Back in full swing.

Hello all.

Well this last 2 weeks have flown by. My bike was in for it’s 7500 mile service last Thursday and although they didn’t fix the really annoying knocking sound, they did fit another back tyre. £340 it cost for the service and back tyre, which is a big chunk of moolah, but I guess that’s what happens if you use your bike a lot.

So the knocking is still there, but I have booked my bike in at the end of August for a “longer test ride” by the mechanics, who also noted on the service sheet that I need a new air filter…but they couldn’t fit it because they ran out of time…

Great. I am starting to doubt the authenticity of the garage. In a few posts back I wrote about how B needed a new bar end weight after his fell off. Well he went in to the garage at the weekend there and I went with him on my bike so he could get his bar end weight fitted under warranty. He decided to get a new back tyre as well because it was bald! So we waited around for a bit and then the guy signalled B in to pay for his back tyre fitting. When he got in the guy said, “That’ll be £140 please” and B went, wait a minute. He knew exactly how much it should have cost because I got my tyre fitted 2 days ago and it should have been £118 fitted. So he queiried it.

“Well there’s the tyre, and that costs £x, and there’s the valve and that costs £x, and then you have the fitting and balancing and that costs £x….and then you have the bar end weight..so anyway.”

“Hold on a minute, the bar end weight is to be done under warranty!”

“Hmmmm. Hold on.”

He then got the only guy in the whole of the garage that is allowed to deal with warranty issues (supposedly) and he came out and went, yeah it’s to be done under warranty.

If B was any other punter, he would have just paid the £140 and that would be it, no second thoughts, but it just shows how sneaky some people can be.

Rant over.

The weather was tremendous at the weekend, starting foggy and burning off to reveal a gorgeous day. I then went with Em on Sunday to buy a sofa, which was stressful and then had a BBQ at night, which was awesome.

The week started pretty bad with lots of fog. Then today it was foggy again but brightened up a lot during the day, only to lead to an insane mega down pour at home time, but luckily I only caught the outskirts of it and managed to ride across the front of it, which was nice!

The bike is going well, and the back tyre sure does remind me how good the GSR handles. You start to lose that “flickability” when your tyre looks like a car tyre. Oh well.

I was going to get some BT016’s on for their “triple compound” goodness but can’t afford it this month (or the next 56) because of the house. Oh well.

We move in in 2 weeks and Em is beside herself. I can’t wait and I am looking forward to 19 days of pure and simple holiday.

I am finishing my photography website off where I have got all my landscape photographs and other images available for sale. I’ll post details closer to launch, but as a wee taster, here’s one of my images. If you fancy owning a fantastic limited edition print, including ones that are distinctly motorcycle based then check it out.
Thanks for looking all,

Gordon

Suzuki GSR600. Frustrating?

I am exhausted.

Work, house, bike, money, fees, loans, cards, mortgages. It’s all tiring stuff. Then throw in to the mix my bike not starting again…whilst at a petrol station…and you’ve got an idea of my morning.

I left the house early for the first time in 2 weeks and was making progress at the speed limit. I did notice how fast people go when you stick to the speed limit…

My reserve indicator started flashing so I decided that instead of playing the reserve light challenge, I would just head in to the BP at the Forth Road Bridge. It was quite busy and I was unsure of their prices, considering the vast array of Esso prices. £1.19 was not as good as the Esso in the city but it’s better than the £1.23 at the Esso in Kinross…so I stopped, filled up and headed inside to pay.

Upon my return I was still early, and got on the bike. Ignition on, starter in…not starting. The starter motor was going as before but it just wasn’t firing. “Not again. Not here.”

The past twice that my bike has broke I have been at home, but I was in the middle of my commute, in a petrol station.

I kept trying and trying and trying. Nothing.

Then a BP guy who was washing the pumps came across and said, “Is your bike an electric starter?”

“Eh…yes?”

“Well those antennas over there screw with the electric starters of cars, so perhaps it is the same with you?”

“Oh right,”

“Yeah, Subarus and other cars have had problems starting their car, but if you head around the corner, they usually start. I’m not saying it will but it’s worth a try.”

“Ok, thanks!”

So off I went, pushing my bike around the corner like an idiot. Got there and tried again. Nothing.

Then I got an FI warning light and “FI” on the trip. F*CKING GREAT!

I got my phone out and took these photos before I phoned the garage:

Arses…

The Antenna that is “Screwing with everyone”

I thought, “I’ll give it one more try” and held the starter button in for a long time. Just before I was about to release it and throw a creampuff, it caught on, sluggishly and it sounded a bit starved of something. I gave it some redline beans and it settled in to idle.

“Thank $@!£”

I put my phone away and got all my stuff on. It was running fine but I was apprehensive about whether or not it was the dodgy antenna or my dodgy bike.

