Well after driving in to the car park at the London flat last night, having been let down by @tweetalondoncab on Twitter this morning, I got the RX8 out to go to a meeting. Crawling out of the crescent at no more than 2 or 3mph, I got to the off-camber, downhill left turn and immediately slid sideways on the ice-covered snow … and slid into the metal bollards. Ouch! I wasn’t the first either as one of them had been knocked over already. So now Blue RX is a tad dented:
Well after Robspeed Motorcycles at Grimsby serviced Blue Rex and left it misfiring within 3 miles of their workshops, I decided the time had come for Blue Rex to get some fettling and proper setting up.
I’d been keeping a set of cams I’d been sold a few years ago which I was told were ZZR1200 cams. So I rang Larry Webb at PDQ in Berkshire to ask him what he suggested. He recommended fitting those cams, gas-flowing the cylinder head, fitting high compression pistons (in the existing bore sizes) and then fettling it all together properly, so I dropped it off and have left them to it.
Bad news came recently: the cams I’d been sold were actually standard ZRX1200R cams so I now have the existing ones plus a set of new ones. Larry is going to send them to the States to get them re-profiled instead as that’s what they used to do back in the day. This will add a few hundred pounds more to the existing quote, but is cheaper than buying new ZZR1200 cams which are silly expensive.
We’ll see what results we get.
Nothing But Blue Skies
I took the opportunity to have one last rideout for the year last weekend, making the most of a crisp, dry day to go for a blast through NE Lincolnshire. I probably won’t get a chance for another before the winter weather sets in and the gritters have a crack at making the roads slippery and salty.
An excellent piece of tabloid journalism from the BBC News site:
Call for law change on quad bikes
“Doctors say the law should be changed to force people who use road-legal quad bikes to wear helmets.
Accident and emergency medics say lives are put at risk because riders do not have to wear protective gear – despite the fact the bikes can reach 90mph.”
Oh my word! Think of the children! Something must be done!
And yet…
“There are no separate statistics on the numbers of quad bike crashes, but two particularly high-profile accidents have made headlines and brought the dangers to wider public attention.
In 1998, comedian Rik Mayall suffered serious head injuries and spent five days in a coma after his quad bike overturned while he was riding it at his farm in Devon.
In 2003, rock musician Ozzy Osbourne spent eight days in a coma, broke eight ribs and punctured a lung while riding a quad bike in the grounds of his Buckinghamshire mansion. He was not wearing a helmet at the time of the crash.”
So there’s nothing to support such a cry for us to be protected from ourselves. And clearly the high profile accidents took place off road. Not sure what a crash helmet would have done to save Ozzy’s broken ribs and punctured lung, but hey, let’s not let facts get in the way of a hysterical piece of so-called journalism.
Well it was time for me and the Blade to play properly on track and break in my new leathers and n00bish virgin kneesliders.
So off we went to the Motorcycle Folly‘s Rockingham trackday on 19 July 2010. The weather was just right despite the Sunday before and the Tuesday after being wet and miserable; indeed I even got a bit sunburnt.
First session out there having led the Novice group round for the first session and I started pushing it a little faster each time until I was getting my knee down on both left and right handers. Indeed in most of the photos of the day of me – taken by the ever-fabulous EDP Photo News – I seem to have my knee down lap after lap.
Anyway, here are some photos:
Ready to head out
Look at these 'sliders!
Portly Blue with Virgin Kneesliders
Kneedown
…but you can never leave (or at least you can expect to be repeatedly billed for services they don’t provide).
Yes, they’re at it yet again and it’s getting really tiresome.
And what’s worse is that these fecktards can’t even operate their phone system properly, constantly hanging up or dropping calls.
“1&1 Accounts: The Home of Special Needs”
Well as I mentioned over at Crass Stupidity, I’d been considering an iPhone 4 after it was announced and given it a guarded ‘maybe’, so I’d registered an interest in it with 3 and indeed Vodafone.
Recent searches had also indicated that 3 might well be offering free tethering, whereby you use your phone’s data package with other devices like laptops and indeed an iPad to save you having to splash out on a separate data contract. And yes, I am beginning to be tempted by the thought of an iPad as well, having had a photographer friend extol the virtues of his and having played with one at Meadowhell last weekend.
Merely having expressed interest, I’d been surprised to receive this text from 3 on the 22nd June:
“Great news: You’ll get an iPhone 4 upgrade and we’ve already reserved one for you…”
I didn’t even say I wanted one yet!
Then on the 24th June:
“Update. Your iPhone 4 is still reserved. Due to high demand we’ll contact you when we can process your order. View tariff details at three.co.uk/iphone”
The next day, I received this text:
“Great news. Your iPhone 4 will be available w/c 19 July. We’ll contact you between 1 & 7 July to process your upgrade…”
Well I’ve just received that call late this afternoon. They’re offering me a 16GB iPhone 4 on a 24 month contract with a one-payment to start with. In other words, it’s the same offer as anyone else would get, except that:
Time to talk to 3’s customer retention department, I think…
Here’s the third shot from the “Dodgy Deal” theme element of the photoshoot Janey and I did with Andrew Appleton: dark and mysterious!
Here’s the third shot from the “Dodgy Deal” theme element of the photoshoot Janey and I did with Andrew Appleton: dark and mysterious!
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