Saturday mornings (infact, life in gernal) used to be pretty relaxing for us. Lewis is getting older now and doesn't need that much attention so it must be....oh yeah, our little three year old Aimee. Trying to find a good outlet for today's toddler is actually harder than you think. When we were at Roosevelts' (Lewis's school) carnival, we bumped into the owner of Santa Monica's "The Tot Club", and after looking at what they do decided to sign up for a FREE (Yes, I said FREE) session. That turned into signing up for a 10 session class and if our 3 year old has her way...probably many more.

So whats the deal with this place? Well, Aimee hasn't been to kindergarten (because all the private ones are so damn expensive) so she's only really been around Adults and kids Lewis's age. A large part of the club is getting children used to communicating and playing with others and during the first class Aimee was pretty reserved. I'm just back from her third class and aside from being completely "buggered", I'm seeing such a difference in Aimee. For those without kids things like sharing, kicking a ball to other kids and dancing amoungst other kids seem like pretty normal things to do but it can be difficult to get kids out of their shell. In our class today, we had 8 people (including Adults) and Aimee decided, on her own accord, to get up and dance and sing with Shelly (the organiser). I'll be honest and say I completely underestimated the idea after initially signing up for our first class but it's such an amazing thing to see.

And the best part is, the adults get involved too. So if you were ever thinking of an excuse to act like a child and get away with it......Here you are! I think this is the first time I have ever seen a black belt in Karate dance around to the Wiggles with scrafs on his head.

Anyway, Go check out their website - http://www.thetotclub.com . Shelly, who ownes the club is completely fantastic and Aimee will second that..Infact, Today Aimee ran up to Ms Shelly and said "Ms Shelly, I love you". High praise indeed!!!!!!

Out!

A few days ago, I posted a blog about the new cell phone law that just came into effect in our lovely state of California. The big question is....Is it working?

I have a pitiful 10 minute commute on the red rocket and this morning, I witnessed 6 people on their cell phones, 1 of whch completely ran a stop sign. I hink I'm going to keep a running total of how many people still use their cellphones.

And to think I had so much trust in my fellow man. NOT! 

Way back in January, I had my first "big off" in nigh on 19 years. Up till then i'd been riding my Shoei Synchrotec helmet on the street and my Shoei RF1000 on the track. With the resulting decomissioning of the Synchrotec it was time to replace my street helmet !

 So coinciding with the purchase of "wee Billy" I went helmet shopping and chose a Shoei Hornet DS in Matt Black as the new replacement. I knew that with the Hornbet DS I'd get a lot more wind noise from the  visor. What i didn't expect was how well the visor shielded my eyes from the sun, allowing use of a non tinted face shiel;d for the first time in 4 years. I can also fit my Oakley perscription glasses under the Shoei, so they serve as my sunglasses as well as letting me actually see while riding :)  Good thing that the shield works so well, because a tinted face shielf for the hornet DS is a scary $82 USD on the shoei website !!! is that daylight robbery or what ?

Better not scratch it then !  Overall fit is good, but after a few hours the helmet is still pinching my ears, even after 1600 miles, which is kinda unusual for me in this size of a Shoei. I'm hoping it beds in quickly as the larger size was much too big off the getgo.

 Ventilation is something i havent really noticed working too well on this helmet, opening and closing the vents seems to make little effect, but i am biased , my last ride was on the hottest day of the year :) so i'll report back on that one. 

The helmet was also nigh on 500 bucks, so with hindsight i'd have to recomend to only buy one if you really want n Enduro styled helmet that makes you look like "Master Chief" ...especially when Shoei has other less expensive , very well made helmets that are lighter, less noisy and cheaper to buy face shields for.

 However, if like me being cool is all that matters, then certainly go and check out the Shoei Hornet DS, and dinnae forget your wallet !

The Shoei Hornet DS has a MSRP of $482.99 as reviewed. You can check out the Hornet DS from Shoei at the Shoei USA website. 

