GrinGod [dot] Com

I’ve finally finished my return route through Norway at the end of my summer holiday last year (2005).  Its taken approximately 10 hours to create and I’ve included both the route I actually took and the route I would have taken if I hadn’t crashed. 

I’ve also included notes about memorable parts of the trip, places I stayed over-night (or didn’t as the case may be), must see places along the way, and a few other general notes about the areas of Norway I travelled through.

All the different bit are included in seperate folders so you can turn them off and on as you like.  Whilst it might take quite some time to tour the whole route, I would advise turning on the Terrain layer and run a tour of the alternative last day.  I would also advise turning on the terrain and having a look at the area around Trollstigen and Geiranger.  I’ve even marked a plane coming into land in Bergen that no-one else appears to have spotted.

Some of the details included in the notes needs to be checked up on, so if you spot a mistake please let me know and I’ll correct it.

Download: Norway – Hamsund to Bergen.kmz

Following on from my Google Earth plot of my never to have been last day in Norway, I have embarked on a project to plot my actual journey home through Norway.  So far its take about 5 hours spread over three evenings and I’ve got as far as Stryn – the town I stayed in the night before my crash.

Just as I was sitting down last night a thought occured to me… why didn’t I use the route finding capabilities of Google Earth rather than manually plotting the line from corner to corner to corner.  My reasoning for carrying on at that point in time was because I come so far I may as well continue.  However, as I plotted more of the route I realised why I should plot it rather than use the route finder, as I was plotting I was taken back to my time in Norway.  I remembered going round particularly sharp corners, and places I had to stop on narrow roads because the coaches sure as hell weren’t going to stop, and high passes which were stunningly beautiful but all I could think at the time was “i-i-i-itssss f-f-f-fuuuck-k-king fr-fr-fr-freeeezing!!!!!”.

Whilst I have wanted to go back to Norway and finish the job properly simply because I was hacked off by the crash, I now want to go back and do it because I remember now how stunningly beautiful the place is.

Thank you Google Earth!

This post come courtesy of two events that have occured at just the right moment. Firstly, the latest version of Google Earth 4 (4.0.2416 beta) now makes it possible to create paths and polygons in the free version, which was previously only available in the Plus version. Secondly I have just submitted my claim form for the accident I had in Norway in 2005 (don’t ask why its taken so long).

To cut a long story short I have made available the route that I would have taken from Skei (in Sogn og Fjordane) to Bergan on my last day in Norway. Unfortunately I crashed my bike in Skei but now I can use the “Tools -> Play Tour (Ctrl + Alt + P)” to see what I was missing. It looks its best if you have the terrain layer enabled so that you fly through between and over the mountains.

LastDayInNorway.kmz

As some of you may be aware I took a holiday in Norway last summer. A smaller sub-set of you may have heard my story of how I got stopped by a couple of eager “number plate spotters” as I left the docks in Bergen. It seems that my bike was the first bike they had seen with a Guernsey number plate and this was rather exciting for them. Being the good-natured person that I am, I stopped and waited whilst they inspected and photographed the plate and explained why they were doing it before heading on my way and thinking nothing more of it… apart from telling as a tale of my adventures in Norway.

Well, more than a year later and I just got an email from my dad. It seems that, whilst searching the internet for something to do with motorbikes in Guernsey, he stumbled upon this site. And, if you head over to the Guernsey page and scroll down to the bottom, you will find, in all its glory, the number plate that was photographed at the docks in Norway.

Isn’t the internet a great place to find all sorts of weird and wonderful things.

Once again my bike is off the roads. Yesterday whilst heading home I came off my bike whilst going round a corner. It been dry in Guernsey for a while now but at lunch time yesterday there was a very light drizzle… just enough to put a fine slippery film of water on the road.

On the previous corner my back wheel had slipped slightly but on the fateful corner the back end just lost it. As the bike span out the back end slammed into the wall beside me and went sliding off down the road. I on the other hand slid along the road and I either bounced off the wall or a gate post… not sure which.

In my dazed state I did a quick check of body parts: head, neck, back, legs, torso, arms. Luckily there didn’t seem to be any internal parts sticking out. I thought about getting up but decided that I quite liked where I was lying. Fortunately there hadn’t been a car right behind me at the time, and there were people around that warned other cars, so I was in danger of being run over. They also called for an ambulance and a nurse who was passing by check me for broken bones, etc.

When the ambulance arrived they checked me over and gave me a thumbs up, I guess someone was looking out for me. The police also attended to ensure that everything was alright traffic wise and to move my bike. Obviously he had to do the usual routine and question me about my riding and what happened. I also had my first every breath test the result of which, as was to be expected, was that I hadn’t been drinking.

The bike itself is in a bit of a mess. The rear light cluster that hit the wall is smashed up as is the seat surround/fairings. The engine casing on the left side is all scratched up, the bars have been pushed back and there is a dent and chipped away paint where the bars hit the tank, the clutch lever has snapped off and the left indicator is broken off. The belly pan has got some paint scratched off by that is fixable.

