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I'm currently buried under tons of snow in Norway and I have spent time with family and friends here since Christmas. I'll soon head back to the UK, but not before Carlos and I have finished at least three new songs for our new music project. Here's a teaser from our first song, Raptor in the sky:

Jason Smith sent me this picture yesterday of his Ducati Hypermotard tattoo. How cool is that? The tattoo shows me pulling a wheelie at the original Ducati Hypermotard 1100 launch in Sardinia May 2007. A Tor T-shirt is on its way in the mail. By Gloucester-ink. Pics and tattoo by Dean Bragg. Tor

Dear reader I have some good news for those waiting in eagerness for one of the biggest launches in 2010, the Multistrada 1200. I've got the invitation and the launch will take place in Spain in early March. I shall do my best to understand and test all of the many technical innovations featured in this new Adventure sports tourer from Ducati. There will be HD video and hopefully lots of it if I get my way with it. Stay tuned. Tor

This time around at Estoril everything went according to plan for Aprilia and I had a great time on the 2010 Aprilia RSV4 R.

I landed in Florence on schedule and hooked up with my driver that took me to the launch hotel near the Mugello circuit. I couldn't believe it when the Aprilia rep told me upon arrival that the launch had to be cancelled due to 5 engine seizures. All we could do was to have dinner, drinks and then call it a day. I published the official videos and a blog from the hotel and then the following day I transferred into Florence again as my flight wasn't until Thursday morning. Big disaster for Aprilia and a complete waste of time for me. However Aprilia will re-schedule the launch for another date later this year.

Below you'll find the music video that I have directed and produced. And since I've done that there's also bikes in it. Let's see if you can spot the B-king in all the scenes! Featuring the lovely Carla and myself around the Northern Quarter in town. The Backstreet Girls have just today released their 15th studio album and are celebrating their 25th Anniversary. Tor

I am very pleased to announce that I have made my first music video and also published it in HD which is also a first. None of you should be surprised by the fact that I love my music by now and this film below features music by one of my favourite bands accompanied by fast bikes. Hope you'll enjoy my film. Click on HQ or HD to view it in the best possible resolution. TS

Published a long version of the Cape Town to Victoria Falls film the other day and you can see it below. Yesterday I did my usual Thursday night saying hello to friends in Chorlton and I'm making a little film for Facebook only with some music by Kristyna Myles and friends and more. Before heading home I popped by Dolcimer and had another chat to DJ Leejanda as we have planned a little show where I'll premiere my Ultimate R1 launch film accompanied by live DJ'ing. Big screen of course and the result will be published on YouTube. I want you to come and watch it too, so I'll publish the date when we have decided one. Tor

G'day from sunny Sydney. I'm still alive despite a scorching hot sun yesterday at Eastern Creek (more than 40c...) The 2009 Yamaha R1 is a real blast and very clever! More about that bike in my full test. Whilst here in Australia I have also been invited to the 2009 Ducati Streetfighter 1098 world launch that takes place at Ascari in Spain in March. Always something to look forward to and that's good! More words on the below subjects as soon as I can justify spending time on the blogo! Tor

Greetings from Sydney! I arrived last night and headed straight to the launch hotel with the UK journos to get some stuff for today's video log and a drink before heading to my hotel in the central areas of Sydney for a couple of days. On Saturday I'll also head over to the launch hotel for four nights where I'll ride both the new Yamaha XJ6 Diversion and YZF R1 for two days on road and track. Got a haircut this morning at a cool little hair salon called Aria Japanese hair salon. Perhaps I should find myself a Japanese wife whilst here in Sydney! Today I've enjoyed myself in splendid weather in the Darling Harbour area. A bucket of prawns and a beer made me love Sydney straight away! Bondi beach next, but should I also go Sky-Diving from 14.000 feet and do a jetboat thingy before I fly home? I've yet to decide. Tor

