Yes, as the title suggests I upgraded. What did I upgrade? Well that would be wordpress of course. Outwardly I guess the changes are so minute as to be insignificant (can you spot the changes?).

Nonetheless the new version (2.0) is a vast improvement over the version I was previously using (1.5.1); this is mainly due to the enhanced admin interface. Stuff is just so much easier now and organised and ya.

Well that’s about it, Wordpress isn’t exactly the most exciting thing to blog about… maybe I’ll finish off the theme one of these days. Which brings me to another question, how many of the people that actually read my blog do so by visiting the site, and how many just use a feed. For the latter I guess updating my theme is rather redundant.

So apparently I’ve been neglecting my blog. I have a perfectly valid reason for this (when I think up one I’ll modify this post and noone will be any the wiser; or maybe I’ll just leave this here as a thinly disguised attempt at humour…).

My holidays are drawing to a close; they’ve definitely been too short, but in some ways I’m almost eager to get back to work. I think it’s more along the lines of passing time so that I can get some paycheques and buy my car. Mmm… car.

On a similar issue, my bike is not safe to ride. This is due to a delightful puddle of oil sitting under my bike. My forks seem to be spraying oil everywhere; this has a two-fold effect: first my suspension is now shot, due to the lack of fork oil (the oil controls the speed of compression and rebound by moving the oil between two pistons through a valve), and the second is that oil is oil, so getting any on my tyre in a corner is a recipe for disaster.

So today I had to do my license on my sisters bike, which I’m completely unfamiliar with. In the end I passed — I’m not entirely sure how (I had a few scares), because my precision and control over that bike is extremely bad, the difference between my sisters bike and my own is like night and day.

On to other things: gym is going good, I’ve put on 9kg since I started (that was mid October). Though I’ve pretty much taken a break for the last 3 weeks due to holidays and haven’t gained any weight. This is mainly because I’m sleeping longer and missing out on an extra meal or two.

My sisters fiancé is a biker, so that’s pretty cool. He does insurance, and financing and other stuff so thats also pretty cool. I’m saving money on my new insurance and will probably get a slightly cheaper deal on finance when I finally do get my car.

And, there’s a few lines of whatever is going on at the moment; though I could easily expand each of those into a blog entry, maybe I’ll do that next week when I’m back at work :).

Oh yah, new years was awesome, cheers Mike, Lu, Matt, Tyrone and Peter… and Nick you suck for missing it and killing our phonecalls.

That’s all for now—

Well it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything of significance, so I figured this post could just be an update on everything that’s happening, however long it turns out.

First things first: my bike. Yes, the thing that has been the subject of the vast majority of my posts, thoughts and topics of conversation (is it annoying yet?). Well as my previous post mentions, I did get my bike back last Friday — accompanied by a veritable horde of problems. Dragging brakes discs, spongey brakes, non-functioning speedometer, non-functioning trip meter, non-functioning temperature sensor, mis-aligned petcock, incorrectly mounted exhaust, loose mirror, very dusty/dirty internals, various paint and body work problems, bike pulls to the right, and finally the thing that set me off… a jammed throttle cable.

I did rush them to have it reassembled by Friday so most of the problems I could deal with and were fairly minor but the jamming throttle cable just made me angry. It’s not very cool when you’re trying to turn a tight corner and your throttle just gets stuck, or turning the clipons full lock causes the engine to rev. Or turning the clipons causes the cables to rub against the tank, triple tree, and fairing; the last thing I need to do is have a cable break off a chunk of my brand new fairing — I did end up splitting open the insulation on my throttle cable as the fairing cut it open. So on Saturday I pulled the bike apart to try and reroute the throttle cable; this involved removing part of the fairing, the tank, the seat, the airbox (I have a K&N air-filter — that’s pretty cool), and about 6 hours of wasted time. It was impossible to correct without removing the triple yoke or one of the forks, and with the tools at my disposal this would be an impossible task. I also attempted to disassemble the switch/cable cluster on the right clipon, but one of the screws is impacted and I couldn’t get enough leverage to remove it.

Then I took my bike for a ride, and it barely ran, so again on Sunday I pulled my bike apart (this time it only took me abt 1h30). It turns out I had kinked the breather tube for the tank when putting it back on, as well as knocking a pipe loose (I have no idea what the pipe is for… the manual calls it #8 :/). So after putting it back together it was running properly again, which was quite a relief.

Back the bike goes; getting up early Monday I took the bike back to them along with a cable & harness routing diagram and a list of issues that need to be sorted. I got it back on Tuesday; the speedometer was working again, the temperature sensor is working (but displaying the wrong value, not such a crisis since I know the thing is working, it’s just displaying wrong), the brakes no longer drag, the bike doesn’t pull to the right, and a correctly routed throttle cable. I refitted my exhaust mount myself, as well as tightening the mirror on Saturday morning. The bodywork, paint, dirt, dust, and misaligned petcock I don’t really care about, I will sort all of that out myself eventually. The brakes came back even more spongey so I will have to bleed those properly — I reckon some of the pistons are jammed in the calipers as well — though my back brake works better than it used to. My trip meter is still not working, I’ll probably take my instrument cluster apart and fix that myself. My bike is still missing a front fender, but that doesn’t affect anything really, except maybe dirt getting thrown up into the bike.

