F*ck Yeah Motorcycles

Traditional old-school Honda colors are red, white and blue

Regular readers that aren't into the motorcycles can look away now. 

Got the 600RR bodywork done. (For the record, that's a 2007 Honda CBR600RR.) Painted and customized the race plastics with a headlight and brake lights so that the bike is street legal(ish). Helpful because I don't have a truck and also I intend to sell it some day and it'll be much easier to sell if it's road legal. Don't plan to ride it on the street all that much. It's registered, plated and insured but the plate isn't actually mounted to the bike. I put it in my backpack if I ride it on the mean streets.

Big thanks to the guys at Metric Method in Lake Forest for all the help and good work. They installed the custom headlight and custom fabbed the brake and turn signal indicators in the rear (there aren't any in the front, see prev. comments re: street legal-ish).

I ordered some mirror block-off plates (and handlebar mirrors, for the street) but I haven't had a chance to install either one yet. Hard to start working on the bike when you get home at 10 PM and your roommate (who sleeps directly above the garage) is already in bed. Haven't even put decals or stickers on it yet. I hope to have all that done by this weekend. Hope. I had some custom decals made up. More on that when they're installed. With photos. Get excited.

Check out the HID high-beam headlight. It's crazy bright but at least people can see you coming. I'd rather annoy everyone because they see me than get run over because they didn't. Not a difficult decision, if I'm honest.

Here's a video:


The "Dream" part is because these red/white/blue colors are associated with the Honda Dream racing team. I think that's classic Japanese engrish so I don't describe it in that way, but most people familiar with Honda Racing will recognize it.

See you out there.

Moar comments on the comments: Belstaff 'Snetterton' jacket

Reader Erik inquires about the heroically awesome jacket I bought last year (pictured, though not on me - only full-face helmets for Case-Sensitive). I ordered mine from urbanrider.co.uk; I'm looking forward to visiting the shop in person when I'm in London in a couple weeks.

Erik writes:
love belstaff!
i live in SCal too and was wondering how hot your jacket gets re: venting etc...
thanks!
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Good news and bad news, Erik. The bad news is the jacket has no venting. As in, none. You can open the front zipper a bit, but that's all you get. It's way too hot for summer, but if temps are in the 60's or 70s then it's fine as long as you're not sitting in traffic. Mid-70s is pushing it a bit, but if you're moving the whole time it's okay.

The good news is that it is the warmest leather jacket I have ever worn; I have ridden it in 45 degree weather with a long-sleeved shirt and a scarf (to keep the wind from blowing down your neck) and been very comfortable. It comes with a removable vest liner but I don't bother with it. The only way air gets in is at the collar. That makes it a 2-ish season jacket in southern CA. Late fall, winter, and early spring. Once the weather warms up you will reach for something that moves the air over your body to keep you cool.

It's still the best looking jacket I've ever seen; people ask me about it every time I wear it. My modern Dainese gear is a bit more comfortable, but not quite as bitchin'. Even people that don't like motorcycles love this jacket.

One last thing: you might know this already, but vents in a leather jacket will help keep you from overheating, but any jacket in temps over about 72 will end up making you sweaty. The vents just cool you off.

My lunch break > your lunch break

I heart the ocean, but some parts of the ocean I heart more than others. For example, when the training group went on a walking lunch to see the seals, I bailed and went my own direction. Partly because I happened to see the seals yesterday, and partly because seals are just dogs with flippers and if you've seen one you've seen them all and I'm not interested (unless it's being eaten by a shark, in which case, oh hell yes).

I happened to arrive at the La Jolla tidepools at low tide, and that's superb, because tidepools are one of my favorite things. Tide was coming in (there's a limit to my luck) but I had plenty of time to see all kinds of crabs, anemones, fish, snails, and quite a lot else. I helped some English kids catch a big (for a tidepool) crab and put it in their bucket for further study. It hung out until they tried to put more water in the bucket and he made a break for freedom. So we caught another (smaller) one. You're not supposed to take the critters away from the pools so I made sure they put them back after a few minutes. I'm environmentally friendly.

Good thing I had on shorts and flip-flops. Work appropriate? Not really. Tidepool appropriate? yessssssss

Imitation is the sincerest form of laziness

Cribbing another post direct from HFL today.
First this superb Vespa advertisement. It reminds me of how I felt on the way to work this morning on my motorcyle: so much wide open space in front of me (after I got to the toll road - the 5 sucked as usual). They call them cages for a reason. You don't even realize how much you can't see in a car until you sit on a bike. On my motorcycle you can barely see the handlebars if you've got your eyes up so you have an unobstructed, panoramic view of the road, horizon, and sky. It's both amazing and awe-inspiring and it never gets old.

