Vrooom

weblog Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

 

It’s done. I’m a biker. I know because on the way to work this morning other bikers I saw were giving me the ever so slight ‘you are one of us’ nod of the head as we past. Or they were riding over pot holes.

I’ve got one of these. It’s a Honda CBR250RR. It’s got a small engine but it’s 4-stroke so it’s zippy and fuel efficient. The petrol tank is 14 litres so I can fill it up for less than $20

Riding isn’t all chocolates and fuel economy. I almost sneezed this morning while riding. Narrowly avoided that disaster. My visor fogs up when I’m sitting at the lights as there’s no wind flowing through the ventilation in the helmet and I have to breathe exhaust fumes – I’m not a fan of traffic lights. I haven’t mastered lane splitting yet. I don’t ride on congested freeways, just narrow two lane roads so there’s not much room to sneak through, especially with trucks and buses. I’ll have to observe other riders techniques. It’s legally dubious too, and if I die I want to at least have the moral high ground. Although this training CD from VicRoads suggested it was better to not die at all — a novel philosophy. It’s also made me paranoid. Car drivers are crazy. Who knows what those cagers (as us bikers call those poor saps) are about to do?

I had a little trouble getting the bike registered. Between Tom’s unholy electrical draining power and the 28 day limit on road worthy certificates, I only had one chance to get to VicRoads for registration which my bike refused to start for. Several hundred dollars later, everything’s fine. Spark plugs were replaced, carburetter balanced and the wallfor reoiled.

But that’s all over now. Vrooom!

318

This entry was posted by the illustrious Andy Cocker on Wednesday, July 19th, 2006. It concerns such pressing issues as . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Vrooom”


  1. Tom
    July 19th, 2006 at 1:20 am

    What’s a wallfor?


  2. andy
    July 19th, 2006 at 1:36 am

    To hold the roof up.


  3. Tom
    July 19th, 2006 at 8:29 pm

    Yuk Yuk. Balancing the carburetor makes a lot more sense than balancing the carbs, as you kept telling me. Mind you, your bike wouldn’t be the first creature to be taken in by that sneaky Atkins diet.


  4. andy
    July 19th, 2006 at 9:37 pm

    I assumed a petrol head such as yourself would know that a carburetter is often called a carb, or carbie and has spelling variations.

    I forgot to mention the good smells. While it is mostly car fumes, sometimes I’ll get a whiff of a BBQ or restaurant or a field of flowers or the open road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common, the hedgerows, the rolling downs! Camps, villages, towns, cities! Here to-day, up and off to somewhere else to-morrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing! I’m not sitting here any longer. I’ve got places to be.

↑
↓