Container unloading

Yesterday I dropped in to visit Yonas and Zi at JDMyard hoping to try out a few of their plastic front lips on my ED Civic. When I got there, a huge truck had just left this in front of the shop:


It's so huge it blocks the shop next door too.


Wheels!


Yonas in the container (which was hot like an oven and smelly). 2 hours in and this is all we had got to.


Late afternoon. We unloaded non-stop. David, Yonas, myself, Zi and 2 other guys came to help out later in the day.


Dave and the towing boxes of wheels, all sorted.


OG OG-San.


OG OG-San.


OG Oldskool.


OG Oldskool.


OG Banzai.


Sportmax!


I also spotted this Seibon carbon bonnet for my ED Civic (ED/EF, same thing). Why so tempting!!!


Nice to see my logo design on a gearknob!


When we finally finished up it was dinner time and the Boss treated us good. Tingtao is a great Chinese beer, crispy, just how I love my beers.


We had dinner in a packed out, award winning Chinese restaurant in Hursville. They served up some traditional dishes that I'd never tried before. Duck with Taro and this soupy dish with salted egg, thousand year old egg and spinach.


Tasty chicken and Basil hotpot dish.

I didn't get to try any of the lips for the ED, but I got carried away with the unloading and really got into it. Good thing as I hadn't ridden my bike lately and I needed a workout!

Ribs and rumps!

Last night Christina and I caught up with our good mate Steve who suggested we pig out at Ribs and Rumps in Homebush.


Ribs and Rumps.


Stevey waited a while as Suga and I were super late (my fault I was so busy installing the carpet in the ED I forgot what time it was!).


I spotted a beer on the list I hadn't tried. One swig and I was sold, it's so sweet, almost like drinking mango juice!


The meat looked better than it tasted. My steak was overcooked and the ribs were nowhere near as good as either Hurricanes or Kelly's.

We then dropped into the JDMST/Circuit Club meet around the corner.


Narada organised the meet and had invited a whole fleet of S2K owners.


Narada + Movember + JDMST T = Win

New carpet for the ED Civic

The old carpet was dead, thin in many parts, damp and smelly so I've replaced it with new carpet which I bought off eBay.


How the carpet comes.


I laid the old carpet over the new carpet to mark out all the holes and went at it with a sharp blade.


Fitting the carpet was a pain, but I got there eventually.


The end result.

A weekend in Melbourne

Spent the weekend in Melbourne with Suga, Felix, Dianne, my sister Jamie and Richie. It was epic! I'm very much in love with Melbourne again (didn't have a great time last trip), loved the food, the sights and most of all the company.


Train crossing on the way to the airport.


It's a tradition to eat McDonalds at the airport, always highly satisfying for some reason.


My T-Shirt :P


The lady pilot hammered our plane into the ground, one of the hardest landings I've felt in a long time. We stayed at the Quest on Collins St. in the CBD and we were pleasantly surprised at how huge and clean our apartment was.


The girls wanted to shop so we hit Chapel Street straight away. Dianne runs a food blog and so she's always taking photos of everyone's meals before we're allowed to eat (haha).


The girls were pretty much walking into every single fashion store. Felix and I had done the whole street by the time they had done only one block! We checked out the Knog store though and had a chat with the cool cats inside.


They sell Swobos at the shop, these ones are customised by the infamous Shifter Bikes.


John and Jamie at Knog. Cool guys, they gave me a load of sweet Knog stickers to put on the counter at MCC.


Bikes are absolutely everywhere in Melbourne. So many riders.


Fixie boys outside of the Town Hall.


Hipster!


Felix and I dropped into the Blue Bar on Chapel St. for a cold one.


My lady.


We hooked up with Richie and Jamie and had dinner at The Point on Saturday night. Check the lit up fridge. I love a place that displays their meat!!!


The foodie at work! Mixed reviews on this restaurant. My steak was damn perfect but others were either too raw or overcooked. Shame really as they pride themselves on serving the best steak in the whole of Australia.


The next day we got up early, killed an amazing brekky then picked up our Tarago hire car to hit the Great Ocean Road. Unfortunately it was pissing down.


We stopped off at this cute little cottage cafe.


They served up some killer scones with jam and cream.


We loved the jam so much we bought some to take home.


