I got a new bike back in June. A 2007 Triumph Daytona 675 triple in tornado red, which I picked up with only 1350km on the clocks. I then proceeded to crash it not even a month later at Zwartkops in turn 2 when I washed out my front tyre.

I went for a few months wondering why the bike was riding so badly. I eventually got annoyed enough to take it to a bunch of track specialists and drop R1600 on having my front suspension rebuilt. As it turns out my one fork had way too much oil in it and was causing hydraulic lock when under compression which results in no damping… so I may as well have not had suspension at all it was so bad. Quite likely this is what caused my washout with the front.

Next up: I bought a bow back in February and have been shooting on and off when I get some time. It’s a 2008 Diamond Marquis single-cam bow. It’s a superb hunting bow and can be cranked up to 70lb draw strength; I’m currently only running 60lb because I fatigue far too quickly with the thing. I’ve only got a basic sight and stabiliser, but the bow is more than capable of dropping a Kudu bull provided I use the correct arrows.

Also I decided to take up climbing. For now I’m only doing wall climbing out in Kya Sands once a week really, but I’m quite keen to get going with some outdoor rock climbing. Even so, I’m thoroughly enjoying the indoor wall climbing and as a result I decided to start purchasing some kit for myself a few weeks back. The first thing I started with was obviously a chalk bag and some chalk; the difference this makes is astounding. The next purchase was proper rock shoes, and compared to the rentals, the difference is like night and day.

Well, that’s it for the expensive hobbies of which there are quite a few it seems.

In other news; I’m still at the same company who is actually sending me for a bunch of training next week. I intend to go for as much training as I can over the next few months courtesy of my company. The handy thing is as part of our Enterprise Agreement with MS, we get training vouchers, which I plan to use and abuse as I’m aiming for all my certs. For now I’m going after my MSSQL2008 MCITP in DBA. Afterwards I would like to go after the developer and business intelligence ones as well. Unfortunately we have a ton of really high profile and urgent projects going on at the moment and a few extras coming very soon, so time constraints are going to be a limiting factor as always.

Not much has changed with regards to the work situation. I work in a team of 3 supporting a massive host of systems, and given the one guy is very very new we’re generally stretched thin. Good times; at least it’s better than being twiddling your thumbs and being bored all day at work.

I just spent the better part 4 hours cleaning my bike… and it’s still dirty. The colours are a tad washed out due to cellphone camera, but it’s easy enough to see that my rear sprocket is gold. Before I started, it was black as my chain still is. My chain is actually the same colour gold as the sprocket, but that’s going to take another 2 hours to clean.

Oh, and you can actually see how badly the chain is sagging. It would suck rocks if that thing jumped the sprocket, I guess I should adjust it some.

I inject heroin into my eyeball.

The day started off by doing some hard braking and swerving between cones. I managed to lock my back wheel twice leaving nice black lines on the tar, at least I really gave that front wheel some work. I’m glad I bought dual compound tyres otherwise I’d be a bit pissed off about creating flat spots. The day progressed to circles and tight turns, something most bikers can’t seem to do without putting their feet down. I only have a problem with doing a full lock right hand turn where my throttle hand is jammed against the tank, otherwise it was easy enough. The day of course progressed to the track riding and various techniques. They sent us around the track without any brakes. Having to shed speed by weaving as you rapidly approach the hairpin directly after the fastest corner on the track is a bit of a hair-raising experience. Fortunately, there were no accidents to put a damper on the day, though a few people did manage to run off the track.

Of course there was me, in full riding gear on what was not a particularly cool day trying not to get dehydrated. Though toward the end of the day I was starting to get a cramp in my right leg, I guess I didn’t quite drink enough. Hanging off the bike must have contributed to the cramps as I was concentrating on form as much as riding. Having the instructors ask when I’m going to introduce my sliders to the pavement was a bit of a laugh though. Try as I might I just don’t have the confidence to go into a corner at full tilt to achieve that wonderful scrape, especially not on my first day at the track. I did manage to head into the final corner a bit faster than I was comfortable with, as the exit is somewhat obscured by the pit-lane barrier. Being forced to tighten your line and the bike over harder mid-corner is a great learning experience and also a huge amount of fun.

