Well, the school holidays are over and I’ve never been gladder to get back to work. As noted below, the holidays have been extremely boring and I’m looking forward to school tomorrow where I can break out the guitar and do my thing.

I’m also hoping that the car will be ready. I rode past the shop today and it was parked out the front with undercoat on the offending section, so it’s looking positive.

I’ve been spending a lot of time getting the content ready for my site. The discipline required to document 34 years of motorcycling is immense and it’s taken me a long time to get it together.

Funnily enough, though, I have found it to be an intensely rewarding exercise. Making myself remember the details of all the bikes, the people, the places and the things has been very difficult, but I am so pleased that I have got it done.

And, along the way, I’ve found a whole lot more stuff that my readers might be interested in as well, and I hope to gradually publish that over the next six months or so.

We’re working on a nice design for the site at the moment so I trust you’ll be patient until that’s done. My designer is adamant that we don’t publish until the “front end” looks good, so, I’m in his hands entirely.

Oh, and I had a haircut today. In fact, I had them ALL cut (what there is there that is). Hardly an earth-shattering event except that this would be the first time in over 30 years that I have gone to a barber’s shop and paid for a haircut. My wife usually cuts it but she can’t right now, for obvious reasons. The barber charged me $15.00. $0.50 to do the cutting and $14.50 search fee.

Using the bike as your only means of transportation is do-able, but I wouldn’t want to do it for an extended period of time. All I can say is, thank goodness for Woolworth’s home delivery service.

Finally, here’s a picture I found that says a whole lot about motorcycle touring..

Frasers Motorcycles at Fairymeadow had a Ducati test ride day today so I went along to have a look and to poach a ride or two. The whole fleet was there and it was really a matter of “name your poison”

Reaping the benefit of being there first, I had a good choice and I chose two very different and contrasting bikes, the GT1000 classic road bike and the brand new Monster 696.

Contrasting bikes but both with their charms.

The GT was true “old school” riding, but with modern sophistication. The bike felt light and even a bit “flighty” but the controls were all excellent. A light clutch (that never happened in the 70′s); a sweet gearbox (ditto) and fine handling (again) Not that we had much chance to explore handling on an escorted ride through the back streets of Fairymeadow.

The engine was flexible and with no hint of any attempt to make it civilised. This is a “what you see is what you get” bike. I loved it. Were I to buy one, I’d ditch the awful mufflers, fit a set of lower bars so that the riding position had just a bit more forward lean than it has, and I’d fit a little perspex bug-catcher screen just over the headlight, to keep the wind off my chest. Apart from that, I think that this 21st Century iteration of the classic 70′s bike is a great success.

The 696 was totally different, of course, which was one of the reasons I chose to ride it. Firstly, it feels tiny, and that’s because it is. You feel like you’re sitting on top of the front wheel when riding it and the seat is by no means comfortable. It’s a shaped-type of seat and it forces you into a riding position that a woman would find OK, but a bloke quickly finds to be most uncomfortable, if you know what I mean The mirrors are utterly useless as well. So typical of the Italians to be more concerned with style than with functionality. Apart from the horrible seat, the rest of the riding position is fine.

And the engine, oh, the engine. If Ducati wants to make lots of money, all they need to do is to find some way of packaging the induction roar of the 696 under acceleration and they will make a mint. On the road the bike is light and responsive and engaging and I found myself slowing down and speeding up all the time just so I could listen to the roar from the airbox. It truly is that good.

Oh, and one of my forum buddies made a very interesting discovery. On the top of the tank in front of the petrol filler there is a “696″ badge. If you look at the badge from the FRONT of the bike, it says “969″ !!!!!

The Test Day itself was excellently conducted; I’m guessing that the Frasers boys have got it pretty well sorted. Four riders in dayglo vests rode with us and escorted us around. Wherever we encountered a major intersection, one of the escorts would go out into the intersection and hold up the traffic to let the whole group go through together. Clever.

There was a barbeque and a coffee van and the whole thing seemed to go off like clockwork. 10 points to Frasers.

It’s nearly the end of the holidays and I’ve achieved about zero in terms of productivity. My grand plan of touring for the whole two weeks crashed early with the realisation that there’d be no-one at home to look after the in-laws and #1 son.

Any thought of doing something a little less extensive was also destroyed with a careless reversing manouver that damaged the rear of the car and has seen it off the road for the last week and a half.

I’ve also had to get two new tyres on the bike and that’s eaten up a lot of the funds that I had salted away to finance the tour. All in all, pretty disappointing.

On the subject of tyres, I am bitterly disappointed in the much-heralded Bridgestones BT-021. Lauded as a Sports/Touring tyre with a dual compound tread (hard in the middle, soft on the sides) it has proven to be a major let down. I have never gotten less than 11000kms on a rear on any of the VFR’s I’ve owned and I often get a bit more than that. This BT-021 lasted 9870kms. Grr.

On a brighter note, I hope very soon to go “live” with the real “meat” of “Half of my Life” a detailed recounting of my 30+ years of motorcycling obsession. Watch out for that soon.

By the way, what did the principal of the inflatable school say to his student?

“You’ve let me down, you’ve let yourself down and you’ve let the school down.”