I got to work and immediately tried the on/off starting and it fired with no problems at all. Here’s hoping it was the antenna, but I’ll mention it at my service tomorrow.

I’ll ask on the GSR forum as well and see if anyone knows of anything like this.
Thanks for looking all,

Gordon

4 years worth in 6 months…

Hello all,

Hope you are all well and enjoying the current weather. It’s great! I think this will be the first of a long list of updates, product reviews and other stuff, so hold on to your hats.

Sunday was the 2nd day out of 14 that I had off, so I took full advantage of it. I had a good lie in and was heading over to the garage with Blair to get his bar end weight looked at. He said that he was riding along, and Kirsty suddenly went “I think a bird just hit me!” So they stopped and couldn’t see anything, and continued on home.

Then B realised that he had a mega numb right hand, and finally noticed the lack of bar end weight on his grip. Hmm.

Very odd. Although B does sit with his hand over the bar end weight…

So he wanted to head out to the garage to get a new one under warranty. It was a really nice day and whilst I was waiting for blair to arrive I sat on the front grass and listened to the birds and trees… Blair arrived and grabbed a quick cig before we headed out. It was a cracking day!

Once we arrived we checked out the metal sitting out the front, including the GSX1400 which was nice, and the boat, also known as a B-King.

May not look like much, but sounds amazing and goes like stink…

So after looking at the nice bikes we headed inside and B started his story up, which resulted in the guy saying (without surprise I may add) that B would have to come back in tomorrow to see the guy that deals with that particular type of request….

It’s really annoying that when someone asks if their bar end weight that fell off can be replaced under warranty, that they all can’t go, “yes” or “no.”

Whilst there, and remembering that my 7500 mile service was on Thursday, I asked if I could have a rear tyre changed at the same time as…well….look at it:

This was a week ago so it’s even more bald than this.

He said “Aye no problem” and I thought I’d better ask how much it will be.

“Well it’s £220 for the service and another £140 for the tyre”

“………well forget the tyre then.”

Bloody hell!!! Upon me asking why it was so expensive, he said “Well you get the spark plugs changed, and they cost £31, and then there’s the added labour of lifting the tank and removing the airbox.”

“Ok.”

I have lifted my tank 5-6 times now and I can now go from bike fully assembled to tank up and airbox off in 15 minutes. Now if you go on the price of the 4k service, which included the oil & filter change etc etc, that was £140. So it’s costing £31 for the spark plugs, leaving £50 for lifting the tank and removing the airbox.

My garage thus charges £200 p/hour labour. Brilliant.

So after I stopped crying, we went out to the bikes and Blair had a smoke and we talked about their complete lack of help…but that you already know about.
We then thought, whilst its such a nice day, that we would go for a quick blast up to East Lomond and then home again, which we did and it was ace.

There was a few police bikers out, but they were on one of those police training day things, where the police man takes you out and teaches you how to ride fast and safe. Both Blair and I went past them at a brisk pace, then thought, “I just went past a police man at more than the speed limit and he didn’t chase me.”

The thing with these courses is though (bearing in mind I haven’t been on one, I have just read about it) is that they don’t worry about you speeding. They actually encourage you to so that they can show you how to safely do it. It must be weird for you to be followed by a police man, doing more than the speed limit but he’s not pulling you over.

Anyway, after we got to the top of East Lomond, we stopped and had a chat about bikes and stuff. We then started talking about the service again and how I have actually done just under 9000 miles (and I’m just getting my 7500 mile service…oops. But I had my 4k late anyway) and wondered how many miles B had done.

He said that if we take off the Scotland Trip, he has done 2500 miles in nearly a year. I said that he was the UK national average biker and when we sat there thinking about it, we worked out that I have actually done 4 years worth of riding (on my GSR, which I got at the end of January, 08 ) in 6 months. All in all, I have done around 12 years of UK national average biking in a year and a half. That’s pretty scary.

He then quipped, “at least it’s cheaper. I’ve not even had my 4k service yet.”

Great.

East Lomond. Where brain’s get fried.

We then headed home and as we approached the road to my house, a Kawasaki naked old thing pulled in in front of us and it sounded amazing! We all then stormed along the road and it was a great finish to a nice ride out.
I fancy a 1 piece textile suit. For the reasons that: there’s no 360 zip to let water in, there’s only 1 entry zip that is super re-inforced, there’s more insulation thus warmer winter riding and finally, it’s smart.

I guess I’ll have to see what happens after we move in to our new house in August.
More updates soon!

Thanks for looking all,

Cheers

Gordon

Sick Sad Little World

I had to work Saturday, which was bums. But never mind, I slept till 11am on Sunday so had a nice lie in.

