Big Pig's birthday!

Big Pig's birthday!, originally uploaded by indigoid.

Yep, I've had it for a year now.

I celebrated by going for a ride, of course. Went south from Mortdale along Princes Hwy past Wollongong, took the Illawarra Hwy exit to Macquarie Pass, enjoyed the challenging twisty roads therein, and stopped for a couple of chunky-beef pies at Robertson Pie Shop. The pie shop is a well-known friend of motorcyclists, but I'd never been there before. I have now, and am most impressed. From Robertson I continued along Illawarra Hwy through Sutton Forest, then turned right onto the Hume and headed back to Mortdale as if I was travelling from Canberra. About 270km in total, and most enjoyable. Here's a map:

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Later, on the way to Newtown for dinner and bookshops, the K1200GT's odometer ticked over to 40,000km. It has been fun, but now I need to organise another service. Thankfully I am told that this one shouldn't be quite as expensive as the services at 20k and 30k...

Water in Lake George!

Lake George with water in it!, originally uploaded by indigoid.

Yesterday evening a friend and I drove back from Sydney to Canberra in his Isuzu County. While he was driving around Lake George I snapped a couple of pics and some video of the visible standing water. Google hints that this is the first time since 2001 that Lake George has had water in it.

The Bureau of Meteorology says Canberra has had about 56mm rain in the last 72 hours. Hopefully a change for the better. Our passionfruit plants noticed and have started fruiting. Yay!

One thing's for sure --- I sure wouldn't want to be one of those sheep on Lake George right now!

Big props for BMW Roadside Assistance

Warning!, originally uploaded by indigoid.

After yesterday's puncture I called BMW Roadside Assistance to see if I could get the bike and I transported to Procycles today for new tyres. They organised it and early today I got a call from a transport company saying they'd picking us up at 1100-1130. Sure enough, they turned up on time and delivered us to Procycles. This was a thoroughly satisfactory and painless experience. Much better than I've had in the past with other roadside assistance services.

Hopefully the new tyres will last as long as the old ones. Odometer when I picked up the bike with new tyres fitted was 36465 km. Hopefully the next set will be on the far side of 60000 km!

My first motorcycle tyre puncture

K1200GT rear puncture, originally uploaded by indigoid.

Today I booked the K1200GT in for two new tyres at ProCycles in St. Peters. Michelin Pilot Road2 again. The current set have lasted about 26000 kilometres. I am pretty happy with them.

On the way home from work this evening I had to weave between a few bits of glass and other debris on the road, especially in the tunnel that goes under the runway at Sydney Airport. Clearly I didn't miss everything, as the GT's tyre pressure monitoring told me that I was slowly losing pressure in the rear tyre. I am very glad that the leak was slow enough for me to get home. Normally I run about 2.9 bar in the rear, but by the time I made home to Mortdale the display was reading 2.3 bar.

I cannot overstate just how useful the pressure monitoring is. Without it, despite best intentions, I probably wouldn't have noticed the puncture at all until tomorrow morning or until the bike really started handling badly. By that time there could have been damage to the wheel as well as the tyre, and repairs would be far more expensive. Instead, I was able to keep an eye on the pressure and feel confident that I could ride safely home. The system gives you far more than just relief from wielding a tyre pressure gauge. Highly recommended.

GPS not included

Good morning!, originally uploaded by indigoid.

A couple of nights ago I went out to my bike in order to head up to Newtown in search of books again. I was displeased to find that my GPS and its Hornig mounting bar (which, frustratingly, also had my RAM camera mount attached) were missing. I deserved this, I guess, since I had become very lazy about removing it from its cradle, just leaving it there most of the time with the "security" screw preventing its easy removal from the cradle. I knew that they could just remove the whole cradle without any real trouble, but having got away with it for almost a year...

Now looking around for a new GPS. Garmin recently announced their Zumo 220. Here's an article about it. Looks like it might be a good option. I'm not sure if I'll get another Hornig mount bar. It cost $200 and while it was a (much!) more solid mount than a RAM equivalent, it wasn't any more secure. We'll see...

Most of the time I only used the GPS as a more accurate speedometer. Perhaps this hike/run/cycle watch might be a better option while I assess the navigation-capable GPS landscape. Not sure how I'd mount it, but I'm sure something could be arranged.

Flickr / Blogger interoperability could be improved

Flickr's "blog this" option would work better if:

• Blogger (or Flickr, it matters not) didn't translate newlines to BR tags[1]
• You could select more than one picture to include in a blog posting
• You had the option of having all Flickr "blog this" posts be saved by Blogger as drafts for later editing, instead of them being immediately published

[1] When I write a new post in the Blogger interface this seems to be off by default. Not sure why it happens to my Flickr-sourced blog posts. Odd.

A different breed of science fiction

King St., Newtown, originally uploaded by indigoid.

For some time now I'd been on a fairly serious fantasy fiction binge. I'd long had Brian Aldiss' Helliconia Winter on the shelf, but had never read it. Recently I found a second-hand copy of the first book in the series, Helliconia Spring and started reading it. It has been most enjoyable.

Far too much fantasy fiction seems to be about combat and magic, and not enough about the very characters involved in such events. Fun for a while, but it gets dull. Robin Hobb's writing seems to be a pleasant relief from such drudgery. As a general rule, according to a colleague, any fantasy fiction written by a female Australian author is likely to be good. I haven't tested this to a great degree yet, but I have in the past thoroughly enjoyed Cecelia Dart Thornton's work, particularly The Ill-made Mute.

Happily, I found, at Elizabeth's Bookshop in Newtown, a good second-hand copy of the middle book in the Helliconia series: Helliconia Summer. I now have all three and hence no frustrating delays will be experienced. :-)