Timothy King – Page 20 – Mechanical Sympathy

Motorcycles Trump Racism

Canada is far from free of racism, but it plays at a much lower volume here. Canada’s mosaic approach to multiculturalism and more open immigration policy probably have a lot to do with this. The United States’ melting pot must feel especially hot if you’re not what the ideal American is supposed to look like.

One of the things that always strikes me when I cross the border south is the unspoken friction between black and white Americans. Being a big, white, bald Canadian means I’m often assumed to be an off-duty cop, which doesn’t help things. There is so much history wrapped up in this that it feels heavy, even to an outsider. When trying to strike up a conversation with a black person in the States you are usually met with polite reticence, like they’d just rather not speak to you. It’s more trouble than it’s worth.

I get that reticence. On a previous trip, out of nowhere, at a gas stop a white guy told us that his parents told him never to put money in his mouth because black people had touched it. I guess we were supposed to laugh and feel a sense of camaraderie with this man, instead my wife and I looked at each other with WTF looks on our faces.

On my first solo trip to the States in the late ’80s my buddies and I walked into a Burger King in Milwaukee and were met with forty black faces looking at us with, ‘what the hell are you boys doing here?’ expressions. It was one of the only times I’ve been stopped in my tracks by that kind of stare (we hesitated and then went in, had lunch and all was good).

MotoGP has riders from all over the world, from Japan to
South America and everywhere between. It’s a multi-cultural
global event that doesn’t cater to racism.

On our recent trip to Indianapolis a young black woman at the counter dealt energetically with the four black people ahead of my son and I, but when we finally got to the counter she gave us a sideways glance and sauntered off in a kind of dance, eventually disappearing into the back, singing to herself. We both stood there wondering what we were supposed to do (it’s hard to pay for gas in the States when you don’t have a ZIP code). A few moments later another girl came out and served us. It’s not easy explaining that sort of thing to your ten year old.

Motorcycles on Meridian has riders of all kinds digging bikes.

That friction began to break down when we were at the Speedway. Suddenly everyone there was a motorcyclist first, even before what colour of American they were. I found it easy to strike up conversations with people regardless of colour. That positive energy followed us to Motorcycles on Meridian, where I once again found the motorcycle community outgunning any sense of racism.

The next morning at Cycle Gear we got into conversations with several groups of black riders coming into town for the Indy weekend. Once again the walls were down and we could just talk bikes. Again in Ohio, Max and I were taking a break in Wendy’s when a group of tough looking black bikers on Harleys came in, on their way from Detroit to Indy. The reticence was there at first (we were far from Indy at that point) but they soon warmed up to me. We exchanged advice on road works and left wishing each other a safe ride. Other people watched the exchange with interest.

Up in Detroit the lovely, young black woman who got our Little Caesars order sorted out had all sorts of questions about the bike and riding. Motorcycling works even if you’re not talking to another motorcyclist. There is something about the vulnerability of riding that encourages people to talk to you. They find it admirable.

The kinship you feel while riding is a very real thing, but motorcycling reaches out into the general public too. If motorcycling can overcome that tiring American black/white friction, it might just be able to do anything.

Welcome to my insanity!

I’m back in the classroom again and teaching English for the first time in more than a year. I took a senior essentials English class mainly because few people want to teach it (teachers like to teach people like themselves), and it fit my schedule. Essentials English is just as it sounds. These are weak English students who are getting what they need to graduate and get out into the workplace, they aren’t post-secondary bound and tend to find school pointless.

The trick with students this bullied and indifferent to the school system is getting them to read and write at all. Rather than drag them into a text book or make them watch the department copy of Dead Poets Society in order to prompt some writing, I thought I’d introduce them to my insanity. In a week where we’re all getting to know each other it helps if students see what you’re into. Showing your hobbies and interests is a good way to have them get to know you. If they get excited about the idea of planning a trip and it prompts them to write, it’s a many birds with one stone situation.

With some support, students quickly
got into planning a trip. 28 days,
unlimited budget!

