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Harley-Davidson published a teaser photo on their site today. Looking forward to a cruiser launch again as the rest next month is circuit stuff. For the Harley launch I'll wear some new kit, the Alpinestars Drift Leather jacket, Alloy gloves and Suomy Jet 70's. Tor

Oh the life of a motorcycle journalist. I have lots of time off but when it really kicks off it's a 24/7 job. It's like being in the army, you hang around, train and stay idle most of the time waiting for action. When action comes you're rearing to go. I was in the Norwegian Army. Everybody has to do some duty in Norway but not everybody go to the Telemark Battalion. This is voluntary and I volunteered. Here's a couple of photos. I spent nearly a month in Norway with my family over Christmas. Usually I do lots of work during this time but this year I hadn't brought the correct external hard drive with me so it had to wait what I had planned to do with videos. Action in February includes the 2012 Harley-Davidson launch in Marbella in just two weeks time. Tomorrow I should know which bike I'll be testing and on February 2nd I'll have the full press release. Right now there's a logistical problem to solve as I'm going to the Paul Ricard circuit in the South of France the day after testing the Harley's. To fly from Malaga to Marseille is about the same as flying from London to Marseille but the trouble is that there are no flights so it looks like I will have to fly via Paris. And you wouldn't believe it but there seem to be a shortage of direct flights from Manchester to Malaga even there forcing me to fly via Madrid. Not ideal. I will also take both full racing kit and custom riding kit. This involves two different helmets and I probably have to leave my laptop at home because of this so that my open face helmet can go in my hand luggage. The last time I flew with two helmets was for the Moto Guzzi Norge/Ducati Monster 1100 Evo launches and then my beautiful Suomy Mille Miglia open faced helmet was stolen by Alitalia staff somewhere between Florence-Rome-Sicily. I even reported it to the Sicilian airport Police because I was furious. This has now been replaced by the Suomy Jet 70's Matt Black (see below). The major problem leaving my laptop is that I'm doing two launches and have nowhere to backup video so will have to boost my SD storage capabilities to ensure I get all the onboard video that I want. Note to self; Don't do too much onboard on the Harley's as roadside stuff always looks better for cruisers. Then in three weeks time I jet off to Abu Dhabi with Ducati to test the 1199 Panigale at the Yas Marina circuit. That's the big one everybody is waiting for and I'm very excited about this. After this gig I'm hooking up with a mate for a night out in Dubai. He works in the oil industry and I've heard talk about big ass yachts taking us from Yas Marina to Dubai. I can't wait to help spend some of that oil cash before I'm in full writing/editing mode. I'll tweet and FB all along so make sure you follow me on twitter etc. Tor 

New additions to the 2012 riding kit includes the 2012 Alpinestars Supertech R boots, Suomy Capirex SE Apex and Suomy Jet 70's Matt Black helmets. The leather suit in the pictures is the Alpinestars Tech 1-R suit that has all the latest in riding safety and it's as comfortable as racing suits get. I'll continue using my Alpinestars Barcelona leather jacket for more relaxed testing service. I will also add the TOR hoodie to the shop shortly. More details on all this soon. Ride safe. Tor

I rocketed off into space on a little journey on the MV Agusta F4. Here's the result. Tor 17000

I've hit 6.666 subscribers and 37 million views on my YouTube channel.

Finished quite a lot of the coverage from EICMA this weekend and one of the edited videos. I have published lots of RawFile video directly from my camera as press conferences and such in Italian I will never edit into anything viewable so they just go up as they are for those that understand Italian and are interested. I've also worked on the Milan babes photos and video and here's some of them. Ciao

Got home last night from Milan after a long travel route home as I had to wait more than 5 hours in Zurich with nowhere to sit permanently with power so work was only sporadic. When I got home I was happy to see that my 2012 Alpinestars Supertech R's had arrived. Can't wait to bed them in! I'll get some new Suomy stuff soon as well to replace the one stolen from my luggage by Alitalia this last summer in between Rome and Sicily somewhere. Today I enjoyed some Headbanger Motorcycles Strong Ale. I'll try to get some more of those over because they are very tasty.

Headed over to the EICMA show for the sixth time since the new show at Rho opened for the first time in 2005. I've only missed one show and that was because I had to be in Texas for a Triumph launch. Due to logistics and the Ducati press conference on the 7th I flew over via Switzerland on the 6th. During the day on Monday 7th I headed up to Rho on the Metro and picked up my press pass. Last year I had to queue more than 40 minutes to get my pass so none of that this year. I'm pressed enough for time as it it. I did as I usually do and went into the halls even though you're not supposed to. I wandered around and got a few mobile shots of some new bikes we hadn't seen yet. After some work in the press office I headed directly over to the Ducati press conference in a theatre in Milan. There Ducati finally unveiled the 1199 Panigale S and 1199 Tricolore S. It's a true wonder machine with its claimed 195hp and an extreme light weight. It's a certain checkmate indeed for 2012 in terms of performance. I'd just like to tell you that I launched a CG of a Ducati 1199 in 2006 with the exhaust in the exact same place. I'll post pictures later. On the 8th it was time for the show itself and Press day. Thousands of people seemed to be walking around with their brand new DSLR's but man do they come small these days as some of the cameras were smaller than mobile phones. Basically EICMA as usual lets in too many punters on press day resulting in me skipping most of the press conferences and instead concentrating on a quiet stand for proper photos. Nevertheless even that strategy proved to be only half successful as I struggled for clean shots again. That's why you'll see so many close ups rather than whole bikes. Whole bikes are boring anyway, we've got the press kits for that. I hope you'll find the coverage interesting. I'm more interested in the visual initially and then proper stories later. Plenty of video over at my YouTube channel from EICMA. 52 all in all so far I believe. EICMA 2011

Just finished a major re-vamp of the Raptorsandrockets.com design and functionality by re-designing some of the gif's and removing old non functional links. I have also fixed some bugs and script errors that plagued the old blog making me do most updates on social networks etc rather than here at the blog. We'll see if I'll do more exclusive stuff here now again in the future to give you more reasons to come and visit! Some pages in the archive will still be like they used to be but everything new will be flashy like this page. I hope you like it! Below is a video showing my best moments of 2011. Tor

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