| Author | Message | ||
     Barker |
Tell us/show what you do and how you done dun it? Payback is a bish. | ||
| Froggy |
I was waiting for this thread to form   | ||
| Rocketsprink |
hope I'm not the only one that has no idea what this is about??!! | ||
| Ourdee |
How long till it starts?  | ||
| Doubled |
hope I'm not the only one that has no idea what this is about??!! http://www.badweatherbikers.com/buell/messages/406 2/465712.html?1245111991 You may want to look at this thread, Rocket. | ||
| Etennuly |
If you read the book, does that mean you won't have to wait for the movie to come out?  | ||
| Danger_dave |
My epithet: 'No, no - wait. Let's talk about ME!' OK - just got some jobs on. | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
Have I got time to go & get some peanuts? | ||
| Danger_dave |
My epithet: 'No, no - wait. Let's talk about ME!' Different to your path Barker. Influences: Born & raised on the South Side of Sydney. Old man was a Dentist. Mum captained the State at Golf. The first time I was in the newspaper was on the back page of 'The Sun'. Dad the Dentist holding baby David, while Mum goes to play Golf. Yuk Yuk Yuk. But this was 1960. My Grandfather gave me my first mini-bike. This subsequently proved to be the greatest disappointment in my parent’s lives, for instead of chasing a little white ball across a paddock with a stick, as was my destiny, I was pinning a rigid frame 125 two-stroke around the clothesline, along the side of the house and back up the driveway. For hours and hours on end. I’d done a lot of miles by the time I was five - apparently. My mum still looks at me to this day and says ‘It’s all your Grandfather’s fault.’ Mini bikes were rare then, but my Old Grandfather was the Senior Engineer at the Steel Works. Parts of it are actually named after him. He started shoveling coal, educated himself, and retired in charge. He had the apprentices build me a mini-bike. My mum says it was when I was 2 years old. Lawn mower engine. I don’t remember much about it other than burning myself on the exhaust and it was rusty. And how happy I was when he bought me a ‘real’ mini bike in the Third grade. My old man passed away when I was quite young and I set my own agendas pretty early on. After school was all about bikes – riding bicycles or motorbikes during the week. I worked as a Copy Boy at the Sydney Morning Herald every weekend all the way through high school - fed the riding habit. I rode a CB450 and a brand new SR500 to my last year of High School on the back of it. (School to which I never fitted in. Artist in a Science School I later realised.) I had an interest in photography and a collection of box-brownies all the way through. Mum encouraged it, paid for the processing. Mum since remarried so I bailed and went into the Family Importing/Wholesale Business - sweeping the floor and driving the Truck and learning how to sell shite. I was skinny, 6'7" in cowboy boots, riding a pretty seriously hotted up XS1100 at 19 and had asked every hot babe within a 5-mile radius of my parents house out riding. With mixed success. The late 70’s and early 80’s in Sydney were pretty special times – all of it on a motorcycle. Halcyon days. Dies cast. Lifestyle forged. Cars shunned. Live to ride - ride to live goner. Biggest, fastest, coolest motorcycles we could afford. No inkling that I would become a moto-noter at all, but I had a good grounding working every weekend running messages and doing the menial jobs in the art department of the metro paper all the way through school. But I wasn't using it - so I got to the stage where working for my step-father was no longer viable and I had careers in several fields, worked in the construction industry in sales and ended up in the marketing department of a large building company where I discovered a talent for drafting and design. Got a qualification and pushed pens till designing housing estates till I just happened to be sitting in a large corporate design office when the first 11” mono screen Macintoshes came out of the boxes and you had to change discs to change fonts. I have been an expert operator since. Just loved 'em. Learned every in and out of the operating system and software like an enthralling jigsaw puzzle. But I was still in construction till one more boom and bust cycle pushed me into business contracting for myself - 20 years ago. But before all that, the singular most important meeting of my life involved a motorcycle too. Snip--> The Co-pilot - It started with motorcycles too. The first thing I noticed as she crossed the room was that she was near 6' tall in her sandshoes that were different colours, and she had a great physique. Hellloooo! It wasn't till 20 years later when 'Xena - the Warrior Princess' first aired that I realised I had a Xena 'thing', but there she was, (in jeans and a flannelette shirt) in the lounge bar of the Sylvania Hotel on the Princess Hwy in Southern Sydney. 