What Motorbike should I get?

I am going to get a new motorcycle. The question is, what should I get?
I want to do long rides, and I do mean long ..... around New Zealand, around Australia type long.
When looking at various motorcycles, I am taking into account the following "must haves"

• Must be an upright riding position
• Must have a comfortable seat
• must be capable of carrying lots of luggage
• Must have nationwide coverage for service and support, or at least be a common brand that it is likely there will be people around who know how everything works.
• Must have good fuel economy and a large (20l+) tank.

My 1st choice at the moment is a Suzuki DL650 Wee-Strom. Seems to fit my requirements nicely and isn't too expensive.
Keen to hear what anyone else thinks. So drop me a comment below with what you would buy to do the kind of trips I am planning.

R.I.P Little Mouse

It is with a heavy heart that I must advise the demise of little Squeaky the mouse.

He was a great friend to me, always willing to listen, never running away, never getting into trouble (we will forget the smoking incident). Never a more loyal mouse did ever exist.

I will always remember you Squeaky. May the cheese in mouse heaven be specialty Gruyere.

I am just so happy that my last memory of Squeaky will be the car ride we took together.

I do not want the haters to hate just because squeaky wasn't wearing a seat belt. He was just way too small.

How good is a mouses eyesight

I am wondering how well a mouse can see.

I heard the TV in the lounge go on early this morning. I went to investigate thinking that someone was in the house.

Imagine my surprise when I found this.

You can imagine my surprise when I saw Squeaky chillaxing out watching TV. I told him off though for sitting too close. The fact that he had to sit so close makes me wonder how good his eyesight is.

I think I might take him to spec savers and get his eyes checked.I think little Squeaky will look cool with glasses.

Bad Breath Mouse

I had started to notice that my pet mouse Squeaky has bad breath.

I know with dogs and cats, the you can have their teeth brushed and also get them special"cleaning" biscuits.

I had asked my daughter to go and clean her teeth and when she got in to the bathroom this is what she found.

Who knew that a mouse could teach itself to brush its teeth by watching humans.

I think I will have to set up a live stream and watch what this mouse gets up to when I am not around. I have purchased a black magic recorder which will enable me to livestream from my GoPro. My project for tomorrow.

All of these products can be purchased from my Amazon Store.

Toilet training your pets

I have been told that it is impossible to toilet train pets. You can get them to go outside, but it is not possible to actually get them to go to the toilet.

You can imagine my surprise when I went to the bathroom today and saw this.

My widdle mouse, Squeaky, is a very smart widdle mouse. He toilet trained himself!

I have noticed that he has bad breath. I must see if I can get him to brush his teeth.

Kids and Pets

My daughter has always been a cat person. She has two cats, identical twins. I was rapt when she took a liking to my new pet mouse, Squeaky.

Here is a picture of her bonding with Squeaky.

I just hope she isn't conning me and planning to feed Squeaky to her cats.

A smoking mouse

I am so disappointed with my new pet mouse. He went missing and when I found him he was .... well I think the picture says it all.

Does anyone know if you can get stop smoking patches in mouse size?

My new Pet Mouse

I went outside this morning and found a little mouse sunbathing on the back porch.

I am going to keep him and call him squeaky.

He doesn't move around much, but thats good, as I don't have a cage for him yet.

I wuv my new widdle mouse friend.

Back from the dead

After not posting anything for four months, I think it is time to start posting again.

I have set myself a goal of posting something everyday, so be ready for an eclectic series of posts.

I have a few things I am planning so I will use this forum as somewhat of a diary with an update on progress.

The first thing is a big ride I am planning. I am going to ride around New Zealand, sticking as close to the coast as I can, bearing in mind I will be riding a sport tourer motorbike. When that ride is complete, I am going to ship the bike to Australia and then do a clockwise ride around Australia. Once again, I will be sticking as close to the coast as a road bike will allow.

Due to health issues, I have had to stop working. This has lead me to look at Kickstarter as a means to fund this ride. Details of the Kickstarter campaign are as follows: http://kck.st/1rMzCXv.

I appreciate any donations towards assisting me to undertake my project.

YouTube Channel Trailer

I have had a trailer video for my youtube channel created. Thought I would try and attract more people to my YouTube channel so I could have a wider audience for my words of wisdom.