Left Manchester very early for my morning flight to London Heathrow where my connection to Sydney via Singapore waited. Fixed my Aussie visa only yesterday and the lady from Quantas managed to register wrong passport number so the BA staff at Manchester airport had to call someone in Canberra to fix Qantas mistake with the Australian authorities. Anything goes in my world, and also this went fairly smooth despite Qantas mistake with my passport. Then it was fog all over England this morning so the flight down to London was delayed an hour or so and we landed on autopilot with only 250 metres of visibility. The pilot told us they could land with only 75 metres visibility, but it's still fairly exciting shall we say... Was a bit worried about my luggage as we landed on the new Terminal 5 and my Singapore flight were from T4, but it did arrive on time and all! In 26 hours I'll be in Sydney. zzzzzzzz Tor

I wish you all a Merry Christmas! I have a busy weekend ahead of me now which is all about getting ready for Christmas as I leave for Norway on Monday to spend the holidays with my family and friends. I will bring my laptop though so there may be a couple more updates before the new year. When I get back from Norway in the new year I only have a few days home before I jet over to Sydney in Australia for the first and perhaps biggest world launch in 2009. We're talking about the big bang Yamaha R1 and the XJ6N/S. I have also been invited by Pirelli to their tyre launch at the high speed oval in Nardo at the heel of Italy. I can't wait to see which bikes Pirelli have booked for us on this launch which will be all about outright top speed! Stay tuned and you'll know what happens first! Below is a selection of the Xmas cards we have received so far! Tor

Headed over to Liverpool airport today in a taxi almost at the same price as my ticket with Ryanair. On the side of the Ryanair aircraft it was painted "Bye, bye Latehansa"! How suitable it was then that my flight to Oslo was 30 minutes delayed and then after take-off we had to return to Liverpool airport due to a hydraulic problem. 3 hours later a new aircraft was ready and I guess Lufthansa can start painting their aircrafts with "Bye, bye RyanCheapShitair"! The least I'd had expected after a maintenance emergency landing that delayed me more than 3 hours would be a free drink, but no they had the cheek to even charge Euro prices for the Sterling! My sister picked me up at Torp airport and we then had a 5 hour drive to the South of Norway to my family all night! We were very tired when we finally arrived in the early hours. zzzzzz T

Picked up my new custom painted trainers in town today! They're ace I think and Chris at Moot-Illustration did a great job! He'll do yours too if you contact him on the site! I then continued doing some more Christmas shopping. In the evening I met this mystery woman again and we had a great time over some lovely Tapas in Hale. TS

I wish you all a Merry Christmas! I have a busy weekend ahead of me now which is all about getting ready for Christmas as I leave for Norway on Monday to spend the holidays with my family and friends. I will bring my laptop though so there may be a couple more updates before the new year. When I get back from Norway in the new year I only have a few days home before I jet over to Sydney in Australia for the first and perhaps biggest world launch in 2009. We're talking about the big bang Yamaha R1 and the XJ6N/S. I have also been invited by Pirelli to their tyre launch at the high speed oval in Nardo at the heel of Italy. I can't wait to see which bikes Pirelli have booked for us on this launch which will be all about outright topspeed! Stay tuned and you'll know what happens first! Tor

Today has been an absolute fantastic day! Not only did I become an uncle for the first time today, I also had a great time at the Manchester Xmas market! I congratulate my sister Angelika and her husband Haakon with a newborn and healthy baby boy that they have named Herman. To celebrate, I had Champagne and dinner in the splendid company of a very gorgeous woman at Sam's Chop house in town.

Whilst I am still finishing more stuff from the Daytona 675 launch, I have made another film. It's all action with lots of cool triple noise from the Arrow mufflers. I hope you like it. Tor

I had a great day and a pleasant evening yesterday. Spent the day on the track and road. Then we all had dinner together in the hotel followed by drinks in the piano bar. After deciding not to join the Triumph guys on a night out in Cartagena city (was considering my head the following morning) Magnus from Swedish Bike magazine and I had a couple of night caps. We spoke mostly about how difficult the online advertising situation is in Scandinavia. It's worth mentioning that if you get a Marketing manager position in any of the Scandinavian countries it's usually a job for life and things change slowly. Anyway, this morning I felt fresh and was awake early to do some more work before my 10 O'clock transfer to Murcia airport. Being on one of these flights to and from Spain in the winter is the same as spending 3 hours in an old people's home. Pretty much an army of white and in some occasions pink hair everywhere. It takes a while to board you could say. Reaching Manchester it was low and frosty fog so we had to circle above the Peak district a couple of times before being allowed to land. I wish I had had my camera out as I got a perfect Birdseye view of the Cat & Fiddle road. I have published the video that I made at the Kristyna Myles gig last week too. You can see the full 1 hour gig below. There's some beautiful music there if you're into soul and even some funk. Tor