Even though the throttle cable was routed correctly it was still jamming (I suspect they didn’t pull the whole airbox off when sorting it out), so on Tuesday night, off comes everything again. I pushed the cables around a bit (they were getting caught underneath one of the screw mounts on the airbox) and suddenly everything just fell into place. The throttle control is smooth, no jamming whatsoever, the spring action is working perfectly, so I’m quite happy with that now. When putting the airbox back together I dropped a screw into the guts of my bike :(. That was a rather angst filled 15 minutes while I sat there wobbling my bike around trying to see if the thing would drop out the bottom — it didn’t. So then I got a torch and sat there for another 15 minutes looking for the damn thing (I’d hate to have a screw get sucked into something, or jammed in my rear shock, etc.). I eventually found it and with the help of a magnet attached to long piece of wire I was able to retrieve it.

This whole situation is quite ironic now, I’ve finally got my bike back to a stage where I want to ride it but I’d rather not because it runs like it’s got snot stuck in the carbs or something. It’s been standing around around in a workshop for over 3 and a half months, so I’m not really suprised that it’s not running too well, there’s probably all sorts of gunk inside the carbs. It doesn’t have the same low down power as it used to, and is just lacking in power overall. Unfortunately I don’t have the tools to clean, balance, and adjust the carbs myself, so I basically need to take the bike in for a full service: oil & filter, carbs, plugs, clean, everything pretty much — but I don’t have the money to do so :).

Otherwise the handling is absolutely superb, I’m pretty sure that that’s a result of the rebuilt forks, considering how bent they were as a result of the accident I’m really quite surprised. My helmet is great, fits nicely, doesn’t budge at all and is starting to break in and become more comfortable.

I guess that’s it for now regarding my bike. There’s more to the whole deal, but I’m sure everyone is bored by now (that’s if anyone even gets as far as reading this).

Ye… I posted.
Got my bike back; took it back to get some stuff sorted.
Will post full details sometime, in the meantime (for those who actually read my blog???) have a pic.
Fixed Bike

edit: Wow… that timestamp is so wrong. What have DataSpace done this time…
edit2.0: Okay… so they changed the timezone of the server — GOOD 1.

So DataSpace got a new HDD in one of their servers (I found this out by reading the forums… no notification or anything). One would think that when swapping out a HDD that you would take an immediate backup of all the clients content. Needless to say, when I checked my site this morning it was missing about 3 weeks worth of content. I guess it’s a good thing I noticed something fishy happening yesterday because I happened to make my own backup yesterday, which has subsequently been put to good use and my blog is now back at the state it should be.

There wasn’t much additional content between now and 3 weeks ago, but that’s not really the point here; I guess when it comes to free hosting you get what you pay for, quite literally.

I’m not expecting sterling service, but I would appreciate an advisory notice or something; a lack of communication/notification/whatever is always something that annoys me, they quite remind me of another company that is quite fond of doing (read breaking) stuff without notification and leaving the clients in the dark… \*cough\* Uninet \*cough\*.

No news, no phonecall, no surprises? no bike…

So I’ve had a lot of people ask me what frame sliders are and what their purpose is. Even the guys that are repairing my bike didn’t know exactly what they were or how to fit them. They seem to be seriously under rated and unknown in this country; goto the US and every second bike will have them fitted.

So here’s my explanation:
Frame sliders bolt onto the sides of the bike, straight onto the engine mount. This means that on 99% of bikes you will need to cut the plastics in order to fit them. Basically what they do is save your frame in the event of an accident. Frame damage is pretty bad on a bike and can cost thousands to repair if it’s bent badly. With sliders fitted when the bike lands on its side the first point of contact will be straight onto the sliders (3 points of contact with the tyres included), this often has the added benefit of saving your plastics, so in a uniform drop where you low-side and end up dropping the bike on its side it’s quite likely that your fairing will only get scratched. A new paint job is *much* cheaper than new plastics (not unreasonable to expect to pay in excess of R20 000 for a full set of OEM plastics — I do believe my uppers and lowers cost R2800 in fibre glass).

Now onto the next point which might not be so obvious. Frame sliders are made out of high durability plastic (mine in particular are thermoplastic – derlin) the reason being as that — as their name suggests — they are for sliding, so they must slide along the ground and grind down. With steel sliders there’s a high possibility of the sliders catching something on the ground — bad… the bike will more than likely flip causing more damage than if you didn’t even have the sliders in the first place.

