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So after approximately 19 months of setting out to gain a new passion, a new way of life, or rather a supplementary one 😉 , I’m now actually the proud owner of my first EVER motorcycle!! It’s a 3rd-hand 2008 BMW F650 GS in Iceberg Silver (kind of icy, blue haze). It’s got a twin cylinder, 798cc, 71 bhp engine!! It’s very nice, a great ride and I’m blown away!! I have a new love in my life…and it’s my kind of girl! 😀

Throughout my training, post testing and even after buying the bike, I’ve experienced a multitude of questions. Questions that include “Am I doing the right thing, here?” and “What if this is a mistake?”

The so-called trials and tribulations have varied in extremity, diversity and come from every angle. Obvious ones include my Mum’s concerns, a misunderstanding between an instructor and me (but which was resolved) through to ‘buyer’s remorse’.

In fact, these past, few days, I’ve even toyed with the idea of not wanting to commute into town, every day, that I had intended. As with all things, curiosity, patience, constant practice and I guess, the human desire to better oneself always kills the cat ☺ Over the past day or two, I’ve been filtering between stationary traffic more and more. The thing that helps keep me grounded is the fact that I can only afford Third-Party, Fire and Theft insurance. This means (Lord forbid) that should I cause an accident, I would be liable. So the promise I’ve made to myself is not to gamble filtering if it’s too risky or what I like to call ‘the tunnel’ (of vehicles) is narrowing, narrow, etc.

When doubts hit, the days seemed long and very gloomy. Especially, when it was a grey day. I think one thing that keeps you going is asking yourself if you’re going to spend a lot of time, effort, planning, saving and money into something just not to pursue it? Or asking yourself when was the last time you’ve spent every, waking hour thinking, eating, breathing and sleeping about something that made you feel good? More so, don’t you want that feeling back?

…Speaking of pursuits, I’m hoping my next blog entries will be to do with travelling…on this bike! :O)

…But on the second attempt! 😛

On the second occasion, I took friends’ advice of just going there, relax and have fun. So with this mindset, I went back to CamRider’s North London training centre (read a set of storage containers located just by Barnet College but which proves to be a great place to begin training). One storage container was the office. The others contained the bikes. I’m a huge fan of effective, barebones & ‘Old Skool’ training. I guess it’s the simplicity and lack of distractions. This, I often find is in complete conflict with how I felt growing-up here. Often, such places of training really didn’t instill/motivate much. Especially, with the cold, dark, dank, wet and early grey late afternoons of Winter and Autumn. I reckon there’s a little Seasonal Additional Disorder syndrome in all of us. Yet, as I get older, I’d like to think that this wears off as long as you keep the big picture in mind or know what your long-term or underlying goal is. E.g., I want to learn to ride a bike, so that I can get out of London on weekends during Bank Holidays and see more of mainland Europe before I go to the States, one day.

A few weeks previously…
The gear-changing really messed me up. Getting confused between easing off the throttle with the right-hand, pulling-in the clutch with the left-hand & this reverse, antagonistic action to accelerate away, whilst pulling the gear lever up or down, was all too confusing coming from a car background. Or the potential, bitter truth: I’m just not learning as fast as I was 10 years ago! 😀

A lot of great encouragement and motivation stuck with me from the CBT instructors from the previous occasion: “Lots of people think that CBT is just a 1-2 day course. That’s not necessarily the case” and “Look at where you were this morning, not being able to ride a bike, to where you are now….” That was Chris, one of the veteran instructors there, who kindly help get my confidence and gear-changing more familiarised on the previous CBT session. He was free that afternoon, so when the others were allowed out on the roads, he gave-up his time in the safety of an enclosed car park of the college to help me get up to, pardon the pun, speed.

The CBT Return Day…
The day itself was GREAT! Learning Parts A & B (equipment, clothing, legal requirements like having to have helmets strapped & quick, select elements of the Highway Code) were good. However, the best bits were obviously getting back on the bike.

