OzVMX Forum
Clubroom => General Discussion => Topic started by: Doggy Digger on March 10, 2011, 11:23:25 am
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As this Forum is based on the passionate love of things in our past, I'm wondering
what your favourite books may be, please?
May I offer the yardstick as being; that you've re-read it/them many times ...
Mine are the Nino Culotta trilogy.
"They're a Weird Mob" (About 15 times)
"Cop This Lot" (About six times)
"Gone Fishin' " (About 8 times)
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I can't stand to read the same book twice ::) :-\.
I remember the 'punch line' and suffer de ja vu on the way through :-[. No thanks :(.
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CWA Cook Book 1974 version and Yates Garden Guide (both more than ten times) ;D
cheers A
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All of Bill Brysons stuff and if you want a laugh try Robert G Barrett. Cheers Jerry
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Bryson's Made in America is probably the only one, I am constantly rereading it and pick up something new each time. I've read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance several times as well. I must admit that most of my reading these days is on the Internet...
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The cruel sea
The Master mariner book 1, Running proud
The Master mariner book 2, Darken ship
All by Nicholas Monserat
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steven king the stand and the gunslinger.
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the CD7 Doggy Digger Book ;)
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Bryson's Made in America is probably the only one, I am constantly rereading it and pick up something new each time.
If you haven't read "A short history of nearly everything" you've lost out. Makes science fun and interesting. It's also hilarious.
I've read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance several times as well. I must admit that most of my reading these days is on the Internet...
Ditto. Recommended reading for anybody with a brain or pretensions of having a brain.
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the CD7 Doggy Digger Book ;)
Thats not a reading book !! thats a boys picture book :D ;)
cheers A
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Every bloody workshop manual I own - especially the bits on electrics!
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is a favourite. An easy repeat read and no punchline!
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"Touching the Void" by Joe Simpson (about 10 times)
a good read anytime you think something is just "Too hard" to do....
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the CD7 Doggy Digger Book ;)
Thats not a reading book !! thats a boys picture book :D ;)
cheers A
Allison its the best book on my bookshelf ;D look at it every other day :D Quality
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'Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire'
I think there is something about hubris and how your luck can run out in there someplace.
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Jerry is right - Robert G Barrett's stuff is cool - especially the Les Norton stories!
Also: "Christine" by Stephen King
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More than five times? Hmmm, not many as I always figure I could be reading something new! A couple that I have returned to a few times are:
'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' - Hunter S Thompson
'1984' - George Orwell
One that I read recently and know I will read again:
'The Road' - Cormac McCarthy
Tex
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"Two Stroke Performance Tuning" by A Graham Bell, read it at least 10 times and still refernce bits now and again.
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for TM Bill would be oxfoerd dictionary and khamasutra...lol
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*The Great Shark Hunt and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas....Hunter.S.Thompson...The man may have been a certified nutter but man oh man could he write.
* John Hepworth...his book......John Hepworth. A compilation of Hepworths columns from the lefty weekly, Nation Review from the seventies. Hilarious.
*The Book of Rock Lists.....Dave Marsh. Rock music bible
*The Peoples Doonesbury....Gary Trudeau Political and social observations in cartoon form. Every time I read it I find somethin I'd previously missed.
*Animal Farm...George Orwell..... A classic that almost got it right.
*The Big Leap...Frank Melling....The best book written on motocross in it's transition period in the early to mid seventies.
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A GOOD KEEN MAN,By Barry Crump.
Real Kiwi Stuff
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Given I read an awful lot, at least five times is easy. Here are a selection that spring to mind:
Skunkworks
every Agatha Christie ever written
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
Papillon
Not Much of An Engineer
To Hell and Back
Science - a History
Suzuki (Jeff Clew)
The Art of Blacksmithing
Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman?
The Making of The Atomic Bomb
Fermats Last Theorem
Business in Great Waters
Yes Minister
Love, Sex and Tractors
Chickenhawk
Accidental Empires
Bomber Command
Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy
The Forgotten Soldier
1984
Luke
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Personally I've never read any book more than once, we agree Graeme, except for a service manual.