I've never liked soft luggage, but then i've always owned Sports Bikes over the last 15 years and soft luggage has a way off looking fairly "tatty" pretty darn fast. Same goes for tank bags, I have a tank bag for my 2001 Moto Guzzi V11 Sport (aka "Britney") and hated it! Havng a plastic gas tank meant that it strapped on, rubbed against the paintwork and was a pain every time i had to refuel.

  Well, this has all changed. I just got back from a 1000 mile roadtrip to Santa Monica and back to hang out with Demon Overlord Stoafo (aka "Kawasaki Riding Bastard") and his family, oh yeah and to do some work too. I knew that i'd need to put some luggage on "wee Billy" for the trip and didnt want to spend a bunch of cash because i've already ordered a set of Krauser aluminium luggage from Twisted Throttle. 

 Prior to the trip I called Honda/Suzuki of San Mateo on the off-chance that they could do a while you wait first service on "wee Billy" as i was already over the 600 mile point. Of course they could ! This dealership rocks! They're a bunch of more "mature" guys, just having fun running an "old skool" shop. I instantly felt at home and i will buy product from them in future. While they serviced my bike i decided to buy some soft luggage. First up the Cortec "Super 10 Liter" Tank Bag.

Ok I'm way impressed with this product. It mounts to the Vstrom's Gas tank magnetically. Easy on, easy off and doesn't move anywhere while underway. This eliminates my biggest gripe with tank bags about stoppping at the gas station. (even though with "wee billy" i only have to stop every 230 miles or so!) I also love the map pocket, although its a little on the small side, nae more stopping to pull my google-mapped location out of my pocket :)

The Zippers are also very sturdy, and i like the grab handle and the little pocket seperator that I use for my house keys and phone etc.

The first big thing that i've noticed with the tank bag is that now i carry a chain and padlock with me everywhere. They live in the tank bag, so i have nae excuses not to lock up "wee Billy" wherever i happen to be!

Here's one last shot of the Cortech Super 10 Litre tank bag in action, high up in the Santa Monica mountains on the hottest day of the year so far in Southern California.

So I have no idea what made me think of this story again. I think it's with all the hot weather we're having here in Sunny Santa Monica. Robbie and I were chatting about beach parties and I thought I'd mention a great example of cultural differences. Here goes..

Business.com (the company I work for) have beach parties every year around August. This is a great thing and, like alot of company sponsored events, Involves drinking. We have a free bar on the beach, games, free food etc etc. Everything you need to have a great time.

I was at the company for about 9 months before my first beach party. As soon as we arrived at said beach everyone ran to the bar. Not wanting to blend in and follow suit I wanted to stay away from the Bud and miller lite and go for a man's drink. I picked the most Scottish/Irish sounding beer (more alcohol obviously) and after tasting it thought it was the "Dogs Danglies". "Yup, this is my choice of beverage for the day", I thought. Because the bar was on a private beach, the barman had to empty the content of the bottle into a plastic cup. Two hours later and I drink the bar dry of said beer and switch to the old fav "Jack and coke". Barman gave me a funny glance but thought nothing of it. End of the day comes and welcome in the weekend.

Monday arrives and at lunch we all get together and chat about the various drunken actions of our work mates. I think back to the day with amazing clarity and boast about how my Scottish ability to hold huge amounts of alcohol was in full effect and despite drinking 9 bottles of beer and 3 Jack and Cokes, I was still standing.  The following conversation ensued:

Me: "Ha, well I managed to do a steller job of not acting like a drunken idiot. I am Scottish and therefore a way better drinker than all of yooz".

Fellow worker: "Emmm...I saw what you were drinking. You were drinking O'Douls".

Me: "Aye what of it?"

Fellow worker: "It's fricken non-alcoholic you idiot".

Now, to this day, this story is STILL mentioned and 2 beach parties have come and gone.  No one bothered to highlight the fact at the time..Oh no, that would be too easy. In the spirit (no pun intended) of helping out a fellow "Non-American", Here  is a good resource of non-alcoholic beverages. Learn these brands to avoid possible confusion and ultimate humiliation.

