind them, this seemed to be a reason to get on to Suzuki. I can think of a few more important issues that they could attend to first though.
How my GSR looks now, 2009 - The frame saving R&G Crash Mushroom. Cheers!
And to top off all of this, the throttle issue returned. There seems to be a pattern of things happening twice, but this time it was the throttle shafts not being lubricated enough and now that they are, the problem is fixed.
How my GSR looks now, 2009 - Aye...build quality is an issue folks.
The real bone of contention for me is the crazy lack of durability with anything on this bike. It’s like the boy in the garage said, “They give you the bike for free and then rob you for parts” and I have to agree. I am a guy who takes pride in the finish of his bike and to see the paint falling off, rusting, flaking, cracking, badly designed parts on my GSR is a major issue. My rearsets are totally wasted with the paint finish blowing off with the wind to leave a nice fresh bit of metal to rust up.
How my GSR looks now, 2009 - Cracked footpeg, conveniently held up with a zip-tie.
I ride my bike 5 days during the week and then when it’s nice, some weekends. I try to wash it every weekend and when I don’t, it’s the 2nd weekend. A bike shouldn’t be this easy to ruin and a bike certainly shouldn’t be so easy to break.
How my GSR looks now, 2009
That’s the negative out the way, and when I say negative I mean in excess of £1500 worth of warranty and non-warranty negativeness.
How my GSR looks now, 2009
So now after I have stated all the problems I have had with the GSR, where does that leave me? Well to be honest I like my GSR. If you ignore all the issues the GSR is a nice bike. The throttle issue can be worked around but now and again still catches you out.
The looks of the GSR are still one of the reasons I love it. It’s quite unique and still get’s a lot of attention, but I suspect it’s people thinking it’s the B-King and not the GSR.
How my GSR looks now, 2009
The power of the GSR still makes me smile with the bike really coming alive after 9k all the way up to the redline at 13.5k. The roll on speed at 70mph is brilliant and leaves nothing to be desired for motorway duties, with low speed stability and controlability superb, so long as you use a good helping of back brake at 3-4mph.
The running costs of the bike are pretty good. I pay circa £224 a month for everything, bike £80, insurance £30, petrol £110 (varies), tax £48 (yearly) so this is a big positive.
The time saved in rush hour alone is enough to justify the expense on parts braking and consumables like tyres and services. I can’t really picture what it would be like commuting to Edinburgh in a car. I would have to leave at day break and get home at sunset and this would drive me mad. With a bike I get up and out to work in 20 minutes and am in the office 40 minutes later. The return is pretty much the same and there is absolutely no waiting in queues at all.
Also as a point in favour of the GSR: It took me and Em around Scotland, laden with luggage, camera gear, sweets and maps unflinchingly easy, and gave us the best time on my GSR, including some sweet handling, power and lack of fuss that we would have wanted. This was a big ask of the GSR and it didn’t even break sweat. Thankfully…
So in summary then, how has the GSR performed over the last year/16,000 miles?
Let us not forget first and foremost that the Suzuki GSR600 is a relatively cheap JAPANESE motorcycle. The finish on the parts is to a budget and it almost certainly, everywhere, shows. With exception to the wheels and handlebar, there is not a part on my bike that isn’t rusted or showing signs of deterioration, whether it be finish flaking off or just turning nasty due to cheapness of material.
There are a number of design touches that are completely stupid and worth slapping the designer over the face for. First is the rearset, which is a cast block of metal. This block holds both sets of pegs and the finish on it is a very nice easy scratch silver paint. If you happen to snap a peg mount point, you have to replace the whole damn thing.
The next is the seat, which is paper thin exactly where your bits naturally sit when you are on the bike. After prolonged periods on the road or if you wear thinner trousers, this can be excruciating very quickly. Not only is the seat thin, but it’s also angled such that your body slides forward in to the tank at the whiff of slowing down. A bit of a flatter angle on the seat would irradicate both problems.
The clutch cable obstructs the temp gauge on the dash. This isn’t so crucial but is annoying.
The clock pod vibrates at exactly 6000rpm and it’s LOUD AND VERY ANNOYING. Something has broken off inside this part and is causing it to vibrate, but I haven’t hit it with anything or tampered with it at all, so there’s obviously an inner stress within this part that fails whenever a mildly big bump is hit.
The throttle issue is something that I knew about and folk who know what a GSR is know about. The fix (looking at the GSR forum) is the throttle position sensor being manually set in the build stage of the bike to a preset place. If you get your bike apart and override this setting by adjusting the position of a lever, the bike runs fine. How Suzuki couldn’t advise their garages to fix this themselves to eradicat this highly irritating and potentially dangerous issue is beyond me.
