David Forster

I spent the back half of the easter weekend with the gang at the 1st round of the British Superbike series at Brands Hatch. Saw some awesome bikes (including the 125s and 600s from the support races and the new ‘Big Bang’ Virgin Mobile Yamaha R1) and had a really great time. Got a chance to use my 70-300mm lens on the new camera too.

I’ve put some photo’s up here – there’s many more (about 500 in total!) so I’ve picked these one’s out as being the best. Jay took some great pics too.

P.S. – Jay – this one’s with love from Serena

Right, I’ve decided on the R1 over the ZX10R. I keep seeing loads of lovely bikes out there that I want – and not just 1000′s, Jay brought his GSXR750 out last Friday and I have to say, it’s a fantastic bike. It comes down to this… At the end of the day, there’s now way I can come close to the reaching the edge of performance of my current bike, so in those terms it doesn’t really matter which 1000 I get. Therefore, I ought to get the bike that I think looks the best and I feel most comfortable on – and that’s definitely the R1.

Now all I have to do is decide on the colour… I have to make my mind up soon because I need to buy the bike next week!

Yesterday was “Superbike Sunday” at the Ace. Plenty of my friends turned up with their bikes and took part in a photoshoot, so I took the opportunity to use the new camera. I was quite surprised that, while I was using a proper digital SLR camera, the people that were actually meant to be taking the photos were only using a Sony Cybershot. Photo’s are here (I decided to try out Picasa’s web page export function – it seems pretty good). Unfortunately, the day came to an abrupt end when there was a bad accident.

Later, I had a nice meal and watched “DodgeBall” with a friend. Excellent film, very funny, 9/10.

Took an R1 out for a test ride again today in an attempt to make my mind up about which bike is going to replace my R6. It was a nice dry day around here and, seeing as I had a little more experience with the bike, I pushed a little harder than before and was well rewarded (95mph 1st gear wheelies anyone? Don’t tell the shop!).

Getting back on the R6 was awful, it seemed so slow!

I’ve just downloaded and installed the free Picasa software from Google. First impressions are that it’s brilliant! It makes it so much easier to organise photos on your PC and the interface is so slick and easy to use. I’ll definitely be using it at home now that I’m planning to take plenty of photos with the new camera. Highly recommended!

Taking a look at a calendar this afternoon made me realise just how little time there is left to get my new bike sorted out. Yamaha currently have a 0% finance offer on R1s, which runs out on April 3rd so I really ought to make my mind up before then. Plus, I have to get insurance sorted out and think about selling my current bike too. The bad news is that Yamaha haven’t released the new 2005 colours yet, and I don’t think they’ll have them out in the next three weeks so it looks like I’m stuck with the 2004 options, which means no “Silver Storm”. The good news is that Colin Collins have (so a little bird tells me) received a new ZX10R from Kawasaki which is meant to be used as a demo bike, so hopefully I’ll get to try it out after all!

Just a quick note to say that I went to see “The Life Aquatic” with some friends yesterday. Overall it was quite a funny film, but did suffer from being a bit slow at times. I’d rate it a 7/10.

Typical! It’s the first decent day we’ve had for a long time. The sun is shining, the roads are dry and I also have the opportunity to leave work a little earlier than usual. So I phone Colin Collins in Harrow, as they’d brought a used ZX10R down from their Letchworth showroom for me to test ride, thinking that finally I would get to go out on it and compare it to the R1. It turns out that they sold it on Saturday.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I appreciate that if a customer wishes to buy a bike then the salesman isn’t going to say no. However, I do think they should have called me to let me know the situation and arrange another bike to test, not wait for me to call them and certainly not treat me with the nonchalant attitude I experienced when I did! Whatever happened to customer service? I guess my cash will be going elsewhere.