Blog of Hamlesh

This is hilarious – well worth a watch!

I am waiting on some UK specific figures, but for now.

That is all!

Today is a good day, i’ve just been to pick up my motorbike from the workshop.  She has been fitted with turndown exhausts, and boy oh boy are they loud.  The bike is no longer called named The Monster, but is now “Thor’s Hammer“.

A little bit of fabrication work had to be done to get this to fit.  Some brackets had to be made up, the RHS foot peg and rear brake lever had to be repositioned slightly, and the control regulator had to be moved.

The end effect is perfect though  Still a few more little bits to do, biggest of which are the forward controls, but we are nearly there!

A friend of mine has a very nice little cottage on the Isle of Skye that his family rents out to holiday makers.  I try to go there at least once a year to recharge and get away from London.

So what? Why the Isle of Skye?  Whats so special?

Well this is the view from the bottom of the driveway…

Click on it for the full version, be warned, its 19263 x 2426.  I’ve made the full res version available on flickr, but please do let me know if you use it anywhere.  I might get a 6ft wide print made up to hang in my room.

I really do love the Isle of Skye  The panoramic above was shot on the 2009 trip up there, didn’t shoot much else.  The 2008 set are on flickr though.

As always, please feel free to post a comment, or come and talk to me on twitter.

A couple of useful files for those of you that, like myself, own/ride the Yamaha Dragstar.

• Yamaha XVS 650 dragstar owners manual download – PDF (9.46 Mb)
• Yamaha XVS 1100 dragstar workshop manual download – PDF (6.95 Mb)

The workshop manual applies pretty closely for both the 650 and the 1100 – other than some obvious internal engine bits.

Hopefully by this weekend I’ll have the turndown exhausts fitted to mine – expect many pics

PS: If you find this download useful, please post a comment, or come talk to me on twitter.

This evening, as I was heading out the front door, vernier caliper in hand, to take bike measurements for replacement parts, when I noticed the light condition – ran back inside, and emerged with my shooter.

Here are the results;

My favourites, which I have enhanced and processed using Aperture;

As some of you know I recently had a little bit of a spill while pottering around the countryside on my motorbike.  It was a silly crash, that could have been avoided, but thats what lifes all about – experience.

Now, I wasn’t riding fast, honestly, and I think that was part of the problem.  Approaching a right hand bend, I slowed down too much and the bike drifted out towards the left – a crude way to explain it would be under steer… which you cant really do on a bike.  In any case I ended up on the verge along the road with the bike bucking and rocking around.  I almost had things under control, and the bike back on the road, when looming upon me, I spotted a large, thick, telegraph pole.

The choice was clear, ditch the bike off into the bushes, and jump off onto the road… where I landed on my face and right shoulder… quite hard.  Thankfully, being a sensible type of chap, I had my flip face helmet closed, and visor down.  Right now I’d have had no face had I been a MORON wearing an open faced helmet.  Yes, people that wear open faced helmets are morons… its a fact… don’t argue with me… you’ll just be wrong.  The impact of my face hitting the ground was so loud that the people in the house a few hundred yards away, came running out to help me.  The impact with the ground was also nice enough to break my arm – so off to hospital I went.

My humerus was broken in two places, but luckily not displaced, and has, three weeks later, fully healed.  My arm is still quite sore, but movement is returning slowly, the doctors have said it will take at least another 6 weeks for the soft tissue damage to heal.

Looking on the bright side, it could have been worse, if I’d hit that telegraph pole, that would have been it, game over, etc.

This hasn’t phased me, I will still be riding, when your clock runneth out, the reaper commeth – so theres no point worrying about it!  I had the bike out for a little bit for the first time since the crash today, mainly to scope out the damage properly, and take some pictures.

Bent right handle bar support mount - its not in-line - see?

Dent in the fuel tank

Dent in the fuel tank

Dent in the fuel tank

Minor damage, I don’t think I’ll repair the fuel tank, mainly as I don’t think its possible without simply replacing the tank.  Plus it will help to serve as a reminder, and add character to my bike  One of the mirror mounts is also bent, and the bike needs a general clean up, to liberate it from bits of grass and mud still clinging to it.

All in all, compared to how things could have gone, both the bike and I came away from it all very much in one piece

Almost a year ago, I posted commentary up on a major BT outage affecting London, caused by works at the Olympics site.  Well theres now another outage ongoing, and I thought, as the last post had a lot of commenters, indicating to me that there wasn’t a lot of readily available information out there – I’d do the same this time around.

Continue reading »