2006 December blog

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Spent Christmas in Norway on Golsfjellet and in Hemsedal. Not very good for skiing this year even on the mountain! But spent time with the family and played with an ATV. Left the mountains yesterday for Hamar (close to Lillehammer) on my way to Oslo. I am preparing the Dakar 2007 coverage at the moment. The 2007 Dakar kicks off late this time on Sunday January 7. In the meantime I will decide what to replace the Xmas front-page with! Pictures are from the Xmas holiday with my two little sisters Linn and Angelika. I have a very beautiful family as you can see for yourself! Tor

I think that I am officially going completely insane if I don't leave Manchester to celebrate Xmas with my family in Norway soon. There's too much going on and I can't sit still for more than a few minutes at a time. So I'm flying to Oslo tomorrow to celebrate Xmas at the top of a mountain with some skiing and other stuff Norwegians do during Xmas. I'm going to Hemsedal which is a famous skiing resort to wind properly down. No bikes, but maybe a snowmobile ride. 2006 has been one hell of a ride for me! 2007 starts in early January with a test or two in the UK. Then I'm flying to Bologna and I won't return until February. So I will basically set up office in Italy for a month. Riding all the latest exotica, speaking to all the important Italian industry figures and see the whole country! Due to a double booking/mistake by BMW we will now ride the K 1200 R Sport in January in stead of now. It will still be the first test you can read in English. I know that certain Brit magazines complained and moaned that they could not ride the bike as early as me. What they need to remember is that it's purely down to my hard work the opportunity came in the first place. They are free to try and establish direct links to the BMW-Motorrad factory like me. But they might fail as they target the UK market whilst I target the global market. I will then ride or snowmobile or ski or whatever from Italy over the Alps and to Munich. In February there are various world launches, hopefully a first ride on the 2007 Suzuki GSF1250 Bandit and a week or two on the 07 Hayabusa. Then March, more world launches. It's good to be busy, particularly if you are freelance, but now it's Xmas! Tor

Righty'o, I have got a 2007 BMW K 1200 R Sport waiting for me in Germany on either Wednesday, Thursday or Friday this week. Trouble is getting a suitable flight this time of year and a photographer in Germany. If I am able to sort that out we'll test the new Sport in and around Munich this week. And that's an exclusive as only the German press will have access to this bike this time of the year. The bike will not be launched to the international press and in the other countries, such as here in the UK, the bike will not be available to the press until early March. In March the bike will hit the dealers as well, so if you want to know about the K 1200 R Sport before that time I'm your man! But it will be no joyriding in Germany as it's very cold at the moment... If for some stupid reason I can't get a flight at short notice, it will be the first thing that I do after Turkey time along with the Ducati 1098 and Terra Modena 198. The BMW X-series will be launched in some way or the other. It could be a country specific launch, or it could be a bigger event. Word now is that it will be country specific. However, we might ride the new 650's in Portugal in mid February. I will work for 31 international motorcycle magazines, web sites and news papers in 2007 with varying content. I will try to add to that too as there are still a few countries I would like to add to the list. But I have got most of the quality magazines that I prefer to have my name in sorted out at this point. All I have to do now is continue to produce quality content, news and tests as in 2006. Some people just follow the flow and accept whatever comes their way, I proactively take what I want before others are offered. That's just how it is. And that's why you won't see either the CBR600RR or ZX-6R tests here at the same time as everyone else. TS

