Hello to all, The newest addition to the forum - 44 y/o, living and working in Manila, Philippines, where I ride through the terrible traffic and the beautiful countryside on a 2024 Speed Twin 900. My third Triumph - I still have my first one, a 2002 955i Daytona, which is still at home in the garage and had (oh, the sweet memory) a beautiful 675R which died rather fast (while going rather fast) on the Nuerburgring in Germany in 2013 while I avoided the same fate by inches. I had been a member of the Triumph Torque/T595 forum some time ago but quitted contributing after I started working abroad in some less touristic countries and didn't ride for some years. Now the restart in this forum, where I'll probably look for technical advice and potentially riding buddies. Anyway, it feels great to ride again, and while the Philippines don't have the best roads in the world to ride (though there are a few decent ones) the weather is glorious and so is the landscape outside the cities. Apparently I'm getting older as I decided not to get myself a sports bike here but a Speed Twin. But it seemed pointless to filter through Manila traffic on a sports bike. The SpeedTwin 900 does a great job filtering through the traffic while it still has enough punch on country roads and highways. Rear suspension is a bit soft, though, especially when going fast or with a back ride; will ask for some advice on this later in the right forum. "Loose weight" and "get yourself a slimmer girlfriend" doesn't count as advice here, just saying. And yeah, I'm originally from Germany. All the best!
@Trierer Welcome to the Family. Nice bikes Speed Twin and like you say very ample. Do tap the upload a file button bottom right corner and let us all see the bike.
Just opened my mailbox and found my humble posting on the newbies forum made it to the "Last weeks most popular topics". I'm amazed. I'll upload some pics of my bike as one comment suggested, but there's nothing really special or extraordinary about it- seldomly cleaned, no modifications, my daily tool to commute from Poblacion to Bel Air to the office... Just on the weekend it becomes the travel buddy and occasional fun machine. But there might be some nice pics and (hopefully) stories up in two weeks. June 12 to 15. Long weekend in the Philippines and I'll take the bike to Polillo Island, just East of Manila. First an four-hours ride on one of the possibly best roads for biking in the Philippines - the Marcos Highway a.k.a. "Marilaque", then a ferry or motobanka to Polillo and from there... Well, let's see. The bike and me are going to eat dust (or mud, rainyseason just started) as apparently there are only dirt roads in Polillo. And I want to get across the island, to Burdeos. Anybody experienced in driving a Speed Twin off-road? No, not the Scambler, the ordinary 900 "paved roads edition". It's gonna be interesting for sure... To sum it up, my plan is to conquer the Polillo wilderness with my trusted 900, and to take pictures of the bike, me, various alcoholic beverages on the basis of local rum, and some local beauties in stunning tropical island surroundings. I might be aiming a little bit high, though. I might get stuck in the mud, blow a tire that nobody can replace on the island, find out that "no electricity " means "no cold beer" but let's see... I'm looking forward to escaping the crazy Manila traffic for a bit of an exploratory ride.