Ridden 50%, broken 50%
Well, there you go. The GSR is a decent bike let down by STUPID build quality issues and a severe lack of durability to their parts. When I am due for a new bike I wont be looking to Japan for my new metal, I will be looking to either Austria, Germany or Italy…although I am sure I said that if you want a cheap bike you need to look no-where else but Japan….who knows. One things for sure, Suzuki really have something to answer for with the GSR and it seems that when Suzuki released the GSR to the world, the didn’t expect anyone to actually ride it that much. For example Blair’s bike has 4,000 miles on it in a year and a half, and it still looks fresh as a daisy. I’m hitting 17,000 in a year and it looks like a pile of rusty ming. I dont want to even think what it’ll be like this time next year…oh dear.
The Summer Luvvies are BACK…
…and I’m annoyed.
Well hello folks, it has been a very frustrating 2 weeks in YY’s life. But hey, whatever.
The summer luvvies are back, resplendant in full race leather, knee sliders ‘n all and it’s havoc! This morning I finally got my bike back and I was up in good time to get going (instead of waking up and getting out the door in 10 minutes.)
It was still quite cold today, a temperature that made me swither on wearing my summer gloves, but I opted for my winters, which was a good choice. As I was cruising along the motorway a guy on an old Kawasaki (i think) went shooting past me wearing a leather jacket, cream jeans and some Timberland boots.
Reaching the city another guy with pillion went weaving through the traffic at high speed, not even flinching as he flew past a bike cop.
It’s been so quiet for the past 3 months and I miss it. I miss seeing the regulars and us both enjoying the fact that we were among relatively few (out of the whole biking frat) that were out in winter weather. Anyway, it’s all good.
The spring is arriving and it’s feeling milder, considering it was only 2 weeks ago I dropped my bike in snow and ice. The sun is out most days and I am loving it.
Bike has been fixed after the small spill.
So the 16k service was done, complete with a new set of brake pads front and back.
A new air filter was fitted and the spill damage was repaired; a new engine case/seal/bolts, new rear brake pedal. Then I got a call last minute to say my valves need shimmed, which would take a wee bit longer.
The bike was ready last night, having been road tested and cleaned (which was great as it looked ace) and the bill came to circa £580. I have gotten used to this figure so don’t flinch when I see it, but when I first was told I almost ate my phone. This biking lark is expensive! haha.
The bike feels great, really solid again. It’s amazing how quickly you can adapt to failing mechanics. It’s like the short story “The Machine Stops” where the machine starts to fail, but they find ways to adapt to it’s failings and make do. That is until it gets ridiculous and the machine fails.
I think it’s safe to say that riding with brakes on the steel is a wee bit harder than riding with new brake pads.
Anyway, biking is ace, and I would never change it for anything. 16,000 miles and counting. I promised you a review of the GSR and that will be the next outing.
Thanks for reading guys, (and girls)
Gordon
January 2009…what happened?
January 2009
Good evening all, it is a cold Sunday night here in Scotland and I have just realised how long I have left it since posting.
My January this year wasn’t the action packed January like last year. No sir, this Janauary consisted mainly of riding to and from work. That’s it.
As far as biking goes, this is as routine as it comes. Yeah there was numerous stupid car driver fuelled moments and a lot of lonely rides in the bogging Scottish winter weather.
My favourite moment from Jan 2009 was when someone pulled out in front of a guy on a beemer Long Way Whatever. I watched as the guy then peeped his horn, raced along side the driver’s window and proceeded to pound on it in frustration. It was a spectacle and something which I found highly amusing. I could also hear some expletives being launched from within his helmet. Brilliant.
We had some snow here over the past 2 weeks and for most the snow had little or no impact. When I say most, I mean people who actually have a grip of themselves. There were people flailing about whining that they can’t get to work and blah blah. Every day I went out in -1°C, -5°C and swept the snow off my bike. I then started my bike and then got on my bike. I then wheelspun out of my housing estate and then wheelspun on to the motorway. I then rode my bike to work and back again. Most people called me a psycho, whilst I called myself a non-panic merchant. I found it fine riding in snow. I found that although it was at times trecherous, as long as I approached the situation sensibly, I was ok.