Jerry, the Robert G Barrett / Les Norton books are a good laugh and make reference to a lot of Sydney's past " Underbelly " type charactors.
Mr Barrett is a fellow member along with my brother of Tamarama surf club in Syd's eastern suburbs, quite a charactor himself.
He's a similar vintage to Firko, I'd be very surprised if they haven't crossed path's at some stage, even on the footy field, but maybe not, RGB is a leaguie and MF is an elbow patcher.
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Haynes TS suzuki manual
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He's a similar vintage to Firko I'd be very surprised if they haven't crossed path's at some stage, even on the footy field, but maybe not, RGB is a leaguie and MF is an elbow patcher.
Steve, how weird,....I actually do know Bob Barrett but thought it'd be a bit rude to mention it ;D. We're indeed both Randwick Rugby alumni!
Bob's books are a really good aeroplane read and yes....he's definitely a character.
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Books ??? who has time for books! ;)
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Mark, when I said my brother I meant my other brother Robert who is the black sheep of the family.
He still has a love of bikes, he just bought a B44, but is a life member of Glamarama, school teacher and heavily involved in sport coaching on the northern beaches, took the studios option, LOSER??
I had an inkling you would've known RGB.
I haven't met him but have heard he could easily be in his own book.
Note - to SOME forum members.
How to make friends and influence people might be a good read.
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Not Much of An Engineer
Fantastic book.
The Making of The Atomic Bomb
Again, brilliant. Won a Pulitzer prize. Haven't gotten around to reading it's follow up "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb".
Sheesh Luke, you're not particle accelerator engineer are you ::)
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"Chickenhawk" hey, Luke. Right up there ... an awesome read!
LOAN OUTS
Alas, I do it so often. Love a book so much that I lend it ... and it never comes back. Worst
part is, I can NEVER remember who I lend 'em to ...
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All my VMX mags! Does that count? J
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The technique of motocross by Ake Jonsson/ Vin Gilligan
Mr Motocross by Torsten Hallman
and last but most read Yamaha Dirtbikes by Colin Mackellar
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I prefer to wait until it comes out in the movies.
Don’t seem to have enough attention span to get through a book, too many distractions and I lose interest.
I have enjoyed reading through once…
Monkey butt (pissed myself throughout)
Total Training for Motocross
Jeremy McGrath’s biography
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Thats a hard one.Especially if one is illiterate. Does Playboys Aanna Nicol Smith pictural count?
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Sun Tzu's Art of War
I keep a copy on my phone, lap top, iphone, crackberry and a printed one in the car.
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"Chickenhawk" hey, Luke. Right up there ... an awesome read!
LOAN OUTS
Alas, I do it so often. Love a book so much that I lend it ... and it never comes back. Worst
part is, I can NEVER remember who I lend 'em to ...
Chickenhawk is an excellent read - hence I have read it multiple times over the years!
For those who don't know, Robert Mason was a Chopper pilot in Vietnam. He felt he was both a chicken and a hawk.
Lend books? I have lent out squillions. It is great to go visit a mate you haven't seen in years and... now THAT looks like a good read and ... yeah, my name is on the flyleaf :-)
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Sheesh Luke, you're not particle accelerator engineer are you ::)
The more you read about physics, the more fascinating it becomes. I wish I had the maths brain to go deep. Dark Sun is different to Making of. Do not expect the same kind of book. Teller has a lot to answer for!
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Sun Tzu's Art of War
I keep a copy on my phone, lap top, iphone, crackberry and a printed one in the car.
Don't overlook Tukhachevsky's work on Deep Battle theory. I'd love to get a copy of "The Russian Way of War: Operational Art 1904–1940"
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doggy digger
Mine are the Nino Culotta trilogy.
