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Whacking Permalink Archive 9 April 2005 I have seen God, and his name is Öhlins. A few weeks back, I had my z1000 fitted with a rear shock and front fork springs from the Swedish suspension specialists. Let me tell you something. If you are a sportsbike owner looking to spend a few bucks on enhancing your machine, an Öhlins upgrade should be your absolute no.1 priority. Forget engine performance mods. An upgrade to your suspenders will make a staggering difference. You'll be able to go around corners 20kph faster with the same level of effort. Traction will improve. Stability improves. Hard braking improves. If you weren't scraping your pegs before, you'll defnitely be scraping them after. Along with the incredible handling Öhlins delivers, is the easy adjustibility: ride height, spring preload, compression damping and rebound damping are all a twist of a knob away. No more banging away with the hammer-n-screwdriver on the rear collar, using a screwdriver on a hard-to-reach adjuster, no need for shim stack to change to ride height. At around $2400, it wasn't cheap, but it was worth every cent. Any bike I get in the future will be getting this upgrade. Motorcyclists,
do yourself a favour and find your nearest Öhlins distributor. Today.
MotoGP gets underway this weekend. My predictions last year were laughable, but I'll have stab for this year anyway. Here's my predictions for the top ten championship places (though I'm only confident about the first two). 1: Valentino Rossi (Yamaha) - he did it last year on a brand new bike, he'll almost certainly do it again on a machine he's been developing for a year. Having Edwards as a teammate - an excellent developer of bikes with a similar style to Rossi's - will only help. 2: Sete Gibernau (Honda) - will probably have a year similar to last year's: win a bunch of races, might lead the points early in the year, but will fade in the second half of the year. 3: Max Biaggi (Honda) - he's finally out of excuses: he has full factory backing on a Repsol Honda. Won't stop him from being beaten though, and he'll find new excuses. He does have master tuner Erv Kanemoto in his corner though.... 4: Makoto Tamada (Honda) - will score 2 or 3 race wins, but will lack consistency to finish higher up. Then again, Tamada is quite unpredictable. He's the only guy Rossi has no psychological hold over, andif he adapts quickly to the Michelins he might even challenge for the title. I hope so anyway, as the guy is amazing to watch 5: Colin Edwards (Yamaha) - first year on the Yamaha, and he seems confident. Will get a bunch of podiums and probably a victory. Won't be consistent enough to challenge for the title. 6: Nicky Hayden (Honda) - his third season with Repsol Honda. He needs to start winning some races. He's had some good results in testing so he may get a victory, most likely at Laguna Seca. 7: John Hopkins (Suzuki) - Hopper has done brilliantly in testing on the still-shitty Suzuki and may gets some podiums this year. He's certainly riding rings around his teammate Kenny Roberts. 8: Marco Melandri (Honda) - a big talent in his first year on the Honda. 9: Loris Capirossi (Ducati) - the Duke should be better this year, and Capirossi is a fast as anyone when he has a decent machine and his head is screwed on. May get a few podiums. 10:
Shinya Nakano (Kawasaki) - the talented Japanese will ride
the wheels off the slow Kawasaki, and a podium or two looks likely, as
do quite a few crashes.
During my recent trip to Melbourne, my accommodations were kindly provided by 'Tom Paine'. The highlight of my stay was a viewing of a special music video he acquired especially for my visit: a jihadist recruitment hip-hop video called Dirty Kuffar by muslim rapper 'Shaikh Terra'.
The images were entertaining though. Obviously filmed on someone's 80's era VHS camera, it had a couple of Islamist chimps in a jihadist hankerchief face-wraps pointing guns at the camera while rapping. This was intercut with TV news footage, presumably to help interpret the lyrics. This included: - footage of Osama looking like a puppet with a hand up his anus, accompanied by the lyrics "OBL Crew be like shining star". - footage of Jihadist warriors racing along in Toyota utes, rather confusingly accompanied by "driving your car disrespects Allah" (maybe there's a blasphemy exemption for four-wheel drives?). - footage of Tony Blair addressing the House of Commons, accompanied by what sounded like "Togy Bler LIAR!" with the word "BLIAR" appearing at the bottom of the screen. - footage of jihadists blowing up convoys, civilian markets while singing something to the effect of "we get you anywhere dirty kuffar". - pictures of famous jihadists, though the lyrics were a little confusing: "peace be to hamas and hizbollah, they suck dick on my car". - footage of an Islamist in Chechnya executing a captured Russian soldier with a machine gun, accompanied by "kill da dirty kuffar!". - lots of images of Dubya, accompanied by "big dirty kuffar", "throw him on da fire!" and other witticisms. - images of Ariel Sharon morphing into a pig, accompanied by "dirty kuffar!". - images of the hijacked planes flying into the World Trade Centre towers in New York with sounds of the rappers laughing and the lyrics "like the way we destroy them two tower ha ha" I remember scattering of other lyrics too, though the poor english pronunciations had me wondering if I heard them correctly. Among some of the more confusing lines were:
Still,
the video is a big
hit with many muslims. And they wonder why this religion has an image
problem.
The ride from Melbourne to Canberra on the highway is one of the dullest in existence. 8hrs57mins of riding gives you a sore arse and serious fatigue. About halfway, I bought a can of Red Bull - the great 'stamina drink'. It
was.....not good. And it doesn't work either. I'll stick to Coke or choc
milk next time.
I don't get to play many PC games, mostly thanks to the crummy old Compaq I have. Still, I did get to play Doom 3. It has a wonderful, and genuinely creepy movie-like atmosphere. The interactions with other characters and machinery is terrific. Sadly, the gameplay doesn't quite live up to his early promise. The never-ending pitch-darkness and the stupid 'triggers' which always put the monsters behind you make the game both very difficult and very tedious. It seriously needed some more varied level design. I only got about 3 hours into the game, and I understand it improves later on, but I didn't get that far. Still,
what's good about the game (graphics, sound, atmosphere) is very good
indeed. It just isn't as good as it so easily could have been.
While I was in Melbourne, I finally got a chance to test ride this little beauty around Heidelberg:
What a little ripsnorter this was. The 125cc twin-cylinder two-stroke has a little rocket of an engine, with lots of low-end torque for getting away from the lights in a hurry. It was comfy, had good brakes, plenty of storage space (but no shopping-bag hook), adjustable suspension and decent switchgear. Best of all was the unusual suspension system, which solves a lot of the instability woes that usually plagues small-wheel scooters. It was smooth over bumps and great through corners. As
a two-stroke performance scoot, it's not as cheap to run or practical
as bigger, cheaper four-stroke models, but it's a lot more fun.
Mundine's pugilistic career largely consisted of fighting ageing bums (after one such encounter, he proclaimed it was "just another step on that road to greatness which will ultimately see me rule supreme") and getting soundly walloped every time he faced a serious opponent. Then there's his rather humiliating efforts at continually avoiding aussie fighter Danny Green, who would have most probably reduced Mundine to a bloody pulp. Gee whizz Choc, what happened to becoming the world's greatest boxer so you could 'fight racial injustice' on the world stage? Anthony
Mundine: celebrity. boxer. idiot.
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Thrilling
stuff, though it wasn't until halfway through the video that I realised
the guy was rapping in English, so I missed out on all that lyrical beauty.
Anthony
Mundine - the self-proclaimed "world's greatest athlete" who
quit rugby league and turned to boxing in a laughably pathetic bid to
become the next Muhammad Ali - is quitting boxing and returning to Rugby.
