There’s some photos of the sliders in position on my leathers. I suppose red sliders would have worked with the style pretty well, so I’ll keep my eye out for a replacement set for the future.

I hope everyone likes my makeshift home for my leathers. That’s the picture rail above my bed and they live there permanently. They’re too bulky and *way* too heavy to go in my cupboard.

Oh ya, the pics are bit funny because I don’t have a light in my room and the camera’s flash isn’t all that powerful.

I picked up a set of Arlen Ness sliders yesterday. They don’t exactly match my suit but they were a reasonable price and look fairly decent as far as knee sliders go. I didn’t want to pay in excess of R500 so I could get myself a set of spiked titanium sliders that only last a few weeks.

It’ll probably be a while yet before they actually get used. Right now I have to concentrate more on getting my corner speed up than getting the knee down. But I have a small bike, long legs, and a lot more confidence now that I have all my gear, so it’ll happen eventually.

For those wondering how I stick them on my suit, they’re velcroed on — that stuff is damn strong, it was quite a bitch pulling them off yesterday. I didn’t feel like putting on my suit so I could position them properly as it was rather warm yesterday and I didn’t feel like getting welded into my leathers.

Between the 1st and 29th of December last year 1 277 people perished grimly in traffic accidents. Pedestrians made up a large number, passengers, sadly, accounted for 420 deaths, while drivers brought up the rear at 341 casualties. I’m certain in most incidents stupidity was a major factor.

Not so long ago I wrote a blog about retarded peds. I received some criticism for that entry, though negative, I found the source highly amusing. No skin off my nose, my opinions are my own, and I have no problems expressing them regardless of what others may think.

The above quote comes from a rather amusing article by David Moseley. It seems he shares my sentiments and is able to express them far better than I can.

The obvious ommission in the article though, is how many are alcohol and cellphone related?

Well here’s a few pics of my bicycle, finally. It’s a GT 2.0 (XL frame), that is rather dirty from Sunday’s excursion though you can’t really see that from the photos.

I received my leathers last week. This finally brings my hunt for full motorcycle kit to a close. To recap, I have an Arai Astro-R tribal-red helmet, Sidi Vertigo Corsa black boots, Alpinestars GP Tech red gloves, and my Vivante 2-piece red leathers. For those of you doing the maths, yes, that’s a lot of money, but the way I see it, it’s a lot cheaper than skin grafts. My previous accident’s medical bills were in excess of R3k; a R2k pair of leather pants with knee armour would have prevented that injury. All things considered that was a very mild injury.

So my general theme is of course red on black with white highlights. So for the first time I’ll post some pictures of myself (in full gear of course) for any who are interested.

The suit design was based on the Clover RC100 suit. Overall I’m quite happy with the way it turned out, there are a few things that I don’t entirely like, but oh well. It was pretty cheap for a custom 2-piece suit and it fits extremely well (maybe a bit too well).

Edit: Oh ya, for those who may have noticed, I haven’t bought my sliders yet, I’m still looking for decent set that won’t cost a kidney and an African orphan.

Yesterday I went cycling with Mike and Mike. The challenge was a Tokai forrest/mountain trail. To say that it defeated me is quite an understatement, I was absolutely obliterated by the steep inclines. This was quite an eye-opener for me, I knew I was unfit, but this just pointed out how glaringly obvious it should have been to me.

We ended up cutting our excursion short, partly due to the heat, but mostly due to lack of energy to go further. So what took us 1h15 from start took us 8 minutes to get back down. I don’t think I reset my timer, so this includes about 10 minutes to fetch tickets and another 5-10 minutes for me to change a tube. Yes, as my luck would have it… I started the day with a puncture.

All in all it was a good experience and I’d definitely do it again, if only for the awesome return trip down the mountain. I must say, freewheeling 50kph downhill on gravel roads with your tyres chittering and sliding all over the place is really fun… though quite a bit scary. You’re definitely going to break something if you come off at that speed.

