audiomick

According to here, that is not "cans produced", but cans actually sold: https://www.redbull.com/int-en/energydrink/company-profile On the topic of how a "Soda company" can afford to sponsor all those sports events, I wrote further up that I'm sure they make a profit from a large part of that. Look here: apparently 2023 was a bad year despite good success in F1 racing. Profits went down, and they only made about £20 million profit. https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/304625/red-bull-annual-figures-show-less-profit-despite-more-revenue-in-2023.html I feel really sorry for them. Only 20 million pounds, must be hard...

I tried it twice, to make sure. I was right the first time...

They no doubt picked up more member after the Vietnam war, but the Hell's Angels go back to just after WW II, at least according to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hells_Angels I think the attraction of a "veterans motorcycle club" is first and foremost being amongst people who have had the same experience. I never had to go to war, and wasn't in the army. I have, however, talked to a number of Vietnam vets, including spending an evening in the club house of the Vietnam Vets MC in Albury, Australia. Is is quite obvious that they have been through stuff that no-one can really grasp who wasn't there. I can understand seeking out or forming a group of people that you don't have to explain it all to because they already know.

Don't know if it is that many, and I couldn't find any figures just now, but I know the do have lots of bikes in stock. One problem is, as I read just now, some of them (a lot) are Euro 5 emissions spec, and as of January a new registration has to be Euro 5+. So if that want to have any chance of selling them at all, at least in Europe, the dealers have to get them registered (Tageszulassung is the German term, "day registration") before the end of December so the registration happens before the new emissions law comes into force.

indeed, but a good kind of weird.

seems appropriate for the last one of the evening...

more Bowie. Sorry, can't help myself....

not my fault, this came after that on Youtube, for whatever reason. Bowie was and remains a legend.

this is the band I was working for. The prelude "where are they...then there lost in the complex" is actually more true to life for the band than is funny.

while i'm at it, this. The band I worked for a while had the same agency as this band, so we did a number of supports for them. They were great on stage.

or this

and this one I liked the first time I heard them

I took a long time to appreciate this band

And now for something completely different, still as relevant today as it ever was....

R.E.M. : it would be nice if the bloke could sing more than four tones. On the subject of french vocals and distorted guitars (ok, the song is from Belgium...) this came out when I was 14, or maybe 15 by the time it came to Australia. I loved it. As far as I can tell, the chorus means something like "it's all ok for me". I found this quote in the Wiki, which I find very appealing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ça_plane_pour_moi

in that category, shitty video, but this lot played in the pub in Melbourne where I was house technician for about two years. One of the best evenings in the entire time, and I don't even really like the style of music.

Tight as a duck's arse. Fantastic. Regarding the "finnish attitude", look at this. Don't pay too much attention to the guitar playing. That is a bit rough, but that is not what the man does for a living. Listen to the voice, and take note that he let his obivously overwhelmed cousin film it and post it on the 'net. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPc7Se3SmkY Dan, the singer, is a member of the ensemble in the Opera in Leipzig where I work. Lovely bloke. This is an indication of what he does for a living. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtmM1IaolYE The point is, someone from another culture who does the opera thing for a living would have threatened to kill the cousin if he didn't take the video down from the net. I spoke to Dan about the video one time, and I don't think he is really happy that it is out there, but he is ok enough with it to not take action. I like that.

@Cabernet re: born to be wild Brilliant. Canny intuition and an internet search machine led me to find out more about them. https://stevenseagulls.com/ The name alone is really high class satire, and the rendition is brilliant. Proof of the ethos if you want to perpetrate musical silliness, make sure you can play your instrument really, really well first. The band is from Finnland, which somehow doesn't surprise me. Interesting people with a very cultivated sense of humour.

Very nice film. The quote from Helen Keller at the end says it all.

Thanks for the tip, but... it is not just leaking a bit. I went for a ride, about an hour and a half, and all was good. When I came out the next day, or the day after, I discover the entire oil content of the left fork on the ground under the bike. It is definitely not just a bit of grit under the seal. The seal has, for whatever reason, shat its pants and given up. On top of that, the bike has about 70,000 km on the clock, and I have no evidence that anyone has ever had a look at the innards of the fork. Given that I can't be sure that this has been done in the recent past, it is about time to have someone who knows what he is looking at do that. The forks will be going to a professional. I'm just not sure yet if that will be the workshop that I take my "too hard or I don't want to do it myself" things to, or if they will go to a suspension specialist.

I agree with that principially, but in the specific case of KTM, I'm pretty sure that the brand will endure at least for a while. As @p6x already wrote, it seems that the company administration is determined that the brand will endure, and I think they will manage to acheive this.

And they all look like orange Transformers.

Nothing on the V11. It's sitting in the garage waiting for me to start in on the leaking fork seal, the farting between 2 - 3,000 RPM, the Roper Plate installation, the gear shift spring, the lucky phil extender and "blueprinting" the shift mechanism. Today I looked underneath the V35. I had it apart to change the seals that face the clutch, and install a V9 clutch (brilliant, much lighter...). Now it's back together, and the more than a year overdue Roadworthyness Certificate has been renewed. But it is still dropping some oil. I think it is just the seal on the big oil drain plug at the front of the motor. Maybe not tight enough, maybe I should have changed the seal after all. Here's hoping it is just not tight enough. The good thing is, the look underneath it today confirmed that it is just dripping a bit, not pouring out.

So that's what he looks like.... Merry christmas everybody.

Ah, ok. Again, I don't think so. Not that I have ridden all that many different models here, but none of the bikes I've had here had one.