User:Retrodouggy

Contributing since: 2007

=Motorcycling=

I have been a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists since 2006. I passed the Advanced Motorcycle Test and in January 2007 and have since gone on to become a Qualified Observer. I am a motorcycle instructor by trade, qualified by the Driving Standards Agency to conduct  CBT and Direct Access Scheme.

Current Motorcycles

 * 1995 BMW F650

Previous Motorcycles

 * 1997 Suzuki GSX-R750 - I missed the previous one too much, but have finally realised that I don't want to ride sports bike any more.
 * 2008 BMW F800GS
 * 2004 BMW K1200S
 * 1994 Honda ST1100 Pan European
 * 1999 Suzuki GSX-R750 - bought for £500 as crash damaged with 24,500 miles on the clock.
 * 1993 BMW K1 - like Marmite (love it or hate it) - I loved it!
 * 1997 Suzuki GS500E - first proper bike - did about 12'000 miles on her in 18 months
 * 1985 Honda VT500E - owned and blew up

Other Motorcycles Ridden

 * Yamaha TZR250
 * BMW F650 - round a carpark for a morning - couldn't handle it at the time
 * CG125 - Hambrook DAS
 * BMW K1200S - test ride at NEC show
 * Suzuki GSF600 Bandits x 2 - regular borrows and post-tinkering test rides - Renthals, aftermarket pegs and can make the difference - good fun and punchy
 * Yamaha 350 grey import cruiser (model??)
 * CBR 600F - quick round the block
 * BMW R1200ST - 2 day loan
 * BMW F800S - Test ride - not sure, only had it for an hour. Might have to have another go
 * Suzuki DL1000 V-Strom - lots of wheelie fun!
 * Baimo Renegade 125 - I have never ridden such a pile of $£&! - Cylindrical gear box (so 1st is up, then keep going up for the rest - eventually get back round to neutral!). This thing was so badly made that at 3 years old it looked 25! Chinese engineering at it's best!
 * BMW R1200GS '07 - Lovely a torquey - no top end but short shifting sorts that
 * BMW R1150R '07 - Not quite as fun as above (both loaners from Bath Road)
 * Kawasaki ZX9R '95 - long and low (like a K1 really!), but with just a little more punch!!!