I guess this means I’ll be marking off a whole bunch of track days on my calendar.

It really sucks when they turn our water on and off for a week to fix the damn thing.

It seems my back brake has a tendency to bite, and with the tiniest amount of pressure it brakes with full force, thus locking it. Braking dynamics on a bike make the rear brake almost useless, which is why it only has a tiny little disc compared to the massive dual discs usually on the front. So this would mark the second time I’ve managed to lock the rear wheel. The first time, I left a nice black line on the tar and essentially ruined my tyre. I had to change the tyre anyways, this just moved the plan forward by a week or two. Yesterday’s little incident left my tyre completely unscathed. The first thing I did when I got home yesterday was to lift the bike onto its paddock stand and check. Not a single scrape or flatspot in the tyre, even though I went fishtailing for a good 30-40m. Guess I’ll be budgeting for those braided hoses sooner than I expected.

Otherwise, I still maintain there are no corners in Joburg. I can see why JHB riders are notorious for high speeds. The few corners I’ve seen on my breakfast runs are just glorified straights evidenced by the fact that you can easily do 200kph+ with minimal lean through these so-called corners.

As most know, I’m currently employed as a network and systems engineer doing exactly what the title sounds like. That is, I manage and maintain the network infrastructure and the services that run on the network for the group as a whole. We’re a shared services IT department so we essentially support all the subsidiary companies located throughout the country. Given the current stranglehold Telkom has on bandwidth, this can make our lives rather difficult at times.

At the end of November I would have been with the company for 6 months, essentially closing my retaining contract, which leaves me free to move where I will. Recently, I applied for a job. It’s an internal position which makes the contract a moot point anyways. The net result of my actions appears to have created some friction myself and my current boss (at least from my perspective), which is making my life somewhat awkward at the moment. The job I applied for is applications engineer for those interested; it’s a little closer to where I used to be, though far enough away to not make me want to swallow razorblades every morning.

In other news, I just got myself a shiny new bike. It’s a ‘99 Suzuki GSXR750 SRAD.

I had no real intention of getting a new bike, but for the price it was going for I couldn’t pass it up. Overall I was really happy with my VFR, but for riding it was just too uncomfortable for me. Add my height to the raised billetted footpegs and all you get is a very uncomfortable ride. My knee would start cramping on longer rides and it just wasn’t fun. I bought a bike to ride and enjoy, not to ride in pain. For my new bike I don’t have any such problems and riding it is an absolute dream, and being a 750 it’s definitely no slouch.

First off, traffic density. I’ve never really had to travel in high density peak hour traffic. However what I remember from going to college and UCT, the traffic in CPT is not any different, in some cases I can confidently say it’s worse. The main difference is that the distances are shorter in CPT so you spend less time in traffic overall. I’ve never travelled on highways in peak hour though I quite often travelled the M5/N1 during office hours, and the off/onramps are much worse in CPT than they are in JHB. Lastly, I do William Nicol everyday, fortunately only a very short section of it. Overall it takes me about 2 minutes max to get through that section. From what I’ve observed, there’s not much difference between William Nicol and Wynberg Main Road (which I travelled every day for 2 years), with the exception being that WNicol is 6 lanes and Wynberg is 2.

Directions. JHB isn’t too difficult to navigate, though everything does look the same (and no, I don’t miss the mountain). Many road are very poorly marked, with those faded b&w roadnames adorning the pavement corners… not very easy to read. The big roads in the main city centers tend to be marked at the top of those roadside “billboards”. I must say that this is quite nice since I can actually read the damn things before I get to the road in question.

Road markings. There are road markings? I tend to rely quite heavily on road markings such as determining which lane I need to be in. However driving around in JHB I’ve noticed that many roads are either unmarked or the markings are so faded that they may as well not be there. This turns general traffic into a free-for-all as people just drive all over the road completely ignoring the “markings”. I’ve also hit a few speed bumps pretty hard because there weren’t any lines on them… yay. Another trend I’ve noticed is that old lines have merged and overlapped with faded new lines, making driving really confusing as it’s sometimes hard to tell if you’re in your lane or straddling 2 lanes as the lines suddenly shift sideways. I’ve almost overshot robots because I was looking at the far robot and didn’t see any lines… great.

