Well I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve been fairly lazy over the christmas period, I’m now back at home at uni so I’m getting back into the swing of things and also of having loads of spare time on my hands. So here’s the update of life between the last post and now.

We’ll start with the bike situation, I’ve been riding a hire bike since around 2nd January - they gave me a really dodgy YBR125 at first which had a top speed of 58mph downhill. Not at all too good so I gave them a call to complain and the next day I was delivered a beautiful SV650. Much more appropriate! I think since then I’ve done in the region of 1000 miles, possibly more with the amount of times I’ve been back and forth between my 3 homes and general play time. I considered writing reviews on the bikes but I couldn’t think of how best to do it so I’ve abandoned the idea. Suffice to say however the SV is great fun, holds the road real well and I’ve got rather attached to it and named it ‘Vicki’… Will be painful to give her back.

As for my bike, the news is not quite so nice. She’s ‘beyond economical repair’, so basically she’s been written off. The insurance company has offered me £1,100 or £880 if I want the bike back. Probably just going to cut my losses and take the money and find a new bike really. I considered getting the bike back and doing work on it myself and selling her… but after being written off and only the main thigns repaired I’d not get too much money for her and it would be a lot of effort. So I’m in the market for a new bike at the moment. On top of that I still need to claim for the damage to my helmet, gloves and other gear. Hopefully there’ll be no fuss involved and they’ll just pay up but we’ll see.

Other news… hmm… Current projects! I’m still working on the paintwork for my Tornado model but I’ve started work on building the DC-10 commercial jet that Ed got me for Christmas as well so it’s all going on over on the hobby front. As for on the computer, we have this blog but I also started something just before I left for Christmas. For now it shall be known as codename… err… ‘Phoenix’. Not sure if it’s going to work or anything so not going to release any details yet. It’ll be an ongoing work in progress but hopefully I’ll have a bit of a mock-up sorted out soon. Stick around and hopefully in the next weeks I’ll have something special for you.

That’s all for now

So it’s been 5 days without my bike, and without a car. I think I’m suffering the detox rather well, although it’s pretty hard. If it wasn’t for the fact that the bike doesn’t even start then I would have long ago failed and been out on the bike even in the questionable condition it’s in. Damage report so far is as follows (damage on the right hand side):

• Severe scratches across fairings
• Scratches along the exhaust
• Scratches on engine cover
• Scratches on front fork
• Lost the front indicator
• Smashed mirror
• Bent brake levers (front and back)
• Possible damage to front brakes
• Not starting

I’m expecting a call from the insurance company tomorrow to sort out having my bike collected and a hire motorcycle to be delivered to me… It’s taking such a long time to get me back on two wheels but we’re getting there slowly. I hope my bike lives…

Anyway, here’s some pics of some of the damage:

Smashed up mirror

Some of the damage to my beautifully polished exhaust

Damage to fairing and gaping hole where the indicator used to be. Fairing cracked further back

Some rather interesting scratches on my helmet aswell… I don’t remember my head hitting the ground though, was a bit too fast for that. THAT Gemma, is why expensive helmets are practical and worth it… as opposed to your bags - lovely bags though they may be

After all the riding I’ve been doing at high speed along country roads and and in the rain and ice and all sorts of weathers… I got knocked off the bike in town today. Only at just below 30mph but still, someone pulled out from a junction in front of me and I smacked into his bonnet… and then I was lying on the pavement. Don’t remember much of what happened in between - was too fast. All’s I remember is thinking ‘oh shit this won’t be fun’.

I’m not really hurt, just a bit sore from hitting the road I think. The bike wasn’t quite as lucky, going to assess the damamge properly in the morning when it’s light. The right hand side is smashed up and scratched quite a bit

That’s all for now - will update later, I’m going to bed

So in between other things I’ve finally got round to doing a little more to the Tornado, so it’s beginning to look more like a fighter jet. It’s definitely not perfect but still only half done. Here’s where we are at the moment:

Obviously you can see the paint needs going over in places (specifically the green - thin paint on a very dark background without ruining the detail underneath doesn’t work all that well)

I really need to figure a way of getting the yellow n black at the front to merge with the rest of the plane without it looking… tacky.

Looks carefully in the cockpit and you can see I gave the pilot and copilot a proper sort of screen dials. Not in any real detail but you’ll understand why if you saw the size of the plane. I shall take a picture depicting scale after I’ve finished I think. But to give you an idea it’s only just over half the length of my hand.

Well I forgot to show how the tornado is coming along, not getting far with it at the moment but here’s how it looks at the moment:

The picture is a little crappy but you can at least get the idea. I’ll get better pictures when it’s done and I can be bothered

Well I spent 6 hours this evening building a plane. Yes, a plane.