=Favourite Articles=
 * 24 is an American action drama television series. Broadcast by Fox in the United States and syndicated worldwide, the show first aired on November 6, 2001. It is presented in real time, with each season depicting a 24-hour period in the life of Jack Bauer, who works with the U.S. government as it fights domestic threats.
 * Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier; February 4, 1948) is an American rock singer, songwriter and musician whose career spans five decades. With a stage show that features guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, and boa constrictors, Cooper has drawn equally from horror movies, vaudeville, heavy metal, and garage rock to create a theatrical brand of rock music that would come to be known as shock rock.
 * The Aristocrats (also known as The Debonaires or The Sophisticates in some tellings) is an exceptionally transgressive dirty joke that has been told by numerous stand-up comedians since the vaudeville era. Steven Wright has likened it to a secret handshake among comedians, and it is seen as something of a game in which those who tell it try to top each other in terms of shock value. It is rarely told the same way twice, often improvised, and was the subject of a 2005 documentary film of the same name. It is thought of as a badge of honor among expert comedians and is notoriously hard to perform successfully. Throughout its long history, it has evolved from a clichéd staple of vaudevillian humor into a postmodern anti-joke.
 * Arnold Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor, businessman, and politician, currently serving as the 38th Governor of the state of California.
 * The Bank Job is a 2008 British crime film directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Jason Statham, based on the 1971 Baker Street robbery in central London, from which the money and valuables stolen were never recovered. The producers allege that the story was prevented from being told because of a D-Notice (now known as a DA-Notice) government gagging request, allegedly to protect a prominent member of the British Royal Family.
 * Bombay Sapphire is a brand of gin distributed by Bacardi. The name hints at the origins of the gin's popularity in the India of the days of the British Raj.
 * Boxing Helena is the 1993 debut feature film by Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David Lynch. The plot centres around a lonely Atlanta surgeon obsessed with a girl named Helena. After she is injured in a grievous hit-and-run motor vehicle accident in front of his home, he kidnaps and treats her in his house surreptitiously, amputating both of her legs. Later, he amputates her healthy arms as well.
 * Breathe is a song by The Prodigy, released as the group's eleventh single on November 11, 1996. It was the second single from the album The Fat of the Land. [..] CD single tracklisting: 1. "Breathe" (Edit) – 3:59, 2. "Their Law" (Live at Phoenix Festival '96) – 5:24, 3. "Poison" (Live at Torhout & Werchter Festival '96) – 5:17, 4. "The Trick" – 4:25
 * Changeling is a 2008 American period thriller directed by Clint Eastwood and written by J. Michael Straczynski. The film begins in 1928 Los Angeles and tells the true story of a woman who recognizes that the boy returned after her son's disappearance is an impostor.
 * Christopher Paul Gardner (born 9 February 1954 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is a self-made millionaire, entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and philanthropist who, during the early 1980s, struggled with homelessness while raising his toddler son, Christopher, Jr. Gardner's book of memoirs was published in May 2006. Gardner's personal struggle of establishing himself as a stockbroker while managing fatherhood and homelessness is portrayed in the 2006 motion picture The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith.
 * A close encounter is an event in which a person witnesses an unidentified flying object. This terminology and the system of classification behind it was started by astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek, and was first suggested in his 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. He introduced the first three kinds of encounters; more sub-types of close encounters were later added by others, but these additional categories are not universally accepted by UFO researchers, mainly because they depart from the scientific rigor that Hynek aimed to bring to ufology.
 * Countersteering is the technique used by cyclists and motorcyclists to initiate turning toward a given direction by first steering counter to the desired direction ("steer left to turn right") - or in other words "look left, lean left, push left".
 * Gavin & Stacey is an award winning British television comedy series, written by James Corden and Ruth Jones, and produced by Baby Cow Productions for BBC Wales. Jones and Corden appear in the show, alongside the title characters played by Mathew Horne and Joanna Page. The series also features Larry Lamb, Alison Steadman, Rob Brydon and Melanie Walters. A romantic comedy, the show follows the long distance relationship of Gavin and Stacey, who come from opposite ends of the country. Gavin lives with his family in Billericay in Essex, while Stacey lives with her mother in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan.
 * A green lane is a type of road, usually an unpaved rural route. In particular, a green lane is unsurfaced, and may be so infrequently used that there is no wearing of the surface, allowing vegetation to colonise freely, hence 'green'. Many green lanes are ancient routes that have existed for millennia such as hollow ways, Drover's roads, ridgeways or even ancient trackways.
 * Hanlon's razor is an eponymous adage which reads: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
 * Keyser Söze (pronounced /ˈkaɪzər ˈsoʊzeɪ/) is a fictional character in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, written by Christopher McQuarrie and directed by Bryan Singer. Söze is an underworld kingpin whose ruthlessness and influence have a legendary, even mythical, status among law enforcement agents and criminals alike.
 * Killing in the Name is a song by American rap metal band Rage Against the Machine, featured on their 1992 self-titled debut album. Released as the lead single from the album in November 1992, the song reached number 25 on the UK Singles Chart and has now become the official Christmas Number 1 of 2009. The song lyrics reference the allegation that some members of US police forces are members of the Ku Klux Klan organization, whose symbol is the burning cross. The uncensored version contains the word "fuck" seventeen times.