3km from home. She was selling raffle tickets for the 'Burning Palms Surf Club'. One of her flatmates was fund raising and they took the tall chick to sell more tickets. I was there with 'Wardie' doing what I always did with 'Wardie' and 'Simmo'. Most Sydney summer nights we rode our bikes or took Simmo's hot rod and we went looking for bands and babes. ACDC, INXS, Cold Chisel, man, huge nights and one was always on somewhere. I had a very tasty XS1100 and I was doing all right too. We all were. We knew groups of chics in various pubs across the south side of town and rode out to see ‘em - most nights. The lounge at the Sylvania was busy, smokey. We were near the exit and contemplating ‘Mick Moylan’s?’ (Another Pub) as time, noise...everything, stopped and she walked straight up to me. I was immediately impressed with the way she iced Ward - the representative lock forward we called 'Krypto'(nite) cause he was harder than, but who called himself the 'Old Master' (aged 22) - he made the opening play, but she only had eyes for me. She walked straight past him like I’d never seen Ward ignored before and stood square before me. I looked down and instantly fell deeply into those gorgeous pools of blue. Looking back on it, I was ‘Gooooone’ in that instant. ‘Do you want to buy some Raffle tickets?’ ‘No thanks...’ Says his mouth, which seems to have chosen this particular moment to completely defy the urgings of every other fibre of his being, which was screaming 'YOU F'ING MORON! OF COURSE YOU WANT TO BUY RAFFLE TICKETS!!! QUICK! SAY SOMETHING!!! AND MAKE IT CLEVER!!!' ‘…I don’t, but would you like to come and see my motorcycle?’ (Fark – lame! I blew it, damn damn damn.) ‘Love to!’ she says. (Whew! Yesssss!! Whhheeeew! - Glad I didn't say something stupid!) She hands Christopher (Her flatmate) the bag of cash and the raffle tickets, points at Ward and says ‘he’ll sell some’, sticks her arm in mine and we walk out the door to view the nearby steed. When I picked her up for our first ride and date (2 days later) I find she already has her own helmet, gloves and jacket (and flat) and is seriously into riding. Brilliant, funny, clever, successful and beautiful - we’ve been best friends and inseparable since. (Christopher gave me '2 weeks'.) We got married 2 years later after a particularly romantic proposal involving ice cream, a paint sign, a hamburger joint, a motorcycle and a roadside. But that’s another story. It’s been running about 30 years so far. < ----- more later. I have to go dribble about motorbikes for money now. That's what peanuts wants to hear about I know! | ||
| Jb2 |
Cool story Dave. | ||
| Court |
>>>Cool story Dave. Very cool . . . suddenly I am overcome with the desire for a burger and to buy a raffle ticket. Who knew. You left out my favorite part . . . . you write right. | ||
| Court |
P.S. - Badweb is plum chucked full of some darn fascinating tales of some darned amazing folks. Buell seems to attract them from the oral surgeon who didn't sleep in 1989 . . to the day George landed his helicopter in the factory parking lot right up to this day. For bonus points . . . try to get JB2 to share his. Like many of us he was bred and married beyond where he could have ever imagined. For extra bonus points . . . remind me to tell you the story of how I explained his tenure as the Team Elves Custodian of Funds. Like Crocs in a swamp . . . the Buell waters are full of amazing folks hiding mere mm below the surface. | ||
| Jb2 |
>>> remind me to tell you the story of how I explained his tenure as the Team Elves Custodian of Funds. It's been a few years but I still recall the FBI background check and "do you see the guy outside waiting in a black limo for your answer?" Then the next day poor Kim calls wanting to know who Court is and something to the effect "no Elves were intentionally hurt during the transmission of this fax." From there it's been all downhill. I met Kim during the height of my moto-cross career(2 1/2 seasons) and we fell in love instantly. Talked about marriage and a life together at age sixteen and less than four hours after we met. I sold the Harley Baja(object of my moto-cross addiction) to pay for our wedding barely 18 months later. We married while still in high school so she could escape Akron, Ohio and some bad family situations. Everyone, except my Dad, thought it was the worst thing two young kids could do. Dad thought it was the best thing I ever did. I didn't let the girl of my dreams get away and have no regrets 32 years later. Motorcycles have always been my outlet and sanctuary of solitude. She understands that as best she can but she's quick to tell anyone/everyone she knew what she was getting into. Motorcyclists ROCK! JB2 | ||
| Road_thing |
...a paint sign??? ...you're a romantic mo-fo, Dave! rt ps--love yer stuff! | ||
| Glitch |
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| Lemonchili_x1 |
Very cool. Looking forward to the next installment  . | ||
| Danger_dave |