At this point it started pouring rain and we all got pretty wet, we forged on though!


Just another pitt stop.


Fish and Chips for lunch, we're almost there!


"AW SHIT!" - Our Tarago had mad plates.


Amazingly the sun came out when we got to the apostles!!!


Felix and Dianne, the wind was so strong which just made it all the more amazing.


Richie and Jamie.


Wow, what a view.






The trusty Tarago was impressive. No power but it could steer! Suga absolutely caned the thing through the twisties!


Cityscape at sunset ended our epic road trip on a high.


We met up with some Melbourne crew for drinks. Shiri and a few Club ITR guys.


We had some Japanese then Shiri took us to "Cookie" which was a totally rad bar.


Di and Felix @ Cookie.


Art @ Cookie.


Jamie @ Cookie.


Suga @ Cookie.


Shiri @ Cookie.


The next morning we hit centre lane again for brekky, which again, blew us away.


Middle Eastern brekky of meatballs and baked eggs!


Spotted outside, lovely.


We also checked out some awesome graff.












We managed to squeeze in Brunswick St. too where Christina once again went on a manic shopping spree (she did well!). This Polyester sign used to be painted large on their shop front, someone was so offended that they threw a brick through the window so now it lives on a much smaller sign outside.


On the tarmac.


It's home time.


Home, safe and sound in Sydney.

Wardrobes are done

Hallway linen closet.


Bedroom.

Our wardrobes are finally finished!

Hanging out with the Locks

Met a great family last night, friends of the Locks since way back. Both of them met whilst gliding and their daughter is double jointed. Haha.


Pre-dinner drinks at the Locks. Great conversation, wine, champagne, all in good taste as always.


Steff's party trick.


We went to Excellent Chinese Seafood Restaurant where Mr Lock gets to order things not on the menu. These desserts are amazing. In the bowl is some sort of almond soupy stuff, it smells so good. The fried ball is gooey and has red bean inside, so good.

911

The look on Suga's face says it all.


Wide much?


Fussy sharp tail lights might take some getting used to but they scream "current model".


Yes automatic unfortunately. The shifters on the wheel have both up and down gears on both sides, which is totally confusing so I didn't even bother. There were 2 sports modes though and the 2nd one was damn aggressive and made the car come to life.

Howzers dropped in yesterday afternoon with his new 911 and I got to give it a bit of a fang!

The car feels so solid and firm yet it's super comfy and handles the bumps so well. The steering is weighted perfectly, the front of the car feels super light which makes it playful when turning into corners.

I mashed the accelerator pedal to the floor my adrenaline levels went through the roof!!! I was laughing out loud, lifting off and hitting it again. Damn this thing accelerates. The response is insane and the noise it makes is meaty and raw.

I loved it! I was on a high for 30 minutes after driving it (and that was only around the block!).

ED Civic update

The drivers side HID was blinking (badly) so I got rid of them and have gone back to bulbs (Old Skool FTW!).


I ducked into Super Cheap Auto and bought a whole lot of trim screws + some no logo black floor matts.

Today I visited Peter who has a great DIY build thread (on an ED Civic of-course!) on OzHonda. I drove the Civic out West (freaky shit. I'm rarely outside of the East! Hahaha). He was an old guy, used to race an EG Civic, is now a Web manager by trade but loves playing with cars. His backyard was a workshop/junkyard/pain shop all in one. There were cars and parts absolutely everywhere, most of which had JDMST stickers too (luckily I brought along a JDMST T-Shirt for the guy!).

I had a list of things I needed for my Civic. Fuel cap lever, rear window lever, various plastic covers and panels and Peter had the lot and then some! He gave it all to me super cheap too, what a guy.


One of Peters (many) project cars (his inspiring DIY build thread here).


All the bits I needed. The airbox is a B16A airbox with an HKS panel filter but unfortunately I couldn't get it to fit as my battery is in the way. Might bother with it some other time.


Speaker covers yay.


I fixed the rear latch which opens and closes the rear window. It was a damn bitch to install but I got there eventually.


New rear floor which goes over the spare wheel.


Peter gave me the panel above the front bumper. Installing it was fiddly work but I got there eventually. I still need to replace the front bumper bar (if I could be bothered).

House update

Our singed Kozyndan prints are now framed, and up on the walls too. So good!


Our HUGE hardwood outdoor setting came, we built it up and oiled it. It seats 10 very comfortably. All we need now is a BBQ!!!


Christina loves the cute Alessi stuff.


Our King couch came in this morning, our old couch was so dark and heavy, this new couch really opens up the room a lot more.


Christina chose the material and it looks great!

Sydney Bicycle Film Festival

Grant had an engagement party to attend so I manned the MCC stall at the Sydney Bicycle Film Festical on Saturday. Frantic work as anyone who had a ticket to a BFF session could go into the draw to win a Giant bike and nearly everyone took advantage of the offer (why some people didn't bother is beyond me!). It was fun and I met heaps of great people and I got to watch some of the shorts too.


Grant, flocked by people wanting to enter the draw to win at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington on the Friday.


We gave away loads of Giant tyre puncture repair kits.


Our setup. My poster design is huge huh? We decided to pull the other raunchy poster, and in the end of the day we were glad we did.


The tickets, which went like hot cakes!


Spotted this Paino outside!


If General Pants Co. has models on bicycles in their window then cycling truly must be cool right about now.


Crazy Chopper thing.


The City of Sydney have the ball rolling.

Strip it!

Instead of eating lunch today I got busy on the ED Civic!!!

Eugene, my brother from another mother

Last night I got to catch up with my old mate Eugene Kee. We grew up together, in the same apartment and always hung out together until I went to uni where we didn't see each other so much. He then got a job in Taiwan, married and now he's a Dad!

Eugene got me into riding bicycles. He always had the best bikes (and apparently still has them stashed away at his parents house somewhere!). He's pushed the envelope and done a few huge cycling trips, one of note was riding through Cambodia with a tent packed on his bike and lots of 2 minute noodles and more recently he's ridden across the Saudi desert!

A year or so ago I found him on Facebook and told him all about how I was getting back into riding, funny then that he told me he was running a bike shop in Taiwan! He's since opened another and last night we got together to talk bikes, business and more bikes.

He's invited me back to Taiwan in March to go to the main Taiwan bike show with him. Consider it booked in! I'm excited!!!

Just a few more shots of the ED Civic

Accident damage. There was no corner light before but Dedy found the corner light at Honbits for $30. He installed it for me too, what a champ.


Just another angle.


JDM dash and climate control complete with a funky little push to open flip up cover to access the air-con temperature control (lol). Holden passenger side floor matt and speaker surrounds are a ncie touch too.


Engine bay.


Nutter alarm fob. You plug it into the ciggarette lighter to charge it up.


Crazy flashing LED to show the alarm is activated.


Rear view, missing a wiper but that doesn't bother me.

Kuwahara KZ-1 Replica Frameset

Excited when I saw the box!


Oh hot daym!


Strictly BMX threw in some free goodies too. Now that's how you do business, what cool mofos.

I just scored this Limited Edition Replica of the early 80's Kuwahara KZ-1 Frameset for $399.99 from Strictly BMX (thanks Blayne for the heads up!). Apparently only 250 of these framesets have been produced for the world and since I've been told that my Kuwa frame is a fake I'm most likely going to swap everything over to this new frame. Happy times!

Honda ED Civic

Christina's suspension install at Top One last week was going to take a few hours and I didn't really want to hang around all day so I asked Dedy if I could borrow a car to take home and this is the car he lent me.

It was a rainy day so I didn't get to drive it in a spirited manner (not to mention it wasn't my car!), the seating position was super strange. I felt that my face was so close to the windscreen and that my head would just smash right through it if I had to brake hard. The gear shift felt long and vague (like stirring a bucket of paint) but hey the little car got me home and back.

When I dropped the car back at Top One Dedy told me the car was for sale "cheap". Christina and I had been looking to buy a cheap beater for her to learn how to drive manual in (I didn't like the idea of burning up the clutch in my Jazz or GT-R). We thought about hiring a car for $500/week but also thought that we might not get the best use out of it during the week of hire, and that it would just be cooler if we could own a car for her to learn in at her own pace.

Me being me I had to jump on the internet and find out as much info as I could about the car. I thought there would be a shitload of parts out there for it but it turns out that there's just nothing much out there at all. I suppose the car is just too old and the fanboys are letting it go.

This particular car has had an engine swap (done by Dedy from Top One). It's got a trusty B16A in it (which revs to 8000rpm... VTEC YO!). It's got a new clutch in it (only done 20,000kms), HKS coilovers, HID lights, a ricey alarm system, newly re-gassed air-conditioning and rego until March next year. Unfortunately the owners mate recently had an accident in it and the front drivers side corner light is gone and there's some damage on the front bumper bar + the front drivers side wheel is a little bent.

I made some enquiries regarding the condition of the car, reliability and the price and after some positive feedback I made the call to buy the car. I'll be picking it up on Wednesday night, so more pictures to come!

R32OC Cruise

On Sunday Suga was invited to the first R32OC Cruise. An impressive 14 cars rocked up in total (13 R32's and one new golf TSI). We met up at Loftus Oval (hey I'm here every week!), unfortunately it was raining but spirits were high. After some friendly chat we were on our way.

Considering the wet conditions and the bumpy and windy roads I have to say I was glad to be in a convoy of R32's. Little 4WD's with traction control and ABS brakes, it's basically just point and shoot. Suga's car performed amazingly even on the rougher stuff. The screw mod we did the day before also eliminated the loud scrubbing issue.

The convoy of V's and IV's stopped at Stanwell Tops for a break and then proceeded down to the beach for a meal. Great guys, great cars.


Howie and Jane.


Loftus group shot.


Tommy's black on black beasty at the Stanwell Tops pit stop.


New school vs. Old school.


Supermotos.


The view.


14 R32's in the carpark.


View from above.


Group formation!


IV V IV V...


Mmmmm fush'n'chups at the lighthouse on Wollongong Beach.

Saturday

I hung out with the Locks earlier on Saturday and we checked out a new mall in Ryde called Top Ryde. The mall was like any other mall but the carpark had great LED board signage which told you how many parks were available and each parking bay had an LED indicator. Blue for available disabled parks, green for availablde bays and red for taken bays. Very nice.


One for the fixed riders.


Touchy park in Bondi Beach where idiots, both on foot and in cars, own the road.


Christina and I had good intentions to check out Sculpture by the Sea but the wind had picked up and we weren't rugged up enough so we settled for just checking out this big guy at the beach.


We had dinner at RAW BAR. I've always known of this Japanese Restaurant, have always seen it there (used to be green) and I've always wondered if it was any good. Truth is it's WAY overpriced and the food was crap.


The fish shop on the main beach road has been selling deep fried Mars Bars for years. I still haven't tried one, the Japanese food expanding in my belly prevented me from giving it a go this time.


We came across a whole lot of drunken riders on ghetto kids bikes in silly outfits, they were doing a pub crawl by the looks of it.

My old Jazz is up on carsales

Spotted my old Jazz up on carsales :)

House update

After much bartering we decided to go ahead with Academic Wardrobes. Today they came to do install both built ins, one storage unti for the hallway and a huge wardrobe with a small build in dresser in the bedroom. They ran into complications with the doors though, and other bits so they're going to have to come back another time to finish off the job. I've taken a few progress pictures in any case:


Huge wardrobe in the bedroom retreat with a built in dresser table + draw on the far end. Sliding doors are still to come.


Storage in the hallway for linen, and whatever else. It'll have some very minimalist sliding doors on it once it's done.

Drop it like it's hot

Christina's R32 Golf is now dropped on Bilstein PSS10 Coilovers which were installed by Dedy at Top One. Wheel alignment was done by Doug at Heasmans.

Coilovers are currently set to "0" (the coilovers have 10 settings and include numbered adjusters so you know exactly what setting you are on without counting clicks) and even at "0" they're super firm.

The car feels so much flatter now and more playful not to mention it looks damn hot!!! I think the wheel alignment has a lot to do with it (my cars always feel amazing after Doug has worked his magic).

The Sydney Bicycle Film Festival Warm-Up party

Last night the Sydney Bicycle Film Festival put on a few drinks with Onitsuka Tiger and Tiger Beer for friends of the festival at The Grasshopper/7m Laneway Bar.

Crazy venue (very Melbourne), awesome vibe despite the light rain. Here are a few blurry pics:


Crazy make-shift bar in a CBD back lane.


