Custom Commandos

 For future reference...

Who's the good looking fella on page 70 of the latest of BikeRider?

Well that's Grant I guess. But there I go too, my 15 minutes (seconds?) of fame, and Hamish as well. This is an article Kerry wrote about our ride down to the Burt Munro racing in Invercargill last year (my pics here) and it's in the current issue of BikeRider magazine. It's a strange mag... actually maybe it's just very normal and I find that strange. Mostly it's full of horrific insect-looking bikes that I just can't stand, although there is a Suzuki 'Waterbus' featured and also a pretty cool old Matchless sidecar racing outfit, so it ain't all bad.

End of summer ride...

Rode up to Wellington with Chris and Grant last week. They were heading up to the 'Old School Nationals' at Manfield with a bunch of old cars as well. In hindsight I shoulda' gone with them, at least for the Friday night, it sounds like they had a pretty choice time.

I took the Norton and spent hours (HOURS!!!) last week working on it getting it ready for its first decent long ride in about 3 years. I'm happy to be able to report it fucking made it too! Did a bit over 1000kms and didn't miss a beat. The speedo fucked about a bit, but I fixed that for the ride back down, oh and the steering lock totally fell to pieces in Martinborough. Rode up there with Mattie from Wellington on the Saturday – in the rain for a bit, although it mostly stopped after we got over the Rimutakas (the photos below are taken then). Stayed in Martinborough to avoid more pissing rain and got pissed ourselves. Rode to Masterton and then back to Wellington the next day in nice bright sun but with pretty bad hangovers...

Left Wellington on the ferry on Monday. Originally we were supposed to be on a ferry that wouldn't get us into Picton until 11pm, luckily we managed to get onto an earlier sailing and got into Picton a bit after 6pm. I bought new strops to tie down my bike after one had snapped on the ferry on the way over (big thanks to Grant for being in the way of my bike falling over! don't think he got hurt too bad!?)...

It was pretty much dark anyway after we got off the boat in Picton. Our concern being Chris's total lack of lights and my old Lucas one being much like a candle with a mirror behind it. However Grant's light (on his dad's Kawasaki Z750 that he'd borrowed cause his bike still wasn't sorted) was pretty good, so we put him in front and me at the back and had a good headlight and taillight between the three of us. I think we freaked a few people out when they'd realise all of a sudden that there were 3 bikes! Chris's CB had something go wrong with the key barrel in Kaikoura and had to be hotwired to keep going. Little bit of drama in the middle of the night was good to keep the cold away.

Chris's bike wouldn't start again when we made our last stop for gas in Amberly. Managed to get him going with some fairly vigorous push-starting, and he made sure not to stop again til he got home.

Despite the cold this was an amazing ride and made me think I should do night rides more often. It's such a different vibe to the daytime, and much less traffic obviously. Although there were some pretty nutty truckers going flat stick through tight corners and blinding us with their lights. I tried taking photos from the bike at night but they didn't come out, which sucks 'cause it was quite a sort of surreal experience. Probably photo wouldn't have done it any justice anyway...

Easter Pt.1: Dirtbikes

Easter Friday – dirtbikes at the Waimak! Hot sun, good cunts, wild times. I didn't get many photos 'cause was too busy hooning about in the dust. Top to bottom = Bad Evil's XL175, Johnny hustling, Ray on Greg's bike, the track, Chris on my XL185, most bad-ass Vespa alive (this thing was flat-track racing at the 'Day in The Dirt' earlier this year!), Chris on my bike again... there was a bit of bike sharing. Went to the trials section after this. That was cool... and kinda scary. I come off once. I have a bit of work to do to catch up with some of these guys!

Fragments 2

This has been sitting here for a while 'cause I've been wanting to write something decent about it, but I thought I better photograph it and give it back to Jimi, who got it from Trademe recently.

What it is is a photography/poetry magazine published in Christchurch in the late 60s or early 70s I'm guessing, there's no date on it. At the back it says "Published by Fragments and printed by Designprint Press Limited, Christchurch", and that's it for info really.

Jimi's dad may know one of the photographers involved and I was kinda keen to see if I could talk with him about it.

Initially I thought it was a bike mag when Jimi told me about it, but yeah it's not, it's just this issue – issue #2. The first half of the issue is this "photographic essay" of what appears to all be the same MC. Mostly patches aren't shown but there's an Epitaph Rider in there on the fold out poster that comes with it. I presume they're all Christchurch based?

It'd be cool to know more about this as the design and printing are noteworthy for it's time too. I have to admit I'm not as interested in the poetry part (which I haven't reproduced here), but it is interesting that someone wanted to put all this stuff together? I've been reading the new book on gangs here, 'Patched', and in it the author talks about the relationship between the early MCs here and the hippy counter-culture movement. I wonder if this is an example of that kind of cross-over? It'd be good to get a date on this sucker!?

More Thruxton mods coming up...

I finally have a bunch of new shit to put on the Thruxton. Got some shorty Emgo mufflers off Pete (that I think are off Sarah's bike originally?). They're straight through and Pete said they're fucking loud – sounds like what I'm after! They're the same as on Tim's bonnie and it sounds pretty sweet, so yeah keen to see what they sound like on a new Triumph? I'm also pleased that they're quite a bit shorter than the ones I have on there now, and I really wanna see if I can get them on quite an angle too.

Apart from the mufflers the other shit is all front end stuff. New speedo and tacho that I'm going to mount flat and low. And then, importantly cause the old one sticks up like an unwanted erection, a new direct mount front brake reservoir from British Customs... so that'll get that lower as well. I also have this old Lucas headlight with grill that I wanna mount somehow. Might just modify the grill to fit the existing headlight? I'll see. Gonna have to make some new brackets for the dials, and so also thinking about making some for the headlight too and maybe lowering it a bit. Also thinking about changing the bars too – clip ons, lower! Maybe? Really wanna ditch the switchgear and replace that too...

Hoping to get started on this asap now that the Norton seems to be a runner (touch fucking wood).