I did get to go on the roads, this time round! The actual 2-hour drive ride was great!! We drove around these suburbs of North London. From what I can recall: North Finchley and Mill Hill were just 2 places we went through. It was a beautiful Autumn day (just coming off the back of a brief ‘Indian Summer’-type unseasonal spike). The leaves were still mostly green and the light was almost Michael-Bay-Golden-Orange. The roads were slightly busy but to cruise through those high streets practicing clutch control through slow-moving traffic, uphill starts, signals and manoeuvres was just great!! 😀 The sheer exhilaration of riding though itself was great, a new type of fun for me and instantly addictive!! :O)

Getting the certificate felt great! I’m currently in training for the remainder of the DAS (Direct AcceSs) Course: a govt./Driving Standards Agency-approved scheme to help get already-proficient road users (e.g. car drivers) into riding bikes quicker. They’re usually 6-7 days in length. All providers tend to be similarly priced in packages & price.

Aged 30 (soon to be 31), and with a growing interest in riding bikes (nurtured well over a year ago!), I decided to commit to a full, unrestricted Motorbike training course. In the UK, it’s best to (& possibly only allowed to) go with a provider that is DSA (Driving Standards Agency) approved. With this, prices are roughly the same with exam fees (around £500 – £800/US$1200). That’s extremely expensive in my eyes. I’ll be doing the first part of the course, this coming Saturday. So why and how is it I feel confident that after I’ve passed my tests and exams that I will actually like biking???

I know I will because I have another sport/community I belong to that I’m extremely proud to have found myself, decide to commit myself to, to partake in regularly, and to have met some of my best friends to date who have stuck with me through think and thin. Proud to have found and be a part of something very different that a lot of society and ‘social norms’ may outcast what we do is not ‘regular nor normal’, not as popular, nor amassed the huge followings that more conventional sports have like Soccer or Rugby have. If I hadn’t have discovered my sport back in 2004, I doubt I would have the motivation, confidence nor reason to get up in the mornings to go to work. It’s my passion and I liken it to surfing. 🙂 I’m proud to be a competition shooter. I’m proud to be a Practical Shooter.

Without my sport, I would be less cultured. I wouldn’t know, for instance, about the cool artwork of Cajun artist George Rodrigue are some of the coolest things I’ve ever seen (). My friend Chet introduced me to this. Without my sport, I wouldn’t have, for instance, met my friend Lenka who works as a super Account Exec for beer company, ‘Staropramen‘. I wouldn’t know, for instance, that the Staropramen draft brewed at 12°C was one of the nicest beers I’ve ever had with little bitter aftertaste that other brews have. Without my sport, I wouldn’t have my lust for travel, UNESCO heritage sites, writing nor amateur photography fully consolidated.

Practically, there’s a lot of work to do. It won’t be easy. Will I be able to learn, remember & apply ALL the physical conditioning in what will be a relatively short amount of time? The instructors have likened the actual hours put in to be equatable to greater than the number of hours I spent learning how to drive a car back in 1997! Woah, that’s a long time ago!! 😀 I know I learn things better manually by hand, by doing and not by ‘classroom’ tuition. So, I may fail a few times at the worst. So, I may have to fork out for extra lessons if I fail more than once! However, I’m sure that once I do pass, my life will be better. The camaraderie spirit, helping each other out (biking issue or not), get-togethers and keeping in touch are some of the traits I’m very confident to be like my shooting community.

I feel a mixture of excitement, some trepidation, a new beginning & the possibility of meeting an additional new circle of friends. Well away from untrustworthy ‘work mates’, judgmental ‘house mates’, ‘meeting friends of friends’ but with the uniqueness and quiet pride of just going out there and meeting people who may become some of the best and decent friends in your life brings.

Without my sport, I would have nothing to fight for in life when the chips are down (and when seemingly, the world is full of assholes). THAT’S why & how I know I will like biking after I pass.

Post title reference:
One of my favourite songs of all time is the Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’. Though some interpretations of the lyrics include ‘an attack on the hollowness of the consumer lifestyle offered by capitalism, describing how society expects young people to conform’ (Wikipedia), I find the strings sound really cool and I could see myself touring on a motorbike with this tune in my head, some day.

FreeLancer out!

Me chasing work on getting the generous perk of free WiFi setup at the new home.

Me: “Oh Daaaaan….was just wondering if I could be one of your difficult users and pester you…”

Jane, the nice lady who logs our helpdesk calls starts laughing. “No, FreeLancer, say ‘Could you help a colleague out?'” 😀

Me: “Yeah, was just wondering if you could help a colleague out and when Vodafone do get the hard-wiring in place can we (or even I can do it) get them to expedite the service to make-up for the delays etc… ?”

