This is going to make no sense unless you read "The Liter High" (click here for that one).  Well, there is no guarantee that it will make sense even if you read all my random, potentially steaming ramblings.  My friends (if I can call my therapist and my parole officer friends) told me to apologise to you all for making you read such a load of shit.

Back to the point.  Projects are an essential part of dreaming.  They let you escape to that happy place, the dark recess of your mind that keeps you sane during the normal day to day grind that passes for semi-normality.  Let’s face it, the only person who really loves his job is Ron Jeremy, and what’s the bet he gets home to his wife, and then instead of taking her to bed for some loving (he probably gets tired after a long day of pounding? Ed.), he heads out to his garage and grabs a beer while looking at his project bike.

So, in order to avoid shooting the dullards that I spend 8 hours caged up with (again! More state funded counselling for me...), I have a project track bike.  It’s cheaper than therapy for the litre addiction too, and it provides many hours of make busy time during the working day.
My project is a k5 GSXR600.  I did consider an R6, but I’m not queer.  In the same vein, I looked at a ZX6R, but since my pants actually fit, and I don’t use the word “yo” as a fullstop, it didn’t seem appropriate.  GSXR’s are also useful – the k5 was the last year that most of the bits are sorta kinda interchangeable between pint, three quarter, and liter.  Plus for some odd reason, GSXR’s seem to get parked in the shrubbery more often than this season’s petunia’s.  Thus making parts supply easier again.

I also used a k5 because it’s not a current shape, so buying go faster bits off ex-racers is a cheaper exercise, just use a word  like obsolete and that Yoshimura full titanium system and offset sump become affordable instead of “sell a kidney expensive”.
And before you accuse me of being cheap – well, yes I am.  The trust fund hasn’t appeared, and neither has the lottery.  And I run 3 other bikes as well, so this fits into lunch money territory.  I’ve lost 9 kg while building this bike, and the Subway guys look at me funny when I press my nose against the glass and sigh... alot.

There is also the mythical eBay and TradeMe (our local online auction house. Ed.) hunting.  This is best done during work hours, that way you effectively get paid to build your project.  And full workshop manuals are best when they’re printed on the big assed company printer.
Time is also an important consideration for the duration of the project accumulation stage.  The price of a part is related to how much time you’re willing to wait.  If you go down to the local Suzuki dealer, the price tag reads like a phone number.  If you’re willing to look on the net, or on eBay, the price is normally half that, but it might take a month to find it.  Or, if you’re like me, and you rock up to your buddy’s place and drink their beer until they hand you the bit you’re after and tell you to fuck off, then the price is even better again.  Sometimes the beer drinking thing can take several visits, and long hours of stalking before they let you in yet again.

Thanks especially to Glenn, despite losing his sense of humour a long time ago, he humoured me rocking up to his place lots over the last 12 months.