Whilst wandering town today myself and Matt wandered into The Entertainer, just because we can and we’re ‘ard. Within we found many a wonder, not least of which guitar which surely entertained Matthew as he rocked away unashamedly until he decided that it was a little bit naff because it wouldn’t let him do chords. We wandered around complaining about all the toys we never got when we were little, for me it was a Hornby train set, and a Scalectrix from Matt. We were horribly deprived. Whilst there I really should have been doing a bit of xmas shopping for my 2 brothers (aged 9) and my sister (aged 8 ) but the only thing that I left with was a little something for myself:

So when I got home after lecture I sat down, dug out my paints, found a stanley knife as I have none of my craft knives here, and set to work. This was about 5pm. At just after 11pm here’s what I had to show for my evening:

Well I’ll let you decide for yourself if you think it was worth all the time I just put into it, but it kept me occupied whilst I had nothing better to do, and was pretty relaxing if slightly dangerous - my fingers will lay testament to that. Having said that there were certain aspects of building it that got to me slightly. The most prevalent is this:

That there is the pointy thing part that goes on the nose of the plane. The 5p is there for size reference to give you an idea of how small that little piece of plastic is. Now I really don’t get why the clever people at ‘Revell’ seemed to think having it as a seperate piece was a good idea, for three reasons. The first is how difficult the damn thing is to cut from the plastic frame, and then cut away any excess crap from the part that joined it to the frame without damaging it in any way. The second point is how difficult it is to find after you’ve dropped the frackin thing. Then finally is how it is to glue it onto the already pointy nose of the ruddy plane! I’m amazed it’s on there now but I have very little faith in how long it will stay, I think when I get round to painting it the paintbrush will be enough to break it off. It makes you wonder if you’re the last sane person left on Earth.

I think I’ll just get round to painting it tomorrow, I’ll probably even post up a picture of it if I don’t ruin it. Aren’t you lucky, you’ve got something to look forward to now, to brighten up your drab and dreary lives.

Well I finally got around to cleaning my bike, spent a good long time on it aswell, had the exhaust polished to a mirror shine, with not a mark to be found on the fairings. The old owner didn’t treat her quite so well and years of suffering at the hand of, lets face it a bit of an idiot, there are certain aspects of the bike that will never be perfect. I say he was an idiot, because as best as I can tell he never cared for the bike. He kept it in a garage sure, and maybe gave it the odd clean every now and then, but he never actually cared for the bike. The chain and sprockets for example when I got the bike were… well they were completely raped. It’s a miracle they were still able to turn the wheel and the chain was bone dry, basically it hadn’t be lubricated in months and the guy was still riding it.

So yes, he was a bit of an idiot and didn’t seem to care a huge amount for the bike. So now I’m doing all I can to restore and maintain the bike as best I can, and so far I don’t think I’m doing too bad a job of it:

There’s still a bit of work to be done, but after a good cleaning she shines up really quite well. It took quite a bit of hard work and time to get her cleaned up but afterwards I stood back, and whilst admiring my work I was rewarded with a real sense of achievement.. Which is lovely until 3 hours later when I got back from taking her out for a blast and she’s once again covered in muck. I guess I’d best clean her again then *sigh*

So I was thinking that I might actually want to create a proper website at some point, rather than just having all this space and bandwidth, just for a simple blog that if I’m being honest, not many people really read. No real idea what sort of site to make, or what content it should have so at the moment I’m open to suggestions. My dad came up with an idea of making a site for new motorcyclists as we were chatting about it on the way up to the motorbike show in Birmingham.

The idea is to have information on the motorbike test, essential bike gear perhaps, tips for riding, what bikes to buy and general stuff that you’re not likely to know about really if you’re new to motorbikes. A lot of people never get into bikes because they don’t know how to go about it, and seem to imagine that getting on 2 wheels takes a huge amount of time, is incredibly difficult and hugely expensive. None of these are really true, especially not in the long term but it’s not really well advertised, everyone just goes straight for a car and spend the rest of their lives completely oblivious of anyone else using the road with them.

The site would potentially have a forum and perhaps a chat room where people can ask questions without worrying about if others will think it’s stupid. Of course that’s entirely if I decide to go ahead with the idea. So this is just me rambling really.

Okay that was my short ramble for today, and now I’m going to bugger off and get ready to go out to Oceana.

Just a site update really.

Added my twitter feed to my sidebar, which is a bit harder than it may first sound… well it is to get it working how you want it and looking like it belongs there.

I started off with a plugin for wordpress, which is good enough I suppose but not exactly what I was after. After a fair bit of fiddling I think I’ve just about cracked it and got it how I want it… for now… Give me a shout if you want to do find out how to do the same thing.

Technically I should be working on my coursework, but I felt like a bit of a bit of a break. Couldn’t really concentrate on it anyway - may be because I’ve drank so much coffee, I’m pretty much jumping like a kangaroo on crack…