Well there wasn’t a better way to approach the weather last week. And my story starts thus:
Thursday last week I headed to work in the snow like I had done for a few weeks. I got on the motorway and it was snowing heavy. I then got all the way through the rush hour traffic and roadworks, through some idiotic moves from car drivers playing with satnav and mobiles, some thinking about work and some just sleeping. I got to my work’s street, which is cobbled and the back wheel was loosing traction like mad, so I slowed down to below walking pace, say 3-4mph and kept it in 2nd to try and get some traction. Then as I went over the entrance to my office car park, which happens to be downhill, my front folded and down I went.
Now there wasn’t a whiff of brake, nor a whiff of anything else. As soon as I touched the slush on this slope there was absolutely nothing I could have done. And what’s the most annoying thing? It should have been gritted.
As I fell it felt familar, something which only people who have fallen off their bike can understand, and I shouted “why isn’t this f*cking gritted?”
Well not a moment had passed and a guy from my work had appeared from the garage saying he had heard me fall off. He also said that his car had been all over the place too and was angry that it wasn’t gritted. He gave me a hand up and off I went in to the garage pushing my bike along, although it was sliding still under no engine momentum whatsoever. It gives a wee idea of how slippy it was.
In to the dry garage I stopped and surveyed the damage; broken rear brake pedal (obviously. These things are meant to break…) a scuffed engine casing and crash mushroom was filed away flat. Luckily because I fell on a downslope, the crash mushroom protected the bars from coming in to contact with the ground, so they were fine, as was my bodywork.
I tried to start the engine and after a bit of trying it started fine. It was showing FI but I turned the ignition on and off and it started ok. I then rode it and parked it up.
During that day I went back out and noticed that my bike was leaking oil from my scuffed engine case. There was a bolt loose enough to turn by hand and this was where the pil was coming from. I went inside and called Stuart, from Jacksons Bikes. He suggested tightening the bolt and warming the engine up to put the engine under pressure and see if there was oil spurting out. If there wasn’t I could ride it to his garage. If there was, it was goosed. Luckily the bolt tightened up fine and there wasn’t any oil.
The ride home was interesting though as I crapped myself incase the engine casing burst off the side of the bike, thus throwing oil on to my back tyre throwing me in to a housing estate or field…but I was ok and got to the garage fine.
After riding the bike in to Stuarts new bike garage wing he surveyed the damage saying that he thinks it’s just a case of rear brake pedal replacement and that’s it. My 16,000 mile service was due so I said just to get that done whilst the bike was here and also replace the brake pads after Stuart had mentioned it the last time.
“You’re mental. Riding in this!” He had a look at the back and muttered “That’s down to the steel…” had a look at the front and “…yep, they’re pretty much the same!…how do you stop!!?”
“It’s an issue”
So we agreed on what needed to be done and off I went happy that my bike was in safe hands.
Voila! My January was complete and February is already half way through, which is ridiculous. My weeks have been flying by (hence the reason I never realised how long it has been) and I am getting the bus to work tomorrow, something which annoys me. On Friday there I was sitting in front of some greasy bank exec type who had serious fag and tea morning mouth and kept sighing, which sent all his faggy tea breath over in to my seat. Lovely. Then some youngster sat in front of me, doused in some sweet smelling aftershave which added a sickly twist to the atmosphere. This is why I hate public transport.
I can’t wait for the spring and it seems to be coming through now. It’s to be mild this week and I can hopefully get my bike back before I poke my eyes out on the bus.
I have had the GSR a year now, so I’m going to post up a yearly review of it. Stay tuned for the relatively small good points and the overwhelmingly regular bad points…it’s not going to be pretty…
Thanks for the regular interest all, I know how lucky I am.
Send me a message if you can, I’ll reply to every single one.
All the best,
Gordon
p.s. 15,500 miles this year. It seems to be flattening out a bit, but that now makes my overall bike mileage well over 33,000 in 2 years. Oh and recent news of bike air bag jackets will be covered soon too…grrr.
There’s a reason for the all the clichés
Hello all
As you can see from my mood bar, I’m feeling pretty good today. It’s nearly christmas and I can smell the turkey already.
It’s getting pretty harsh these days regarding weather. Yesterday I hit a sheet of black ice, which wasn’t much fun. The day before that I hit a divot on the motorway and did a massive weave, which also wasn’t much fun. The most annoying part of winter isn’t the cold, or the snow or ice. It’s the dirt. MY WORD, the roads are dirty just now. And it’s everywhere.
