Dinkoman.com

Believe it or not but “Dinkoman” has been active for 4 years now. It makes me seem so old haha. The official date is a little vague as I opened several websites under the name all around this time of year, but I prefer to stick with the 24tyh of February. I’m going to spare the conventional review as I normally do simply because it is getting a little old. Irony in its truest form.

This past year has been full of ups and downs, mainly ups (or what I can remember) and I am really looking forward to the remainder of 2010. At the start of the year I had really high aspirations for 2010 but none of them have come true so far, mainly because the weather has put a “dampener” on my mood. 2010 is looking to be good from now on though as I outlined in the last article. To celebrate the 4^th year birthday of Dinkoman.com I am going to a strip club. Seriously…

I can’t wait for the weather to improve for when I get my new bike. Finally I can get suited up in my leathers instead of the filthy textiles I have become accustomed to wearing. Bring on knee-down season haha, I can’t wait!

Today was another day of carefully plodding down my road in the mixture of slush, ice and snow. I swear my neighbours think I am certifiably insane; today I set off as one was taking his dog for a walk and he gave me the strangest look of confusion and admiration. It was awesome. Right now I’m sat here, 6 minutes to midnight listening to Brad Sucks while writing this article and talking to a few internet buddies. I might organise some ride outs later this year when the weather picks up. There are a few guys on some forums I hang out that are talking about it and I think it would pretty cool to all hang out.

Quite eventful happenings since Saturday I must say! But first I will say that I’ll be doing a review of my bike boots and helmet in the next few days.

Mail

Anyway, Saturday I awoke at about 12:30pm and found that I had been left 4 presents by the mail man. This months software review package came (AVG Anti-Virus Pro on a 2 year license), which is a joy as AVG has just this minute saved me from a virus I acquired on the Pirate Bay website (not a torrent, an ad from the site strangely). One can never have too many Anti-Virus programs. Unless you are like me that is and have amassed a collection of 11 based on product reviewing.

My second item to come through the mail was my Visor Stickers. The picture you can see at the top of the screen is me in one of my helmets. As you can tell I have added a few arrangements to it which attract quite a lot of attention from wherever I go. Seriously if you want “people” to talk to you then stick a red Mohican on top of your helmet and voila! Well seeing as I get all this attention I thought that I may as well whack a sticker on there and get myself some free advertising. The below picture is the result of this and I must say – I am really impressed. The order arrived quickly, stuck on easily and it looks great. Check out xtreme2xcess to order your own.

Yet another joyous surprise on the motorcycle front was that I awoke to 5 2010 Honda brochures for various bikes! Plus a letter inviting me to come for a test ride on the VFR 1200. Great! I really love Hondas and am actually thinking of buying one as my next bike sometime around April. Honda seems to have the most relaxed approach to bike sales as well and it’s something that I really value as a customer. If I want a test ride on one all I have to do is pop down to my nearest dealer and the hour after I am riding whatever I choose. Clearly I think this is an amazing idea and as a result I would be willing to put my money into the Honda brand.

The fourth item to arrive was a booklet of financing and money. Exciting I know…

Snow

Once again it snowed on Sunday which laid a good three to four inches on the ground. Seeing as now my only option is to travel by motorcycle (I don’t do buses, sorry) this made for quite an interesting Monday morning commute. My commute is about 10 miles and most of the roads were just wet, with snow on the parts cars had not been travelling on. This rule excludes both the road where my house is and the road where work is. They were covered with Ice, slush and snow – add on the bonus of me living on one of the steepest hills imaginable, having practically bald tyres (still legal) and you have yourself a concoction of fun and ass clenching antics.

Needless to say I did arrive safely and me and the bike had no issues. Oh, there is now just the fact that everyone that saw me, which was probably in the thousands, now thinks that I am a complete lunatic. This doesn’t really bother me as my mother always told me I was anyway.

Holidays

As promised in my last article I will now inform you about my upcoming vacations. I don’t know for certain yet but sometime in July I will be going to Amsterdam! I’ve been to Bruges before but never Amsterdam and I am really looking forward to it. I’ll be going with 3 of my best friends on a “minicruise”. I have been on one before but I was 11 or so, therefore I can’t really remember much about the actual ship. I do however know that there is a casino, shopping centre and several bars onboard for the 18 hour journey. Sounds good enough for me! If anyone knows any good things to do in Amsterdam (aside from the obvious) then message me on twitter or through the contact page.

