Adventure riding & the recession

[warewolf]

In the late 80's I was working for IBM in Sydney. Lots of workmates then had 3 kids and a mortgage that had climbed from 7% to nearly 20% interest... not easy and none of their doing, these were modest family people who'd allowed for a climb to the mid-teens but that last 5% was trouble. My term deposits to pay for uni were earning high-20s. IBM had a "full employment" policy, ie you had to under-perform despite remedial initiatives for 9-12 months to get the sack. When the company dived with the recession, first they tried to improve morale by reiterating the above, then they started sacking people for the first time in its history. An interesting time to be there, just observing corporate behaviour. And some ppl wonder why I am cynical about big corporations.

Around then I went from $40/week in juice for the 5.0L V8 to $10 in the CBX250. Wasn't my car but man did the running costs suck (went OK though with sticky tyres ).

Hey Ryan, someone has to be positive and keep spending money, keep the economy ticking over .

In reality my job was removed (I suspect) as a sneaky way to restructure the company. Anecdotally there's plenty of work, as ppl are prepared to pay for systems that save them money.

Down in this part of the country, judging from tyre sales dirt biking seems to have stopped but the Harley and sportsbike market are stronger than ever. Put it down to dirt bikes being more of a toy for those with less, and the ppl with expensive bikes are more sorted financially so haven't had to give it up (yet).

And if we're apportioning blame, let's not forget the sub-prime market in the USA where ppl were given mortgages for 110% of the house value. The extra 10% was spent on booze, bikes & easy women, then they f@cked off leaving the investors out of pocket. That's not something that happened here, as far as I'm aware. NZ is simply caught in the aftermath. The financial systems are linked behind the scenes.

[mazz1972]

So far so good for us.

My work is doing very well. We've just had three very good months, January sales were a record, and we are crazy busy. Having said that, we are part of a public company and some of the other entities that are part/fully owned by our company (some in Oz), are not doing so well and have had to restructure, reduce staff, take salary cuts etc, so the overall result of our public company is not so great.

Hubby works for an earthmoving firm. One of their bigger clients recently went down the gurgler owing substantial $. However hub's firm seem to be still ticking over and very busy at times, so haven't had to reduce staff as yet.

[Crisis management]

Well, for a while there I thought I was the only one without any work, glad some of the rest of you are joining in!
With the building industry having crashed to a stop up here there's not a lot of scope for drawing pictures of houses and its been a quiet couple of months now. However, it's also been a chance to sit back and decide whether I want to continue in this line or find something different for the next 20 years, so I'm currently investigating a career change....

Biking, well I have looked at the 990 and thought "maybe I should have kept the DR, thats another 10k sitting there" but we are a way off that decision yet and in the interim it's a matter of not spending as readily and keeping spending to the real neccessities, not the frivolities (unfortunately the new rear tyre on the 990 gets called a frivolity now).

Fun huh?

[junkmanjoe]

one off the bigger imployers down here, has just culled
9 staff,,,,, some my mates.... our team will lose one more this week.....shite....
whats next...

[Paladin]

Interesting that within a diverse group there seems to be a general theme that the recession is affecting a lot of people in one way or another!

[jafar]

We have had to tighten the belt a bit(okay a lot). The recession hit for me over a year ago when I had to close down my business & get a "real job".
Being self employed was a lot of hard work, now I get 4 weeks annual leave & someone else has to chase the bad debtors
We are starting to feel the effects of the slowdown a bit, sadly I think the worst is yet to come.
Tis a known fact that business slows in winter anyway, add to that the fact that recession is here & we are all looking @ saving our funds, this will only drive the recession deeper.

Money's short times are hard

[pete376403]

10 people at my employers made redundant - ranged from sales to technicians.
Fortunately for me I dodged that particular bullet but now workiing twice as hard to keep up. The pisser is that we had the work, but seems no-one is paying for it.
Has it affected my adv riding? Buying second hand tyres and making at home what other people pay for. But we KLRistas are notoriously cheap arse even in good times. Wondering if I could get the thing running on used cooking oil and if I did, how much of a power increase I could expect?

[junkmanjoe]

i pretty much live on trademe hunting for a bargans.

and i do find then,

so it keeps my bikeing budget down.

[Ruralman]

This thread has been a great read - good to hear what is going on and unusually for this site this thread is packed with some down to earth honesty about some pretty trying personal stuff.

My main income is from sheep farming - we're getting around $30/lamb more than last year so that has been really good. The downside and reason theres not a lot of frivilous spending by sheep farmers is that this follows 3 tough years of poor prices, plus lamb numbers are generally back on many properties due to the flow on effect of last years drought.

In my case I had to write the biggest fucking cheque of my life to get settlement with my ex late last year (after 2 years of protracted negotiations) and had to fix the interest rate for a year - before they started coming down.
So if it wasn't for the extra debt servicing we'd be having a really good year.

As it is - I am careful with expenditure but it hasn't curtailed any biking - there seems to be enough other things that do that!!. Having said that if I can't get out on the Tiger I can usually jump on the Gasser for a pretty exciting blast around here.

From what I have read (thoroughly recommend reading Gareth Morgan's article in the latest Listener - explains the background well and his thoughts for whats coming) - I also agree that this thing isn't going to turn around any time soon and could get a lot worse yet in NZ.
Good luck for all you guys finding work

[cynna]

18 jobs are going at my work which is probably around 10% but i should be ok. some pretty scared people at work tho - its funny how much harder the useless ones are working now tho

after losing my sixth day one other thing i cut out on my rides is my pub stop before i head off to the river

[junkmanjoe]

A sawmill closed its doors on friday, 25 people out of work.
there boss said, thats it were fuked, dont come monday.
thats a bit hard, no warning no leave pay,, nothing.

[warewolf]

thats a bit hard, no warning no leave pay,, nothing.

That might be how the bosses found out, too.

[Tony W]

My thoughts are with you guys that have had unexpected 'career changes ' thrust upon you. I have been lucky so far, but you can never be sure what's going to happen next week. I know one of our local KB guys has had his bike on Trademe because of these circumstances.

On the riding front, I am sticking pretty close to home these days to try and cut costs unfortunately. . although I spent far too much at the bikeshop last month. I had to buy new Z6 tyres for my RS. The prices makes dirt bikers like me wince. . . and I just couldn't resist those matching leather trou. . !
If anything changes I'll be in deep $!@#. I'll be very happy if I can get through this year and will be thankful if I can keep what I've got.

Best wishes to you all.

[buggsubique]

go here if you're looking to save on lube costs.

[El scooto]

Well it's safe to say someone hasn't told my bike about the recession, It cost me $450 on parts just the other week! And they took two weeks to arrive and then they had the wrong parts!

Luckily for me though work is going well and my department is having a bumper year. Sorry to be a positive prick like my brother. Didn't realise the country was in such a sorry state.

John