At the minute every leading edge of my bike gear is glistening with salt and muck. 99% of my time spent on the road is in partial blindness because of all the crap that gets flung on to my visor. And even when I get the rare spatter of someone in fronts window washer, my delight is quickly crushed as my dirt covered glove smears yet more dirt across my view. It’s a never ending cycle of dirt, and for this reason, winter is the worst.
In Summer our roads are the same. In Summer when it rains it ain’t this dirty. Where the feck does all this crap come from!?
Anyway.
Clichés. Bikes are dangerous. Bikes kill folk. People who ride bikes are nutters.
I dont agree with any of these. But over the past couple of months, I have saw things that have made me think “yeah, I guess that’s why people think these things.” I’ll give you examples.
The first one is quite common and it is annoying for both drivers and riders. It’s the “Everything that overtakes me is a race” rider. If I want to go fast, I go fast. If I want to cruise I cruise. But you get these guys who cruise along and then as soon as either a car or bike overtakes them, it’s like a challenge. I have overtaken a biker, only to be overtaken by the same biker immediately after, one such occasion that nearly cost me my life. I had overtaken this biker a while back, but then had pulled in to the left lane to cruise at the speed I was doing when I passed the biker. About 5 minutes later I was about to overtake a car, did a shoulder check and was just about to pull out when “BBBRBRRRAAAAAAAAAAA” the biker went rocketing past me. I shat myself and started swearing.
I’ve watched a car starts his overtaking manoever, only to find that the biker has noticed this and has sped up to deny the car it’s finish.
I dont know what goes through their minds at the time of this happening, but they must be insulted or something. “How dare you pass me! I’m on a bike dont you know!?”
The second was just bewildering to me.
It was a couple of nights in a row I saw this guy and I just couldn’t fathom his choice. He was on a black bike. He had black Wolf gear on and a glossy black Shoei XR-1000. But to top the look off, he also was wearing a black visor.
Fair enough you may think. Well aye, except when I saw him, it was night time and it was raining. Now as I said above, during winter it’s pretty hard to see anything with a clear visor on due to road dirt. So how the hell does this guy expect to ride his bike safely and know what is going on around him!?
It was an accident waiting to happen. If not an accident it was certainly one of the reasons why dark visors are illegal. It’s because idiots like this guy wear them at night. I didn’t see him and think, he looks cool. I thought, what a cock. He also sat squint in his seat.
Why make it so bloody hard for yourself? He mustn’t have been able to see anything except wee dots of light rushing past him. I have had a dark visor fitted to my helmet at dusk and it was the last time I ever do that. I was late coming home from my brothers and I couldn’t see shit. So ended up riding home with the visor up. Ridiculous.
I dont see that many bikers at this time of year and when I do, they are in the same boat as me. They are all wearing clear visors, day glos, white helmets. I like it at this time of year.
Ahhh, that feels better.
Sorry for the rant, but I wanted to point out my observations.
Roll on the next week, so we can all get a rest from this madness
Thanks for reading all,
Ride safe
Gordon
Winter is nearly here…again.
Well it’s now official. Autumn is happening and it’s October tomorrow, which means pretty soon it’s winter. Great.
The life of a 365 biker is complex. Many a time when I have arrived at work, hands blue from the frost, tears and snot running down my face, with ice formed on my visor, people have asked me, “Why don’t you get a car!?”
It takes a certain love of 2 wheels, a desire to ride that makes someone endure such weather. It also helps if it’s your only mode of transport. Why don’t I get a car then?
Well cars make you warm. They make you (relatively) safe. They entertain you with music, sometimes more. You sit, comfortable in your hugging sports seat with tinted glass windows, offering you a crisp aperture of the world whooshing by. You may have a fast car, which then adds an element of thrill to the whole thing. But then, after you are settled in for the drive and have your stainless steel travel mug firmly positioned in your cup holder, you hit what is known in the automotive world as a “queue.”
It doesn’t matter if it’s raining, if it’s snowing, if it’s sunshine and beautifully warm, one thing above all keeps me smiling; I never have to stop in a queue. I never have to drawl along at walking pace for hours. Yes I may have blue fingers and frozen snot on my face, but I left my house half an hour ago, which was 15 minutes after waking up. When did you leave? “I left 2 hours ago to beat the rush hour.”
Why am I saying this again you may ask? Because I am now coming up to my third Scottish winter, a thing that over the past 3 years has gotten colder and colder, earlier and earlier. And I don’t feel down about it. I don’t wish I didn’t have to go out in the frost to sit on a cold bike. It may make me bonkers, but after nearly 2 years of all weather biking, I am still as passionate and excited about my bike as I was when I first started.