Also I’ll be going on holiday to a couple of other destinations (one of which will probably be Spain by the looks of it). I’d really like to go to Taiwan as well on one of Mordeth13’s tours he is setting up but I will have to see how much money is available as I will probably not be in the best financial situation soon. So that may have to wait a while. I may be moving there in the near future anyway due to the fact that I can get a job teaching English. We shall see. Positives for England are… oh nothing.

So then, as you can see, quite an eventful couple of days. I am looking at purchasing a Honda Hornet 600 soon. I really fancy the revvy CBR engine they have (13K redline!) so this will stretch my monetary situation. This and the fact that I am moving to Scarborough. Oh and the fact that I still have a ton of things I want to do! I’ll have to spread the costs though and will have to wait a couple of years or so, as I will be more financially stable by then.

P.S. I’ll be posting about my VIP trip to an executive box in Wembley to watch NFL last October soon as well. Our box was next to the owner of the New England Patriots so that was pretty cool. I may be going again in September as well to watch the band Muse.

As I said before, more reviews coming in the next couple of days, follow me on twitter for up-to-date adventures about my life (actually quite mundane) and *Sign of phrase not currently found*.

Calpe Trip – [Foreword: It gets better below. With pictures.] Each year I generally go on a few holidays (vacations to those Americans) and I have been to quite a few places in my life time. Last summer I went on a 2 week trip to Calpe, Spain. Spain is not the most glamorous destination as it is possibly the number 1 holiday destination for British people. I have been to Spain and the Balearic Islands many times and Calpe is one of the nicest places I have seen. There are advantages to Spain of course, and these advantages make it one of the top destinations for Europeans; warm weather, sandy beaches and the relative inexpensiveness are what attracts most to Spain and sure these are great but are not the reasons why I love the country so much.

Over The Pyrenees

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I’ve seen this guy before a while ago. He has to be my favourite weather forecaster in the world, it could piss it down with rain all day and i would be happy hearing it from this guy.

I know it’s not the article I promised but I am still in the middle of writing that one and several others. 4000 words is a lot longer than I expected ahaha. Anyway, I had THE MOST AWESOME ride home today! I decided to attempt my commute in Jeans and a Leather Jacket (gloves and all the usual as well of course) instead of my filthy touring/enduro suit. It’s the first dry day I can remember in recent times and what an epic ride it turned out to be.

When I set off at 10:30am it was around 1C (degrees = 34F) but glorious sunshine and no rain predicted for the whole day. I miss going out in my leather jacket, it reminds me of the Summer time, last Summer in particular – which was one of the greatest. It did occur to me before I set off that I might be a little chilly but I had layered up wearing my under suit. It turns out that I had become a little too accustomed to my touring suit as I got pretty cold, pretty fast. Not to deter me though.

To get the true picture of what I am describing you really need to know what my commute is like. I live about 10 miles away from where I work and where I live it is semi-mountainous with fast twisty roads and beautiful scenery. After about 7 miles of this it heads to inner city type traffic, heavy traffic. Well that is at 9:00am. Seeing as I set off at 10:30am some days I miss most of the traffic, but generally get stuck behind some commercial vehicle making overtaking almost impossible. The way to work was pretty uneventful as I was stuck behind a coach of school children who had never seen a motorcycle before judging by the endless waves I kept getting. However the way back was completely different!

3:40pm and I set off. The traffic was as usual but for some reason I had a real aggressive feeling towards queues and filtered the entire city section of the journey. I usually filter but if I am behind a car or two the lights change pretty quickly so I just tend to sit behind most days and only filter if the traffic is more than 2 cars. Well it turns out that if I am at the front of every light than nobody is every in front of me. Who would have guessed?

This is the Google Street view location for where i took this picture.

To be honest filtering the entire way was kind of fun for once. Generally it is dull, grey and raining when I filter so it gets kind of boring but the sun changes everything! As I got out of the city and the road opened up my excitement meter went form 5/10 to maximum overdrive! Every corner was pure bliss. DRY ROADS! For the first time in 3 months – DRY ROADS! I decided to go the long way home through the moorland to my house and snapped this awesome picture on my phone (above). It’s amazing how something as simple as dry roads and no traffic can lighten your day/week/life. In general I am a happy person but this past week has been dragging for some reason. I needed that. Thank you weatherman and BRING ON SUMMER!

*Sorry for some of the grammar and structure but I have been awake for 20 hours now, it is 1am and I am tired as… well nothing is more tired than I am right now but I promised an article, even if it is mediocre. I will tell you about my upcoming Amsterdam trip shortly!