Dan: “FreeLancer, you know what Vodafone (the supplier and major cell phone corp.) thinks of us little people? (Jokefully and using his hands): We’re like little fish in a big ocean. Just think about like…You know those little, tiny fish-”

Me: “Plankton, you mean.”

Laughs from Jane. “Yeah, that’s a really good example, actually,” says Dan.

Oh, how I promised myself I wouldn’t be *too* desperate without Internet connection! 😛 Boy, I’m extremely lucky to have an Internet phone! 🙂 What & HOW did we get on with life before the Internet days, I don’t know!! 😛

I’ve been in the middle of house-hunting for the UK since coming back from Texas. My entries will most likely be retrospective/back-dated but will continue in the near future when the WiFi connection is up and running in the new place. Stay tuned! 🙂

1st March 2011 – Last time, I was here, I noticed the frequency, route availability of busses was nothing like that of other metropolises of the World. E.g. Germany, Berlin, Rome or the UK, for instance. With that, my friends let me borrow their car. Or specifically, their jeep! 😀 I spent about 20 minutes familiarising myself with the controls and adjusting the seats and mirrors.

Interesting differences I learn from between how we drive in the UK & the States/mechanics:
*There’s a 4th pedal down below (to the left of the clutch)!!! It’s the ‘handbrake’.
*There’s the Brake Release handle just to the right of the steering column to release above, said pedal! 😀
*The clutch needs to be pushed down before the engine can turnover!

Other road rules/traffic flow differences:
*Vehicles coming off a dual carriageway/highway/bypass, come onto a side road called a frontage road.
*These roads often merge, automatically.
*These drivers leaving the highway have right of way! :O
*Significant signs at home like ‘Give Way’, ‘One Way’ or ‘Stay Left/Right’ are often monochrome and not bi-colour like in the UK. So I have to concentrate even harder not to miss an important sign.

Wow, what an experience, though! 😀 It’s my hope that I’ll be able to venture out a little farther (but not too far) for the highways experience. Thank you, Chet+Beth for helping me out this way!!!!! 🙂

I just got the scores in! 😀 So, this was my first crack at Steel Shooting 🙂 It was at the local match described in the previous post! 😀

Thx to Chet and everybody for lending me their gear, again!!! :O)

Yesterday, Sunday 27th February 2011, I was introduced to a great, new shooting discipline that I had never tried before. It was a local Steel Challenge Match at the above gun range & actually hosted by the Austin LoneStar Practical Pistol Club (ALSPPC, who are based there). My friend, Chet, who I’m staying with, in an almost acquiesce kind of way, knows exactly what I like to perk me up. 🙂

In Steel Challenge, you have set Courses of Fire (stages) that you shoot at. You often have to fire at 4 steel plates and a 5th ‘stop’ plate. The stop plate is just a visual cue for the Range Officer to see that you’re declaring you’ve finished firing the course of fire. The shot timer device records the time from its’ initial buzzing sound (the shooter then draws) to each shot fired and then the last shot. The last shot is the recorded time. You get 5 strings (attempts) at each stage. Your ‘throwaway’ time is the least. Your shortest times of each stage are added up at the end of the day. The person with the shortest total time is, not only on average the fastest shooter of the day, but also the winner :O) Such simplicity and such excitement! I think of it as like Saturday Qualifying sessions in F1 racing.

Having not shot a live round in just shy of 3 years, I was nervous about how I’d perform. The safety, sight picture & timed scoring are similar to my main shooting sport, Practical Shooting. Would I forget my safety principles of muzzle control & direction and trigger-finger safety? Would I do something fundamentally wrong like handle ammunition in the Safety Area and get DQ’d? Chet was really supportive of me and I’m so ever grateful. I can’t underestimate or ever emphasize just how great it is when someone believes in you. Growing-up in this tough world, I believe it’s a priceless & immeasurable force that can just nudge someone in the right direction.