But one things changing this year, and that’s the handlebar muff situation. I will be getting some fecking muffs and have my heated gloves wired up because DAMN it’s cold!
Anyway,
I have been totally enveloped by my new camera. I am going crazy over it. I have always wanted one and now I am having a blast with it. I love having the means to stop anywhere and take a photo, and know that it’ll be super sharp and super big. I took lots of photos on the Scotland Tour 2008 (980 to be exact…) and it beats me up that although the pictures are really good, the quality of the image isn’t. If only I had this camera to go around Scotland, when we had some unbelievable weather and saw Scotland in breathtaking style.
But there you go. On Sunday I went out and took some quick shots of my bike after I gave it a BIG clean. It hadn’t been cleaned for weeks and the chain was sounding a bit wierd. So Sunday was all about getting my baby back up to scratch, and fitting the screen again in a bid to try and take some of the weather off me.
It still looks as good as it did new!
The GSR is holding it’s finish superbly! That’s nearly 12,000 miles and apart from some scratches on the swingarm from bobbins and feet, the rest of the bike is in excellent nick.
Fresh off the cleaning wagon.
The evening light made my bike glow. It also showed up my amazingly bald front wheel...
Over the motorway.
My front tyre is on it’s last legs. It is the original tyre from when I bought the bike! That’s nearly 12,000 miles on 1 tyre! Wow.
My bike goes in for it’s service on saturday, and will get a new tyre on it. The bloke at the garage said that I need a special type of tyre, made only for the GSR. I don’t know if he’s spinning me a line but whatever. For 12,000 miles a tyre, I’ll pay that extra £20!
So yeah, all in all it’s all going well…all.
I’m at the stage just now where I am just chewing up weeks and miles. Work is going so fast and nights are lost to tinkering or surfing, the last time I looked at my ODO it was 11,300 ish. It’s now just about 12k so that’s 700 miles of autopilot.
I have some new gear which has the Outlast material in it. If you have never tried it, I suggest you stop reading this and go and get some. It is amazing.
It’s a thermal regulating fabric. So if you are cold, it makes you hot and visa versa. And it works like a dream. It’s been quite cold recently and I have noticed my arms warming up as I’m riding along. It’s simply amazing!
So yeah, Outlast rocks.
I don’t really have anything else to say at the minute. Life is just churning past at a fast rate of knots and it’s sometimes difficult to steal 10 minutes to update, but I’m pretty sure when the Winter starts coming, I’ll have lots of stuff to say! Because when the nights get dark, the car drivers come out to play.
Thanks for reading guys and all the comments you keep sending in, I really do appreciate it.
Gordon
Lube it or lose it
Yes folks, that’s right.
Well this week got off to a bad start weather wise, with mega rain all the time. It’s getting tougher and tougher to withstand the cold wet commute but there you go, the choices you make.
The other day I was riding in to work and even though the 6th gear tapping was doing it’s thing as usual, there was another type of noise. One which made me instantly worried.
Now the thing with the 6th gear tap is that it’s coming from around the engine area, however this new noise was a back left hand noise…i.e. drive chain.
The thing is, it was only at 0mph-20mph that it was obvious. It was in all gears as well which was even more strange.
I got to work and had a big look around the chain, wheel, sprocket and nothing was apparently wrong. I thought that a missing sprocket tooth might be the problem but they were all present and correct sir. I had a chat with my boss who had just arrived in the garage and he was as baffled as I was.
So the working day concluded and I headed home and weirdly enough, the sound had gone…until I got to a roundabout and it started again. It was really loud, and I mean seriously loud. It’s hard to describe a noise through text but as always I shall try:
Imagine the bike at rest. First gear, “Clunk!”
Clutch out and bike starts moving, “Bvvvv THUMP bvvvv THUMP bvvvv THUMP!”
The thumping speeds up as I accelerate. It sounds at one point like something is stuck to the back tyre and is slapping against the tarmac as the wheel goes round.
“THWACK! THWACK!”
I eventually get home with nerves fraid. I mean I thought that the back wheel was going to fall off. I get in, take my rucksack off and put the bike up on the paddock stand to have a good look.
Back tyre is perfect, no nails or cracks/bulges. Chain is also ok and the sprocket is all there. Hmmmm. I start the bike up and listen for it, however I didn’t really expect to hear anything as on the way home I worked out that the noise only happens when the engine is under load i.e. I am accellerating fast. If I smoothly and slowly accelerate it’s fine.
So I decide to lube it and see if it makes a difference, the chain was looking a bit dry.
