Eunos Chump

Gave the SV a service today, including a thorough degreasing of the underside.  Just short of 27K now, zero problems but I'm still going to look at a F800ST at a BMW dealer tomorrow.  I'm not sure about the looks at all, but on paper it looks a perfect fit for my requirements.  Hopefully I'll hate it and have to buy that Super Blackbird after all.

I think I've mentioned before my admiration for the Suzuki Van Van.  Unfortunately they're only 125cc, and never, ever cheap... but rejoice, there's now a cheap'n'cheerful imposter from Korea! I saw some in my local dealer yesterday, they're extremely cute and about £2.5K on the road.  That's still too much for an occasional-use toy, but if I could get one for about £1K I'd be happy.  Being a Hyonsung, depreciation will be epic so the wait could be short.

I've been using the bike all week, even though it's sometimes been frosty.  I'm not sure why, perhaps to inject a little excitement into the daily commute?  Anyway, 'cos I'm going relatively slowly I'm getting 61 MPG and the new kit keeps me warm.  I don't think it would be so much fun if I had no other transport though, it's quite nice having the choice of 2 or 4 wheels.  I'm planning to replace the E39 with something more interesting next year though, and when I say 'interesting' I mean something that's a contender for the 2013 Autoshite calendar:

I bought some winter bike gear this week; Hein Gericke textile jacket and trousers, and the winter version of my Spada gloves (excitingly called 'Enforcers').  I've also put a Pinlock insert in my visor, using the DIY kit .  It's quite fiddly to fit, you have to place a clear vinyl template over the visor then drill holes where indicated, then push through the pins.  Although there's some adjustment on the pins (they're eccentric), if you get the position of the holes wrong by a couple of millimetres then it's never going to fit. I went for a ride of about 15 miles in the cold, and the pinlock is just amazing!  There was plenty of condensation around the edges of the visor, but the pinlock area remained completely clear, I didn't have to open the visor once.  Unfortunately my soft little hands got very cold, so I'll either have to get heated grips or man up a bit. Had a look at some bikes at George Whites in Swindon today, there's some good d...

Subwoofer time

I have gone to Skyrim (along with more than 7 million other losers), I may be some time.

I'm back home now, in fact I've been back almost a week but have been too knackered or ill to do anything.  I miss the Washington weather and Harris Teeter, the 24-hour supermarket that was 5 mins from my apartment.  It wasn't cheap ($10 for a tub of cookies, for instance), it had a funny smell that I couldn't put my finger on, it sold only 1 motorbike magazine (but about a dozen gun magazines), but I liked it.  It wasn't just the crazy food (everything has to have peanut butter/bacon/cheese), I liked observing the zombies who stalked it's aisles.  The mad cat-lady ratio was pretty high, perhaps because the area is made up solely of apartments rather than family homes. Oh yeah, it snowed.  Proper Scott-of-the-Antartic snow, but it only lasted a day and didn't really settle.  This was about 3 days after I'd got sunburnt at Kings Dominion, very weird. Cubicles.  We were horrified when workmen started assembling these, we're used to big open-plan off...

Day 754. I have a new friend living with me, his name is Wilson and he's a box of Cheezits.  He doesn't like me watching Sponge Bob, he thinks it has no moral compass... he doesn't like me using the internet either, so I have to go now.

On Sunday we visited Kings Dominion, and there was a LOT of rollercoaster action. Best one there is the Intimidator 305 (that being the height in feet), it's a mile long and reaches 94 mph.  After the illness of Six Flags I was taking it easy and missing quite a few rides, but I went on this a couple of times.   Dominator was good too, if I was a nerd I'd mention it's the same model of B&M coaster as AT's Oblivion , though much longer and minus the freefall drop. Again, rollercoaster-enthusiast weirdos would tell you that Anaconda is a late model Arrow Dynamics Corkscrew.  It's quite long but with a painful full-stop part way through, feels like it was too intense and had to be tamed.  Pretty rough ride. There's some good wooden coasters too, such as  Rebel Yell which is 2 racing coasters, like the Grand National at Blackpool (really painfully rough).  I didn't do the others, apparently they're even tougher on the arse so I sat them out and had ...

