Tim’s Motorcycle Diaries – Page 37

Motorcycle Lift Table Instructions

A friend and colleague retired but kindly left his DIY motorcycle stand with me when he moved to the West Coast. Here’s the construction of it back in 2016:

HERE are the plans he worked from in PDF format. Now that I’ve got the plans I can find a properly spec’d lift to use on it. My old lift is leaky and over two decades old, so the replacement will work the motorcycle lift as well as the odd car tire change.

Currently it’s home to the Honda Fireblade project:

The garage is a nice place to work (though small) for 10 months of the year, but during Ontario’s deep freeze in January/February, as outdoor temperatures often dip to -30°C and beyond, the cold emanating, even through the rubber lined floor, makes it torturous. Even with a propane heater running, working on the floor isn’t any fun for my fifty year old bones. The stand, even when lowered, has been nice to work on. Now that I’ve got access to the specs, I can source the right kind of hydraulic lift and have everything at an even more ergonomic height.

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Mid-November Last Gasps

The Tiger’s still purring to the
edge of winter!

Mid November and I’m still commuting in to work! It was -2°C while riding past frost covered grass on the way in, but a comfortable 12°C and sunny on the way home.

I should be able to two wheel it in and back for the rest of the week, but come the weekend things take a turn for the worse. If there’s salt down and icy roads this may finally be the end. Still, riding from the end of March (it would have been sooner but for a carb-dead Concours) until Mid-November is no bad thing.

In a perfect world I’ll be back in the saddle in March some time, and might even steal a ride or two in between,weather permitting. That’s four months of waiting… unless I can convince my lovely wife to let me get… THE VAN (it’s still for sale). If that happened there’s no telling where we might get to over the cold months.

That don’t look good, but it was inevitable.

In the meantime, there was a super moon!

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Demo Daze

Kawasaki Canada’s Demo-Day, if there is one in
your neighborhood, I highly recommend heading
out for a day of diverse riding experience.

There aren’t many opportunities to ride motorcycles when you first start out. If you’re a new rider buying even a second hand bike generally happens without a test ride. Based on very loose ideas of what fits and the advice of others, you wind up on a machine with little or no idea of how it might work with you. I purchased my Ninja 650 without test riding it and I often wonder if I would have had I a chance to ride other bikes.

This past Saturday I spent most of the day at Two Wheel Motorsport in Guelph riding a variety of bikes from Kawasaki Canada. Kawasaki’s demo-days lets you sign up to ride your choice of pretty much their full range of bikes, and it only costs you a donation to the Canadian Cancer Society.

The demo-day setup is a well oiled machine with a Kawasaki trailer set up along with tents to cover the bikes. After a briefing on what to do if separated and the expected ‘don’t ride like a fool’ safety talk, you’re ready to go. The ride is 20-30 minutes and took us through country roads, small towns and offered some twisty bits as well as opportunities to open up the bikes. One of the safety tips before we began was to not grab a handful of brakes if you’re coming off an older bike. The more athletic machines have such good brakes that you might launch yourself if you grab them too hard.

After the ride you get a debrief and chat with the Kawasaki people there who are very responsive to rider feedback, often taking notes on what people are saying. Apart from the opportunity to ride all of these new machines, it’s also nice to see a company so interested in getting ground-level rider feedback.

The people at the demo-rides ranged from early twenties to seniors and on some of the rides there were as many female riders as male. Some people went out on the same kind of bike that they rode in on, others were obviously looking to try something specific, and then there were the few ding-dongs like me who just wanted to try as many different bikes as they could.

I ended up riding everything from a Z1000 naked sport bike to the all rounder Versys and even a little Ninja 300. I’ll go into details on subsequent posts, but I’ll end this one saying, if there is a demo-day going on in your area, head out for a couple of three hours of riding that will expand your appreciation of just how different motorbikes can be. If they’re all run as well as Kawasaki’s was, I’ll be heading out to others at earliest opportunity!

A sea of green… a chance to ride everything from a KLR650 to a ZX-14r or a Vulcan!

