Yep, it's bike stuff again and some of the following may not make any sense to you if you don't 'get' bikes.
Today I'd booked the Daytona in for a suspension tuning with Laurie 'Suspension' Smith. He's a bit of a local legend in Motorcycling circles, not only because he's incredibly good at sorting out motorcycle suspension issues, or because he was invited to the Le Man 24 hour Motorcycle race off the back of his reputation nationally, but also because he's built some amazing things in his workshop. His creations range from shoehorning an 1100cc Honda engine into a 600c Yamaha frame to building a dirt bike out of a Kawasaki ZX10R to grafting a Girder front suspension setup that he designed and fabricated in his workshop onto the front of a Yamaha R1 with impressive improvements over the standard telescopic fork design.
Needless to say I have the utmost respect for Laurie's capabilities with suspension and on top of all that, he's a good bloke.
Today, I spent some time with Laurie while he spent some time tuning the Daytona's suspension to my weight. He made quite a few changes to the rear shock and gave the forks a bit of tweaking as well, I don't really understand all the things Laurie did today but I'm sure they'll make a difference to how the bike feels on the track. It's great having such ready and local access to a resource like of international note like Laurie, I feel pretty lucky to have been able to use his talents on all my bikes... except for the R1, but I'll be dropping that one in to him in the near future too.
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