Over the last few years i've started to move further and further away from a car as my primary form of transport. The problem has been that none of the bikes i own are at all practical as everyday transport/car repacements:

• The V11 is too much like hard work over distance with fairly extreme ergo's. I've done a few 500 mile days on "Britney" and always needed a chiropractor the day afterwards :)
• "Margaret" - my 1976 Convert is currently broken, but the main problem with her is that shes a vintage bike, she's comfy for distance but not the kind of bike that i'd want to sit at 80mph on the freeway anytime soon.
• "Steve, my Bonneville is raucuously obnoxious and geared too low for freeway riding, plus my hearing is something i covert, the non existant wind protection beats you up on the Bonnie at anything above 70 mph. Plus refueling every 120 miles gets old after a while.

....So what to do ?  Well, i'm in process of selling my truck, (anyone want a 2003 Hummer H2 wih 40,000 miles on the clock ?) and really needed something rock solid for daily transportation, something with a great fuel range, decent economy, room for luggage and good wind protection.

Aha time for a Moto Guzzi Stelvio !! no wait i cannae afford one of those this year as i'm recovering from financial disaster, ah must be time for a V-Strom 650 then !

The V-Strom 650 uses a detuned SV650 motor. It comes in a "half dark" model in 650 guise. Once i figured out it'd do over 200 on a tank of gas courtesy of the 5.8 gallon tank, that it'd cruise at 85 mph all day, has an adjustable screen and that I can attach tasty "Long way round" style aluminium luggage, I was pretty much sold. 

  So now the problem was finding a non-ABS model somewhere close to me. Turns out that Berts MegaMall in Covina had one. A wee bit of haggling later and a price was agreed upon. I hopped a flight the next morning to LAX, where I was picked up by Stoafo and off we went to the dealership.

 The first ride home was during breakin period so i was pretty gentle with the bike. Plus I hadnae named him/her yet! First impressions were all about the super neutral handling, the comfy seat and very linear power delivery. The adjustable screen was set in the lowest position though and i was getting quite a bit of buffetting on the ride home.

There followed a week of commuting on the  "wee strom". I quickly found that it's easily the best handling bike i own, lane splitting is nice and easy becasue of the high seat and upright riding position. Raising the windscreen, reduced the helmet buffetting above 80mph, but i still get noticeable buffetting at 70 :( Other than that the big thing for me was how well the stock OEM Bridgestone Trailwings work on this bike. I'm getting enough lean angle to scrape pegs and the bike always feels planted with a high level of grip. Initially i'd been worried about the relatively tall seat height (i'm a short ass), but it's not been a noticeable issue. 

  The first accessories that i've ordered have been the Suzuki handguard set and a carbon fibre tank pad (the dealer accidently put a scratch on the tank before i took delivery). I do however have a set of Krauser luggage on order and at some point in the next few months i'm goign to be adding engine guards, a sump protector and heated grips.

The Krauser luggage that i've chosen has a long delivery time though and lsat week i was jonesing to take a road trip so i swung by the Suzuki dealer in San Mateo and while they were 600 mile servicing the bike, I bought a tank bag and some coretech soft luggage. (to be reviewed seperately :)   )

So equipped it was time for a first ever road trip and two-up we headed off to Santa Monica as I had work at my companies LA location and it seemed like a good excuse to put some miles on "wee Billy" as he's now named. Riding down was "ok", basically a blast down the I5 in the evening. Riding home however, on the hottest day of the year, in fully lined textile black clothes and helmets, wasnae too much fun :)  Here's some pics of "wee Billy" as the heat started to set in. The heat up in topanga canyon was pretty intense so we headed down to Malibu and the alledgedly cooler climes by the ocean. 

On the way home the  Suzuki managed a respectable and comfortable 85mph for 3 hours at a time as I hauled ass to make sure i made it to San Jose in time for the George Michael concert ! Pulling up at the HP Pavillion Arena in San Jose with 5 minutes to spare, I barely had time to reflect on how well the Suzuki's performance is greater than the sum of it's parts. Suspension is a bit soft, i increased preload for the ride home, but the brakes and chassis work well, even two up. My only grouch is i'm used to more fire breathing motors, but hey, the vstrom can even power the gerbing heated vest i brought along for my pillion! 

