New Rubber

I have new rubber. I'm very pleased with it. I have gone with an Avon Venom 170/80/15. I spent about 6 days researching tyres, until Parky and I had an afternoon kip (as we are wont to do) and I spent 90 minutes dreaming about tyres. I awoke feeling not the slightest refreshed and decided it was time to make a decision and get it over with. I must say that it was an all consuming task. I have now had 5 different tyres on this bike and 3 have been abject failures, one was okay and now I have one that is byooooootiful. Each of the rear tyres have led to fishtails away from traffic lights in rainy weather and underpant-change-necessitating rear wheel drift when wending ones way downhill, on dry road, through the twisties (even up to a week after the last rain) and encountering a stream of runoff. This has lead to rear wheel drift through the runoff and semi-religious instances of near hi-side on a 538 pound machine on a 12% decline.

For the clan of 'motorcycle-jargon-differently-abled-persons' (of which i am, for the most part, a member) a high-side consists of sliding (usually around a bend) in a rear wheel drift over a patch of something unexpectedly slippery (in a straight line, or due to excessive speed on the entrance to a bend) with the result of your two wheels becoming rather more perpendicular to the direction in which you are travelling you would like.

This does not yet constitute a 'high-side'. One has only now begun the 'pant wetting' or given previous experience at high-siding the 'pant filling' portion of the 'high-side' experience.

Allow me to recap. You are wending your way down a mountainside on dry road. Given that it is Korea, the upcoming corner might be anywhere betwixt a 90 and a 180 degree curve. All of a sudden you encounter runoff from a long distant shower which is still making its way out of the granite. Your front tyre makes it smoothly though the curve, but your rear is in danger of overtaking it. The feeling is kinda funky before the clincher; your rear wheel regaining grip.

We have all seen the video footage of people taking a stack a 100 miles an hour, bike slips out from underneath, person (with full protective gear) slides 100 metres before getting up and walking away seemingly unencumbered by the goings on. This person was a) sliding and b) didn't get much air~time.

A high-side is what happens next, your rear wheel regains grip but the angle of your dangle means that there is no way in hell your bike is going to right itself. Physics dictates that the path of least resistance is flopping your clockwise (for example) travelling bike onto the left side of the tank. Remember that you are not travelling very quickly because of the sharp curve of the corner that you have entered. The rider is shot, like from a shanghai, directly into the air, with almost no forward propulsion. The rider rises, balletic, into the air and proceeds to fall (at 90 degrees to the ground) and lands with an almighty thud, shattering whichever bone happens to hit the ground first.

The high-side happens to people who are inexperienced, overly eager, and who skimp on their tyre spending. This is the only way i can explain spending $300 (Australian) on a rear tyre. But if you have ever experienced a high-side, you will agree that it is money well spent.

New Website

The motorcycle page of the new website is up and running.

www.wombatcorea.com

have a gander ...

Happy Saint Patty's

What the heck is up with this weather? What the heck is up with March? I love the weather in Korea 9 months a year, July is a bit damp, January is a touch cool, but what the heck is up with March? I’ll tell you what; Mother Nature takes LSD in March, I have proof. Here it is:
1) March 2005, 60cm of snow in a single day.
2) March 2006, rode my motorcycle from Gangneung to Gimhae (8 hours) in relative comfort.
3) March 2007, look out the window.

We have had 15º, 5º and everything in between. Wind storms, bright sunshine, 5 straight days of overcast. Don’t give me shit about looking at www.weather.com, www.wunderground.com, www.kweather.co.kr, the weather channel, yahoo weather, CNN weather or any of that crap because they could not predict the end colour of a ripening orange. I don’t even want to talk about it anymore, apart from to say “Try organising a motorcycle tour when you can’t predict what the weather is doing 10 minutes from now, let alone on the weekend.”

It is an unmitigated disaster. Everyone is crook. It is bucketing down in Busan, raining in Jangyu and overcast but otherwise fine in Gimhae (7 kilometres away as the crow flies).

