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!