Passion has 2 wheels

Another moving video about our passion....

We R Winning from Todd Blubaugh on Vimeo.

The Ultimate Experience

This is a great essay from an unknown author about the ultimate experience that is riding a motorcycle. It's all about passion....

There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and weight as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition. But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a summer is worth any price.

A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time, entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than Pana-Vision and than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard. Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed. At 30 miles per hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree- smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony.

Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it. A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane.

Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy. I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over half a dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride one of the best things I've done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.

-Author unknown.

SR movies

Today I'd like to show you a few videos. The first one is from a Japanese movie called "Good Luck", the second is a very nice promotional video from Yamaha and the last one is a short movie about the never dying  motorcycle passion in all of us riders. All videos are highly recommended!

Here we go....

1#

2#

3#

SR Memorabilia

This is my little collection of SR memorabilia.

A working SR table clock, bought for 100Baht (about 2.50Euros) at Bang Saen Bike Week.

Aoshima SR400 ('96 model), scale 1/12, bought online from Japan for 1000Baht and assembled by yours truly.

By the way, I still have a brand new box. I was trying to sell it, but I'll probably end up making a replica of my bike, once it comes back from the painter, that is....

SR400 paper model. You can download the plans to make your own here:

http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/global/entertainment/papercraft/realistic/sr400/index.html

Custom made SR engraved leather key chain, 100Baht I think, bought at Ratchada Night Market in Bangkok. More about this and other markets next time.

Maybe my wife is right after all when she says I'm obsessed with my bike?!?............naaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

SR Logo

These are a couple of my sketches for the new tank logo. The others are with the painter, who I wish would use them RIGHT NOW (23:20), to finish my tank before all the petrol in the world runs out. Electric scooters are not really my thing, you know.

The first version, later binned

The final version

The Omega Race

I was surfing the net when I stumbled upon this little piece of computing nostalgia. There is a Commodore VIC-20 game called Omega Race, where a space ship's mission is to destroy asteroids. Funny coincidence, the VIC-20 was my very first computer!

Forgive me if I go off-topic here, but I couldn't resist. :-)

This is the 80's game....

And this is the modern equivalent... 

My vote goes to the old one!


<<<---I also found this game
Surprisingly it's called Omega Racer! What a coincidence!


You can play it here:
http://www.pictogame.com/en/play/game/SOiIorN3ddlM_omega-racer

The Little How-To Corner

Here is another amazing new feature of my blog: "The Little How-To Corner". From time to time, or when the opportunity arises, I will post little how-to videos or pictures to help find your way in the maintenance and/or modification of your beloved SR.

I'm be no means an expert mechanic, but I do try to do stuff by myself...before bringing the sad result to a mechanic. Which is even more embarrassing, considering the low standards of Thai workshops. Not all of them...I hope. Just the ones I found.

So, as a starter I would like to show you this very entertaining video on how to change the oil on your SR, made by Marlon in Australia. Thanks Marlon!

Ode to Ms. Cela

I just came back from the paint shop and surprise surprise,...he has barely started scratching off the old paint. I guess this weekend's ride is out of question.

I would therefore like to take the opportunity to praise an often undervalued member of our family: our trusted Ms. Cela. My wife got her from her dad and she is about 20+ years old now, but still going strong. All I know is that she's a 2-stroke. In fact, not even the almighty google could offer me any more info about her. It's the John Doe of motorcycles, I guess.

I often looked at her with envy. When my other bikes came up with the weirdest problems, Ms Cela always started on the first kick, her idle was annoyingly stable and she would run for months on a tank of gasohol. Quite the opposite of my rides.

I never really liked Hondas....they're too perfect for my taste, but I have to (reluctantly) admit that their bikes could withstand the coming apocalypse. Cockroaches won't be the last survivors....Hondas will!

BIKE OF THE WEEK

From today I will feature a bike every week. A bike that particularly speaks to my heart or otherwise has some amazing features that distinguishes it from all other bikes. Thinking about it, a plain bike with a beautiful girl on it will do just fine, too.

Bike of the Week #1