The plan was pretty straightforward: you’ve got four weeks (28 days) starting next Monday. Assume you’ve got an unlimited budget for a road trip (gotta travel on the ground). Where would you go? What would you do? On the second day I gave them some pointers on Google Maps and some planning tools like a calendar and how to make notes online and they were off. At the moment it looks like I’ve got pages of writing from students who generally don’t. The research they’ve been doing also lets me diagnose their reading level.

Needless to say, I bravely volunteered to present first. It doesn’t feel like homework when you enjoy doing it, and mine was obviously going to be a motorcycle trip. I probably could have gone more bonkers on bike choice, but I have a sentimental attachment and some practical necessities that prompted my choice. Rather than go for the South American adventure, I decided to focus on The States, which has tons to offer, especially if you aren’t sweating the budget.

Norman Reedus’ RIDE gave me an idea of where I’d like to go, the question was, could I get to the locations in the show and back home in 28 days?

Here’s what I’m presenting:

I presented this to the class two days before it was due. Seeing an example helps and gave me a chance to explain my own process in putting together the trip (deciding on a vehicle, breaking the trip into sections, etc).

That photo I doctored of a VFR800 a
couple of years ago came in handy!

Another side benefit of something like this rather than a boiler plate reading and writing diagnostic is that is gives students a lot of control over the direction of their writing, which means I get to learn what they’re into, which helps me remember who each person is as well as offering me relevant subjects I can insert into future projects.

I’m hoping they surprise themselves with the results. If I catch some of them in the future staring wistfully at Google Maps instead of playing pointless FLASH games I’ll know that they’ve been bitten by the travel bug too!

It’s a lot to try and pull off in 28 days, but when the budget is unlimited, I want more miles!

Into the Rockies ASAP, then down the coast, across the mountains again, and then up the Appalachians home.

Yellowstone! Riding over a mega-volcano.

Death Valley and across the South West to the Twisted Sisters on the way to the Big Easy.

Back north in the Smokey Mountains and Appalachians.

I was thinking maybe an H2R or RC213 in a trailer, but then that meant driving a truck and trailer all over the place.
Better to be on two wheels all the time, and on the descendant of my first bike crush.

#edtech I.T. Management

Welcome to 2010, kindof…

We’re back in school again and it’s been a bit of a #edtech mess. Over the summer our board upgraded to Windows 7 (so now we’re only one iteration behind the most current operating system). In the process the entire network was rejigged to fit this new desktop O.S..

Because doing a massive O.S. install wasn’t enough, we also had a major hardware update, moving both models and manufacturers from several years old MDG Intel core two duos to Dell Intel i3s. If you don’t know the nomenclature don’t sweat it, the long and the short is that our school technology is basically completely different from what we were running last year; and it isn’t working very well.

Managing I.T. is tricky at the best of times. Managing it in an education environment is more so due to the privacy concerns and complexity of trying to serve people ranging in age from five to sixty five and in computer skill from caveman to cyborg. To top it off they are all going after radically different uses from physical education to theoretical physics and from pre-university to kindegarten. Pitching to the middle of this group causes frustration at either end, it’s not like running an office where everyone has similar backgrounds, ages and a common focus.

With that much difficulty it’s not surprising that our board I.T. seems to often lose sight of what their function is. Supporting effective use of technology in learning shouldn’t be far from anyone’s mind, but it often feels like the reason for being there gets lost in the complexity. On top of that, board I.T. often seems strongly coloured by business thinking, which it isn’t. One of our networks is called UGDSBcorp. I’m not sure at what point our public school board became a corporation, but the naming says a lot about the thinking.

We’re in a transitional time in information technology. What used to be closed systems meant to connect employees internally are migrating to web based services that are meant to offer greater communication, efficiency and utility. Clinging to the old way of delivering I.T. results in a lot of unnecessary overhead. An example is our email. We cling to Firstclass as an internal client but are also running UGcloud (google apps for education which includes gmail). We’re told to check our email each day. Which one? Both? I know which one I can connect to more consistently, and it isn’t the internal board one.