I got up in time to watch the second 3/4 of the 250cc’s and had breakfast in time for the MotoGP boys. It was Sachsenring and Rossi needs points. It was mega rainy and initially I thought, “well that’s crap” but after a moment I remembered some of the other wet races and know that it makes it 10x more unpredictable. So I settled in for the race.

Dani was on form immediately, racing away like he was on a dry track when everyone else was on a wet one. It was quite funny though because Charley and Steve were chatting away and then the camera’s cut to Dani’s arse cam. They said “now lets listen to the RC212v…”

“Bvvvvv bvvvv bvvvv OOOOOOOOOOO”

And at the end of the straight we saw Dani go bye-bye. I actually sat there with my mouth open in amazement. It was something else and great timing by the director.

Dani went sliding in to the air fence at 170mph. Oh dear. I think he was 7s in front on lap 3. Serves him right.

Casey then bulleted away, leaving Vale doing his amazing wet weather riding to get 2nd. It was a great race and that concluded the lunchtime slot.

I then washed my bike and lubed the chain. Gave it a wee dry and set it in the garage, by which point I was not feeling too well. But I pushed that aside, got our gear on and we both went out on the bike.

I headed first to see our house, which reminded us why we couldn’t wait to get in, and then we headed out past T in the park.

As we were riding along Em shouted, “Look at the sun!!!” So I did, and this is what I saw:

The sun halo above Kinross.

That photo was taken on my new phone, a Nokia N95 8GB. It’s a fantastic picture and I am well chuffed with it. It gives me a pretty dependable backup camera should I spot something and my actual camera has ran out of battery.

After stopping for a moment, I then saw that I could nip out quick before a lorry came along, so I did…and then did a nice wheelie. Em was crapping herself but I knew it would happen because of the weight over the back of the bike. We then shot off and headed to Powmill, so that we could go around the Knockhill road.

Which we did. And there were tonnes of bikers. It was great! Then a bike arrived behind me and sat really close to me. I guess he liked formation riding and I accepted his fast riding and shot off past the slow moving cars. He followed and we weaved our way through Fife. He then shot off past me, offering a wave before I peeled off on to the motorway to head home again. We cruised up the motorway and back home. It was a nice ride out and took my headache and sick feeling away.

The cones that are laid out to channel the T in the parkers off the motorway are a great source of entertainment. As we approach the segregation, there are signs telling the drivers that in 800yrds you’ll either need to be in the left lane to go to TITP or the right hand lane to go straight on. It’s quite funny watching all these dopey drivers driving along, then suddenly realising that there are cones in the middle of the road…”why is that? What is happening? Am I meant to be in a specific lane here?!” and you can see what they are thinking by the erratic weaving that follows. Then a last minute decision is made and this either means straightening up and accepting your TITP fate, or doing a mega swerve on to the right hand lane.

It all plays out before me and it’s a laugh. Just shows how oblivious some drivers are to what is going on around them.

Anyway,

The news of a poor soul being brutally stabbed in the face and body 11 times at T in the park because he was defending his female friend, has soured my weekend.

We live in a sick, sad, little world where people who go to enjoy music at a festival end up getting stabbed in the face because some drunken neds think it’s cool. It makes me sick to the stomach to think that 2 brainless idiots can deliver so much brutality for something so trivial.

Is anything sacred in this place any more. Can we not go and enjoy something together without turning it in to a blood bath. These yobs who carry knifes around looking for trouble should be locked up. Or better still, shot.

It’s a sad day when we realise that everything we love about this place will end up being desimated because of the delinquent filth who hurt for kicks. We will end up living in a state of emergency. It’s inevitable as long as the dogs that do this shit still walk our streets.

Good night all, thanks for reading.

Gordon

June 2008

Hello.

June 2008 has passed without major incident. There was a few near misses, a few gear updates and yet another “issue” with my GSR.

Things have seemed to flatten out with the starting problem, but I am still not 100% sure it’s fixed.

A funny thing happened on the way home tonight. As I was driving in to my street there was a group of young girls standing in the road, but when they heard the bike they all headed to the pavement. I drifted past and to my amusement, one of them shouted “STIG!”

Brilliant.

The latter end of the month was taken up with house hunting. Me and Em went to see 5 houses and out of the 5, we saw only 1 that we liked. Then we put a bid in and got it! So my weeks shot by with lawyers and bidding and fees. But we got the house that we wanted so were really chuffed.

I’ve spent the past 3 weeks trawling furniture websites, looking at the endless pages of stuff that wouldn’t work. I found myself sitting late one night aimlessly surfing the IKEA website, page after page of just stuff…really sad.

We move in on August 15th, so from now until then I doubt I’ll do much else other than continue to trawl the web and walk around furniture shops. It’s all good fun.

Anyway, that was June! A month that flew by. July will be the same, then it’ll be August, and MOVE IN TIME! YEAH!

Thanks for stopping by folks,

Gordon