This is mostly how I ended up looking seriously at a bike over these last few weeks.

Kym is used to me day-dreaming and flicking endlessly through mags but this time she could see I was a little more serious than usual. We went through the accounting-dance to negotiate just how much moolah I was authorised to spend and I promptly hit the streets.

After testing 8 bikes over the last few weeks and finally settling on two I fancied I visited the two stores in question at lunchtime yesterday to get the best trade deal and ended up riding out of Hamilton Motorcycles on a near-new Triumph Daytona 675. (here’s a wee video of the bike if your interested)

Got insurance sorted out this morning and went out for a lunchtime strop out of town, round a few back-roads near Hamilton Airport and back in through Peacocks rd. It was raining of course, we’ve hardly seen a dry day in the last couple of months, but the bike handled beautifully in the wet. The torque is gorgeous, it loves to rev, brakes are great, engine braking surprisingly good, the engine note is fantastic, I could (and will) listen to all day.

Its fair to say… I’m stoked !!!

EDIT: – took the long way home from work tonight, still raining, also dark, but had some more fun and picked up on some more details. I know its very shallow and cosmetic but am totally loving the tone of the Triple, especially in the low-to-mid-range area, the sound is to die for, has a slightly edgyier-than-twin but less coarse than 4-cyl sort of tone to it. A real nice grumble, not quite as distinctive at the top-end but pleasing none the less.

Handling wise am loving the way it tips in to corners. Not too urgently so it catches you out, just very easy to initiate the roll and very stable and linear as it tips in. The clutch is REAL nice too, requires very little input but still obvious as far as required input goes. Gearbox is a wee bit clunky though, could be the new-ness of the machine I spose. Oh yeah, and on the new-ness front, it still smells new when it warms up. About as close to a new bike as I’ll probably get so I intend to savour it

The season has been shaping up wickedly, the wins have been shared across a number of front runners, and now that we’re half way through its still a close thing between the top three bikes (Rossi, Stoner and Pedrosa)

So its not like we’ve got anything to complain about, the races have been entertaining, lots of thrills and spills, but it’s started to look suspiciously like team Ducati and their top rider Australian Casey Stoner might be getting their act together to the point where they would dominate the rest of the season just the way they did last year.

I’ve got nothing against Ducati winning, Honda and Yamaha have had their fair share of dominance, but noone wants to see a total walk-away season win, and Stoner being 20secs out the front just doesnt make for entertaining watching.

And to be honest I just can’t warm to Stoner, he doesnt have that crazy, cavalier, accessible persona other riders have, and he definately doesnt posses the charisma of the likes of Valentino Rossi.

Which brings me back to last nights race.

Stoner had qualified well and seemed a shoe-in to win if he got out in front early. Rossi was having none of that, he totally put it out there fully commiting to getting in front of the Ducati and staying there. He and Stoner duked it out for the first 10 laps, some awesome passing manouvers, we were roaring with vicariously adrenalised delight in Paul’s lounge as one crazy pass followed another.

Rossi the more aggressive passing and more defensive once he got in front, Stoner decided he’d sit in and watch from behind and bide his time, ran wide a few laps from the end and dumped the bike in the gravel, but remounted and amazingly still took 2nd place on the podium.

Rossi and Stoner were just in a different league out front, not to take anything away from the awesome performances from the likes of Vermuelen, Dovizioso and Spies, but the leading pair may as well have been in their own race. It was the greatest battle of this season, or last, and its been on my mind all day as a totally awesome racing hilight. Here’s hoping we get more of it.

I ended up buying my 954 Blade and don’t regret it for a second. But now that I’m lookin for a change and after being tainted by a ZX10R experience in the past I had this lingering desire to throw a leg over the newer 06/07 shape as a comparison and realistic option.

I took out the ’06 one currently on the floor at Waikato Yamaha, after having just ridden an R6 they’d recently traded, knowing full well there would be that same overpowering effect of the Kwaka over the middleweight, but to be honest I had an inkling the R6 wasn’t gonna work out even though I really do love the things.

