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those handlebars are sweet looking jeff! Still no fix for my damn clutch. I might need you to take a peak at my bars and see what you think. any meet ups happening soon?

About 1/2 way through first term last year I became friends with a young man who goes by the handle endo. As we're both utterly obsessed with bikes it's not a major leap to believe that we became pretty good friends. After he read my blog he confessed that he was becoming involved in a contest of sorts. Building a streetfighter - he asked if I would be willing to write the blog to go with the build. There was no way I could possibly say no.

It's been a long 8 months, but today is the end of the contest. Everything has to be finished and submitted. So today was the second to final upload of the build. From humble beginnings comes what can only be described as pure awsome. endo, you're a superb builder, and I cannot wait to see what you do next!

Sev's setting up shop....


thanx dr_bar!

hahaha! I like the model planes!

It's been some time since I've updated my blog. I think partially because I'm putting so much effort into work I cannot be bothered to write anything, and partially because I've just been bored with the idea of keeping a blog. But I went out with a friend tonight who reminded me that I'm not writing this for someone else, I'm writing this because I want to keep a record that I can look back on and remember. So, I'll start writing again soon.

Friday... Friday the 1st I changed my sparkplugs. What an ordeal, first I had to pull off the seat, then the tank - which is remarkably tough because the fuel line is just BARELY long enough to make it to the petcock. But I got it off without too much trouble. Pulling the sparkplug leads is even tougher, but somehow I managed to remove them. Number three is an iffy one on my bike... for some reason it doesn't like to thread in smoothly. I got it done though.

Bike starts better now, but seems to run about the same. And it idles lower... dropped from 1400 to 1250 for some reason. Why? I don't know. But I'm happy I finally got it done. Sitting at aprox 26800 km right now.

Last Sunday was a very special day. It was the day that Dr_bar rolled into Edmonton on the first leg of his 2007 cross continental ride.

To start the day off I met up with a couple of old classmates from NAIT. JP and Alyssa for a latish breakfast. We caught up on what we'd been doing, I got to brag about how well work was going . Compared horror stories and generally just had a great time. It was good to see both of them again. After that, I went for a short ride by myself. Because of this ride (and Alyssa showing up late) I managed to miss KC's phonecall to let me know that she was heading out to meet up with Dr_bar.

I ended up meeting them over at KC's place where Dr_bar... well... if you haven't had the pleasure of meeting him... you should do your best to do so. He's a great guy, smart, funny, full of great stories and all kinds of good jokes. Just a pleasure to be around.

We took the time to change his brake pads which were nearly shot by the time he arrived. The fronts were very standard, remove the caliper and remove the pin, then take out the pads and fit the new ones. The back was interesting in that you merely removed the pin, then pulled the pads out the back. It went very fast once we figured that out. He offered me the chance to ride his bike afterwards, but I declined I didn't trust the mechanic... actually I didn't trust myself with someone elses bike. Can you imagine being the reason someone had to cut their cross country trip short??!!

After that we had dinner - very good burgers, and, wonder of wonders took KC's youngest for her first ride. I don't think I've ever seen a happier kid! All in all, a phenomenal day.

The next Monday was even neater. I was working away as usual when I hear (over my headphones) "HEY JEFF!" I look up and there's Dr_bar. We got to chat for a little bit before he took off for the next leg of his trip.

I'm glad I got to see you again Dr_bar . And thanks for letting me learn a little about your bike.

Work today was interesting.

Last night I stayed a little late at work to help out a coworker. I pulled the forks off a bike for him, then buggered off to the hospital to visit my little brother. He was going to pull them completely apart and replace the seals.

I got in the next morning (early) and Chad hands me a pile of fork internals and says, "okay Jeff, I got it apart, but I can't get it back together. It's your job for the day."

"Wait, what, huh?"

"Look, it was late, I was impacting, "poo poo" was flying everywhere. I've got to install this powercommander... you figure it out."

"You're an "O Ring"."

"I know."

So I had a pile of fork parts, and a complete fork beside them.

I carefully took apart the other fork, spread everything out, washed all the bits in varsol and reassembled them with new seals. It's a surprising amount of work.

*more to come*

Up until last Sunday every single ride I've ever taken has been "on the street."

Last Sunday, that all changed. As part of a thank you too employees and customers alike Echo Cycle hosted a track day. And as an employee I got to go !

I took a couple pictures, but spent more time riding. As such I would like to thank Jolene who risked life and limb to venture onto the track to take shots of all the racers. You'll only get to see pics of me though.

It was exciting because this was literally my first chance to even start to press the limits of my bike. I'm sure I didn't even come close though I got to embarass a bunch of much faster bikes. Some ZX10's, CBR's, and such. Which isn't to say I was fast











These are my tires after my very first session on the track (about 4 laps)




Here's closer to the end of the day

Come on!!!!! Until you scrape hard parts you're not having fun!!! Wow, that's pretty cool! Glad you got to go and have fun! Oh, and doncha love it when they have a superfast bike, but don't know how to ride it???
Wrider