The paint sign was over the paint shop that was next door to 'The Kats'. A hole in the wall burger joint that I had been going to eat deep fried processed foods since it was the only place with a 'Space Invaders' and I was sneaking into the South Hurstville Hotel just down the road – underage. It in a lay-by beside the main road. This particular night we were back in Sydney after a year traveling. (by Bike around Aus) We'd been out on the town and stopped for an ice cream (and probably smokes in those days). A Balmy summer night in Sydney has a unique feel, a gorgeous girl, the glint of a fluorescent light in chrome. We were sitting and leaning on the bike, slurping ice creams, heading home from a phat night out - as you do. The motto for the brand of paints that owned the paint shop at the time was 'Keep on keeping on'. Slurps Ice cream. See that sign? That’s what we should do. Parents and 3 guests at the Wedding. We used the money for the deposit on a house. I learned a lot in nearly 15 years in the new home construction industry - but I always gravitated back to the design office and the cad drawing board. We had moved to the coast, south of Newcastle NSW where I got head hunted for a job with the last builder I was to work for. They got hit by a credit squeeze - so I bought the Macs cheap and a Scanner and printer and set up for myself. Architectural renders, Artists Impressions, Presentations and general desktop publishing at first. I also freelanced for the Apple Center as a Graphics apps trainer and network installer – back when Windows and Mac didn’t talk to each other I made good money sorting fixes for mac based printererys trying to publish MSword docs. I also worked at a Windows training group teaching Photoshop, Pagemaker and Powerpoint for the dark side. I got some real good breaks out of doing that and picked up a 600 poker machine Sports Club (Casino) as a client - doing all of their commercial art. Gaming, food, menus, promotions and all the Casino’s graphics shizzle. Wonderful diverse experience and I got the contract to produce their monthly, full gloss, 30,000 print run, magazine. That's where the magazines came in. All this business was conducted on a motorcycle too. Board meetings in leather jeans. Meetings with CEO - soaking wet and leaving puddles off my bike boots. When you are the ‘creative one’ you an get away with all sorts. Interesting times. We had bought a dilapidated cottage on the waterfont of Lake Macquarie and spent a lot of time and years renovating it into a pretty nice family home. All was going quite nicely. Amy and Matt were born in Hobart and were at High School by the time the Co-pilot instigated the next phase. We’d moved and traveled a lot. Lived in most Australasian cities and we had followed and moved with her career too – which is really important to mine. She was an operating theater nurse when we met. The one the difficult surgeons asked to assist. Became a Cardiac specialist and from there moved into health project management. Public hospital system. She is my hero. Worked in theaters, studied for her first post graduate degree and between the two of us we raised teenagers at the same time. She then went on to get her third degree, her MBA while working full time, dealing with the kids and putting up with me. Saint. At the time I thought it had all come round to bite me on the bum. Auckland! I was comfortable – the six year renovation had just been finished and….Auckland. I was riding with blokes that will be my Hombres for life and now she’s got a job offer in Auckland? And it was too good to refuse Dammit. 20 year clinician with a MBA and Change management ticks. She was running Surgical Services of the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest Hospital and I just tagged along for the ride. Dragged under protest actually. But what do you do. Closed my business, sucked it up, and flew East. Welcome to Auckland. (Message edited by danger_dave on June 17, 2009) | ||
| Danger_dave |
I have a 1995 Triumph Thunderbird. It’s got 100,000 miles on the original needles and seats and is running like a bit of a dog currently. It’s off the road and sitting in my pal Brian’s shed. It’s not worth much, but it’s a good backup if anything untoward happens to the Buell. It would take 4 weekends to bring it back to Showroom condition, but at the moment it’s laid down like a vintage wine that I’ll drag out again ‘in the fullness of time.’ However, the vehicle was the catalyst in the succession of events that lead to working as a moto-journo. I bought it in Sydney and we rode it around a lot of the Eastern Seaboard of Aus before shipping to Auckland with t’family. I pinged one of my web buddies already living here and was directed to Auckland Motorcycles & Power sports as the destination for the crated bike. And that was the start of a great set of friendships. My Tbird was a show winner and it has been suitably customised. I was fortunate enough to have a world champion proddy racer tune and tweak it for me in Aus. Ohlins shock – Race tech front end and a whole lot of tasty accoutrements. About the time my bike landed and I became friendly with the shop - they needed a web site. I had one (web site) already built about my T’bird. They liked it and I won the contract to build their site. Hard out Triumph ridin’ Big Dave or some web geek who didn’t know where to sit on a bike – let alone ride one.. The experience and work practices I garnered working for the Casino translated to implementing Harley® and Buell® (raises eyebrow) and Triumph branding for the countries biggest dealer and made Newcastle not so hard to leave. From there I picked up the Triumph and Vespa importer as a client. And friend. And in the meantime I landed a studio job as well. I had a few months of frustration