Done and Dusted

Finally, the 400 got to see some daylight. The first photos of the bike were in the yard about a week ago, however Robin and I headed out on the bikes for a run-in and to take some snaps on the Perth foreshore on the weekend.

It has been interesting getting used to the bike again as I haven't ridden it properly in about six months. This thing handles like it's on rails. I keep forgetting how low the centre of gravity is on this bike. I can change direction so quickly and rip around corners effortlessly. It also has a shorter wheel base and smaller turning circle than the R1 so I don't need to do a 10-point turn to get around the courtyard.

I'm looking forward to many more lovely kilometres on "Paris". Here's to warm sunny days and windy roads.

:)

The Finishing Touches

I'm going to let the photos tell most of the story, but I would like to make a point and say a massive "Thank You" to Robin, who has done most of the work, been pestering me to get this bike going and make it look beautiful again.

I love you sweetie, and your work. You're a star.

The tank went on about a week or so after I got it back. When fitting it, we changed the fuel hose and decided to polish up the tripleclamp and replace the headstock nut with a nice titanium one.

Working nights was common, it was a lot cooler and with a beer or two, we were happy to kick on for a few hours a night to get things going.

$5 to the person that can guess what is wrong with this picture!Once the fairings were on and the bolts were replaced with a nice set of ProBolt aluminium bolts, all that was left to do was to go in search of a tank pad. Here's a cracker we found by Keiti.

Getting Tanked

I got to pick up my tank yesterday. Big thanks to Potato (Niall) for doing this up for me, I think the finish is great!

Looking forward to fitting it back to the 400 during the week.

Infected

What a killer week it was! I somehow managed to get a pretty destructive virus on my computer which had me faffed for over two days. The usual steps of just removing it and rebooting caused me so much drama.

Here is what I woke up to:


What I soon found out to be BlazeFind, had me stumped for days. It created a login-logout loop for Windows which meant that I couldn't login to my own computer. Lucky I had a laptop that I could work from to at least work out what the hell was going on!

I ended up needing my Windows XP CD to create a pre-installed environment so I could remotely change the registry. It was a total nightmare, but at least none of my files were deleted or removed.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the Tenners!

New Year's Eve started at Hornet's place in Scarborough where we all met up, parked up on the lawn, got the eskies out and started cracking those first drinks. We had oodles of beer, cider, sparking wine, snacks, my famous fried potatoes (world famous in Perth) and heaps of chocolate!

Hornet and I

Lucie and Jamie

Simone and Matt

Hornet

Robin and his beautiful smile

Robin and I

In between beers, Hornet and the boys got the toy helicopters out and took them for a spin in the backyard. Unfortunately, the wind caught most of them and threw them into the next door neighbour's yard and there wasn't much left when we went to inspect the damage. The skids and counterweights had broken off and Hornet only had a few flights before it was inoperable.

The launch

Up, up and away!The demise...

Later in the evening once dinner was done, Simone got out the blender and started mixing it up with Midori, Bacardi, fresh mangoes and raspberries... in fact, I don't remember what half of them were, I just drank anything that was put in front of me!

The girls and their cocktails: Simone, Lucie, Julie and I

When midnight struck, we all exchanged hugs and kisses, wishing each other a Happy New Year! It wasn't a long or rowdy night, but it was great fun. Cold drinks, hot food and great mates.

A successful start to 2010.