Monthly Archives: November 2009

Grant had an engagement party to attend so I manned the MCC stall at the Sydney Bicycle Film Festical on Saturday. Frantic work as anyone who had a ticket to a BFF session could go into the draw to win a Giant bike and nearly everyone took advantage of the offer (why some people didn’t bother is beyond me!). It was fun and I met heaps of great people and I got to watch some of the shorts too.

Grant, flocked by people wanting to enter the draw to win at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington on the Friday.

We gave away loads of Giant tyre puncture repair kits.

Our setup. My poster design is huge huh? We decided to pull the other raunchy poster, and in the end of the day we were glad we did.

The tickets, which went like hot cakes!

Spotted this Paino outside!

If General Pants Co. has models on bicycles in their window then cycling truly must be cool right about now.

Crazy Chopper thing.

The City of Sydney have the ball rolling.

Instead of eating lunch today I got busy on the ED Civic!!!

Last night I got to catch up with my old mate Eugene Kee. We grew up together, in the same apartment and always hung out together until I went to uni where we didn’t see each other so much. He then got a job in Taiwan, married and now he’s a Dad!

Eugene got me into riding bicycles. He always had the best bikes (and apparently still has them stashed away at his parents house somewhere!). He’s pushed the envelope and done a few huge cycling trips, one of note was riding through Cambodia with a tent packed on his bike and lots of 2 minute noodles and more recently he’s ridden across the Saudi desert!

A year or so ago I found him on Facebook and told him all about how I was getting back into riding, funny then that he told me he was running a bike shop in Taiwan! He’s since opened another and last night we got together to talk bikes, business and more bikes.

He’s invited me back to Taiwan in March to go to the main Taiwan bike show with him. Consider it booked in! I’m excited!!!

Accident damage. There was no corner light before but Dedy found the corner light at Honbits for $30. He installed it for me too, what a champ.

Just another angle.

JDM dash and climate control complete with a funky little push to open flip up cover to access the air-con temperature control (lol). Holden passenger side floor matt and speaker surrounds are a ncie touch too.

Engine bay.

Nutter alarm fob. You plug it into the ciggarette lighter to charge it up.

Crazy flashing LED to show the alarm is activated.

Rear view, missing a wiper but that doesn’t bother me.

Excited when I saw the box!

Oh hot daym!

Strictly BMX threw in some free goodies too. Now that’s how you do business, what cool mofos.

I just scored this Limited Edition Replica of the early 80’s Kuwahara KZ-1 Frameset for $399.99 from Strictly BMX (thanks Blayne for the heads up!). Apparently only 250 of these framesets have been produced for the world and since I’ve been told that my Kuwa frame is a fake I’m most likely going to swap everything over to this new frame. Happy times!

Christina’s suspension install at Top One last week was going to take a few hours and I didn’t really want to hang around all day so I asked Dedy if I could borrow a car to take home and this is the car he lent me.

It was a rainy day so I didn’t get to drive it in a spirited manner (not to mention it wasn’t my car!), the seating position was super strange. I felt that my face was so close to the windscreen and that my head would just smash right through it if I had to brake hard. The gear shift felt long and vague (like stirring a bucket of paint) but hey the little car got me home and back.

When I dropped the car back at Top One Dedy told me the car was for sale “cheap”. Christina and I had been looking to buy a cheap beater for her to learn how to drive manual in (I didn’t like the idea of burning up the clutch in my Jazz or GT-R). We thought about hiring a car for $500/week but also thought that we might not get the best use out of it during the week of hire, and that it would just be cooler if we could own a car for her to learn in at her own pace.

Me being me I had to jump on the internet and find out as much info as I could about the car. I thought there would be a shitload of parts out there for it but it turns out that there’s just nothing much out there at all. I suppose the car is just too old and the fanboys are letting it go.

This particular car has had an engine swap (done by Dedy from Top One). It’s got a trusty B16A in it (which revs to 8000rpm… VTEC YO!). It’s got a new clutch in it (only done 20,000kms), HKS coilovers, HID lights, a ricey alarm system, newly re-gassed air-conditioning and rego until March next year. Unfortunately the owners mate recently had an accident in it and the front drivers side corner light is gone and there’s some damage on the front bumper bar + the front drivers side wheel is a little bent.

I made some enquiries regarding the condition of the car, reliability and the price and after some positive feedback I made the call to buy the car. I’ll be picking it up on Wednesday night, so more pictures to come!

On Sunday Suga was invited to the first R32OC Cruise. An impressive 14 cars rocked up in total (13 R32’s and one new golf TSI). We met up at Loftus Oval (hey I’m here every week!), unfortunately it was raining but spirits were high. After some friendly chat we were on our way.

Considering the wet conditions and the bumpy and windy roads I have to say I was glad to be in a convoy of R32’s. Little 4WD’s with traction control and ABS brakes, it’s basically just point and shoot. Suga’s car performed amazingly even on the rougher stuff. The screw mod we did the day before also eliminated the loud scrubbing issue.

The convoy of V’s and IV’s stopped at Stanwell Tops for a break and then proceeded down to the beach for a meal. Great guys, great cars.

Howie and Jane.

Loftus group shot.

Tommy’s black on black beasty at the Stanwell Tops pit stop.

New school vs. Old school.

Supermotos.

The view.

14 R32’s in the carpark.

View from above.

Group formation!

IV V IV V…

Mmmmm fush’n’chups at the lighthouse on Wollongong Beach.

I hung out with the Locks earlier on Saturday and we checked out a new mall in Ryde called Top Ryde. The mall was like any other mall but the carpark had great LED board signage which told you how many parks were available and each parking bay had an LED indicator. Blue for available disabled parks, green for availablde bays and red for taken bays. Very nice.

One for the fixed riders.

Touchy park in Bondi Beach where idiots, both on foot and in cars, own the road.

Christina and I had good intentions to check out Sculpture by the Sea but the wind had picked up and we weren’t rugged up enough so we settled for just checking out this big guy at the beach.

We had dinner at RAW BAR. I’ve always known of this Japanese Restaurant, have always seen it there (used to be green) and I’ve always wondered if it was any good. Truth is it’s WAY overpriced and the food was crap.

The fish shop on the main beach road has been selling deep fried Mars Bars for years. I still haven’t tried one, the Japanese food expanding in my belly prevented me from giving it a go this time.

We came across a whole lot of drunken riders on ghetto kids bikes in silly outfits, they were doing a pub crawl by the looks of it.

Spotted my old Jazz up on carsales :)

After much bartering we decided to go ahead with Academic Wardrobes. Today they came to do install both built ins, one storage unti for the hallway and a huge wardrobe with a small build in dresser in the bedroom. They ran into complications with the doors though, and other bits so they’re going to have to come back another time to finish off the job. I’ve taken a few progress pictures in any case:

Huge wardrobe in the bedroom retreat with a built in dresser table + draw on the far end. Sliding doors are still to come.

Storage in the hallway for linen, and whatever else. It’ll have some very minimalist sliding doors on it once it’s done.