I’m not sure if it’s because I subconsciously knew that the ammo was light power loads, but this time round I didn’t even think about the recoil putting me in a freeze. Maybe it was the excitement of discovering something new. Maybe, it was the relief and joy that I’m actually doing something again (if only for 2 weeks) that I’ve not done in 3 years. I had purposefully chose not to partake anymore in IPSC matches in Europe around 2009. I was just coming out of redundancy and had decided that after 2 years trying to make a go of it in London at that point, I had to make a full, concerted, all-out effort to move to the US. London was dead to me. It had brought more faux-amis, duplicitous work folk, extremely territorial and self-righteous commuters & misery than happy memories. I had a notion I could do better and live better elsewhere in the world. Specifically, Texas, as it appears to have everything I need to get by, to live a modest means but I was also impressed by the standard of living out there when I visited earlier in 2008. A board member of my local wing wasn’t being sympathetic and kind of suggested that I may have to pay full years memberships for each subsequent year that I was intending to take a sabbatical from. So, if I wanted to return in 2012, I would have had to pay £80 and the additional £40 for the 2012-2013 season. This wasn’t going to wash with me. So, quite painfully, I decided to leave and have vowed not to go back to them ever, but instead, to join an IPSC wing of a region that I want to live in.

In short, today, had fun! I was starting to feel better as each string seemed to get faster. I was building a good cadence (like rhythm & timing) between each plate of each stage. I was starting to gain confidence back in being able to go back or stay & hit a steel plate again if I wasn’t sure I had hit it. You do get to hear ‘ding’ sounds of the plates if you had. I was trying to rely on a good sight picture instead. I had shot Open Division, so you get to use visual aids like this C-More red dot sight, so you can index the target quicker. Nice gadgetry, too!

At the end, we had a go with my friend, Roy’s M2 Browning chambered for .308/7.62mm. It was like a THUNDEROUS cannon!!!! 😀 Awesome!!! As he is a gunsmith, he had made his own mini, cute version of the M2 chambered for .22 Long Round. The attention to detail was very intricate and you can tell it was a labour of love for him. Unless I’m mistaken, I think it took about 1 month to build with lots of testing.

As well as, another day of firsts, I actually got to see a past champion in action. An enigmatic shooter who was squad with us was a potentially returning shooter who was a former Handgunner Junior Champion in the late 90s. I remember the late 90s as an era I wish I could live again but at the age I’m at right now. It was a time of funny teen movie flicks, the hedonistic-type getaways and fun to be had. It’s quite hard to imagine then, that this shooter is now a father! It really is scary how time does fly if you’re not careful. This is what I love about the world of action shooting sports, you get to see miraculous things happen and see ‘stuff of legends’ stories play out in front of your eyes. There’s a new underdog, every year 🙂 There’s no where else I’d rather be at that point. He was shooting times that were sub 3 seconds. Some strings were sub 2 seconds! You couldn’t believe your eyes!!

Afterwards, we went to a local burger joint that was called ‘Ghost Town‘. The Ghost Town burger was yummy! 😀

From there, we went to the Cabelas outdoors outfitter store was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! It was like the Academy store I went to in 2008. It had a WIDE variety of outdoors stuff and…guns!!! Lots of guns! It had Benelli M3 shotguns popular with current law enforcement and military. I couldn’t believe I was actually looking at one. As well as, a .44 Magnum revolver. I bagged myself some gun mags and a groovy long sleeved shirt for the next British Winter. 😉

A great day!

Hi,

Welcome to my blogging site!  This will be where I post my travel write-ups, thoughts, plans, ideas, reflections on life (possibly), adventures about town, what I’m currently buzzed about, running, exercise and my shooting sports (International Practical Shooting Confederation, ipsc.org).

I’m 30 Year Old guy in London, British-born Chinese, born & grew-up in the 80s. 🙂  Currently, working towards hopefully working & living in Austin, Texas.  A compromise that I’m kind of liking the idea of, of late, is being able to ‘split my time’ between both countries, like those Lonely Planet travel writers.  How cool would that be?  Best of both worlds, eh? :O)

Currently wish to write under just the letters, ‘LK’.  The handle ‘Freelancer’ is a dedication to Jennifer Garner’s character, Sydney Bristow, in the TV show, ‘Alias’.  This was her handle at the height of her being a double agent for the good guys. 🙂  Great strength of character and the parallels between that and terrible workplaces I’ve had to put up with definitely resonated with me.  ‘2011’ is a reflection of STI’s hi-capacity Practical and Steel Match sports pistols.  One of many popular & ubiquitous choices in our sports scene.

It’s my vision to improve the visual and heuristic properties of the blogging site as I learn more and more about blogging, here, on WordPress.  As I do, it’s my eventual hope that I’ll migrate over to my own web host fully, one day.

Thanks again for visiting!
LK!