I have been out photographing and riding the CCM FT35 today. I will also talk a bit more about Friday's CCM event. On Friday I rode my bike up to meet CCM and my photographer for the day Gary Freeman in Scunthorpe. Scunthorpe is a short track in the North East of England and about 100 miles ride from Manchester. In offroad gear it was a very, very cold and wet ride. I could barely speak when I arrived so stopped at McDonalds in Scunthorpe and had a warm coffee and thirty minutes under the blow drier in the toilets whilst waiting for Gary. Then we headed out to the track where CCM had rigged up for us. The bikes they brought were the SR40 Street Scrambler, CR40 Cafe Racer, FT35 Flat Track, FT35 Flat Track British short track championship winning race bike and a 250 short track bike for juniors that we didn't get time to ride in the end. CCM had also brought with them Pete Boast that races in the Short Track championship on a Honda CRF 450. The plan was for him to do the sliding for Gary Freeman whilst I learnt my way around this secret dark art. Unfortunately it was very wet and slippery so it was difficult to hold a slide for long before going off the gas even for Pete, but we gave it our best shot. Did the road stuff on the SR40 first and then I did some laps on the oval when we had finished the static's as well (so the bikes would not get too dirty for the beauties). We got some good shots of the SR40 around the track and I decided to give the FT35 race bike a go whilst at it. However, what I had forgotten about was that we had still got the FT35 roadbike and the CR40 left to do on the road. So when I took the FT35 that did not have a front mudguard on it yet I was covered in mud after half a lap going slowly. But boy does that bike have some low down torque available from the word go! The race bike had proper speedway tyres fitted so grip would not be such a big problem. But I went in anyway as I remembered now that it wasn't such a good idea to get my white Scott Gerona jacket all muddy before we had done the other bikes. It was already too late so I should have just continued around the circuit. But we decided to do the FT35 anyway, but at the near by roundabout to not loose too much time. Then we let Pete loose on the FT35 race bike to slide for us. The plan was for me to go out again as soon as we had the shots of Pete in the bank. But then Pete punctured the rear tyre and that pretty much wrapped up the day.

With my mate Rolf we did some more shots of the FT35 today. We went to Tatton park first, but the FT35 is so noisy that it was limited what we could do in the park. So tried desperately to find a more quiet place with no people around to do a couple of stunt shots. Around Manchester it's so difficult to find good locations where there are no people so we had to do some stuff close to a farm. And it didn't take that long before someone came out and told us this was not a racetrack and that we were scaring the horses. So moved to a different location, but again the light was going so had to settle for a simple burnout. The FT35 is really easy to both stoppie and wheelie even on the wet, but when I had a look at the shots it was just a blur with bad light. Bloody winter! pix tomorrow. TS

So little time this week to update the blog as I have negotiated deals for 2007. I am almost done doing that and I can promise you now that I will be a very, very busy man also in 2007. Today I have ridden every new 2006 and 2007 CCM. I nicked the FT35 Flat Track to take home for the weekend. It's just an amazing little bike! I rode CCM's British championship winning bike on the dirt-track oval and also the SR40 on the same oval. Much more about this and images tomorrow. Photo: Gary Freeman/Redeye

You know what's coming! Travelling again and on this trip the journey to and from went pear shaped deluxe! Woke up with a hangover and late so had to skip breakfast at the hotel. Grabbed whatever I could find edible from the mini-bar (sorry Tony) and jumped in the limo again. This time I was heading out to John Wayne airport in Orange County and was 30 minutes late. It proved to be plenty of time, but you never know until you have tried being late. John Wayne is not a big airport so I got through check-in and security smoothly. Then boarded the plain back to Chicago. I would have a few hours in Chicago and was really hungry at this point after missing breakfast. So a deep pan Chicago pizza sounded very good whilst I listened to the soundtrack of about 5 family's worth of Xmas travellers and baby screaming for 4 hours. It was still below freezing in Chicago and proper winter. Got the train from terminal 1 to the international terminal 5. Then checked the departures screen. And I have got to tell you that I was not that surprised to see that my flight from Chicago to Manchester, UK was cancelled. Great stuff, back to queuing again to see what the hell they had in mind for us this time. After a long time in the BMI queue they booked me on an American Airlines flight to London Heathrow and from London to Manchester. That flight was three hours later than my original one and to the wrong airport with another three hours in London. And no food coupons or any other form of compensation for the lost time. Chicago security had plenty of time this time of night and decided to do a full security check on me with body search and all. Now I was stuck inside the terminal building with $10 pints and no proper pizza places. Guess I'll have to save that Chicago pizza until next time. I arrived home the day after, today Sunday 10th in the afternoon after more than a day travelling again. I am still not jetlagged, but thinking about queuing at airports makes me sick to my stomach! Perhaps I should do the rest of this years fly-a ways in January in stead... Tor

