6 Over: The Movie (Dice Mag)

6 Over - Teaser from Wild Honey Productions on Vimeo.


This has been up for a while from the guys at Dice, but it looks like the full movie is coming out soon. I, personally, can't wait... and I'm not even into choppers really. But I really like Dice mag, and just the general way these guys approach shit. I like their style goddamn it. I'm hoping this movie will kick ass all over those wishy-washy HD bike porn things that look real nice but don't have fuck all to say.

Stalker?

Holy shit someone's obviously following me around drawing pictures of me. It's a bit creepy although I'm sort of flattered too. I found this on Cafe Racer Culture and as usual there's no info...

James Oram's new build

This is James Oram's newly built bike towards the end of the night at the HFoS launch. Tim Brott took the photo. This bike is totally awesome, not only does it look hot, it rides real well too. This started life as a Honda FT500... check them out, you'll see how much work he's done here! I think Kerry Swanson is doing something on this bike in a mag soon. Hopefully James will do something for HFoS #2 too? Look out!

Ride to HFOS launch party

This footage was shot by my missus from the back of my bike. Was a lot of fun, except at the start there when Malcolm couldn't kick over the 125!? And so we had to ride about looking for everyone else to hook up again. Good times, cops, etc... thanks ya'll for coming!

New petrol tank for the Thruxton

I finally bit the bullet and shelled out for a new tank last week, and it just got here today. Having paid for the thing I read in the weekend some guy on the TriumphRat forum saying to someone else that there was no way this would work, that the tunnel in the tank would be too small. I was freaking out thinking shit I shoulda checked this out more before buying the tank, so when it arrived today I got busy straight away seeing if and how it might work. Good news! It's going to work, and won't require any mods to the tank. I will have to grind a couple of lugs of the frame though (the ones that hold the front of the current tank). I had been trying to do everything without cutting the frame at all, but fuck it I think this tank is going to look totally fucking awesome, so get out the grinder! I will have to reroute the loom a bit, maybe pull it apart to do this, but I don't think that'll be too difficult. Also, obviously, will have to make up some pretty serious brackets. The one at the back will be easy enough I think, the front will require a little more thought. Anyway sitting the tank on the bike, even though it won't go down past those lugs, I'm pretty happy with the shape of it. Might even grind of those lugs this weekend so I can get started thinking about brackets etc. AND then I'll be able to fit it over the frame and actually eyeball it 'on' the bike.

This is a NOS tank! And I know there's a bunch of Triumph owners who aren't going to be very happy about this... esp more so because I'm planning to get rid of the mounts for the tank badges and paint the thing (probably black?). It is original paint too. Sorry guys, but I couldn't find another one in shitty condition to do this with... and hey, you coulda bought it if you loved it so much. Still I do feel a bit guilty, she's a beautiful object that's for sure...

Hinckley tracker

Have been looking a lot at other examples of Hinckley Triumphs that have been chopped up. This is from FrankenStrange here.

Me & Malcolm, Nth Island summer ride 2010

Took off on the Sunday morning following the HFoS launch. It was all a hell of a rush, and I forgot a bunch of shit inclduing my camera. Losing my grandfathers gold watch the night before was a bad omen I thought, and I did continue to lose shit during this trip. At some points I got quite worried that I was jinxed and was gonna crash or some shit!? Anyway Malcolm had his camera and I ended up buying one (actually two cause the first one fell out of my pocket on the road and smashed into a million pieces) of those shitty disposable cameras.

This Sunday I rode up to the ferry in Picton and then met malcolm in Wellington, and then we rode straight over the Rimutakas to Martinborough and down to Lake Ferry where we stayed the night. Photos start here, at lake Ferry. It had been an insane day of riding for me, with 120km gusts of wind coming up the Kaikoura coast.  