 * Lou Ferrigno is an American bodybuilder and actor. He is more recently known for playing a recurring role, as himself, in the sitcom The King of Queens.
 * Metallica is an American heavy metal band from Los Angeles, California, formed in 1981. Founded when drummer Lars Ulrich posted an advertisement in a local newspaper, Metallica's line-up has primarily consisted of Ulrich, rhythm guitarist and vocalist James Hetfield, and lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, while going through a number of bassists. Currently, the spot is held by Robert Trujillo.
 * Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 was a PT boat last commanded by then-Lieutenant, junior grade (LTJG) John F. Kennedy (later President of the United States) in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Kennedy's actions to save his surviving crew after the sinking of the PT-109 made him a war hero, which proved helpful in his political career.
 * The Pelican Brief is a legal/suspense thriller written by John Grisham in 1992.The story begins with the assassination of two philosophically divergent Supreme Court Justices. Liberal Justice Rosenberg is killed at his home, while the conservative Justice Jenson is killed inside a theatre exhibiting pornography. The circumstances surrounding their deaths, as well as the deaths themselves, shock and confuse a politically divided nation.
 * The pitch drop experiment is a long-term experiment which measures the flow of a piece of pitch over many years. Pitch is the name for any of a number of highly viscous liquids which appear solid, most commonly bitumen. Tar pitch flows at room temperature, albeit very, very slowly, eventually forming a drop.
 * Red Ring of Death - The Xbox 360 video game console is subject to a number of technical problems that can render it unusable. Some, but not all, of these problems are identified as "general hardware failures," and are indicated by three flashing red lights around the power button. Since its release in 2005, many articles have appeared in the media portraying the Xbox 360's relatively high failure rates. The three "flashing red lights" have been nicknamed in these articles as the "Red Ring of Death" (or "RRoD")
 * The Ridgeway is an ancient trackway described as Britain's oldest road. At 85 miles (137 km), the route follows the chalk hills between Overton Hill, near Avebury, and Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire and represents part of a route in use since Neolithic times.
 * Robert Craig Knievel (October 17, 1938 – November 30, 2007), better known as Evel Knievel, was an American motorcycle daredevil and entertainer. Knievel's nationally televised motorcycle jumps, including his 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon at Twin Falls, Idaho, represent four of the twenty most-watched ABC's Wide World of Sports events to date. His achievements and failures, including his record 37 broken bones, earned him several entries in the Guinness Book of World Records.
 * Salisbury Plain is a chalk plateau in central southern England covering 300 square miles. It is part of the Southern England Chalk Formation and largely lies within the county of Wiltshire, with a little in Hampshire. The plain is famous for its rich archaeology, including Stonehenge, one of England's best known landmarks. Largely as a result of the establishment of the Army Training Estate Salisbury Plain (ATE SP), the plain is sparsely populated and is the largest remaining area of calcareous grassland in north-west Europe.
 * The Terminator series is a franchise encompassing a series of science fiction films and ancillary media concerning battles between Skynet's artificially intelligent machine network, and John Connor's Tech-Com forces and the rest of the human race. Skynet's most well-known products in its genocidal goals are the various terminator models, such as the original "Terminator" character, portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in three films.
 * Thalidomide is a sedative-hypnotic and multiple myeloma medication. It was sold in a number of countries across the world from 1957 until 1961 when it was withdrawn from the market after being found to be a cause of birth defects in what has been called "one of the biggest medical tragedies of modern times".
 * Thích Quảng Đức was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on 11 June 1963.
 * ThunderCats is an American animated television series that was produced by Rankin/Bass Productions (the same that created the Silverhawks,Tigersharks and The Comic Strip) debuting in 1985, based on the characters created by Tobin "Ted" Wolf.
 * TVersity Media Server is a software package that allows a personal computer to stream content to UPnP devices, such as the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii, regardless of the limitations of the device. For example, the Xbox 360 does not support certain codecs or Internet videos such as YouTube. TVersity Media Server transcodes the video on the PC into a compatible codec and then streams it to the device.
 * In engineering, fiction, or thought experiments, unobtainium is a humorous concept for any extremely rare, costly, or physically impossible material needed to fulfill a given design for a given application. The properties of any particular unobtainium depend on the intended use. For example, a pulley made of unobtainium might be massless and frictionless. However, if used in a nuclear rocket, unobtainium would be light, strong at high temperatures, and resistant to radiation damage.
 * The X-Files is an American science fiction television series, created by Chris Carter, which first aired in September 1993 and ended in May 2002. The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans (e.g., "The Truth Is Out There", "Trust No One", "I Want to Believe") became pop culture touchstones in the 1990s. Seen as a defining series of its era, The X-Files tapped into public mistrust of governments and large institutions, and embraced conspiracy theories and spirituality, as it centered on efforts to uncover the existence of extraterrestrial life.

=Favourite Words=


 * ghey: (Internet, slang, pejorative) An alternate spelling of gay meaning ineffectual, unsatisfying, unfulfilling, stupid, untalented, and so on. Equivalent to the slang meaning of lame.
 * Intransigent: Unwilling to compromise or moderate a position; unreasonable; irreconcilable; stubborn.

=External Links=

Motorcycling Links

 * Wiltshire and Bath Advanced Motorcyclists
 * Bristol Advanced Motorcyclists
 * Freewheelers EVS
 * Institute of Advanced Motorists

Wiki Links

 * My Wikipedia contributions
 * My Wikipedia edit statistics