Next time I’ll be better prepared, perhaps not going in the hottest time of day would be a start, but also taking energy foods would be a good idea. I had plenty of water, so that wasn’t an issue, but I completely ran out of energy and my heart rate shot through the roof. During the hill climb (we only went up about 2.5km) I had a sustained heart rate of 180-190. My MHR is around 197, but I’ve only ever peaked 194bpm previously. Yesterday I think I peaked at 192, so I was in a fair amount of pain. No matter how easily I took it, my heart just couldn’t handle it. Ironically my muscles weren’t even tired, and I’m not even slightly stiff today; I guess gym has given me the strength, but definitely none of the endurance.

Well I’m going to go research how to get my heart rate down in cardio training, otherwise this problem is just going to repeat itself. Having been asthmatic since I was 7 and not doing any exercise till recently is definitely not helping.

Well I managed to get new hosting, so my blog isn’t dead quite yet. It seems everything is finally working, it only took about a week to migrate and transfer my domain — quite pathetic really. Much blame to UniForum and my new host who took 2 days to validate my account…

The theme is gone for those who don’t use a feed; this will eventually get fixed, but not right now. I may end up just putting the old one back and calling it a day — we’ll just have to see how lazy I am.

Finally for those of you who were still using my old domains (grave.za.net/org) they are no longer linked to this one due to the transfer, so I guess it’s time to update your links — and yes, I fully see the irony in this request.

Update: I put my old theme back, though it’s a bit broken due to the alterations I did in the underlying Wordpress code.

Update: I’m now using a new, different theme, it’s a bit dark but overall it’s not too bad in my opinion.

I just received the following in an email. My first reponse was one of skepticism and “this has to be fake”, that quickly changed to hilarity, and so I shall share.

Read the quoted (sic) text before looking at the pictures below.

Can only happen in good old RSA!!!!!

How’s this for vacuum packaging?

This vehicle was stolen and then involved in an accident.

3 cows were found inside — tied up and squashed in !! — see the 1st and 2nd photos.

When the cows were removed the vehicle appeared as in photo 3 — rear seat and front passenger seat had been removed to fit the cattle in !!!

The last photo shows the 3 cows after their release — remarkably unscratched!!!

Only in Africa…

The things our criminals do…

My hosting has expired. I shall either retire this blog and my entire webspace, or I shall procure new hosting; somehow… or probably not.

For those who may not already know, I’ve finally cancelled my Uninet connection in favour of a DSL connection. I’d pick Telkom over Uninet any day of the week and twice on Sundays; the only reason it took me so long to switch over was the initial cost and subsequent value for money.

Uninet finally earned my eternal enmity and ire when they decided to disconnect me with absolutely no warning due to “non-payment”. I actually had to contact them to find this out. Their reason was that I was not paying them enough but they agreed that I had paid them for that month — I was paying the price as advertised, not the price they want to charge me (which is 50% more). Can anyone else see the problem with this? Dual pricing schemes…

After 2 and a half years of loyal patronage I promptly cancelled my Uninet connection and ordered DSL. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back I guess. I’m still now even having fights with them as they think I haven’t cancelled, too bad I don’t have a contract with them and have always been on a month-to-month basis — which is one of the ridiculous reasons they want to charge me 50% more for an identical service.

So… that’s the end of my story, a very abreviated version I might add; I could quite literally fill books on the general crap and dealings I’ve had with them.

To Telkoms credit, a week after I ordered they contacted me to tell me I could go ahead with the self-install and my line would be activated 7 days hence. So 6 days later I picked up my router, plugged it in and no line sync. Well there was still 1 day to go right? So the next day, still no line sync. I went to Telkom Direct, picked up the self-install kit and filters (you don’t need these to get line sync) and asked them what the situation was. I spent about half an hour with a consultant while she phoned around Telkom for me to find out what the problem was as my line was already listed as activated. After all that she came back and told me that they were working on the exchange and my line would be working Monday afternoon. Yay… I stood there for a good 30 minutes to get a 5 second response.

That reponse had me a little worried though, when Telkom tells you they’re working on the exchange, it can often mean months before your dsl is working. So I didn’t hold out any hope of having my DSL fully working by Monday. I was however quite surprised when I got home from work on Monday to find my router had obtained line sync.

So all-in-all just under 2 and a half weeks from order to installation to activation to full working DSL. From some of the horror stories I’ve heard, the process was relatively fast (within Telkom’s 3 week target at least) and painless. DSL lines do pretty much have the highest priority in Telkom at the moment though.