Pan American Motorcycle Diaries

As I got into motorcycling, I came across Ewan McGregor & Charlie Boorman’s Long Way Round. I HIGHLY recommend it if you enjoy travel documentary. The Long Way Down is a second trip they took that felt a bit more rushed, but still very enjoyable.

The idea of being on a bike, out in the world, and seeing the world, has real pull for me. And so… the Pan American Motorcycle Diaries: From Toronto to Rio for the 2016 Olympics. Courtesy of Straw Dogs (originally published February, 2013):

The North and Central American ride

gearing for 500kms a day in the States, 2-300 a day in Central America
minimizing interstate/get there fast without seeing anything roads
the idea is to get away from the local touring scene as soon as possible and get into the once in a lifetime bit (Central & South America)

The direct route: minimal highway travel in The States

The South American Ride

A much shorter and cheaper ocean voyage, then south through Columbia

PAMD2.0: from north to west to east in South America

Using the new ferry service from Colon, Panama (on the Carribean side) to Cartegena on the north coast of Columbia.

much cheaper than trying to charter a boat down the Pacific side
regular, dependable service
more than enough space for everyone to go at once

Chilean Atacama Desert & Volcanoes

The South American portion now includes Columbia and an angle through the Atacama desert in Chile. The end result is a more economical, shorter trip (though with more time on the ground in South America) and we still get to add another two countries to the roster.

7000kms in North & Central America (6 days in The States at 500kms a day, 22 days in Central America at 2-300kms a day)
A 500km/7 hour ferry trip from Panama to Columbia
8000kms in South America (27 days at 300kms/day)

Even if we reduce the South American mileage to 200kms/day, we’re still only looking at 40 days.

With the reduction in time and cost, we could easily leave mid-May and arrive without rushing (including days off and/or diversions) at the beginning of August.

May 17th, 2016 departure from Southern Ontario.

North & Central America: 7000kms

CANADA: 325kms to U.S. border ~ first day – stop in Toledo?
USA: 2700kms to the Mexican border ~ 6 days, 6 nights
MEXICO: 1800kms to Guatamala ~ 7 days, 7 nights
GUATAMALA: 300kms to El Salvador ~ 2 days, 2 nights
EL SALVADOR: 328kms to Honduras ~ 2 days, 2 nights
HONDURAS: 150kms to Nicaragua ~ 2 days, 2 nights
NICARAGUA: 360kms to Costa Rica ~ 2 days, 2 nights
COSTA RICA: 560kms to Panama ~ 3 days, 3 nights
PANAMA: 581kms to Colon (ferry) ~ 4 days, 4 nights

North America: 6 nights
Central America: 22 nights

South America: 9500kms

COLUMBIA: to Ecuadoran border 1550kms ~ 6 days, 6 nights
ECUADOR: to Peruvian border 931kms ~ 3 days, 3 nights
PERU: to Chilean border 300kms ~ 2 days, 2 nights
CHILE: to Bolivian border 288kms ~ 2 days, 2 nights
BOLIVIA: to Brazilian border 1566kms ~ 6 days, 6 nights
BRAZIL: 1866kms ~ 7 days, 7 nights

South America: 26 nights

Basic budget

Gas per day ~ $30 avg (higher in expensive countries, lower in cheaper countries)
lodging per day ~ $60 avg each (shared accommodation)
food per day ~ $40 avg (lower/higher)
~ $130/day/person
54 day trip = ~$7000 each

Had I the means, I’d offer ten places and budget $10,000 per person and do the trip from May 17, 2016 to August 1st, 2016. The seats would be filled by people willing to document the experience using various forms of media from their own distinct perspective. I’d want people of various backgrounds who would all bring their own insights into the experience of riding through such a diverse range of cultures and climates. I’d then take the results and build a travel documentary in multiple media about the experience.