With the migration of apps and systems to the cloud it might be wise to push aside the intranet 1990s thinking and consider a resilient network that simply allows easy access to the internet. Privacy can still be protected on secure web-servers. If you can do your banking on them, you can certainly store student records on them. But our board clings to intranet thinking, keeping the vast majority of functionality on local servers and increasing their management work load to such a degree that they can’t keep up with basic operations.

I’ve long held that students (and staff) don’t learn responsible use of technology if you hand them hobbled technology. No one ever got on the tour de France with training wheels. The internet they see at home or on their phones isn’t the training-wheels internet they see at school, and this isn’t helpful. Instead of using the internet as a babysitter in class, teachers need to be in the middle of it, calling attention to misuse and showing best practices. A school system with less fetters would aid this and make management easier for the people who are constantly short staffed and given too little time to keep it running.

Until we have internet and technology access that rivals the up-time of what we see outside of school we have an uphill struggle convincing reticent educators and poorly trained students to learn best practices, which is supposed to be the whole point.

Night Rider

We’ve already had a couple of frosts up here and there was another one on Thursday night when I had to get over to Erin, a 90km round trip from home. It was a cool day, but sunny and the fall colours were coming on strong. I make the monthly trip over to lodge in Erin from September to June, and try to ride whenever I can. This might be my last time on two wheels for a while.

Waiting out the winter is never easy, and the coming snows tend to urge me onto two wheels even more as the darkness arrives. The ride over was cool but spectacular: a blood red sunset across some astonishing trees. I stopped in the hlls of south-west Erin at a horse farm and took a picture.

It was about 8°C (46°F) on the ride over. The Tiger takes this in stride. The only part of me that gets cold are my hands, and the hand guards and grip warmers had me covered.

I got back out at about 9:45pm. The temperature was hovering just above freezing. I had the fleece zipped up and the leathers on over top. That combination does a remarkable job of retaining heat and stopping the wind from getting in.

I pulled out onto the empty, streetlighted road and headed into the darkness. The moon was waxing gibbous and cast long shadows across the road. Any exposed skin would have been instantly frozen, fortunately I didn’t have any.

I stopped in the dark and snapped that picture on the left. Best I could do with a smartphone. I want my next smartphone phone to be a camera with some smartphone on it rather than the other way around.

A single car drove by while I was stopped and asked if I was OK, which was nice. Back on the bike I thundered through the frozen moonlight, weaving my way down empty country roads back home.

When I got in my hands were still working even though I’d only wornn normal leather gloves. My core temperature was low, but it didn’t take long to warm back up. Next time I’m out in that kind of weather I’ll try out the winter gloves. I’ll keep going until the snow flies and the roads are salted. At that point I’ll clean up the Tiger one last time and let it hibernate under a blanket until spring.

Some variations:

Blended Learning and Relevant Classrooms

I’m feeling the synchronicity of two educational situations at the moment. I’m presenting this on Monday next at our Board’s learning fair, and I just went in for an interview for a curriculum leader position in technology/elearning.

The topic of the learning fair is ‘student engagement’ but I think this is the answer to the wrong question. Engagement implies trying to tailor your teaching to make it palatable for students. Engagement is what you get when you look at the bigger picture and become relevant, it isn’t a goal in itself.

I was asked today in the interview what the future is for blended learning. In this case, blended learning implies a hybrid of elearning/in-class learning and technology. I don’t think there is a future in it, I believe it is the future, at least if we want to get an increasingly irrelevant (due to the pace of change) school system to recognize the scope of the changes happening in the world around us, and make a meaningful attempt to prepare our students for the deluge ahead.

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google had a rather profound quote, I use it in the prezi:

“Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003. I spend most of my time assuming the world is not ready for the technology revolution that will be happening to them soon,”

If the world isn’t ready, education is even less so.

In the interview I described students’ out-of-school life as a torrent of data, like standing under Niagara Falls; it’s a stimulating, multi-directional, multi-disciplinary stream of information on many topics delivered in many different formats in rapid succession. We then get them into a class room and dribble information at them, out of a teacher’s mouth, out of a text book, all of it stale, uni-directional and non-interactive; then we wonder how to engage them.