and a couple of dead end gigs at first but eventually the computer and design experience landed me a job in a big inner city publishing house. Senior designer on a floor with a dozen glossy magazines in the stable. They were also happy to publish my writing. To the stage where I was writing concert reviews for the local Rock bible, and Business Weekly (Tech column). What a place that was. This big hairy biker in a Media house. I also handled security and did in fact bounce a few stalker types before going back to glamour shoots. There was a firm of Lawyers on the floor above us. I used them for the legals on the house we bought in Auckland. One day he confided that they used to stop the lift at our floor just to see how see-through the receptionist’s top was. So I was looking after the dealer and the importer after hours and working for the publishing house days. I was supplying ads to Kiwi Rider. They liked my stuff. Met me and offered me what I though was a reasonable fee to contribute as the Touring Correspondent. We’d since acquired a Trophy 1200 and had explored both islands thoroughly. The publishing house crashed and burned in the dotcom meltdown. So I went bike back to freelance full time. In the first instances it was adventures on my own bike, then I used the published articles to establish some Bona Fides to borrow demos. AMPS were and are great to me and I made semi regular contributions using their demos. Then the offers started coming in. The current Editor moved into the chair not long after I came on board and we get on famously. Good pal whose integrity I respect greatly. I’m still a freelancer, but over the last six years have become (one of) the experts on cruisers and the generally large capacity vehicles as well as being retained to build and admin the web site. And I’m the Buell and Triumph and Harley guy. I also have a number of clients for my design business. Co-pilot moved into the private health sector 5 years ago and is the CEO of a health group with 7 hospitals and Rest homes and I do the marketing support for that and another health corp as well And a dozen small businesses. It all pays for the motorcycle play. How do I get your job? Obviously you need a big head – haven’t you been reading? I travel to launches and spend some time with a variety of people who do the job for other rags. A lot come to it from competition riding. Some from within the trade. I sort of came to it from other magazines and production and was lucky that my passions were compatible. A little enthusiasm goes a long way. The Ed tells me: ‘There are people who can ride well. There are people who can write well. There aren’t a lot of people who can do both.’ Throw in ability with a camera and you are starting to sound attractive to a publisher. You also need integrity. Not so much for the writing part. If the writing doesn’t have it – you won’t be writing long. More so for the dealing with the trade and the use of the vehicles. Word – bond. Always return the vehicles washed and full of gas. It’s amazing how much easier that makes it to get the next one. An experience base. That is the hub for all that’s spoke (Yes – an interest in lame puns is also handy) but some basis for comparisons is a given. Flexibility. Can you cover a launch from Tuesday to Friday next week? Can you pick up a bike tomorrow and deliver it to… If you are Freelance You need means beyond the Bike gig as well, it’s seasonal and boom or bust depending on model release times of the year. Downsides? I was lounging by the pool at the resort in Cooktown on the Buell far north Queensland adventure ride – as featured in Messers (they hate that) DG & CC’s chronicle and getting bent on JD charged up to Harley’s marketing budget. I asked several of the Journos what they thought the bummers about the gig were. Airports and the travel to the jobs was the only gripe – and that’s not a serious one. If you count up what it takes to produce a bike test it’s not a pretty rate. Taxi to the distributor to pick it up, few hours riding around test route, couple of tanks of gas, photographing, research, sorting pics and banging out the copy, checking and dispatching - it’s not a good hourly rate – but it’s very, very lifestyle rich for the kid who shunned golf and shattered his mother’s dreams. Best gigs. The Buell and Harley releases are standouts. Roustabout for Triumph and AMPS was pretty cool too. I bet I have run in more new bikes and models than just about anyone in NZ. Given the keys to the local Dragway and a new V-max was pretty cool. Some of the Triumph gigs have been outstanding too. Take a new one and produce a Touring NZ report please David. Regrets, Ive had a few; But then again, too few to mention. I did what I had to do And saw it through without exemption. For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught. To say the things he truly feels; And not the words of one who kneels. The record shows I took the blows - And did it my way! What. A. Wanker! (Message edited by danger_dave on June 18, 2009) (Message edited by danger_dave on June 18, 2009) | ||
| Lemonchili_x1 |
"a dilapidated cottage on the waterfont of Lake Macquarie" It's a great area, and surrounded by great roads. Sounds idyllic  |