What do you think?

Feel free to subscribe to my youtube channel here.

I haven't posted anything new for a while but that is all about to change. Stay tuned for a lot more uploads.

Random words while riding

Went for a ride today with "She who must be obeyed" on the back.

It was a fantastic day for a ride so I took one of my favourite routes out through the Pohangina Valley to Apiti, coffee at Kimbolton and home via Colyton.

Came back feeling hyper as usual and then spent an hour editing all my go pro video to make another extravaganza. I am going to learn how to use iMovie properly and work on my editing to make a more professional looking video blog. I also need to find a mic that can block out the wind as the wind noise is quite intrusive.

I do quite enjoy having a conversation with myself while riding along. I do notice that I stop talking when I need to concentrate and start straight back up where I left off when I am through the tricky bit. I don't consciously know I am doing it. The brain is a wonderful thing.

The extravaganza can be found here on youtube.

Padded Bra Test

I went for a ride today and tested out some bra padding.

No, I wasn't wearing a bra to contain my man boobs, although I probably need to. I was testing out using bra padding as a wind filter for the microphone I use when I am moto-vlogging. This was suggested by ++AccidentalBroadcast so I thought I would see how it worked.

Take a look at my latest video and let me know what you think of the sound. Is the wind noise reduced? Is it acceptable to watch/listen to?

Video can be found here on the you tubes,

Riding without Teeth

Oh No, Quelle Horreur, only 3 days of my holiday left ......

Where on earth did those three weeks go!

Back to work on Monday so I thought I would take the opportunity this morning to go for a little ride. I fancied some twisty bits, so took the following route:

• Palmerston North to Balance Valley Road via Pahiatua Track
• Balance Valley Road to Ashhurst via the Manawatu Gorge
• Ashhurst to Bunnythorpe
• Home to Palmy

Had a great ride, and as always, I came back feeling full of energy.

Here is some footage of the ride with some commentary from me. Forgive the wind noise as I am still trying to find the ideal position for the mic inside my helmet.

Vlogging

I am now a Vlogger.

Now before you jump to conclusions about me embracing medieval masochism of some kind, a Vlogger is a Video Blogger.

I have now just lost ⅔ of my audience, who had tuned in expecting something completely different. Oh well, c'est la vie. It's just my sister and some person from the Ukraine who doesn't speak English left now.

Anyway, I digress, back to the topic.

I bought a microphone for my GoPro. I followed the youtube instructions which showed me how to drill a hole in the side of the GoPro case (here is a link). I actually managed to do this without destroying the case, so yeehaa (I have my teeth in and the hillbilly still comes out in me), $65 saved. I have a helmet mount for my GoPro and run the microphone cable down into my helmet, under the cheek pads inside the helmet, clip the cheek pads back into place, and Voila .... I am ready to Vlog.

Went out today and recorded my first video with voice. It is not as easy as it seems and the odd swear word did get into the video, I will have to find out how to edit swear words out, but for now, block your ears kiddies.

After some basic editing, the result can be found here on my YouTube channel.

Happy Watching.

Improving my cornering technique

I have always used the "vanishing point" technique for cornering on my motorbike.

Basically this is where you look as far around the corner as you can, keeping your eyes always on the furtherest point you can see. If that point starts coming back towards you, you are going to fast and need to slow down. If that point starts going away from you you can start accelerating as the corner is opening up.

Earlier this week I was watching a "Vlog" by the Baron (BaronVonGrumble on YouTube), and he was talking about a technique he used, the A B C technique. Basically you divide your side of the road into thirds. A is the third closest to the kerb, B is the middle third, and C is the third closest to the centre line.

You normally ride in the B sector. When a right hand corner comes up, you position the bike in the A sector (closest to the kerb) so you can see as far around the corner as possible and take the corner starting in the A sector. When a left hand corner comes up, you position the bike in the C sector, once again so you can see as far around the corner as possible.

I combined this technique with the vanishing point technique and found it really smoothed out my cornering. I will be keeping at this technique until it becomes automatic as it really does seem to work for me and my style of riding.

I took myself off for a pootle over the Pahiatua Track to try it out. The video can be found here on my YouTube channel.