Raf and I went to Six Flags last night, it's a chain of theme parks across the USA.  It's good, technically better roller coasters than those at Alton Towers, but the themeing, landscaping and general feel of the place is quite slapdash. It was a halloween night, so there were plenty of roaming zombies with chainsaws scaring people (so a lot like Kings Lynn) First we went on a wooden coaster built in 1917, which was as rough as you'd expect.  Next it was the 208' high Superman, the first hypercoaster I've been on... intense.  Lot of negative-G's, and a very long ride.  Then Batwing, the photo above.  If I'd seen this in daylight I doubt I'd have gone on it, it was the most extreme ride I've ever been on.  You sit in the car backwards, then the seats recline so you're laying on your back, and then... I don't know, I couldn't tell what was up or down beyond the first twist.  All I know is I was flung about and felt very, very ill afterward...

Check it out, I found it under the sofa. I'm considering hiring one of these for a weekend (convertible version, so ladies can enjoy my pretty English face), but the roads here are awful and sap all the joy of driving (I've been piloting our little Kia recently).  Get some roundabouts, America!.

I went to the new air and space museum near Dulles airport today  SR71 Blackbird; it was my favourite plane when I was a kid, 2200mph! Talk to me, Goose!  Every aircraft museum seems to have a Concorde now.  I liked the 707 prototype in the foreground better. It's a shuttle! shame it's only  Enterprise , which was launched from the top of a Boeing 747 for flight testing and never saw space.  Still impressive though, it's bloody enormous. Cabbage soup, in a tube; Soviet space grub. 128K computer, $1.9M in the late '60s and finally the mothership from Close Encounters of the Third Kind it's got a number of objects added which you couldn't see in the film, including a submarine, WW2 aircraft and R2D2

Can you guess where it is yet? No, not Bracknell Nor Wisbech... Not even Basingstoke.  It's DC, this is the Korean war monument. Apollo 11, encased in plastic, at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum The Watergate complex in the evening we went to a riverside bar with Matt's friends, who are local.  I had swordfish, I'm pretty much eating anything unusual I can find (you should see the contents of the fridge).  Then they drove us around the old part of Washington, and showed us the staircase from the Exorcist... I've not seen that film for years and can't remember this bit, but hey, here it is.

Hey, I'm visiting the Great Satan!  The climate is warmer and petrol is cheap... everything else is rubbish, I don't like it. We arrived at Washington Dulles on Monday via Bubbles , went Premium economy so it was pretty comfy with lots of snacks.  I tried to watch Thor, but it was too rubbish.  Then I tried Battlefield Los Angeles, and it was worse.  I ended up watching Fast & Furious 5 which was absolute tosh, but I had nothing better to do of course (I wasn't given any opportunity to drive the plane, how rude). After a lot of Blackberry-related trouble (we couldn't call each other or retrieve the emails containing the addresses, etc), we got to our apartments in the evening.  They're pretty plush, and you can see the office from the balcony: I've seen loads of interesting cars, I'll start getting some photos.  I like the new Beetle, and there are a lot of sleek Japanese coupes we don't get in the UK.  There are a LOT of Camaros around too, an...

I'm going to be in the USA for a few weeks so I've put the bike away in it's little hidey-hole.  It's had a clean and I've sprayed the bits that might corrode over winter with WD40 (because that ACF stuff is bloody expensive).  I have considered hiring a Harley when I'm out there for a weekend, it works out to be quite expensive though and there is an increased chance of coming to harm... maybe not a good idea. Coming up next: pigging out news, and complaints about TV/tea/crisps, etc.

I had a ride of a Triumph ST 1050 today, courtesy of a friend at work.  It felt a big hefty lump after the deft little Suzuki, it insists on written notice in advance if you want to change direction.  It was stupidly easy to speed too, my license would be in serious peril if I had one.  This particular one has an aftermarket exhaust which is very noisy and pops and crackles on the overrun, it's a bit too unsociable for me; nice comfy riding position though. I did like it, but not enough to want one; I was surprised by this, I thought a sport tourer would be a perfect fit for my requirements but it's just too stodgy, and as it's considered the best in class that doesn't bode well for my VFR800 plan.

Look at this, atomic powered aeroplanes!  I'd never heard of such a thing and I know pretty much everything .  It works like a normal jet engine, but the compressed air is fed through the reactor to heat it.  It could stay in the air for months, theoretically, but never came to fruition: There's more great nuclear shenanigans at this blog I stumbled across: