motobiking.com

so much to look forward to and yet  ..

8 August 2007
Received a call from dearest Onta this morning. He managed to regain his bike control after successfully avoiding a car that swayed to his path. But the price he paid was a severely sprained wrist.  Onta would not be on his bike for a while depending how severe his injury is.

About a week ago, Phang decided to bite the bullet to have his damaged shoulder muscles repaired. The surgery went well and he is now resting at home. Phang would out of riding for at least a good 2-3 months. It is still early to tell, but I reckon that boredom would set in 2 weeks' time

And yet, there are so much activities to look forward to. To celebrate our 50th year of nationhood, the annual 3-Nations Ride would be hosted by a Malaysian bike club and the central activities would be in KL. The main highlight is to convoy to Sepang to see MotoGP.  The down-side is that we would not be riding anywhere far this round. The furthest we are riding is to Sepang! 

Meng, our former bike-shop sales coordinator from NKS has decided to severe his career with the family-own business and ventured out on his own with his mechanic. Now that he owns his own bike shop, he would have to prove that he can match the more established bike shops in Klang Valley in service and pricing. After all, this is a very competitive cut throat business. 

I been having a blast with my Z750s. Coming end of this month, I would have own it for a year and I have taken it around the countryside many times and she been very reliable. To hear her singing sweeter, I recently installed an older model Yoshimura muffler.  I would be installing a Scottoiler auto chain lub system soon as I aim to take her to the Southern part of Malaysia before the end of the year to complete the loop around Malaysia.  

I almost forget to mentioned that I met more new bikers than ever. The Government should support this group by reducing the import duties and taxes on bigger bikes (250cc and above). The heavy import duties were in place originally to protect the local motorcycle  manufacturers. In any case, we used to have one that never venture motorcycles beyond 150cc engine capacity. There are now a few assemblers with colaborations with Taiwanese, Chinese and Korean manufacturers. I believe they themselves would be happy to see taxes and duties reduced further. The taxes, unfortunately, are now seen as some kind of luxury taxes, to penalise those who want to ride big bikes. 

However, our dear government openly support events like the 2007 TNCR and MotoGP. We all can't be riding 100-150cc kapchais to these events. Then again, not all can splash on bikes that cost twice the price of a typical national car or a typical low cost 3 bedrooms apartment.

The new Motorcyclist Magazine editor naively mentioned Malaysia as a third world country in his recent editorial column.  We can't allow this silly mis-informed typical American to cast us a third world bikers riding kap-chais.  

Nevertheless, it looks like the biker fraternity is destined to grow irregardless of bikes cost. Afterall, We are a very passionate lot 'bout motobiking. 

ride safe