Created by Oatmeal
Archive for the ‘Fun’ Category
I’ve recently become a biker, by which I mean I’ve passed my CBT and bought a 125cc motorbike. I felt more comfortable doing it than I thought I would, having had a car licence for 14 years and being a keen cyclist back in the day (before my fitness and I parted ways). This part of the UK (Devon) seems a lot more ‘biker aware’ than other areas, maybe that’s through necessity or not I don’t know, so everything about getting a bike is positive.
I haven’t even mentioned the fuel economy: the first tank of fuel I got through worked out to be 115mpg! That’s about four times better than my car. Road tax is £15 for a year, compared to goodness only knows what for the car (about £180 I think). These positives are counterbalanced by the mild negatives of not being allowed on the motorways (need a full licence for that) and no passengers. And the weather can be a pain. And you’re a lot more likely to die.
This next sentence comes from my 14 years on the road driving and more than that cycling, and is a direct result of using the roads at car speeds but being perceived as a cyclist: car drivers on the road have no fecking clue when it comes to motorcyclists. If you don’t look like a car, then you’re barely considered. Since starting to ride the bike I have had a van pull out in front of me, had a monsterous 4×4 towing a caravan wait for the car in front of me to pass it and then swing out directly in front of me, numerous cars and vehicles taking liberties with fitting through gaps which didn’t exist and taking up needless amounts of the road unnecessarily. I’m not convinced that these things happen to me in equal measure when I’m driving the car.
I wrote earlier that this part of the UK is more ‘biker aware’. There are signs up all over the place with exactly that wording on it, but I think this is more a reactive effort due to the number of accidents/deaths than a proactive effort to prevent them. Having said that, there are a LOT of bikes around, way more than I have seen elsewhere, but then it is good biker country.
Still, I’ll take it easy, work on my slow control, get a high-vis top to go over my jacket and lots of very warm, water/wind/hail/snow-proof clothes for the winter. Oh and go to a huge biker meet every Wednesday. I found out that Paignton is the home of Bikers Make A Difference (BMAD), a social gathering for bikers from all over: “Each year on Paignton Seafront we regularly have a mile of bikes parked side by side every Wednesday evening from May to Sept.” They weren’t kidding. Two rows of bikes, trikes and fast looking things half the length of the sea front. (Seen on a trike: “Is there life after death? Touch this bike and find out!”)
As a biker n00b I wasn’t going to turn up on my only-one-step-up-from-a-scooter 125 (with ‘L’ plates on), but it was an education. I didn’t know what to expect but a well-organised event with an asmosphere of friendliness and fun wasn’t it (not that I’m complaining, I’m really glad it was). There are some cool looking bikes out there, as well as cool looking bikers. The police had a presence there, but not to control the bikers, there were official BMAD volunteer stewards in place for that. The police were promoting safe biking (for bikers) and awareness of bikers (for the 4-wheelers out there) including grisly pictures of what happens when bikers and car drivers alike forget themselves. My daughter even had a go on the police bike.
Harley Davidson also had a presence there. Wow. I saw this (click for big or Google for images):
V-Rod Muscle: Whoa mamma.
I researched (Googled) it and found that it’s most likely to be a new 2009 model called the V-Rod Muscle. I really don’t know what I want from a bike in the future, but something like this would be… awesome. It’s a 1250cc V-twin and it has lots of cool looking shiny bits and a fat-as-f**k rear tyre. I’m not sure what the power-to-weight ratio is (a much more realistic figure than pure bhp) as there’s not enough info. My car has 110bhp/tonne, my 125 has about 72bhp/tonne (I *think* I got the maths right…) and this 1250cc bike weighs in at 300 kilos. Should be fine. As I’ve heard, you have a nice bike, you don’t want to ride it so fast people can’t see you on it.
I’ll try to get some pictures next time, I only had my phone camera with me but will take the D-SLR next time. Check out the galleries on the BMAD website.
Sainsbury's price-per-item FAIL
Taken just this evening in the local Saino’s. Sadly I don’t think this is an any way a rare occurrence, tho I do love it when I get to the checkout and am asked to pay NaN for that week’s shopping.
Head over to failblog.org.
About this time last year, I found and ‘passed on’ via the medium of blog, an image I found called simply ‘Bacon flowchart’. The full explanation for the image is right there in the title.
Well, the blog software was found to be vulnerable to XSS or banana peels lying carelessly on the street and was hacked to buggery and back before you could say ‘viagra spam’ so I lost the image. Well I could have gone looking for it but fate emailed it to me today (yes, fate and destiny are getting all 21st century, you can probably find them on Twitter) and so I am reproducing it here.
For a while, if you typed ‘bacon flowchart’ into Google, that blog post was the first result back. Wonder if it will happen again?
Bacon flowchart
I just came back from my first outing to the second ‘camera club’ meet in the village where I now live, and within minutes of getting on teh Internet, stumble across this gem from Cyanide and Happiness:
