Please sign the “Stop Diesel Spills” Petition on Number 10′s web site…

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/StopDieselSpills/

Many Thanks.

Steve McQueen's Metisse Desert Racer

Check this out, Métisse Motorcycles have produced a limited number of Steve McQueen’s Competition Desert Racer. Before you get your cheque book out you might want to consider other bikes in its price range like may be a Ducati 1098 or a BMW R1200GS Adventure. Yes, this trailie will set you back over £15,000, but what a stunning bike, damn I’d love to take one for a blast…..dream.

Official Website:http://www.metisse-motorcycles.com

I just came across this petition, it has got to be worth signing. Even if you don’t go to London much, it’s a right pain parking your bike now. It’s the principle you know :-/

Not only have you got to deal with the gazillion scooters crammed into every inch of bike park, but now you have to text your number plate to the parking authorities and have your mobile billed £1.50 for the pleasure.

How many more ways can they find to wring us dry of any hard earned we might have left!

Go on sign it You never know, it might work!

Sign here…http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/bikeparkingfees/
Related Site: http://www.notobikeparkingfees.com

Damn its cold! -8 degs, it gets chilly on an hours commute.

So here’s my setup….

Top

Jacket: Revit with waterproof and thermal layer.

Additional Wind Proofing: Local Paper

Heated Vest: Maplin £20 (Keeps your core warm on the motorway)

Fleece: Patagonia R1 (Very Expensive and very good but suspect M&S Thermal isn’t far behind and less that £20)

Thermal Top: Marks and Spencer’s Thermal Long Sleeved Top (Very very good I think Ride gave them top marks in a recent test and less than £20)

Office Shirt: Whatever’s cleanish

T-Shirt: Whatever’s clean

Bottom

Layer 1: Marks and Spencer’s Thermal Long pants with Merino Wool (They have a few different ones).

Layer 2: AlpineStar Touring Leathers

Boots: Daytona Gore-Tex (Covered 60k miles in all weathers, these boots are exceptionally warm)

The outer layer survived a 50mph slide down a dual carriageway leaving the occupant without a mark

Also a good set of handle bar muffs work wonders, cheap ones do nothing they let in too much cold air.

This setup works well for me. I would love to here about anything better or other recommendations for winter kit.

2007 Yamaha FZ6 Fazer

… So the 600 Fazer S2 is working as planned, sort of, it doesn’t shred rear tyres, although it is nowhere near as torquey as the thousand, it is still too capable of speed limit bashing. Also, on the back (being a fair bit taller than Bro) I get a fair bit of lift over 100mph, which makes for interesting times NOT! (I have no problems at all on the back of the FZ1 Fazer it’s little fairing seems to do a great job).

I think the daily two-up pounding the Fazer 600 got, was a little too much. After six months it developed a whine, plus we were bored. So it was off to our friendly Yamaha Dealer again. This time we decided the speed was still an issue, well more our lack of any self control.

We were looking down the rows of bikes, still under the deluded impression that a 600 was the way to go. The answer to all of our problems was there staring us straight in the face, how can we have been so stupid, a super-moto! Yeah! They are fun, can’t do much over the license loosing 100mph, especially two-up and they are fun.

2007 Yamaha XT660X

The new shiny KTM sorry I mean Yamaha XT660X. Now that looked like fun, we took it for a test drive. It was really bizarre, I hadn’t been on a dirt bike since I was a kid. It was like riding a 100mph mountain bike. Just riding around Shepherds Bush roundabout was awesome. The speed off the line is unreal, it fitted all the criteria, fun, curtails top speed on the motorway and has a back seat oh yeah and has to be fun.

So the paper whizzed around and it was ours, the poor whiny Fazer was gone, woohoo. The XT was surprising good at commuting and was amazing fun, the only problem in London was the bars, it took a few days of mirror bashing to get the hang of filtering with wide bars, even then it is a pain in the arse, it is made up for though by the fun you are having when not filtering. Even on the motorway it was fine, comfortable two-up and cruising around 90mph (if legal) would have been fine.

But the friendship soon turned sour, after six months the gearbox imploded it was repaired under warranty but a month later the gearbox blew again. We decided that it was not up for the job and we needed a thousand again. The Ace had survived for years. So a deal was done and we where back on a thousand. The story is continued in previous posts… see below.