After my last accident in Norway I decided to upgrade my insurance policy to fully comp, so hopefully that will cover all the repairs.. assuming they don’t decided that the bike is a write-off!

I have taken some pictures this morning but they are on my sisters camera and I don’t have a cable to connect it to my work computer, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow before I can upload those.

I got this meme passed to me by DamienG, so I guess I’d best carry it on.

Four jobs I’ve had in my life

1. Software Engineer
2. Database Administrator (& web developer)
3. Student Mentor
4. Electrical/photographic sales assistant

Four movies I can watch over and over

1. Ghost In The Shell
2. Ninja Scroll
3. The Last of the Mohicans
4. (I’ll get back to you on this one)

Four places I have lived

1. Guernsey
2. Richmond, London
3. Finsbury Park, London
4. Hatfield, Herts

Four TV shows I love to watch

1. Futurama
2. Lost
3. Desperate House Wives (I blame it on the gf!)
4. Gardeners World

Four places I have been on vacation/holiday

1. Norway
2. Iceland
3. USA (California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona)
4. Rest of [western] Europe (France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Luxemberg)

Four of my favourite dishes

1. Spaghetti bake
2. Sunday roast (chicken or pork)
3. Hot chicken salade (Dix Neuf)
4. Hot bacon sarnie

Four websites I visit daily

1. BoingBoing
2. Little Gamers
3. Google
4. MAKE:

Four bloggers I am tagging

1. Shane Marriott
2. Matt Ingy
3. Leigh Brookes

Interesting note, I traced this meme back to hicksdesign.co.uk the domain of Jon Hicks. For those of you that don’t know, it was Jon Hicks that came up with the logo for Firefox. I guess that makes me nearly famous

This weekend I finally got around getting some new brake discs, as I’ve had bent discs since my accident in Norway, and fitting my jack-up kit on my Suzuki Bandit 600. Thanks to Dave and his tool kit everything went (mostly) smoothly.

The replacement of the brake discs process went something like this:

• Put bike on centre stand
• Put sand bag on pillion seat (to raise front wheel off the ground)
• Put a car jack under the bottom of the header pipes (sand bag wasn’t heavy enough)
• Remove front calipers
• Remove front wheel
• Remove old discs
• Fit new discs
• Remove old brake pads
• Grease & fit new brake pads
• Refit wheel
• Refit calipers
• Remove car jack

Apart from it being a bit awkward trying to get the front wheel and spacers to line-up with the forks when putting the wheel back together everything went as smootly as you could imagine. An hour from start to finish (I had plenty of time and didn’t want to rush things) and once again I had front brakes that actually work.

The jack-up kit was a bit more interesting. Whilst it is theoretically more simple that replacing the brake discs it took just as long. The process should have been something along the lines of:

• Undo & remove lower rear height adjuster bolt
• Undo & remove upper rear height adjuster bolt
• Replace rear height adjusters with new ones
• Re-fit upper rear height adjuster bolt
• Re-fit lower rear height adjuster bolt

Well, thats the theory. In practice things went a little differently. The lower bolts came out without too much trouble but the upper bolt was more difficult. Part of the problem was that I have got a rear-hugger fitted on the bike and, as I couldn’t be bothered with removing it, this meant that access to the upper bolt was greatly reduced. After much effort and a slightly rounded nut the top bolt finally came free.

Fitting the new adjuster bars would have been plain sailing only the holes for the bolts were slightly on the small side so the bolts couldn’teasily be pushed through by hand. Not to worry, enter Dave and his big hammer! The result is that the bolts are re-fitted and the back end of my bike is now sitting about 3cm higher than it was on Saturday.

For those of you that are not in the know, whilst I was in Norway I had a minor accident on my motorbike. I say minor but it resulted in the front forks being bent and my front wheel collapsing. After the whole fiasco with the RAC returning my bike (I promise to post a full writeup) I have finally found a breakers yard with spare parts for my bike and have ordered them. Hopefully they should be dispatched tomorrow to arrive in the island by Friday afternoon.

If all goes well and I can get into the garage where my bike is being stored I may even be able to get my bike back on the roads this weekend!!!

For all the trouble that the RAC put my through, I would like to thank them for paying for my spare parts… their “compensation” really came in useful!

King Cross Modified by gringod,
originally uploaded by GrinGod.

I’ve finally jumped on the band wagon and have gone and got myself a flickr account for storing images online. I have been thinking for a while about installing Gallery back on my server but I don’t have the time to configure and theme it. I have been using the IImageBrowser plugin for wordpress but its not the same as a gallery… so Flickr it is.

I have started out with uploading a couple of shots of my accident in Norway (I’ve got my bike back now and will post more info as soon as I get my money), and I’ve also created a photo set of desktop wallpapers that I’ve been using at work recently… so enjoy!

I’m back from my three week holiday to Norway but my bike isn’t!

It’s a long story so I’ll fill you in about it later.