Hamburg was cooold.

Wicked old KTM found at bubble visor.

On the way over I picked up classic bike mag, which has a special edition issue this month with classic bike of the year in. I guess this is bound to always be a contentious subject, but while these bikes are pretty nice I reckon there have been some much nicer bikes on Bike Exif, as well as bubble visor, both classic and custom classics. Anyway, here are a few of them below. Grab the full mag for more, and for some nice write-ups on each project.

Well, I made it, 4 days after we were meant to be here, without my wife and baby and having missed xmas, but at least I am here in time for my mums wedding today which was one of the main reasons for coming. It is the first time I have been to this house and it is pretty amazing. After landing in a massive rainstorm, I woke up to this incredible sunny view this morning. Great to see the fam again including my bro, sister and mother, most of whom I didnt see for well over a year.

Phoned up the American embassy in Berlin to try to find out how to get a tourist visa for my little 7 month old @ 1.85 euro per minute: “hi we have a rescheduled flight to America tommorow to visit my mother who has a green card and both my wife and I have visa waivers but apparently our baby can’t get a visa waiver due to his passport not having a chip, how can we get him a visa today?” ” sorry sir you can’t have an appointment for a visa on the same day you schedule it because the computer has to run security checks.” Me, ” we are talking about a 7 month old baby, how on earth could he be a security threat?” Robot man, “sorry sir there is nothing we can do, the computer system won’t let us and the next emergency appointment is on Jan 3rd”.

Happy Xmas to everyone from Hamburg. Meant to be in California but at the airport they wouldn’t issue our tickets as they said my 7 month old baby was ineligible for a visa waiver as there was no chip in his passport so they canceled our flights.
Clearly German babies must be a terror threat and a passport which says valid for all countries is no longer ok for America.
Crazy and not very nice on Xmas eve. Drove 9 hours to be with the wifes family in Hamburg instead and they are all great so its sort of ok in the end. Happy Xmas!

Rok Bagoroš picks up his new KTM125 Duke and gives it a first quick spin.

By the time the bike was ready there was a blizzard going on outside, so we filmed around the slippery factory for a bit before he headed home. Only took him 10 mins to get comfortable on the bike.

They just put the official video live on youtube, so I guess I can show this one today. Over 100,000 views now on each of the other 125 videos we made.

Volksbar Berlin

Marok from Lodown’s tag

KTM 125 Dukes

Was up there for an Interview with the young German Motocross ace Ken Roczen.

My work colleague Manuel noticed the sun shining in on the Kiska designed KTM Stunt concept bike in the studio this morning and snapped a few pics of it gleaming.

Weird pink dots on this lens flare from the S95

The big kicker at Flachau seems smaller this year.

PTSP method.

S95 tilt shift mode on Salzburg

Jule

MP’s Xmas project.

A Peak in conventional crude oil production in 2006 as stated by the 2010 World energy outlook, should logically coincide in a short space of time with a peak in net oil exports, as the producing countries have less oil to export and keep the oil they need for themselves. If these peaks did happen, they should show up in a corresponding decline in the oil available for other countries, especially the worlds biggest oil consumer, the U.S.

Well, total net imports were 7.793 million barrels per day in the last report. That is an import level below any week since the week ending February 27th 1998.

“The crude numbers are shocking,” said Andre Julian, chief financial officer and senior market strategist at OpVest Wealth Management in Irvine, California. “A near-term shortage of crude in the U.S. is forming. Prices could easily hit $100 by the end of the year based on this report.”

10 Euros for an hours lift pass = 4 runs = 2.50 per powder run. Bargain.

Fairly unremarkable photos I guess, except it was the first time I saw a glimpse of the sun for almost 2 weeks! Quite a lot of snow too.