Dave fired up the Kwaka inside the shop much to my acoustic delight. The machine they have is fitted with a pair of Micron aftermarket cans and by Jesus it sounds like a substantial piece of kit. Not spinning up as quickly as a 600 but the initial bark and subsequent grumble as it idled coarsely out the door to the workshop for a fuel-up was bloody impressive to say the least.

Onto the bike and easing the clutch out gingerly for manoeuvres onto Te Rapa straight and north out of town I was kinda wary of the beast beneath to be honest. You hear lots of criticism from self-proclaimed hard bastards about how Kawasaki took all the character out of the 04/05 model when the 06 one came out, but lets face it, there’s really no room for complacency when your sitting on a 160 rear-wheel horsepower and a pair of cold tyres.

Out through Te Kowhai, south to Whatawhata, and down the Waipa a little towards Te Pahu and by now I’m starting to get my head around the 10. And by Christ I’m loving it. More urgency than my Blade of course but the same order of magnitude of behaviour really. On a couple of occasions the front lofted during 2nd gear roll-ons, probably a third-throttle if that, but they were at times when I knew I was squeezing on a little more than usual and if you’ve got any throttle control at all there’s really no problem keeping the front wheel on the ground.

The Ten has a beautiful smooth delivery of arse-shoving grunt, still has that incredible big-bore rush of the ’04 model, but its definately spread a little further out across the rev range. Tipping it into a corner was a cinch, I was kinda expecting it to not be as easy as the Blade but it turns in without effort, feels light to the touch as you alter angle and seems very easy to change the pitch mid-corner with a little more or less throttle or a bit of counter steer.

The brakes are good and progressive, but what else would you expect from any modern bike these days. The ergonomics felt comfortable for me, the engine note is glorious, the styling I like, and its GREEN which is a bonus (I’m a closet Kwaka fan having owned them in the past). It has to be said that overall its a bloody great piece of kit that has handling and responsive performance to boot in a package that doesn’t feel too intimidating to someone used to managing a few ponies.

Would I buy it. Definitely. But first I’ve got a couple of other machines to try to satisfy my curiosity.

Today I took my chance. Beautiful clear blue winters day, a little on the cold side in the morning, warming up a bit by midday and the roads were dry. This was it. Took the afternoon off and went to three of the bike-shops in Hamilton to ride the machines I thought best suited my needs. Following is a review of the 1st bike I took out, the others to follow in coming days…

Yamaha R6 ’07

Back in 2004 I took an as-new R6 out from Jason at Waikato Yamaha and absolutely loved the thing. I’d been riding a Kwaka ZX7R at the time and the nimble, free-revving, crazy little 600 was a real breath of fresh air for me at the time. Things have moved on a lot technologically since then with the R6, but the new model still shares that light handling rev-head character that rewards a rider happy to keep the engine above 10,000rpm.

Apart from the top-end fun, the thing I loved the most about the 04 R6 was the Superman like position of feeling like your looking over the nose of the bike. The 07 R6 seems much the same, it almost disappears beneath you which is weird at first but quickly you forget about the machine and occasionally you catch yourself thinking that your actually flying along the tarmac and not attached to a motorcycle at all. This is what riding a bike is all about to me, being in the moment like that, and it seems so easy on the R6.

For what looks like a wee bike there’s a ton of room on the seat, and it actually felt like it needed a Dani Pedrosa style rubber stopper on the arse end to stop me sliding about.

The engine spins up effortlessly (sometimes actually over-running on shifts with the clutch) but it suprisingly didnt take long to get into the habit of keeping it revving, however it really still is a little breathless when your not working it and would make for some sweaty passing manouvers for a lazy bugger like me who’s used to the beefy torque of a big-bore machine.

