Hello There, New R6!

14 May 2011

Motorcycles, The Lonely Motorcyclist


I picked up my new bike today, a lovely 2007 Yamaha YZF-R6. The blokes at Arnold's Motorcycles at Burton-on-Trent, particularly Dave have been looking after this machine for the last couple of months for me, and it was quite exciting to finally meet everyone and pick the machine up.

It is remarkably more agile than my old R6, very nimble, and feels quite light indeed. The addition of the Yoshimura R55 gives the bike a lovely howl, and gives the bike a little more pull down low. This is a stark difference to the 2010 R6 I rode, which really didn't do anything until about 10 grand.

I am already in love with this bike, and am so glad I didn't move to a bigger capacity machine. At this time, the agilty and power of the R6 is more than enough for me, the perfect balance of small capacity weight and handling coupled with the power of a bigger bike. I can only wonder at how my mates who went directly to 1000 cc bikes from their 250 cc learner machines are coping. Bugger that!

And here is the beast in question:

2007 Yamaha YZF-R6

 

Motorways in the UK are sensible places. People move out of your way if you're travelling faster, lanes, towns, exits, ramps and speed cameras are all clearly marked, and speed limits in general are appropriate and well suited to getting you across the country quickly. I can't help but wonder why we don't have similar systems in place in Australia (well, we do mostly in South Australia) to encourage responsible driving, especially considering that we live in a gigantic country, and have simply massive distances to cover. The national limit should be 150 km/hr in Australia at least.

Here is an example of the local brew, which I polished off after not doing 110 mph down the M1 back to Woking:

Old Empire

I landed in the UK on Tuesday the 10th, and have spent the last couple of days getting acustomed to the new time zone. A tough gym session yesterday and early nights really put me in good shape for the ride back to Woking today; my exercise over the last few months helping me to pull up nicely after parking the machine for the night. For the record, push-ups on your knuckles do prepare you well for riding a sports bike, especially if you've been away from riding for some time, as have I. I did have a bit of a sore arse when I arrived, however that was less to do with the bike, and more to do with the 40 kg squats I cranked out yesterday.

The flight from Melbourne was less than exciting, 14 hours to Abu Dhabi, then a further 8 hours to London. I didn't sleep at all, despite starting at 0500 on Monday, and attempting to tire myself out with a decent gym session. Our flight out was delayed too, and we didn't get away until well after 2345. Melbourne was 10 degrees when I left, and Abu Dhabi was 37 when we arrived, which didn't auger well at all as I had to sprint from one plane to another in thermals. I was baking by the time I embarked on my connecting flight, and wasn't able to strip off until we were at cruising altitude.

I've had hardware issues since I arrived; the Mac is dead, the Archos 5 developed serious clicking and beeping noises (goodbye GPS), and my phone needed to be unlocked, even though I am with Vodafone in the UK and in Australia, and despite the fact that the phone is only worth a couple of hundred dollars. Hopefully these niggles will be sorted shortly.

On the plus side, the locals love my accent, and seem to warm to me when greeted with a "g'day". I may have Aussied up slightly since I've arrived, but who gives a shit?

As odd as it sounds, this all still seems very much like a dream, this adventure doesn't really seem as though it's happening at all, even though the first stage is almost complete.


 

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