The brothers of our brother at -273 living large. VIA -273.

Finally it is getting cold here. Some way below freezing at night. But it’s dry. No rain for weeks, or is it months? It was cold but dry today and I had the day off. And I had a 2012 KTM 150SX which I had parked in the garage for the winter. But winter hadn’t really come yet. No snow, no rain, and the sun was shining as it had done so often over the past few months.

20 minutes after setting off we got to the X Bowl arena in Stegenwald. But it was shut. f@#k. they said they were open on friday, saturday and Sunday in November. Or rather, Jeweils Freitag, Samstag und Sonntag von 9h – 18h.

There was a phone number on the fence, but nobody answered the phone. Once, twice, three times. Dam. Ok Adi, lets just walk up and I will show you the track. We squeezed through a gap and walked 5 minutes up to the track. Completely deserted. Where is everybody?? I tried to call them again. No Answer. F#$K. We walked back to the car and I redialed. Somebody picked up straight away. (me, In rubbish German) “Hi, we are at the track, are you coming here? It says you are open on your website but the gate is locked and nobody is here”.

Austrian dude, “No sorry, I cant come down today, but I can give you the code for the lock and you can go ride. Just shut the gate behind you when you go in”. Me, “Thank you”.

the photo above is click-able. More for me than you. Always useful to see yourself ride to see what to work on. This part of the track always pisses me off. SO hard to ride it clean, and even when you do it doesn’t feel like it. Or maybe I didn’t really get it clean yet. haha.

This week was fairly rubbish so far. Seeing the world like this pretty much puts it all in perspective though. That thin, faint, green glow you see at the end is the earth’s atmosphere.

THE AURORA AUSTRALIS, or Southern Lights, have been captured on video by astronauts in the International Space Station (ISS).

Ah, I love these lunch break rides. Pretty much the only chance i get to ride nowadays, but they will do for now : p

As we were leaving I realized my little S95 I usually take photos with was out of batteries, so my buddy Manuel brought along his 60D and took some photos instead.

Ok, enough of me, time for a few on Manuel.

Next time we are heading higher up.

Loads of action going on over at the -273 blog.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/Bagoros.Rok

Photos by Damjan Žibert

MV Agusta stamp on the frame.

Went for lunch today with my friend on his Mito and was loving the smell of the 2 stroke oil burning. Reminded me of being a kid. On a side note, Oil topped $110 a barrel today and hit a 30-month high, as US Energy Secretary Expresses “Great Concern” Due To High Oil Price and OPEC Oil Shipments Decline 1.6%.

The Cagiva Mito was the first bike of Valentino Rossi, eventual 9 time MotoGP world champion. In 1994, Rossi had been provided a factory Mito by Cagiva team manager Claudio Lusuardi and cruised to the Italian title.

During the 1990s the Mito was the arch-rival to Aprilia’s RS125, a similar 2-stroke 125 cc race-replica. In 1994 the bike was restyled by Massimo Tamburini with similar lines to the then new Ducati 916, a design he also penned. The similarity is particularly visible in the front and rear fairings.

Full line-up with big photos and the helmet image saved with the drivers name over at -273. Standouts? favorites?
I’m going for Massa, Heidfeld and Kovalainen, but some others are quite nice too.

Yeap, was 26 degrees here this weekend (78F). Went snowboarding Saturday with some friends. Super slushy but fun to jib around and hit some kickers. Farewell until next year, winter.

More at -273 here.

My buddy at work Maxime finally got his old SV650 running so we went for a cruise at lunch up and down Rossfeld.

It rained last night so most corners were pretty wet. This was one of the dry ones.

Rossfeld is up at 1600m or so and the power felt way down on my bike at the top. Had to clutch it like crazy to get the front wheel up.

Maxime was loving his first ride of the year.

Really, really, really enjoying riding this duke.

My old friend PJ came to visit

Some more photos @-273 here.

PJ checks in with more fat rides from Abu Dhabi.

PJ Checks in from Abu Dhabi over at -273. Have a look here.

We would like to thank the academy for the recognition of the Black Swan T, which won Best T, Best Design and Best Production.
Catch one in the -273 store now.

Yup, I bought a bike! An absolutely mint condition 2010 KTM Duke from KTM marketing. I was originally after a more classic older bike but don’t want to deal with all the maintenance. I figured therefore to go for an SMC but when this Duke popped up the price was too low to resist. In fact it was so low I should be able to ride it for 2 years and still sell it for more than I paid. Anyway, it has been a long journey over the years to get here to this bike so I am pretty chuffed!

After receiving a nice email from Marcus of marcusmotodesign in Sweden I got motivated to finally finish a KTM 690 street tracker Bikenstein which had been sitting half finished for ages  on my computer.

We will still run the odd bit of content here for -273 but heading forward, www.minus273.biz will now be the place for news exclusively related to -273.  We felt that -273 is now big enough for it’s own site and it will also help to avoid confusion with the domain names.