In the meantime I’m seeing students mismanage and drop information and connections they should be making because they can’t manage the information being streamed at them. They don’t know how to make most effective use of their technology, often using smart phones in the dumbest possible ways. They don’t know how to effectively vet and prioritize data and find ways to make useful, actionable connections from it.

We certainly don’t teach effective data management and analysis in our in-class information dribble of chalk boards, rows of desks and one-person-speak-at-a-time last century classes.

Blended learning, where teachers make use of the sea of data swirling around us and teach students to swim, not sink is the first step towards a relevant education system that actually prepares students for what they are likely to face. But preparing them for the data storm requires that we use the technology being developed to manage it, and the friction is great from a conservative educational standpoint.

When I was a kid, I was big into Astronomy. I memorized the nine planets, and even the big moons. Since August 2011, we’ve discovered almost 600 planets (even including Pluto’s demotion) and average about twelve new discoveries a week. The whole time I was growing up, there were only nine planets, we’re on the verge of discovering multitudes. Astronomy is just one of EVERY FIELD OF STUDY that is facing this data onslaught.

Information isn’t the limited, simple, permanent, sacred collection of knowledge it was once perceived to be. We have to stop teaching to the book and start teaching to the evolving datasphere.

Living On The Concours

It doesn’t happen often, I’m usually the one taking the photos.
A student of mine saw me riding in to school from her school bus.

I’ve been riding the Concours for over a month now. It came to me with a broken speedo reading 25073 miles. Today it’s 25784 on it – 711 miles so far. With some commuting and longer trips in the mix I’m starting to get a good sense of what the bike is capable of.

My most recent refill took me 175 miles and took just over 20 litres to refill (pardon my half imperial/half metric measurements). It looks like I’m getting about 41mpg out of it, which is quite a surprise considering how often I push the RPMs up (it just sounds so good doing it). I’ve been told you can get up near 50mpg if you don’t wring its neck, which should be doable if I’m on a longer road trip, especially if I’m covering miles at speed on the highway, which I never normally do.

The only time I pushed too hard was winding on the throttle when entering a main road a couple of weeks ago. Being so torquey, the Connie broke loose on the back wheel when I rolled on the thottle. I caught it in time but it was exciting! Hooking up the bike and keeping it upright was surprisingly easy, this Kawasaki is remarkably responsive for how big it is. Easing off the throttle and letting the tire reconnect was enough to get me straightened out and launched up the road right quick. Other than that one bit of excitement the Concours has been an easy bike to live with. It handles two up duty well, swallows the horrible roads around here with much better suspension than the Ninja had, and the engine has only gotten sweeter as I’ve started using it regularly.

With the Connie sorted I’ve been working on the rider too. I started working on my weight in February when I was shocked to learn I was over two hundred and sixty pounds. Most recently I was down to 248lbs, which is a 14lb drop, which isn’t bad considering I’m exercising regularly and have put on some muscle as well. I’m aiming for under 240, but I’m going to keep up the exercise and eating choices and just see where it lands me. The goal is still to eventually head off to racing school and not look like a tool in one piece leathers.

Twist of the Throttle

The cornering bible…

I’m currently reading Keith Code‘s Twist of the Wrist. I’ve been looking for an intelligent description of motorcycle operation that accurately explains the dynamics of two wheeled riding (which differs significantly from three and four wheeled operation).

I listened to an interview with a senior Honda engineer (I can’t remember where) and he said that after World War 2 the engineers that couldn’t go into aviation (because of the U.S. embargo that prevented a Japanese aviation industry from re-inventing Zeroes) went into motorcycle engineering because the dynamics are similar (motorcycles work in 3 dimensions like airplanes). Victory in World War 2 meant the end of allied motorcycling manufacturing as they knew it… an irony of victory, but I digress.

The Ninja takes a breather at Higher Ground, the lovely
coffee shop at the top of the Forks of the Credit in Belfountain.

Professor Code’s book explains the dynamics of motorcycle riding in better detail than anything else I’ve found. The video explains the psychology and physics of riding and dismisses many of the misconceptions.