There are other benefits for having sliders. For instance, you park your bike at a shopping centre or something and come back to find your bike on its side. Yes this happens, far more often than it should. The obvious conclusions are that some toss didn’t see your bike and knocked it over (which is why I *never* park in bays); or some little kiddy saw your bike, thought it looked cool and wanted to sit on it (how would you like it if I came and sat in your car?) meanwhile he’s never sat on a bike before, so he straightens it up promptly loses his balance and drops the thing… at which point the git usually vanishes.

There are various other types of mishaps which plague bikers. Coming to a stop street, you put your foot down… straight into a pothole, and over go you and your bike. Same thing at robots then, with every second car dumping oil on the road at a robot, bikes tend to ride on the sides of the lane so guess where your foot goes? Straight into a nicely laid patch of oil, and over you go. We don’t have this problem in ZA but it seems that kickstands on bikes like to sink into hot asphalt since the stuff is pretty much a liquid, with a rapidly sinking kickstand your bike will fall over all on its own; which is why you never park your bike on grass without pucking the kickstand (stick something under it, plank of wood, piece of metal, empty coke can, etc.). There are plenty other mishaps that happen and having frame sliders can minimise damage quite a lot, so for R340 I consider them to be quite a bargain — I’ve almost dropped my bike a few times just pushing it around in the drive way.

Update on my bike: the reason the bike looks matt black in the pics, is because that was the primer. They’ve fitted my sliders, which apparently was quite a chore, so it had better still look decent. Otherwise I wouldn’t mind throttling the guy that didn’t buy my mirrors, because those will only be arriving next Friday (which I doubt). I was told there’s no problems with the brake disc… I assume that means they have it. I didn’t notice a front fender on my bike, so I damn well hope they didn’t forget that thing, I reminded the guy that’s fixing my bike so hopefully he’ll check up on it for me. So… at a stretch I guess I will have my bike back for next weekend; buuuuuuuuuuut, I somehow recall saying the same thing for the last 4 weeks running now :/.

This morning I went to drop off my sliders, and show them where and how to bolt them on. I’m really hoping now that they don’t make a real mess of that job. Otherwise my bike is looking pretty smart.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

A few pics I took this morning with my phone. I don’t have any photo editing software on my office machine so I couldn’t compress them anymore than what my phone did, so I just settled for resizing them (originals were all 1600×1200). The colour is a bit leeched and the photo’s dark, but that’s mostly because there wasn’t a whole lot of light around, and I wasn’t going to bother with the “flash”.

The paint is currently a matt finish, so I don’t know if that will change. I suspect that once they’ve put the stickers on they will clearcoat the entire thing, which will give it the gloss finish. Either way I don’t mind, I quite like the matt look right now. The stickers are done and are a light silver/grey; they should look really good once they’re on the bike.

Finally… the big question is: when will I get this thing back? Who knows really; they seem to think the brake disc will arrive this week, but now they don’t have the mirrors??? *Sigh*, I can ride without mirrors, but I don’t want to ride without indicators. So I hope they at least have those at least.

Well here’s a pic of my sliders, and something that looks suspiciously like a urine sample. The one bolt is quite significantly longer than the other, I really hope it’s meant to be like that :/.

Sliders

I’ll figure out how to use the camera properly one day, it’s quite… blue. I’ve probably got some lame effect applied, but oh well.

Speaking about pictures, I should probably also update the banner one day, seeing as .za.org is the primary rather than .za.net as I had originally anticipated. The theme and banner especially were only meant to be temporary — laziness won over again :).

update:
Well I contacted them, and yep the one bolt is longer than the other. I don’t have my bike at the moment so I can’t check myself, not I just have to hope that the screwthread matches properly.

And… last night I realised how horribly unfit I am. I spent an hour in the gym last night and will again tonight, and probably tomorrow night as well. I cycled (I must quit the cardio) a whole 7.5km or so, that was the easy part, but the free weights absolutely killed me (which is good I suppose). I was like one giant piece of jelly Gavin, most of my muscles were weak and trembling after my gym session, so driving home as exhausted as I was was quite an experience, one that I need to get used to pretty quickly.

Surprisingly though, I’m neither stiff nor sore today, though some of my muscles feel a bit tight, so I will probably start really feeling it tomorrow after my second session. Considering how tired I was last night, I’m also quite surprised at how not tired I’m feeling today, which is quite nice — I still woke up very tired this morning, but I’m hoping that will go away with my gym training.

I’ll probably end up in the gym 5 times a week, see how hard I can push myself and hope that I don’t injure anything. I’m really glad that my left knee didn’t bother me at all, because it was pretty sore a few days. Hopefully I won’t develop any permanent injuries there because joint injuries really suck; my motorcycle accident really showed me how bad a knee injury could get. I was really lucky to only come out with a split knee and lots of bruising. Though I still think I’ve damaged something under the kneecap (I hit it pretty hard) but nothing showed up on the X-Rays.