Lube, it's your friend
So after a massive doseage of Lube, the sprocket instantly sounded smooth and quiet, a lot quieter than the racket it was making before the lube.
I head out on the bike to see if it’s all ok and it’s 100% fixed. No noise at all.
I breathe a sigh of relief and of surprise. The last time I lubed it was before the service and when I got it back there was this white stuff all over the swingarm, which I just assumed was the garages lube, but it obviously isn’t that good and had either washed off or dried up.
So basically what I am saying is, my chain was bone dry and it was metal on metal action that was causing the noise. I shudder to think what possible damage/accident it could have caused if I had left it any longer. I shudder to think what possible damage it has done already!
It just goes to show folks, if you dont keep your chain lubed, you’ll have a crappy ride and a fraid nervous system.
Lube is your friend.
Thanks for stopping by folks, next post will be about my old faithfuls, my Alpinestars GoreTex boots, which on the 6th August 2008, died.
Gordon
July 2008
Hello.
First off what a tragedy to read of the death of Craig Jones. After an extremely alarming accident at Brands Hatch, Craig Jones suffered too severe a head trauma to survive which is very very sad.
Having seen the accident on Eurosport it was pretty clear that there was absolutely nothing that Andrew Pitt could do to avoid Craig’s fallen body and it was just extremely bad timing that his head be struck by Pitt’s wheel. Regardless of this truth, I can’t begin to imagine how Andrew Pitt is feeling at the minute. It’s a very sad day and a sad day for World Superbikes.
Well that’s yet another month over. This is starting to worry me slightly. My months are flying by all to quickly.
I have a story for you and it’s not a positive one, so if you are not in the mood for a grumpy Scotsman with gear issues, please look away now.
It was a very wet morning and it was so wet that I thought, “I’ll have to wear some sort of waterproofing, as my Jacket and Trousers just won’t go the distance.” So I dug out my Ixon Cheap Waterproof jacket but couldn’t find my trousers because Blair still has them.
So I donned my gear, got my dark visor tucked inside my jacket (in case it was sunny later…wishful thinking I know) and zipped up before putting my Ixon over my jacket.
Now here we go.
The collar of the Ixon jacket is very high, like up to ears high. Usually I manage to get the zipper up far enough that I am able to tuck the remaining collar in to my Kriega shoulder straps. However today it didn’t matter.
I headed out to my bike and opened the garage door. Oh. Dear. It was chucking it down. Oh well, here we go.
I must have made it 400m and my gear let in water.
Oh well, I had predicted this and brought extra underwear and t-shirt. But that was the least of my worries. As I headed on to the motorway the rain was picking up density and the spray from the other cars was unbelievable. My visor was instantly transformed in to a frosted window. Then it steamed up.
Now I am usually not a guy to believe marketing hype, but AGV claim that their visors are “Clear, flat, anti-scratch and anti-fog polycarbonate Race X visor with tear-off system” which is nice. But totally untrue. Yeah when I got the visor I sat with the visor shut and breathed really heavy and it didn’t fog up. But introduce the things that actually do make visors fog up, rain and cold and you instantly have a useless visor.
So I couldn’t see for the spray and rain on my visor, which was easily dealt with by a turned head or a wipe of my glove, but when it steamed up there was nothing I could do but open the visor to get some de-misting action going on. That however made seeing where I was going dramatically harder considering that I was now blinded by the ultra high speed water droplets hitting my eyes.
Not for rainy use either
You would think that my ride to work couldn’t get any worse…well as I was travelling along blind, cold, totally saturated and annoyed, my Ixon cheap-shit collar started to vibrate against my helmet, directly at my ear. Now if you can imagine either a pneumatic drill or a woodpecker attached directly onto the shell beside your ear, you have roughly what I am talking about here.
As I struggled to get the collar tucked in to my bag strap or into my helmet liner with my winter big gloves on, yet more water was now seeping in to my clothes. I would get it tucked in only for it to whip out and start banging against my helmet again 2 minutes later.
I think at one point I was so frustrated and deafened/blinded/freezing that I started to whimper. Then I went f a c k i n g BANANAS.
Then to make matters worse, my gloves started to let water in and my god damn mega boots started as well.
It was a dark day for YamYam.
Oh well.
Every wondered what a white helmet looks like after being ridden through a pack of Scottish Midges?
Fly swatter need not apply
So yeah, there you go.
Other July highlights are my bike breaking at a petrol station but then magically working again, and lots of miles.
Thanks for stopping by folks, I really do appreciate it.
Gordon