I spent this afternoon riding over to one of the few curvy roads in the farming desert I live in to practice my throttle control and make a conscious assessment of my fear reactions to riding. I’m determined to get rid of the ‘chicken strips‘ on my tyres. I got down to my peg feelers on a couple of the long corners, finally.

The distance between driving a multi-wheeled vehicle (which I’ve got a lot of experience on) and two wheeled vehicles is massive. You have to fight a lot of habit and psychology to give the bike what it needs to corner well; the dynamics are completely different and counter-intuitive if you’re overly four wheel focused. Even the process of approaching and exiting a corner is much more complex on the multi-axis two wheeled conveyance. Driving and riding are two very different processes, and I’m frankly enjoying the complexity of the simplicity of two wheels by comparison.

Reading/watching Twist of the Wrist should be a requirement for anyone wanting to take on motorbiking, it’ll make you aware of the mechanics of riding.

I really need a track day, not for the speed but for the ability to focus on process without worrying if the person coming the other way is texting.

Motorcycle Media Musings

If you’re in the mood for a motorbike adventure to the top of the world, give yourself fifty minutes and give this a watch…

Evidently the company that runs this trip is no longer doing business, but here’s hoping they are able to get it going again, what a journey.

This is a compilation of amazing video. Other than the first track I generally enjoyed the musical accompaniment too.

What surprised me was the level of acrobatic control that is possible on a bike, and the drifting is astonishing. Between the stunt bike riding and the race footage, it makes me wonder how someone learns this degree of control. A bike with no plastic fairings that got dropped a lot must be somewhere in their past. I’ve often thought that an old dirt bike that I could drop without worrying about it would help me get a feel for the limits on a bike, even at low speeds.

On a now-for-something-completely-different in terms of motorbike media, I’m finishing up the bike hole. For decoration I wanted something bikey. My wife got me some fantastic hand drawn prints while we were in England this summer, so they were destined for the finished garage.

I also wanted some clean pictures of modern bikes that I like. We just set up a photo printing station at work, so I found some clean, high-def side views of bikes on white backgrounds that made for some nice 4x6s.

The end result is a nicely bike themed bike hole. It’s not quite finished yet, but it’s looking good.

M2: Double the Fun

I got my M2 yesterday, which means I’m off double secret probation and able to ride at night, double people and/or go on the big highways. Two hours after I got my M2 I took the bike over to my eight year old’s school and drove him home on it. It was a nice, leisurely ride through town. He hasn’t been able to talk about much else since.

Just like Nana used to drive:
The Isetta 3 Wheeler

One of our instructors at the motorbike course wasn’t a fan of taking passengers. To him it defeated the point of the whole experience; a singular, tight bond between rider and bike, and a chance to be alone with your thoughts. I think that’s an important part of biking, but I’m digging being able to share the feel of riding with my son. To that end, I’m thinking about the options available. The idea of a big touring bike doesn’t really thrill, but in the antique and adventure bike arenas there are a lot of options.

I’ve got a thing for asymmetrical vehicles. My Nana had a three wheeler when I was growing up in Norfolk. I loved that car, the door was the whole front end, and she looked so cool driving it.

Royal Enfield Bullet Classic

When I was a kid I also saw my share of Morgan Aeros, and the new Morgan 3 scratches that same itch. Bikes have a long tradition of three wheeling too. I’ve always thought the sidecar look was classic cool. When I discovered that one of the premier vintage side car shops (Old Vintage Cranks) is only 20 minutes away from me in Hillsburgh, I could see me getting something from them in the future.

They also happen to be a Royal Enfield dealer, so I could get a classic look with modern parts! With that bike a sidecar is almost a necessity! OVC is the place to get that done. A Royal Enfield Bullet Classic in blue with a matching classic side car would be an awesome way to share the open feel of riding with my family.

I think there will always be a place in the stable for a two wheeler, but it’s nice to have a not crazy-expensive option like the RE Bullet and sidecar sitting there waiting for a tear down the road. Cool chrome riding goggles and classic leather gear would be the accessory of choice.