Finally at the concert, we had barely enough time to change (mental note, motorcycles get rockstar front and center parking at the HP pavillion, great for parking not so great for changing in privacy), before heading on in to watch George Michael rock out. Seriously he did rock out, i was majorly shocked at how good he was live!

 
As I write this I have 1500 miles on the bike in just under 10 days. Next blog will be a review of the soft luggage that I bought as a makedo for the trip.

For those of you not living in California, the state is finally seeing sense and passing a "no cell phone" ban whilst driving. The rule basically forces drivers to use a headset/hands free kit whilst talking and driving. It is hoped this will reduce the number of related accidents and make the roads safer.

Why blog about this? Well, on my way into work I have to negociate many 4 way stop signs, which can be particulary dangerous for us bikers. Picture this: I come to a complete stop and intend to go straight through the intersection. I place my foot down on the road and the driver directly opposite me approaches her stop line. I wait until she stops and then take off. As I approach the center of the road, she decides to turn left (no turn signal..of course) and pulls out directly infront of me.

I slam on my breaks to avoid going over the front of her car and look in disbelief directly at her. Surprise...she's on the cellphone, looks at me, waves to say "Thanks" for stopping and carries on.

It's impossible to say wether or not the cellphone was the reason for this crazy stunt because alot of drivers dont need a distraction to be completely clueless but here's my issue with the law. Whether you are using a hands free kit or not, you are still concentrating on a conversation and not on driving. Sure, the hands free kit enables you to have both hands on the wheel but how many people drive with their hands at the "10" and "2" position? Or even drive with both hands on the wheel period.  In fact, I would call it "half a law".

And look at the punishment if you're caught: $20 fine for the first offense then $50 every time thereafter. Is that enough?

Come the start of July, it will be very interesting to see the stats on how many offenses are logged. It'll also be interesting to see if it has an affect on the number of driver related accidents.  I'll reserve my judgement. It is a sweet little earner for the mobile companies though in the form of related accessory sales.

So we have a new addition to the family.

No, before you ask there are no babies on the way but there is the "pitter-patter" of tiny feet...and the soft munching of carrots. It all started last Saturday with the carnival at Roosevelt Elementry. There happened to be a petting zoo there, There happened to be lots of bunnies to play with and the next day we found ourselves off to our local pet store.

Introducing "Elvis".......

He's a lop eared..emm..Rabbit. There's probably some kind of techinical name for him but I dunno. He's cool though and since getting him he's been running around the apartment. Rumour is that you can house train the wee buggers so we also have a litter box for him.

In terms of hutches, he is living up to the neighborhood standards. I mean, talk about "primo" townhouse living:

So there you have....No doubt there will be more bunny related stories as things progress but in the meantime, Thats all I have to report. The one interesting thing will be finding out if he likes Cheesburgers as much as his name sake.

Hullooo....

Exciting times, these are! Working hard has it's advantages. You do your job, even go above and beyond and providing you work for a good company you get a bonus. My friend Robbie works hard! He works for a damn good company. My friend Robbie got his bonus. My friend Robbie bought new motorcycle.

I'll leave the details to him because I'm sure he wants to write about it. Don't expect anything today though because he left my house in Santa Monica around 7:00pm last night and rode back home to San Francisco. "Should be a nice break in period", he said before leaving. Let's just say that it is the "Death Star" of bikes. How much more black? none, none more!

Anyway, on to my tales. We both ride out to Berts MegaMall in Covina to purchase said motorcycle on the Ninja which meant that on the way home, I managed to experience my first decent freeway ride. The 10 was flowing surprisingly well for 4:00pm on a Saturday afternoon so there wasn't that much need for lane splitting. Sure, Robbie could've got home quicker if it wasn't for his "lame arsed" friend but hey It's all about riding in your comfort zone right? (well, at the moment anyway..heehee).

Two other great highlights of the day. Firstly, I managed to buy some great extra protection in the form of an Icon body armour vest.

 Although I'm not the type of rider that hits the canyons at any given opportunity, accidents could potentially happen at any moment in time. Having something like this will give me the extra protection my spine needs and will hopefully make my mum worry less about me hurting myself! (Now that in itself is worth $99). For more info about the vest, you can check it out here.