 That's me telling Malcolm how shit is. next day we hit the road early and went back to Martinborough, where I bought the first camera (the one that fell out of my pocket somewhere after Eketahuna. We had pies at Woodville and then fucked off to Malcolm's family farm. That was pretty cool, I'd never been there before. I hadn't ridden a 4-wheel motorcycle like this either, that was pretty choice. As were the dogs, cows, etc... shit if I was Malcolm I'd be living on the farm! But I guess I didn't grow up there eh. Anyway we then went to Dannevirke, and then east via the Wimbledon pub to stay at Porangahu beach. A bunch of shit happened, and I kept a journal but this no proper 'write up'. I might do that later for HFoS issue two... maybe? We met some Maori shearers at Porangahau, that was pretty interesting. As was getting there to find no shop open and the pub not serving food. We thought we would starve and so tried to fill up on beer and crisps, but when we got back to our tent Malcolm did his smooth dog thing and got this nice lady who was camping with her family to give us some 2-minute noodles. Shit they were some good eating at that point!

Next day we took off and had breakfast (big one) in Waipukurau. We then did a fairly big ride to Napier and on to Gisborne for the night, where we stayed at one of them big cheesy family camp grounds. I'd wanted to see what they were like, and we found out why we don't go to those kind of camping grounds. I think we had lunch in Wairoa on the way? This was the first place we saw Maori kids riding horses bareback... a common feature of the trip as we got closer to the East Cape...

I was quite pleased to get out of Gisborne the next day, it felt too much like Palmy or something? I don't like those kinda towns. And anyway we were on the edge of the real riding now, which was to get into the East Cape. Great coastal ride, heaps of speeding logging trucks (including one that had crashed), and then lunch and a bit of relaxing on the beach at Tolaga Bay. After that we just cruised pretty slow up to Tokomaru Bay, and when we got there we liked it so much we decided to stay there for the rest fo the day and night. We got some beers and wandered around this real small town, shit it was pretty dead but very nice, great beach, old run down houses and buildings etc. Some of the locals were playing that game on horseback where you grab the poles, what's it called? Had fish and chips for dinner and went for a walk...

Next day we wanted to take some photos of Tokomaru bay before leaving and the night before we'd come across this MC clubrooms. We pulled up outside this building and got off the bikes. Malcolm went straight round to the window to take a photo, in the meantime a dude from the house behind the building had heard our bikes and came out to check us out. He came and started talking to me, and turns out he's a Triumph nut. He invited us into the clubrooms and had a bit of a yarn, showed us his bikes and whatnot. We were pretty stoked about that, and took off feeling like Tokomaru Bay was just about the coolest place on earth. We did quite a lot of riding this day... up through Ruatoria and onto Te Araroa for lunch, where there were signs advising local kids that their horses weren't welcome in the playground. From here we rode down the west side of the cape, which was pretty stunning. Beautiful beaches. We didn't stop, just took our time, but almost did run out of petrol. Then got stuck at some roadworks for about half an hour in the hot hot sun... and I kept all my gear on cause I kept thinking we were about to go. Got pretty sticky in there. Went to Whakatane for the night. Felt weird being back in a proper town again, kinda awful. But we stayed in a motel and having a real bed was kinda cool...

Next day was a bit depressing as it was the last day we'd be riding together... that and the fact we were really mostly back on main roads. We did take a bit of a detour through Galatea and Murupara, but yeah heading for Taupo it really felt like things were winding down in terms of adventure quality.

Stayed in this cabin in Taupo, cause the place we wanted to stay at with the hot pool was full up (actually I reckon we've been banned since partying there a couple of years back). We tried our best to have some fun, but it was a bit lame really. Next day Malcolm headed back to Auckland and I fucked off down to Wellington. I thought it'd be a shit ride but actually it wasn't too bad, I went fast to stop it being boring and seemed to have real good luck with cops. Went to a leather store and bought a belt in Otaki, and then onto Wellington where I stayed with Anna Dean. I stayed in Wellington the whole next day to avoid the rain, and then on the Tuesday morning had the roughest ferry crossing I've ever encountered. Soem bikes even fell over (dicks didn't tie them down right). And then a windy ride home again... what is it with wind up that east coast between Blenheim and Kaikoura?