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It turned out to be a productive day yesterday after all and I got lots of nice shots despite the grey weather. It did dry up and we all got our knees down. Today we started on the Cartagena circuit again as it's finally a sunny day! So this morning I got the chance to do several more track sessions including a couple of sessions with onboard video that you can see here later. After lunch we did a short road ride where I did some more video on the way. A short action teaser from the first day of riding below. My thanks goes to the Triumph staff that made the whole event flexible enough for everyone to get whatever they needed of footage and video. TS

I am now sitting in my hotel room as the first track day at Cartagena on the Daytona 675 has been postponed until after lunch due to appalling weather conditions here in Spain. So I'm working and have published some pictures from the press kit. I may even have time to publish a short vid from yesterdays press conference. The problem from the hotel seems to be that the wireless connection doesn't like FTP as it keeps stopping the transfer with annoying regularity. More later after I have ridden the bike. If today's weather continues into the afternoon Triumph may change tomorrow's road ride to another track day at Cartagena too which I'm all for! Garry McCoy in the action shots. Tor

Just arrived in Spain at the La Manga Club resort. Watch the Vlog below.

Some great news today too! I have been talking to Backstreet Girl's manager Vegard about using the bands music in a selection of my videos. And after I showed the band the intro Ducati 1198 clip that I'll use for the long version of the launch film (including video interview of Troy Bayliss) they gave me the go ahead. To celebrate I published that clip for all to see as I'll change it again before the full Ultimate film. You can see that clip below. Also, the work on the YouTube channel continues and today I was approached by YouTube to work even closer on new features and more. This should improve the viewer experience further. I have also upped the quality of compression in my films and the result again is in the below first film with that sort of compression. I'm now also ready to pack my bag once again as I fly to Spain tomorrow for the 2009 Triumph Daytona 675 launch. Next report will be from my hotel near to the Cartagena circuit. See you soon. TS

It's all about the video editing from Portimao for me now. I am also transcribing my video interview with Troy Bayliss. Another very good news I received today is that I will indeed attend the 2009 Yamaha R1 and XJ6 world launch in Sydney, Australia in January 2009. Big Bang R1 and Eastern Creek, here I come! But before that, I'm flying over to Spain next week for Triumph's launch of the 2009 Daytona 675. That's a bike I also really like as it's so narrow and agile so Cartagena should be a blast on the 675. Tonight I'm going on a whiskey tasting event here in Chorlton with my friends and then have a lie in tomorrow before full throttle again. See you soon! Tor

Wrote my article today, but still had time to chill out on the beach for a while after lunch. After all, evenings are all work when on a launch. Don't get me wrong, I'm having drinks with the guys and all, but then continue working until 1-2AM before going to bed. I still have a million things to do and soon it's time to edit some of the great video footage I've got too. I had time to say hi to some of my friends from the North Europe and Japan groups that just arrived today to ride tomorrow before transferring myself to a different hotel nearer to the airport. Arrived fairly late so ordered a Portuguese Pizza take away to the room and continued work with images and video. Need to rest a bit tomorrow as I haven't gotten much sleep these days in Portugal. TS

Good morning! It's 06:40 in the morning here in Portimao and I'm watching a beautiful sunrise. Just after breakfast we all head out to the Algarve circuit which is a 20 minute drive from here. At 9 O'clock there's a press conference at the track before we finally get to ride at 10 O'clock. I should be back at the hotel just after 5 sometime for the first update and first impressions of the 1198. The first impressions has been added to the 1198 link and also to the news section. Bike is great! The shower I had after riding today was like heaven for my sore limbs. The 1198 S really pulls and stretches your body as it's pulling so strongly. After shower we all headed into the fishing village for a very nice dinner. Lots of the guys were surprised to see Troy Bayliss having a cigarette with his drink. I don't really understand why, let the man enjoy himself. Had a chat at the bar to Troy and Heather Watson. One of Troy's mechanics is Swedish so the subject as I'm Norwegian went towards what Troy called "Stink" which really is called Snus. It's a smokeless tobacco really and very popular in the Scandinavian countries. I usually bring some when I'm flying long haul, but had some with me on this one too. I offered Troy some, but he wasn't up for it tonight. He still agreed it's good stuff though. Troy's moving to Queensland now and his wife and kids are back in Monaco now packing. I wish him all the best and perhaps a comeback in 2010? Heather is now trying to learn Japanese as her main job next year is to take care of Nori Haga in his campaign for the world superbike crown on the 1098R. Tor