Screening shorts on the wall.


Familiar faces. The Future Büro/Boutique Cycles crew.


Matt and Andy.


Tom and Rob from Hell on Wheels.


Rusty Chains! Some of these cups had numbers at the bottom, and there were a stack of Tiger boxes with corresponding numbers filled with goodies as prizes (nice idea guys).


MCC.


Andy Mash.


Ramp.




Tomsational!

Higher resolution images here.

A little bit lame

It looks like my poster designs for the MCC Giant Giveaway at the BFF are coming under fire. It's not the first time I've been hammered in a gender debate. I'm going to try my best to stay out of this one because it's an argument I can't win!

Yeah... that's pretty good.

Removing friends from facebook

I had 626 facebook friends last week with a whole lot more friend requests which I hadn't approved (626 friends? YEAH RIGHT?!). I spent a little time clicking around at some profiles and I realised that I hardly knew any of the faces I was viewing. I'm getting conservative in my old age so I've decided to delete a shitload of people from my facebook friends list.

For the past 3 days I've been removing friends and I'm now down to 449 friends, of these people I can at least say I know the faces and have had conversations with most of them in real life. I feel a little shit about deleting people but hope fully I'll feel more comfortable about it in a few days.

Loftus Oval

Ash.


Sharing is caring.


Light Fantastiqué!

Last night a few of us hit Loftus Oval. I took the Anthem which now has a Joplin seatpost. 10 minutes into the ride I knew the saddle and seatpost weren't set up right. The seatpost at it's highest position was too high and the saddle was too far forward and the angle wasn't right either. Pretty pissed off as it was 100% perfect before with the old seatpost. An hour in and I was spent. Maybe I hadn't recovered completely from last weekend's 90km Gong ride, maybe it was because I only had a pastry for lunch at 3pm or maybe it was because the air was so damn hot and dry last night. I still had fun in any case, a ride's a ride right?!

Sydney Bicycle Film Festival

The faux movie poster designs I did for the MC Cyclery stall at this months Sydney Bicycle Film Festival have been printed and they're fucking HUGE!!!

The festival program is now up: Sydney Festival Program

Get your tickets now as they do sell out: Moshtix

Rockpool Bar & Grill

View from the mezzanine level.


Jess and Christina.


House rules.


They print out a new menu daily.


100% go for the grain fed over grass fed.


The goodness.

Last night we had dinner (again) at Neil Perry's Rockpool Bar and Grill to celebrate the last day of HSC exams for Christina's sister Jessica. Mr Lock had booked us into a table on the private mezzanine floor above the restaurant (pimp!) and this time we ordered our steaks "medium" instead of "medium rare" and they came out perfect (the waiter did confirm that they prefer to cook their medium rare steaks on the rare side).

The experience for Christina and I was so much better than last time (because of the steak), the starters were also awesome (we had sashimi, Australian meats, Calamari and King Prawns) and the warm rhubarb, strawberry and almond pudding with vanilla sauce was killer.

TheFiXFiXFiX

OOOOOOOOOH YEAH!!!!!!!!!!! TheFiXFiXFiX WEB SITE IS NOW LIVE!

MS Sydney to the Gong 2009

I snuck out of the JDMST EOMM on Saturday night early so that I could go home and hit the sack. 5am on Sunday I was up, packed the car and headed of to Richie's. From there we rode to Newtown for the start. My hands were killing me from the ride in so I made a little adjustment to the bars (I tilted them back) and that made a HUGE difference.

We met up with Jing and after sitting in the line for 10 minutes we decided to jump the start (we would have been sitting there for at least half an hour otherwise). Like last year there was a major blockage for the first 10km but we were rolling soon enough and that Gong vibe kicked in.

Seeing so many different types of people, of all ages, so many different kinds of bikes and the volunteers yelling out "Thank you so much! Thanks for the support!" brought a massive smile to my face. I've always treated the Gong ride more like a race (which it isn't) and gone solo every time. Richie, Jing and I stuck together as a group all the way until the finish line, which was great fun.

The event raised over 2.6 million dollars for MS and I managed to raise $410 so a huge thanks to everyone who sponsored me.

More pictures and discussion can be found here.