Woke up fairly early in the morning in my nice and big hotel room at the Westin Long Beach hotel on the East Ocean Boulevard. No jetlag at all as I'm quite good at travelling long haul at this point. So stuffed in some breakfast and headed out to do a couple of touristy things before breaking into the motorcycle show in town. My "holiday" in Long Beach lasted about two hours and I walked around on the Rainbow harbour before I decided to do a 45 minute harbour cruise. I went back to the room to get my camera, and to my despair I could verify it was pretty dead after the flights. I just got a big bad error message on the LCD screen! Shit, this is not good I thought. I reckon it got some rough treatment in my backpack over the Atlantic. I also dropped it earlier this year down some concrete stairs in Cape Town. So I gave it a good bump to the lens a couple of times in case something was loose and luckily that was all I needed to do. The camera is now better than it has been since March this year! So if something doesn't work just kick it and it will be fine! So went on this cruise and watched the famous Queen Mary, former WWII troop carrier, that now lies permanently at Long Beach harbour as a tourist attraction. We also passed the Paradise cruise ship just as the morning fog from the Pacific entered the harbour. A bit of a shame really, but we did get to see a small colony of Sea Lions and some artificial oil islands with Hollywood palms and all to cover up the ugly sight a oil plant is.

Finished being a tourist and entered the Cycle World bike show just by the harbour. Spoke to a lot of people I usually only see on E-mail and photographed a lot of specials from Yamaha, Star, Honda, Suzuki and Kawasaki. The V-max prototype was unveiled to the American public and also out in public for the first time since the 2005 Tokyo Motor Show. Some details about that later in the news section. At the end of the day I had champagne and cake with the Cycle World guys that celebrated their 45th anniversary.

This was just before the big event of the night kicked off at my hotel. From Champagne to Margaritas with the fine people from Victory motorcycles. I can't talk about the product itself here right now or publish pictures, but I can describe how the event in general happened and about some of the other people attending. Arlen and Cory Ness was natural guests on this event. I grabbed Brian Catterson from Motorcyclist to shake some $'s out of his pocket for the work I have done for them during the last year. I was also recognised by the guys at Robb Report Motorcycling and we had a long chat about what I can do for them next year. Lifestyle reports is something that I'd like to do more of and we'll be syndicating the news. Lifestyle products might just be the victory Victory are looking for after this night. No one I spoke to was disappointed about anything regarding this event. All my thanks goes to Tony Meirovitz and the Victory team behind this brilliantly organised event. Just a shame I can't share much of that with you guys reading this yet. So when I had spent every available power cell from my camera's battery my attention went from bikes to finding California women. One of the guys at the Victory engineering team, a young Norwegian descendant guy called Matt, were all up for this idea about LA woman. As is the case so many other places in the world, you need a pint of Guinness in an Irish pub to find woman. And it just happened, after having a couple of pints at Rock Bottom in Long  Beach, we found the LA woman in an Irish pub. At this point, I must tell you that I am actually a single man these days. Claire is history. So anyway, Matt found something, but I'm sorry Matt; I grabbed it and that's all I'm going to say in this fine blog. I'm so bad! TS

Where to start! At the beginning I guess to answer that question. Just after 8 O'clock in the morning I jumped on my bike and rode it up to Manchester international airport. In my backpack I carried only spare underwear, my camera and toiletries. I had a 10:45 flight to Chicago to catch. I arrived in time and started queuing for check in. Only to be advised that the flight had been delayed by 5 hours. Those 5 hours turned into 8 hours in the end. Now, this is what I did. Stupidly I packed my bike keys, chain and house keys in my backpack that had to be checked in if I wanted to keep my 100ml+ toothpaste and hair-gel. So by the time I learned that my flight to the Windy city had been further delayed it was too late for me to go back home to do some more work as the keys were in the checked-in luggage. The flight had been booked for me with United, but from Manchester it's BMI that actually flies. There was a tornado in London that day, but I am not sure whether this was what caused the delay. Probably not if you read the entry from the 10th too. My final destination was California, John Wayne airport in Orange County by the way. I missed that flight as the 8 hour delay only left me with very slim opportunities in Chicago. So after 8 hours of pissing about in Manchester airport we were finally on our way. When I arrived at the Chicago O'Hare airport I had to get another boarding card after passing through immigration to get a stamp on my green card. Then after queuing again, story of my life at the airports, I reached the United ticket desk and my only option left that day was to fly into Los Angeles in stead of Orange County. Which is actually closer to Long Beach than John Wayne airport. The only reason I managed to avoid staying over in a shitty Chicago airport hotel was that the last flight that night to LAX was also late by a couple of hours. Managed to wake up the agency that were to pick me up in Orange County and tell them the new plans. I arrived at LAX sometime after midnight local time. Including the time difference, 8 hours in Manchester, 8 hours on the plane to Chicago, 2 hours waiting for the delayed LA flight I must have been on bloody airports or in planes for 24 hours. So when I could see that I had been treated to a proper stretched limo from Los Angeles to Long Beach I actually thought for a minute that I deserved it! had a Scotch in the limo on my way to my posh hotel where I had two agenda's. 1. Top secret event and 2. attend the Cycle World International motorcycle show just over the road. What I liked about the trip was seeing the Chicago skyline from the lake at night and the fact it was 11 minus in Chicago and 20+ in California. That's a contrast that makes it worth travelling so far for just a day. More happened on the 8th, much more...Tor

