Monday 12 March 2012

Introductions

So Hi! I'm Scott, I've just turned 31, I live in Hamilton, New Zealand, and I'm a self-confessed 'biker'. By that I mean I love motorcycles, I ride a 1990 Honda CBR250RR (MC22), it's my pride and joy! I figured I'd start this blog to share my thoughts, my ride experiences, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff that has yet to happen!

I'm a pretty 'happy go lucky' kinda guy, I'm currently working as a fencing technician for a big event here in Hamilton, this is the last year that the city is hosting the "V8 Supercars", the major Australian race event between Holdens and Fords for those of you that aren't familiar with it. Basically, I'm working alongside the fencing contractor, putting up all the security fence, crowd control barrier fence, and a bunch of other bits and pieces that we have to get done before the 20th of April, when racing starts. It's a street circuit, and we've got about 10km (just over 6 miles) of fencing to put up in a little under 5 weeks, then we have to take it all down again within 2 weeks! (to clear the streets for regular traffic, otherwise we start getting fined big bucks!)

I enjoy the work, it's pretty simple, mostly just manual labour, and my boss Dave is pretty easy to work with too. He just gets a bit stressed out by the deadlines, and the fact that half our fence still hasn't even been made yet! I worked for him on the track last year too, which was an 'experience' to say the least! It was Dave's first time at the V8's as well, and I think he didn't realise how big a venture it was! This year we've done a fair bit more preparing, a lot more planning and organising, but the company owner is slacking with organising the fence for us... Should be interesting to see how it turns out anyways, I'm not particularly stressed about it, I don't get paid to stress!

Back to the bike anyways, I've had the CBR for just over two years now, I bought it to use as a daily runner, and it still is to this day. I've done a few long trips, some with friends, some on my own, and I'm fairly confident as a rider. I have ridden other bikes previously, but the CBR is definitely my favourite! I've often been given a little bit of stick for being so obsessive about the bike, but I figure it's the most expensive thing I own so of course I'm going to take care of it! To put it in perspective, I've spent almost the original purchase price of the bike on aftermarket pieces (including a full engine rebuild, more about that later), and I'd be pretty confident in saying it's the most modified CBR250 in New Zealand. I'm a member of a few forum groups, that are great for advise and tips with my bike, but mostly I've learnt how to fix things on it myself. I have a bit of a mechanical background, I'm a qualified auto-electrician by trade, and I grew up playing with cars, so the bike is pretty simple really.

A little over a year ago, I had a fairly bad 'off', where I made the mistake of thinking a car driver saw me but actually didn't, and went for a slide down the road. Thankfully, my injuries healed up pretty quickly, but the bike faired a bit worse, unfortunately. I'm still in the process of returning it to it's former glory, but I see the whole ordeal as a bit of a blessing in disguise now. After having the accident, I am now a lot more cautious on the road, I look at everything out there: cars, pedestrians, the road surface, etc etc. The other benefit of having the accident is that I know now exactly how my bike works, having stripped it back to a bare frame in the rebuild process (three times now actually), and put everything back together piece by piece.

All that awaits the bike now is a bit of powdercoat, and a new set of fairings. When I bought the bike, it had Repsol fairings on, and I intend to keep with this look, having purchased a set from a reputable company. I'm still waiting on the delivery, but they are coming from overseas so I understand they might be a little while. Before I put them back on I plan on powdercoating the frame, subframe, rearsets, fork legs, triple clamp, and clip-ons, but at this stage I have to wait for more finances... I will be completely pulling the bike down again, sending everything away as one package, and hopefully this time the powdercoaters will get it right.

The frame that I have on the bike currently isn't the original, it's actually the third frame. I sent the original away to powdercoat a while back, in the bike's initial rebuild, but when it came back to me they'd plugged all the bolt holes thick with powder! Suffice to say, it would've taken a fair while to scrape all the powder out of the holes to use the frame again. Instead, I purchased another frame that I found at a wreckers pretty cheaply, but alas, when I got it home and tried installing the engine I found it was bent inwards a bit and the engine wouldn't fit. So, long story short, I bought yet another frame (the one I'm using now) and refitted everything to it...

At the moment, the bike looks a little like a streetfighter, with cut down fairings (modified after the accident), a vinyl blacked frame and swingarm, rebuilt engine, completely rewired, and a few other bits and pieces that I won't bore you to death with. On the road, it runs really sweet, apart from the fact that it doesn't like being cold at all... But I'm pretty sure an oil flush and change would sort this out, it's about 150km overdue... (next on the list of things to do...)

So, as you may have gathered by now, I do have a bit of a soft spot for my bike... It's as I say 'a work in progress'... when that progress will end, I'm not entirely sure, but that's the fun part of it all!

I've been riding with a really cool group of people for a little while now, mostly they are from Auckland, so it's a bit of an extra hike for me to go out with them, but we have been for a couple of amazing weekends away together, and have put a lot of kilometres on our bikes together. The first big ride I did with the group, I added up over 1200km on the CBR, all the way to the top of NZ and back! It really was so much fun! I look forward to the next ride I get to go on, after work settles down a bit, the group are an absolute blast to hang out with, and the scenery on the rides we go on is nothing short of spectacular.

There are a couple of people in the group I've made very good friends with so far, apart from the 'ride organisers', who already know that I think of as my 'biker foster Mom and Dad', who have been good friends of mine for a fair while now. One of the other guys that I've become good friends with has gladly put me up for two weekends in a row, without asking for more than a spare cigarette every now and then! I truly am humbled by the level of acceptance and warmth shown by this individual, he has a heart of gold, and I cannot say thank-you enough to him for being a friend. The way it worked out was that I had kind of organised a little send off for one of our biker friends, who was flying out to Canada for an year(ish) long trip, so a bunch of the biker group converged upon Auckland Airport to say goodbye. It so happened that my birthday was the following day, and I hadn't really made any plans for it apart from having a relaxing day at home in front of the TV... Well, said mate kindly offered me to go back and stay at his place, which was really cool to start with, then he took me out to a party on the night of my birthday even after he'd had a pretty harsh day at his work. This, to me, is the definition of a really good friend, because little did he know, if I had stayed at home being bored and with no-one to talk to, it wouldn't have been any different to any other day. So just the fact that he let me stay and share good conversation was really huge to me. I don't know if the way I've tried to explain it makes much sense, but it was just the simple little offer of a friend to talk to, that's what was huge to me.

Oh yeah, the other friend, the one we all said goodbye to at the Airport, well it turns out that she and I have been talking a lot online too, and for some reason I feel really connected to her in a cool way too. The funny thing is, we only met about a week before she left, but the way we talk is like we've been good friends for ages! She's a really cool chick too, she seems to understand me in ways that I'm not even sure I understand myself in, but that's female intuition for you I suppose! Hehe. The look on her face when she saw everyone at the Airport to say goodbye was so cool, made me feel pretty good to have (kinda) organised it all. I do hope we keep talking online throughout the year or so that she's away, and that I can surprise her again with everyone when she flies back into New Zealand!


Wow, I just realised that I've written a pretty long introduction so far! Might have to leave it at that, for now... The plan is to write something up on here every day or so, even if it's only a couple of short sentences or so, just to keep track of my year, I wonder what it'll be like to look back after 12 months and read what I wrote today, how I'll feel and how things in my life will have changed... I can only imagine at this stage!

Until next time!

:-)

2 comments:

  1. Hey Cocker, nice outlook on life you have there.
    Enjoyed reading this and any biker who has had an off and gets back on is fine by me....even if I am a miserable old sod.
    Look forward to the next installment.

    ReplyDelete

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