At the moment I’m finding the Ninja to be a great first bike. It’s athletic, sounds wonderful and is always rearing to go. With my son on the back I feel the weight, especially on the shocks. Something with longer suspension travel, like that KLR I originally considered, would also allow for a better two person ride. A KLR with luggage means I’m less worried about him flying off too, something the twitchy Ninja seems eager to do.

Now that I can do pretty much everything you can do on a bike on the road, the perfect bike isn’t one bike. I’d eventually want an enduro that can go anywhere, a road specialist, and something odd-ball, like that classic bike and sidecar combo. At the moment my dream stable is a Triumph Tiger 800 adventure bike, a Triumph Street Triple naked road bike and that whacky classic with sidecar. Being able to open the garage and see those three sitting there would mean all options are on the table… and the three together still cost less than a new mid-sized SUV.

Road Specialist

Triumph Street Triple

Enduro Go Anywhere Bike

Triumph Tiger 800

Old Vintage Cranks: a hidden side to bike culture

Ural project: ready for combat!

I finally made some time to stop by OVC in Hillsburgh this week; it’s everything I’d hoped it would be. Only a few years ago this was a one man operation running out of his garage, but as the need grew he moved into a garage space and now has employees and is so busy that he is thinking about expanding again.

The shop was busy with sidecar projects as well as working on what they sell as a dealership (Urals and Royal Enfields mainly). It was organized, but busy, and every inch of space was in use. Out front they had sidecar rigs on a Royal Enfield 500cc and the fantastically Soviet styled Ural.

Royal Enfield & sidecar

I’d gone to see the Royal Enfield, I think the Bullet Classic is a fantastic looking classic bike. With the modern engine and fuel system it’s super dependable. At 500cc I thought it would be much too small, but I (at 6’3″) felt more comfortable on it than I do scrunched up on my Ninja, which has a lower seat and higher pegs. The problem came when I saw the Ural.

The Soviet cool Ural

I was indifferent to it, though impressed by how tough it is from online writing like Hubert’s Timeless Ride. When I finally saw one in person it has a unique aesthetic that you don’t find in any other bike. The lights are blocky and purely functional where an Italian would have made them streamlined and an American would have drenched them in chrome. There is nothing dainty about the Ural, it’s a tough machine built by tough people for a tough environment. If you dig Soyuz space capsules and the no-nonsense style of Russian technology, you’ll totally dig the Ural. It comes with a movable spotlight (standard), but machine gun mounts are an option… this is the bike that Russians manufacture for their own military, and it looks it.

Max digs that Bullet Classic

After looking at the Royal Enfield and the Ural, I wouldn’t want to saddle the RE to a sidecar, it’s such a pretty bike on its own, and without the extra weight, even with 500cc, it would move around in a spritely fashion.

The Ural is a beast, and with the sidecar it looks like it could come thundering out of Moscow to chase the Nazis back to Germany (the bike itself is copied from German designs).

OVC’s busy show room

If you have the time to drop by Old Vintage Cranks in Hillsburgh, it’ll show you another side of motorcycling culture about as far away from the big manufacturer’s aesthetics as you can get. With no American=too much, German detailism or Japanese techno-crush, the bikes at OVC offer you another
avenue into biking that’s so not mainstream that it’s shocking. That it’s a tiny, independent, busy, working shop packed to the gills just adds to the flavor.

It’s only a matter of time before my son and I are on a Ural pounding through the woods, or I’m on a Royal Enfield weaving along back roads, enjoying a bike that’s as much a part of the scenery as the scenery is.

If you’re heading out of the GTA, I have a suggestion, head north on the 410 out of Brampton (it turns into Highway 10) and hang a left onto Forks of the Credit Road (about 10 minutes up the road after the 410), enjoy that, grab an ice cream or coffee in Belfountain. Hang a right onto Bush Street/Wellington Rd 52 until it Ts in Erin, go right to the light, left to the next light and you’re at Trafalgar Road North. Hang a right there and OVC is on your left about five minutes up the road as you ride into Hillsburgh.

There are lots of nice riding roads around there if you’ve never been up that way before.