Anyway, Bill and I went for a ride to Dadaepo today. It was quite nice. We saw a new suburb under construction, a FERKING BIG mollusc farm, a very lonely, very odd and very big new house, an ostrich and a great big arsed beach that I didn’t even know existed.

I realise this blog is lacking a central theme just as was the collection of items that took our interest today. In an effort to keep with the theme of not having one, here is a photo of our dog in one of a thousand unusual sleeping positions he employs, usually but not always, on our pimped out couch and a wacky pair of signs.

It’s been another good couple of weeks here in sunny South Korea. Parky and I went to Sancheong last weekend, up near the Jiri Mountain range. We saw some sweet land up there and may have even changed our prospective address of our prospective farm, which is years down the track but nonetheless something we are dead set on. We had always thought that Goje (on the sea) would be our residence of choice, but Sancheong (on 2 rivers and a few big lakes) look very nice and less cluttered. Sancheong is quite pretty, it has good water (even in winter), it is much more sparsely populated and hence more to my liking. Parky also found a hog she likes and wants one for herself.

I started work for Parky last week and am loving it. I am trying to find a way to make 4 hours per day, 4 days a week for a full wage sound funny, but it just beggars belief anyway you put it, so I will just leave it at that.

We became card carrying Costco members today. Costco rocks! So much crap that I haven’t ever been able to find here in Korea for 4 years, all there in one store. We got:
1) 16 tins of crushed tomatoes.
2) Asahi beer (half the price of normal)
3) Aussie beef. (less than $40 a kilo)
4) Affordable chicken breast fillets
5) Chicken stock (8 litres)
6) Dill
7) Thai sweet chilli sauce
8) Great coffee ($13 a kilo)
9) Tortillas
10) Lasagne
11) Avocado
12) Asparagus
13) Spanish salad onion
14) Coriander
15) Fajita seasoning
16) Tortellini
17) Ravioli
18) Camembert
19) Blue vein cheese
20) Salami (3 kinds)
21) Ementaler cheese
22) Tortillas
23) Croissants
24) AND … SOUR CREAM!!!!!!!!!

Not being readily available in South Korea, it was as pricey as you might think it would be and a little more. I you want to work out how much we spent in Costco today, Aus$1=750won.

1-3-07

Parky and I have been riding all day with yet another group of guys and gals. It was a cracking ride up to the ancient Shilla capital of Gyeongju. Highway up and mountain roads back. We have met some really interesting dudes in the last week.

On Sunday we went cruising with some old Korean guys, mostly riding gold wing Hondas. That was a fantastic day. We just cornered some old dude in a bike shop and he invited us riding with his club. They have an average of about 50 people out twice a month. The youngest is 40 and the second is 45. There was one dude at the clubhouse wearing the colours, he didn’t come with us, but he must have been 85 if he was a day. What a fantastic group of lads. I’m sure I’ve already said that but it was just so true. I was treated so normally. Nothing special about being a foreigner, about being half the average age of the guys, just one of the guys. As a weiguk one is rarely treated like that in korea. It was so refreshing. I had no intention to ride with the crew often, but now I’m not so sure. I had one of the better days riding I’ve had in this country, and that is a big statement in a land where everyday is motorcycle heaven. What’s more, those old farts can ride. Those old farts might drive cars like my grannie on crystal meth, but they could throw those fat arsed gold wings around like they were postie bikes. What a spin out, eh!


Today’s ride was a freaker too. Met some new weiguk dudes who are well into the bike scene here. You will notice the custom job in the photies. It’s an original custom job, in the truest sense of the word. Louie (the owner) is some kind of freaky engineer here in Yangsan and imported the bits and pieces as he saw fit. Built the entire thing from the ground up just for kicks. Better to look at than to wend around the twisties here in the Land of the Morning Calm (no disrespect intended), but what a fucking monster of a machine!

Kudos to Trey, who has purchased himself a schmick 1100cc virago and made it out today as well, hope to see much more of that in the coming year. And great to finally meet Paul, with whom I’ve been conversing on the phone for the last 9 months and failed to catch up with. Great to see everyone again after a short winter’s break. Be ready in 10 days for Wombat season to begin again in earnest.