"They're a Weird Mob" (About 15 times)
"Cop This Lot" (About six times)
"Gone Fishin' " (About 8 times
john o'grady or nino culotta lived a few doors down in oatley where i grew up. he was a great bloke once you got to known him.used to fish off his wharf as a kid would always say hello as i walked past his house and down to the river.never read his books though.
jim
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The more you read about physics, the more fascinating it becomes. I wish I had the maths brain to go deep. Dark Sun is different to Making of. Do not expect the same kind of book. Teller has a lot to answer for!
I've never seen beauty in numbers. To me numbers on a page are just boring old numbers on a page. However, I see the written word as a beautiful and infinitely creative thing, capable of evoking all kinds of emotion. I've had some deep discussions on this subject with a couple of mates, one an architect, the other a successful businessman and both are as enraptured in numbers as I am with words. It's ironic that neither of them have any interest or the patience to read a novel or anything that's not technical in nature.
I guess there are numbers people and there are word people and 'rarely the twain shall meet'. 8)
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I concur or the Chickenhawk book, a really good read
For me the Dam Buster book is also not much thought of but if your into tech developements of WW2 it has a lot on Barnes Wallis - now there's is a guy with a brain the size of the universe!
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the trilogy of 4 books from "The Hitchikers guide to the Galaxy" maybe, that is why, I'm so warped ::)
Cheers Trev or am I Worms today ???
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Luke I too have read a lot of general books on matters physics and cosmology, and really do appreciate the use of mathematics to understand the concepts. As a kid I hated maths but I did not 'get' its use as a symbolic tool for expressing concepts that words cannot. Sadly I am far too dim to be able to change that - I am much more comfortable with words and images. But I do at least now understand what maths is for! :)
Nowadays, and this is straying off topic, the vast majority of my reading is either anything dirtbike related, or following several major blogs that address the global warming thing. I'm an avowed skeptic but I have found it intensely interesting learning more about the actual science on both sides of the argument. I hardly ever read a book now, yet as a kid I was an absolutely voracious reader of sci-fi, fantasy and adventure novels.
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Jimg1au ... personal message sent
Dambusters!
Hands up who DID NOT have (or know someone who had) that old classic Airfix model of the Lancaster!
I used a hot pin to melt bullet holes in mine. Very sexy bomber
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I've read that Dambusters book a couple of times and would like to read it again. I loved the movie as well...That pencil thin mustachioed stiff upper lip "Let's bomb the bejesus out of those Jerries chaps" stuff gets me every time 8).
I've just started reading Peter Fitzsimons book..'Tobruk' which looks as if it'll be equally as good as his 'Kokoda'.
I've never been a big reader of books on millitary history but every now and then one grabs me. The Kokoda book was a real eye opener as to what really happened up there. As big a tosser as Fitzy comes accross on the telly, he can surely write. Besides his WW2 stuff I also enjoyed his biographies of Paul Keating, Les Darcy and John Eales.
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The more you read about physics, the more fascinating it becomes. I wish I had the maths brain to go deep.
Recently I read "The black hole wars" by Leonard Suskind. He puts the whole argument about the permenance of data quite simply. As an aside, remember Yrjo Vesterinen? Three time world trials champ? His son (also a trials rider of some note) is working on the D zero project at Fermilab.
Oh, BTW, I am a particle accelerator engineer.... ;D (really)
Teller has a lot to answer for!
Teller was strange bugger. Driven by fear and loathing of communism. As a refugee Hungarian, like Szilard, Von Neuman and others, his was fearful for good reason.
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Oh, BTW, I am a particle accelerator engineer.... (really)
Me to! my partical has wheels ;D
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Jimg1au ... personal message sent
Dambusters!
Hands up who DID NOT have (or know someone who had) that old classic Airfix model of the Lancaster!
I used a hot pin to melt bullet holes in mine. Very sexy bomber
I used a dart ;D not on the lancaster though. Only on the ones which had "crashed" beyond repair. Had a massive box full of them, and gave them away ::) Now I've got a six year old who would kill for them.