I'm now in Portimao and have already made the first film. It's uploading now as we speak and I'll post as soon as finished. From a rainy day in Manchester to clear skies and sun here in Portugal is great! Had lunch with the Ducati guys earlier and there's a couple of surprises for us journos once again. My bet is on Troy Bayliss being here to show us around the technical Portimao circuit tomorrow. That'll be a great privilege! Tor

What a life! I'm finishing deals and contracts for 2009 right now. I can't hide the fact that I'm doing well, but I want to invest in more equipment and more exclusive European tests next year. I thought I could use a Sales Manager to bring in some advertising to this site and to the YouTube channel. But it just doesn't work well that way so I have to try to do more myself. I am also pleased to be able to announce a new cooperation here at Raptorsandrockets.com with BSN, the voice of British motorcycle racing. So as of from now (or at least when I'm back from the Ducati 1198 launch) we will cover all aspects of roadracing again powered by professional content. They'll get to pick a few sportbike launches in return. So, on Monday I jet over to the Algarve coast in Portugal to test the all new 2009 Ducati 1198 at the brand new Portimao circuit. I am looking forward to both riding the bike and to test on a new circuit that I've already heard fantastic stuff about. Been on the phone with Yamaha today as well discussing launches, flights and all that. I am one of a few freelance journalists that actually pay for most of my flights myself. With Yamaha this is the case as I'm invited centrally and not by a specific importer. The rich advertising fuelled magazines still get most of their travel cost covered of course, but I'm not complaining because I believe in a society with differences based on how different people actually are. So I mentioned the flights again to Yamaha's Marketing boss and said I'd be happy covering most flights as long as it's not to Australia or something. Where is the 2009 Yamaha R1 and XJ6 world launch do you think? You got it, Australia! Anyway, I haven't been promised the spot yet but we're going to do more Yamaha soon. I haven't worked out the 09 R1 quite yet, but it sounds more like a growling V-twin than an in-line four which must be a good thing! My schedule can change drastically from just day to day as the launch invites streams in with the usual irregularity. Expect lots of good stuff in 2009. Tor

As you will have noticed, I love to promote new and upcoming artists in my bike films. I have lots of musician friends, and one of the most talented is Elizaveta from Los Angeles. Finally I have been able to add one of her great songs onto one of my films. I'm very chuffed about it and you can see it below. I am hoping to do more soon with guitar maestro Adam Palma as well as soon as we can make something happen in a studio. Then you've got Charlie Allen that's also a great singer/songwriter, but he's all over the place at the moment doing ABBA show's in Sweden. Anyway, on Sunday I fly to Milan. On Monday I'm attending the Ducati press conference followed by a Gala dinner where I'll be chatting to all the important people again. Busy days! TS

November looks likely to be fairly busy with two high profiled sport bike launches, the Milan show and more. Very shortly after the Milan show Ducati will launch one of its biggest 2009 news and I'll be riding it at the brand new Portimao circuit in Portugal. Then towards the end of November Triumph are launching its 2009 version of the Daytona 675 at Cartagena in Spain where I'll also be in place both for a day on the circuit and for a day of road riding which will make for a very comprehensive test of Triumph's midrange sportsbike. I have also spoken to Aprilia about the RSV4 launch which is not planned for date and location yet. 2009 will be a big year for sport bikes. 2009 looks to be the year when I'll start doing some Kawasaki launches too, but unfortunately the ZX-6R launch that takes place in Japan was too expensive (something in the range of £5000 per journo). We're looking at a possibility for the new 1700cc cruisers as the first opportunity. We are not going to test any of the 2009 Harley-Davidson models as a cause of some not so well thought through politics from the American giant. When there's a possibility for some exclusiveness again we'll be there. Tor