Now to drivers. Crap drivers are crap drivers, it doesn’t matter what city you put them in, they’re still crap drivers. That being said the general trend in JHB seems to be far more aggressive drivers. I quite often get tailgated in rush hour traffic; everyone is moving at 40 or 50kph but no, the guy behind me has to speed around me into the cruising gap I left and then suddenly brake hard because he’s going a good 30kph faster than everyone else. All that’s happening is you’re wasting petrol for the time you didn’t save since you’re going to get stuck at the offramp robot anyways. Unfortunately most drivers tend to indicate as, or after they change lanes, or not at all, and with the amount of lane changing going on I can see why so many bikers get knocked down; mirrors? blindspots? apparently not.

Though, bikers… well I’m struggling to have any sympathy for them. The way some of those guys ride in traffic makes you wonder how much their life insurance policy is worth. Usually bikers split between the fast and the middle lane, with the general rule of thumb being 20kph faster than the surrounding traffic. Apparently many N1 bikers didn’t get that memo. I’ve seen plenty of them weaving in and out of traffic at crazy speeds, not to mention the bikers that treat the emergency lanes as their personal highways and cruise down those at highway speeds.

There’s much more to say on the topic, but this is all I have for now. I almost got taken out by a taxi this morning, he must’ve missed the part where they teach you to yield to the right.

I got my bike early April, right before the eNaTIS systems were being “installed”. I’m not quite sure what they were doing there because the system is still horribly broken. Anyways, after trying to register my bike in Cape Town and being told the systems were down or I had the incorrect paperwork or I needed this document as well it was finally time for me to leave to move to JHB. So I did. I brought all the documentation with me.

Seeing as I was going to be permanently residing in JHB I figured I may as well register the bike here. How wrong I was. Apparently the police clearence isn’t valid because it was obtained in Cape Town. Nevermind the fact that I had the original document and all these systems are supposed to be national. So I sent the paperwork back down to CPT to have my bike registered there (courtesy of the ‘rentals).

Nope… apparently I still need more paperwork (there’s now about 7 different documents). So all the documentation was finally organised, and the bike about to be registered. Nope, no can do… the police clearence isn’t on the eNaTIS systems (the police clearence was obtained in March); did I mention I had the original document. Apparently they can’t enter it into their systems. So more waiting ensued, after finally getting the police clearence on their systems (and more eNaTIS related downtime — you’d think that after more than 2 months they would have ironed out the “kinks”) my bike was licensed and registered. At least I got a nice 5 digit CA plate.

Other than that I did go riding a few weeks ago — with my sister’s plates (who conveniently has the same bike) and I can see why people get so many fines in JHB. There’s nothing but straight lines and 90 degree angles here. I’ve yet to see anything that looks remotely like a twisty, or even a curve or a bend. Nothing but monkeys twisting the throttle and measuring the size of their cock by flaunting the money they put into their bike… it’s pretty damn boring.

I only started packing on Friday afternoon, which meant I spent most of Saturday packing, yet we still only ended up leaving an hour later than planned so that wasn’t too much trouble.

All in all the trip was fairly uneventful, only getting a scare when I ended up driving over something (???). I had my car lifted off the ground and everything checked out during the week so there doesn’t appear to have been any permanent damage fortunately; I even scored free wheel balancing.

Otherwise, this whole endevour has been a fairly costly one for me: having a towbar fitted, having smash and grab fitted, a full service done, as well as wheel alignment and balancing. That just covers my car, I also rented a trailer, flew my brother-in-law down and had my bike “couriered” up, not to mention the costs associated with the actual trip itself. My bike was collected on Tuesday evening and arrived on Wednesday morning… that’s some pretty speedy service.

One thing that did surprise me about the whole trip is that I barely even felt the trailer I was pulling, occasionally having to check the mirror just to make sure it was still there.

I guess the next entry will be about how life has changed for me, and the differences between living in JHB and CPT. So far I can say: not very much, but I’ve only been here for a week so we’ll see how that opinion changes over time. I’m also going for a ride tomorrow, so maybe I’ll finally get some photo’s of me on the bike.