I couldn't list all the books I love but since a minor theme exists, "Reach for the Sky" is one I read as a plane nut when I was a kid and have re-read more than a few times since. Inspirational stuff.
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Fear and loathing in Las Vegas.
It has a dirt bike angle,and written by a true legend:Hunter S Thompson.
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Very rarely read books, trained myself early to read comics. I admire people who can read any book that does not have pictures, especially with no explanation of how two clutch transmissions or something work.
In my teens and later I used to go to the pictures every time that the programme changed, Fairfield Crescent,then Hargrave park Nissan hut, then Chester Hill after we finally got a commission house at Villawood.
It was Tech days then and the only books I read cover to cover and back to front and inside out was tech books, service manuals, tuning for speed, wheels magazine [from a dog eared no.1 onwards] Les Archers Scrambles and Motorcross, and stuff like that.
However I read 'How to win friends etc by Dale Carnegie [should be read in schools] Animal Farm, What do you mean he ALMOST got it right Firko?, and a few others. The most engrossing book I ever read that had nothing mechanical in whatso-ever was called The Financier by Theodore Driesser, that was about a foot thick and I was on hols at Blue Lagoon beach Bateau bay, I was reading that 'till nearly sun up every morn.
As far as maths is concerned I was a miserable failure at it always but don't hate it as I believe maths is one of the few things in this world that can work out EXACTLY right. cheers pancho.
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I believe maths is one of the few things in this world that can work out EXACTLY right. cheers pancho.
Should it not it wouldn't be maths and we'd be in deep doo doo.
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doggy digger
Mine are the Nino Culotta trilogy.
My God! I'd forgotten them! I had read them MANY times over! Superb comedy. I used to think he was real. A great sadness when I found out Nino was fake.
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I concur or the Chickenhawk book, a really good read
For me the Dam Buster book is also not much thought of but if your into tech developements of WW2 it has a lot on Barnes Wallis - now there's is a guy with a brain the size of the universe!
Do you mean Enemy Coast Ahead (Guy Gibson) or The Dam Busters by Paul Brickhill? Both awesome reads. Barnes Wallis was indeed a genius. Oh and Brickhill also did the brilliant Reach For the Sky. And heck, did any of you ever read the superb war books of Russell Braddon - Nancy Wake, Cheshire VC, The Naked Island?
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the trilogy of 4 books from "The Hitchikers guide to the Galaxy" maybe, that is why, I'm so warped ::)
The increasingly innacurately named trilogy had FIVE parts :-) Frighteningly, I can quote large sections verbatim!
Now if only Ford Prefect had ridden a Suzuki, so much of this wouldn't have happened!
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Cheshire VC
One of my heroes. Only man to watch the dropping of both atom bombs. Flew on pathfinder missions (even taking a drop in rank to be permitted to fly) and later founded the Cheshire homes. What a man.
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Hmm, well, I"ll admit to being a Spike Milligan tragic, got all his books I can find , Silly verse for Kids, A Little Potboiler, Open Heart University etc, etc, etc ,but the one I have read a Zillion times is " Puckoon ", bloody hell what a tragic mind !!.
Never mind " He's fallen in the water !! " oooooh the Goons !! , yep got all the scripts.
And now , Moriarty, to be serious , Gerald Seymour's " Holding the Zero " , a very enthralling yarn culminating in a sniper duel in the middle east, set in around 2000 , Jim just got me a replacement copy, I lent my other copy to a Mister Plod , he didn't return it.
Foss
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Dambusters!
Hands up who DID NOT have (or know someone who had) that old classic Airfix model of the Lancaster!
I used a hot pin to melt bullet holes in mine. Very sexy bomber
I had one of those! Around the time my dad was reading and raving about the the Nino Culotta trilogy
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Yeh jerry is correct Bob Barrett is tops. Les is the coolest i think ill go and cook a couple of steaks a dozen lamb cutlets some bacon a few pork chops and wash it down with half a carton of XXXX and a BIG DELISH.
then go out and find some dacka and have a hot one then beat up a few would be thugs.