Here Guy Martin, a professional motorcycle racer with a personality. I want to hate this guy because he's cooler than me, faster than me, and has seriously awesome facial hair. But I can't. I even tried to dredge up some internet rumors of him being an arrogant dickface but couldn't find any. Winston Churchill and Ghengis Khan? You win this round, Guy.

Developing "skillz"

Spent Sunday at a rider training class with Jeff Hawkinz (hence "Skillzdays"). I'm pretty sure it was the best $50 riding course you could take. It would have been a great bargain even if the class were full, but the other students flaked so it was just me and two other instructors. If you do a track day or riding school at a major track you can usually get a student instructor ratio of somewhere between 3-1 and 6-1, depending on where you go and how much you want to pay. Wherever you go it's going to be more than $50. My student/instructor ratio was 1/2, so the lead instructor watched me bumble in circles and the assistant took pictures if me trying not to bumble. Lots and lots of pictures.

We weren't on a track, but the nice thing about bikes is that you can build good skills and habits at low speeds and then implement them at any speeds. In other words, proper braking, throttle control and body position can be taught in a (large) parking lot. So that's fun.

What is oozing out of our ground?

I don't like to make fun of people because they are ignorant* but sometimes I can't help it.**






* This is a lie.
** By 'sometimes' I mean 'always'

This is how you know something isn't intimidated by you

Most sea creatures are very shy and retiring - they either ignore you or want to get away as quickly as possible. Almost all wild animals are like that. The ones that aren't wary are dangerous. To you. Take, for example, the Humboldt squid. It will just swim up and check you out:

Roger Uzun, a veteran scuba diver and amateur underwater videographer, swam with a swarm of the creatures for about 20 minutes and said they appeared more curious than aggressive. The animals taste with their tentacles, he said, and seemed to be touching him and his wet suit to determine if he was edible.

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Just want to let you know that if an animal is swimming up to me to check if I'm edible I'm getting out of the water RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

Image courtesy/copyright MBARI, which I'm guessing is the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, but I'm too lazy to check for sure. Article here.

My head just exploded

Dammit!

Behemoth Chicken, Cont'd, plus Castle Crashers

The Behemoth finally released Castle Crashers. They had some initial problems but I hear it's working now. Dan Paladin and the rest of the team kick ass.* Get your wallpapers here. The art is superb.

When the game launched my blog traffic went up because people were searching for The Behemoth Chicken (who wields a sword in the intro to the new game). So here it is again. Along with another image courtesy the Behemoth website.

All images copyright Dan Paladin and Behemoth Software. Don't dare use them without credit or you will for sure go to hell and get your site pummeled by powerful nerds (not me - I'm a mid-level tech geek). Steal images from Wal-Mart or Sony, not independent game developers.

*Wanted to type list of other team members but there's no list on your website & I'm not enough of a kissass to get it from the game itself. I had to draw the line somewhere.

puts it in a blender. ON HIGH.

First there was powerthirst. Then there was powerthirst v2.0. Then someone with a budget decided to hire the powerthirst guys and make a commercial about a videogame. And it was outstanding.

GET YOUR SH*T TOGETHER SOLDIER

Fighting the good fight: Castle Crashers

More updates from Castle Crashers:

The Castle Crashers development blog is up and running and it's fun if you like art and/or video game development.

Go here for a video of Dan Paladin doing his thing: http://devblog.thebehemoth.com/?p=48

Also here: http://www.thebehemoth.com/

I have posted about Paladin, Alien Hominid and the Behemoth chicken before. The chicken rules most of all, but you can't get him on a t-shirt. Just a polo. Or a skateboard deck.

image copyright theBehemoth.

le dunk de la mort

Great article about dunking in the newest sports illustrated. It's probably better read online, because then you can youtube and watch all the dunks he writes about while you read. I laughed out loud when I read about Vince Carter's famous one hander over the 7' 2" French guy. The French press named it le dunk de la mort, or "the dunk of death". That may seem a bit strong, but for effs sake, watch that thing again and tell me it's not awesome.

sound the feasting horn!

sure, it's an ad. but I laugh every time.

"we might get divorced if he keeps playing that game"

my friend bought an xbox360 for her husband this past christmas. it's a good present. I helped her pick out some games. when I asked her if he was playing a lot of Call of Duty 4 she said, "we might get divorced if he keeps playing that game."

she was kidding. kind of.

meet the world

I guess these images are part of some chain mail that's going around. I saw it on draplin.com, so i'm sharing it with you. The artist had this (in part) to say about his work:

We started to research relevant, global, and current facts and, thus, came up with the idea to put new meanings to the colours of the flags. We used real data taken from the websites of Amnesty International and the UNO.

image copyright/owned by the artist, Icaro Doria

5 seconds of magic

our first video here at GJAW. Stealing from another blog:
"this video is only 5 seconds long. I dare you not to watch it 40 times."