Batting a thousand

Well the score so far, one lost drivers license, one lost VISA card, one lost nephew, and one lost van.  This is getting discouraging.  Added to that, Bakersfield is cold damp, foggy and dark.

I leave messages for Adrian to call, but no news. 

Comments

  1. Rene SchmidtJanuary 8, 2010 at 10:07 AM

    We've left some messages. Adrian is alive and well in brighton. Your van is sold and the plates are being shipped here with Adrian's stuff via UPS. Hey, have some fun on your trip!
    Rene

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Electrifying

Image
  The future is electric they say.  I agree, sort of.  I am on my second electric pedal assist bicycle and have test ridden a Zero FX.  I was impressed. I would have bought the FX right then and there, but negotiations stalled over the usual dealer charges for their overheads.  Sorry dealers, but I have had enough.  Do not advertise a sale price that won't roll it out the door.  Anyway, it gave me pause to reflect on electric's weakest link, batteries.   But before I rant on batteries, my experience with electric motorcycle and bicycles have convinced me electric motors are the future of transportation.  Electric motors with electronic control systems are so much better than petrol powered engines.  Electric motors eliminate clutches, transmissions, most required maintenance, smell, vibration, noise, excessive heat  and all the power wasted on noise, heat and vibration control.  On my test ride I did not miss any of them.  The instant torque, and the ability to enjoy the ride w
Read more

A tale of two XTs

Image
Over the years I have almost always had more than one motorcycle at a time, but never really had a collection.  Collecting stuff has a lot in common with activities like recreational drug use or gambling, it can be fun, but watch you don't get hooked.  In my case the wake up call arrives when I can't get into the garage anymore, and then it's 'everything must go!' until the garage is empty.  After which, like coat hangers in a closet, a bike creeps into a corner, and another and another. The collecting bug does not discriminate, people collect all kinds of shit, from buttons to military tanks. I never saw my random moto acquisition binges as an investment, I was mostly sucked into buying old bangers through the motorcycle price-age curve, a tool used by economists to study the demand for rusty old crap. As you can see in the graph below, the actual selling price of a motorcycle descends very swiftly the moment it leaves the showroom, mostly because the dealer
Read more

Decline and fall

Image
Most motorcycle manufacturers have come and gone.  Pick your favorite defunct moto brand, google it, and surely you will find that someone has written a book all about the reasons no one is making them anymore.  But really, every motorcycle brand failure can be attributed to two reasons, people lost interest in buying them and or their makers lost interest in building them. When it comes to why consumers buy motorcycles, this too can be broken down to two reasons, they want affordable basic transportation or they want a motorcycle for fun.  Because most motorcycles are road legal, motorcyclists can combine practical transportation and fun, or at least that is what they tell their wives, mothers, husbands...   There is a (much) smaller market of motorcycles for commercial, police, or military use. Motorcycles started out with the marriage of the safety bicycle invented in 1883, with the high speed small gasoline engine, invented only a few years later. It is estimated that there were
Read more