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The cool thing is that Bob Barrett channels Les Norton and are one and the same person. Barrett lives the Les Norton lifestyle to the hilt...he's a deadset Eastern Suburbs legend. ;D
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Growing up my old man was a sales rep for Airfix models. You reckon I didn't have Lancasters and Spitfires to burn!!! Having said that let me say this "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell. Great bit in it when he's trying to organise the anachists so that they can do a better against Franco's fascists. The problem being of course that anarchists dont respond well to someone trying to organize them. Sensational stuff. Loved it! J
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ok so i am a big kid. i never find the time or inclination to read a serious book.
i have read the following at least 15 times (for both my daughters benefit and mine :D)
the Dr Seuss Classic "Green eggs and ham"
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You the man, Hoony am.
Green eggs and ham.
Hey Firko, how many noses has RGB burst like ripe fig over the years?
Notice I have resisted the temptation to " CROW " about the footy from last night.
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ok so i am a big kid. i never find the time or inclination to read a serious book.
NOT ONE? NOT EVEN ONCE? I am unable to comprehend this.
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Thanks Jimg1au - for PM with background on your childhood, and what you knew of O'Grady the author.
Thanks heaps ... good on you
:-)
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NOT ONE? NOT EVEN ONCE? I am unable to comprehend this
Luke this is more common than you'd imagine. As I mentioned earlier I've got a couple of mates who will read tech manuals and the very occasional biography or historical tome but they can't find any interest at all in a fictional novel. Both state that they can't stay interested in something that's a figment of someone elses imigination. Both of these blokes are successful businessmen so they're not exactly dummies and neither is dyslexic. Another mates son heads a huge international advertising agency and he's yet to finish his first novel :-[.
It's sad I know but they're all getting along fine without literature so each to his own. Personally, I can't sleep at night unless I read a chapter ot two. It's been that way since I was a kid.
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Mark, I am both surprised and saddened that men can go through life and never read the Roger Welsch book "Love, Sex and Tractors".
Replace 'tractor' with 'dirt bike' and they would be cheering from the rooftops in praise of this book.
This man knows about "Women School". this man knows his shed. this man knows the value of a naughty calendar.
If anybody on this list has NEVER read a book without pictures, this one would be a good place to start.
Luke
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Mark, I am both surprised and saddened that men can go through life and never read the Roger Welsch book "Love, Sex and Tractors"
I plead guilty....I've never read it but if you reckon it's that good I'll see if I can dig up a copy. I feel the same with Hunter.S.Thompsons 'The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved'. It should be essential reading for all creative writing students or just those appreciative of a beautifully written good yarn.
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This explains why I'm broke,dumb,and have no future aspects.
Read most of Harper Lees books.Reading and re-reading; Joseph Conrads difficult, but entertaining books.
Tolstoy..........yeah well. Had to help on some "research",for my brother.
Read Toynbee.Mmmm.History.
Read Marx,Mein Kampf,yeah yeah.Thank my brother who's a Prof now,who got me to proof read,and research for him.
Reading a marvelous publication of servicing- "Yamaha DT250A,DT360A,"sent to me by Jimau.
Bit of different enlightenment.
Oh,Brue Lee's "Tao of Jeet Kune Do."Exciting to delve into his thoughts on defending on self.
Cheers,Mark.
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I grow up at school using a reading machine, couldn`t keep up with the clucking thing, teacher abused me for not keeping up, hate reading, hated the teacher, ready machine was in use for one year,education department through it out of the window. Bad idea, now l don`t mind reading but still hate the teacher.
I like reading doggy digger books, green horror, VMX, Geelong Advertiser on saturday by sunday l use it for toilet paper, Fishing books, Just bikes, the forum, started reading the crow once, I was real happy with myself read 10 pages realised their where 2,690 pages to go chucked it in the bin, got the video instead,sat down and watched that it was easier.