The fit is really good and works well under the Shift textile jacket I'm curently wearing. A very good buy me thinks! Hopefully I wont have to write and tell you about how it performs in an accident. **grinz**. On that note, I heard a classic line from a fellow rider while I was waiting on Robbie signing stuff at the dealership. I'm standing with the armour on and we are discussing his new Boulevard that he just bought. He has on a light weight pair of jeans, T-shirt and a brain bucket style helmet. He says to me "Thats some serious protection, expecting to be in an accident?". I didn't really know how to respond without sounding really sarcastic so I just laughed and hoped that my lack of answer made him realise how stupid his question was.

Lets, see...What else happened? Oh yeah....Still standing at the dispatch area of Berts MegaMall, watching all the proud new owners of bikes drive them away. A kid and his friend (we shall call them "Beavis" and..emm.."Tony") stood beside his new Shadow (or maybe it was a Vstar??) 650. His salesman asked the usual questions about his riding experience, if he knew the controls of the bike etc. Beavis replied "yup", so the salesman completed sign off, rolled the bike out of the cage area into the parking lot and went inside.

Beavis got on bike, started it up, tried to pull off and stalled. Fair enough. Started up again, tried to pull off, gave it too much gas stalled and skidded the back tire. By this time he had a wee bit of an audience watching him. Attempt no 3 and he started up the bike, gave it gas, let the clutch out and he was on his way......right towards a piece of sidewalk and a tree. Instead of trying to point those things infront of the rider (I believe they are called handlebars) and lean away from the oncoming obsticle, he decided to accelerate and smacked the front wheel up on the sidewalk, narrowly missing the tree.  Did this deter the young chap? Not a bit. He sorted himself out, started up the bike again and actually continued to negociate the very challenging parking lot and onwards onto Asuza Drive.  At least I'm assuming he made it that far.

I think I already blogged about easily accessible motorcycles are in States but this just highlights the issue. I mean, talk about being a liability. No wonder insurance is so high for new riders. Completely Unbelievable.

Anyway, look out for Robbies' review of the new purchase. I'm sure it'll be here soon providing he didnt keep on riding up to Vancouver. As long as he had his "Jenny" radar on, he'll have made it home...Right Rob! **grinz**.

Keep the rubber side down..Or if you're Beavis, Away from the trees!

Nice idea by my good friend Robbie to start a techie type category. When I saw his posting on amazon I thought I'd contribute by sharing my experience with Google Analytics and the ability to track your web sites performance from a conversion point of view.

Think about it. You have a business. You buy keywords on various search engines (google, yahoo, ask etc etc). You want to know if the money you're shelling out is actually bringing you more money in, ie, a positive ROI. (Return On Investment). Here's a typical and very simple scenario:

• You own an online store selling, say, drum parts.  
• You pay $500 a month in keyword buys on www.joeblogssearchengine.com.
• Is the $500 you are spending on those keywords bringing in more than $500 in sales?

This is a very common question that search engine marketers need to know. Ideally, you should be able to track a sale (or conversion) and identify where the person originally came from. If none of your sales are a result from a click on www.joeblogssearchengine.com then you'd be just as well taking the $500 and subscribing to "search engine marketing for dummies". This is called Conversion tracking and there are a few easy ways to get this information.

There are numerous conversion tracking software companies out there. There is also a free way to do it! (free is good right?) Either way, There are steps common to configuring conversion tracking:

• Get some javascript from the solution provider to put on your web site.
• Change the URL's of your ads on the various search engines you advertise on. 

In my Job, I'm kinda tagged (no pun intended) as the "conversion tracking" expert. An honourable position indeed, so I know a wee bit about this.  If you go with a conversion tracking vendor then they have people on staff to help you set things up. If you go with the free option ("Google Analytics"), they have tonnes of documentation but, in my opinion, it's a bit confusing. Because of this, I wrote a guide on a great site called work.com that explains how to set this up. A direct link to the guide itself is HERE.

Ok, It's Friday afternoon and I'm off to drink beer. While I do that, go set up some conversion tracking and watch that money roll in!

Out!