The only other gripe I had (which could have been to do with suspenstion setup I guess) was the front end got a little unstable on the gas in the rough stuff a few times when exiting corners. Would just feel like it was unsettled and not holding contact with the road, although to be fair its at times when you pretty much know you’re actively doing something which might cause it.

All up the R6 is still a wicked fun bike, would be a fantastic machine to step up to, and would clearly make a killer track-bike, but I’m not confident I could do without the midrange, and I’m really in the market for something that can also double as a commuter which it probably aint aimed at. Great bike, just still not for me.

But this morning for about an hour and a half I was as cold as I can remember, with no escape and little chance of warming up.

I stayed overnight in Auckland and got up in the dark this morning at 6:15am (something of a record for me) pulled cold leathers on over top of my polyprop long-johns and top, threw down a hot-chocolate, and leapt onto my bike for the ride back to Hamilton to get to work as on time as possible. The weather over the weekend had been clear and warm and the mornings pretty comfortable, but this morning, even in sub-tropical Auckland it was rather nippy.

The motorway from the North-shore into Auckland was slow going by the time I went over the bridge in the eerie glow of dawn, and even through to the south side of town the speed was pretty low so the cold was fairly bearable. But moving along at 100-ish on the southern motorway section to the Bombays was starting to get bloody uncomfortable. I had to keep working my hands and sheltering my left one behind the tank, riding one-handed for a time lest the both of them lock-up altogether.

Stopped at the BP in the Bombay service center, topped-up on fuel, then checked how much cash I had, bugger, not enough, didn’t have my Eftpos card. Mmmm… Quick grovel to the cashier, offer to leave my phone as a deposit, confused looks, the manager (Lois, bless her heart) came out of the back office, swipped her store credit card and payed the $16 I owed them out of her account saying not to worry about it, gave me the receipt and said drop in next time your passing.

Despite this potentially warm and fuzzy experience, I actually wasn’t feeling any warmer, and I still hadn’t had breakfast coz I was planning on eating at the Bombays and now didn’t have any cash. Busking for my breakfast wasn’t gonna work coz I cant dance, sing or play anything well enough to be paid for, juggling was possible but my hands were too cold to manage that. Clearly the contents of my cranium were not functioning at their usually impressive rate, this next leg was gonna have to be nice and easy.

Unfortunately for me things were about to get much worse. The section from the bottom of the Bombays through Pokeno, Mercer, following the river on long-swamp road to Meremere is notorious for fog, and that’s exactly what I hit after a few short minutes. A thick, white out, freezing wall of endless fog, dotted with dangerously slow moving trucks and cars, coating the visor on my helmet with a sludgy mist which I could wipe off with one hand, but my breath clouding up the inside. Bloody great, just what I needed.

After about 20mins of this insufferable torture I finally caught sight of the first sunlight of the day. Hallelujah!!! the Sun was up, and by Hampton downs was actually breaking through the fog, and then Bam!!! out into the clear, bright morning, perfect visibility, and up goes the pace again. At this point a motorcyclist faces the dreaded trade-off of winter riding: you either ride quicker and get home sooner but get colder due to increased speed, or ride slower and maybe feel a little less cold, but take longer getting there. I decided to take the former approach, sod the speeding tickets, the only thing on my mind now was getting through Huntly and home to warm the helll up.

Pretty soon I’m heading into H-town, through the back-streets to home, into the house, stripping out of my frozen leathers and easing my pathetic shambling carcass into a steaming hot bath. Its been ages since I’ve had a bath in the morning, and good lord was it great. I jumped in around 8:30 and after 20mins or so and a few hot-tap top-ups my core temperature had improved to the point where I thought I could face getting out and dressing for the road, and riding in to a day of work.

So it is I’ve canceled plans to attend the Brass Monkey, or any of the other ridiculous winter bike rallies run in NZ and around the world, I’m a summer softy, there’s no doubt about it. Please don’t invite me, refusal may offend.