Carbon fibre fairings

Laurence White recently offered some carbon fibre fairing panels for sale on the Benelli Forum, and since both of my lower panels had scratches or flaking paint it seemed a good opportunity to replace them altogether. The carbon fibre panels are also extremely light and strong.

They duly arrived and I checked the fitting before taking them up to Larry Frost at Illusion Racepaint, to be sprayed in that beautiful Benelli metallic green. I also wanted to leave some of the carbon fibre showing: Larry explained that this would work better if he didn’t use a primer underneath the green, but the finish of the panels was good enough to get away with not having a primer/filler coat. There are a few pock-marks if you look really closely, but I think the result is really stunning, and shows off the carbon as well as the great lines of the Tornado. The colour match with the tank is not perfect – it’s a little less yellowy, but I actually prefer Larry’s green if anything.

New and old fairings

Trial-fitting of the unpainted carbon fairings

Barcelona!!

Somebody suggested a long weekend in Barcelona so this Friday we landed at a rented appartment with Raks, Alena, Priten, Anisha, Madz, Bharat, Parin and Sid. It was hot hot during the day, but we went out Friday for a typical trawl of the bars and clubs around Las Ramblas. It was a bit of a mad one and we eventually got a Taxi back in the small hours. I think I left Smeeta’s camera in the cab – dammit!

The next day we crawled out of bed and spent some time at the beach – a local gay nudist beach as it happens. I felt ill enough to not even make it that far, but we went out again in the evening. On Sunday we packed our things only to discover that we’d misplaced our passports, so we spent the day traipsing out to the Police Station to report them stolen, and then to the Airport to see if Easyjet would let us travel without them. No such luck, so we’d have to stay another night and get some temporary travel documents from the British Consulate on Monday morning. All of this was a bit of hassle, but we did find a lovely little hotel on Las Ramblas itself, just next to the Fish Market, and we went out Sunday evening to a great cocktail bar, run by a Brazilian guy who made the most fantastic Mojitos. And very good Tapas. So not all bad… 🙂

Sweet Pea Bonanza

We planted a whole host of flowering plants earlier this year in the hope that we could use some for the Wedding in July, but the wet spring and early summer meant that hardly any had flowered in time. We now have an absolute flood of Sweet Peas blooming – more than we can actually harvest! They look and smell amazing…

Murray Magic

My favourite Olympic moment was Andy Murray’s magnificent performance in beating both Novak Djokovic and then Roger Federer on Centre Court, barely a month after that emotional defeat in his first Wimbledon Final. The semi-final with Djokovic was incredibly close-fought, Murray just edging the key points, showing great strength and focus to beat the current World Number 1.

In the Gold Medal match he thoroughly outplayed Roger Federer, producing some amazing shots to which the Swiss legend had no answer. Fed wasn’t at his best, but Murray didn’t give him a chance and after holding his serve early in the match he totally dominated… He was awesome and totally deserved Gold. Go Andy!