Have we got a treat or two coming up for you before Xmas! We will do the CCM FT35 Dirt-Track, the 2006 FT35 Dirt Track race bike and the SR40 Street Scrambler on an oval. I'll ride them and a pro-racer will ride them. Hopefully we'll get second opinions from him. The best MX photographer in the country will do the shoot and then we'll ride the SR40 Cafe Racer on the roads. Then we'll jet to Italy to ride the new Ducati 1098 and Terra Modena 198. And possibly even over to Germany for another gig, all before Xmas. My family now have rights to be worried whether I will make it home in time for Xmas. Due to the new arrangements, I will return the SR40 again today so that CCM can do their rally in Wales on Sunday with the bike. I will rendezvous with the CCM's early next week. I'm jetting off to somewhere far away to get a suntan tomorrow morning and then I'll be back updating the blog again by Sunday. This is high speed journalism and you're part of it all if you read the blog. Xmas is cancelled! TS

I am now on the coolest little thing you can imagine. The 2007 CCM SR40 Street Scrambler. I picked it up in Bolton today from the CCM factory and spent some time chatting to the guys behind CCM. More on that later. I have only done a few miles on it, but it feels both nimble and light. It was described to me as a short wheel-based retro, almost trail bike from the 70's. But with the Scrambler details intact. A capable Street Scrambler in other words, light, single cylinder engine and with knobbly tyres. More about the CCM soon, I was invited to do a rally on it in Wales on Sunday, but I am not sure whether I have time. I am travelling somewhere else this week to a place a bit further away than Wales. Warmer too. I know that there is some jealousy in this business that I'm in. So some Editor-in-chief will read this blog, see something that I am attending and not him. If it's an old magazine he is probably used to just sitting on his arse waiting for things to come his way. You have to work hard for everything in this life and if you don't want to pay me to do stuff for you, then you better get your arse out of the comfy office chair and do some work yourself to keep up. Even then you might not be able to. So if I drop a little bombshell saying that I might ride the 2007 BMW K 1200 R Sport before Xmas I can promise you that some Editor will be on the phone to BMW moaning about this and that. I think one of those Editors have been on the phone to Honda UK quite a bit during the last months complaining that they didn't get this and that. What this twat still probably don't understand is that I have a global network, I don't get my news from Honda UK. No one does as they are tight arses with the news. Anyway, enough about these sabotaging and conspiracy hungry dudes with small willies for this time. I am enjoying the SR40 as I said... TS

I returned the Tiger 1050 to Triumph today. Did a couple of shots on the way so you can see that new Scott Gerona jacket. It was also the first long trip I did with it and it's quite comfortable. It's much shorter than the Scott Narvik I have used earlier this year and it really need some pants that fits perfectly with the jacket. I have asked Scott to send me the Kalmar pants that fits this jacket. It was bloody slippery up the Cat & Fiddle road by the way. Some HGV had spilled its guts somewhere after the second lay-by coming from the Macclesfield side. I didn't notice the oil spill until I went very wide in a bend a bit later. I thought bloody hell, the tyres can't be that bad and it's not ice on the road! So rode very carefully up to the Cat and could verify it was oil as it was still plenty on the rear tyre. First I thought it could be leaking from the bike, but I could see nothing. So asked the owner at the Cat and he told me several cars had come in with oil on their tyres. It was fine after the Cat and I could up the pace again. Returned the Tiger dirty due to the roads we have here now. On Monday I will pick up the CCM SR40 and that should be fun! TS