The Pan American Motorcycle Diaries

A two month odyssey along the spine of the Americas. Out of the Great Lakes basin, across the Mississippi and the Mid-West, through South Western U.S. desert, along the Mexican coast before crossing the back of Mayan Mexico and tracing the Pacific coast of Central America all the way to the Panama Canal. Recrossing to the Caribbean side of Panama, we take a ferry service to Cartegena and trek south through Columbia into Ecuador. Following through the Andes and bouncing off the South Pacific shoreline, we enter Peru and after heading inland to Machu Picchu we skirt Lake Titicaca (I just wanted to say skirt Titicaca) and head south into the Chilean Atacama desert. Crossing volcanic Chilean Andes we enter Bolivia and finally cross the back of the Andes into the Amazon basin. The rest of the trip skirts Brazilian jungle on the way to Rio on the South Atlantic coast.

60 days, 15 countries, two continents, 16,500kms!

Links:

The Original Pan American Motorcycle Diaries

Tim’s PAMD Kit 1

Bike update

A Year of Living Dangerously

Work’s been heavy as of late, and I’ve got the middle-aged itch to do something profound before I’m too old to do anything interesting. As usual, money and responsibility tie me to the earth, but in my more imaginative moments I wonder what I’d do with a year off and the money to do things that one day I’ll be too old and creaky to manage.

If I finished work at the end of June this year and had a year off I’d be back at work the following September. That would give me the better part of fifteen months to explore three of my favorite aspects of motorcycling: road racing, endurance riding and long distance adventure riding. In chronological order, here’s my year of living dangerously:

It’s seat forward, middle & back,
in ergocycle but it looks like I *really*
like that Daytona.

1… Road Racing: This spring get my race license, get a bike sorted and complete in the SOAR schedule over the summer.

A 12+ year old Triumph Daytona 600 would be a nice machine that fits into specific age (lost era) and displacement categories and wouldn’t be what everyone else is sitting on. I also fit on it quite well (see the suggestive gif on the right).

Road racing would sharpen my riding skills and let me wrap my head around some of the more extreme dynamics of motorcycle riding in a controlled environment.

Familiarity with high speed on a bike wouldn’t hurt for what I’m planning to do next, and racing over the summer would also focus my fitness training which would be helpful in building up to #2.

Costing a road racing season: ~$20,000 (including race prepping a bike and racing in a local series)

Less than 50% usually finish, it’s
difficult, astonishing and viciously
exhausting, but finishing puts you in
a very small and exceptional group.

2… Race the Dakar: Happening over New Years and into early 2017, finishing the Dakar would be the kind of thing that not many people manage. Dreamracer puts into perspective just how difficult this can be.

Leaving work at the end of June I’d be full-on training and preparing for the race. There are a number of Baja and other sand/desert focused races that would get me ready for the big one. There are also a lot of off road training courses available well into the fall. My goal would be to get licensed, certified and experienced in as many aspects of motorcycle racing as possible in the six months leading up to the Dakar.

Doing a Dakar would also be a fantastic fitness focus. With a clear goal in mind, it would be a lot easier to schedule and organize my fitness. A personal trainer and a clear targets would have me ready to take my best run at a Dakar, one of the toughest tests of mind and body ever devised. It would do a fantastic job of scratching that middle-aged urge to do something exceptional.

Costing of a Dakar: ~$98,000 Cdn

3… Ride Home: The Dakar raps up mid-January, the perfect time to begin a ride back to Canada! After resting up from the race I’d head south to Ushuaia at the beginning of February (summer time there) before riding back up the west coast through Chile.

A stop in Peru at Machu Picchu and then up the coast through Ecuador and into Columbia before loading on the Ferry in Cartegena to Panama around the one roadless bit in the Americas.

Once landed in Panama I make my way through Central America before pushing all the way up North America’s West Coast to the Arctic ocean in mid-summer (lots of sunlight!). The last leg has me finally heading south again and east across Canada and back home.

The new Tiger would do a sterling
job of taking me the thirty three
thousand kilometres home.

All told it would be just over thirty three thousand kilometres. Leaving Buenos Aires at the beginning of Februrary, and averaging 500kms a day (less on bad roads, more on good roads), I’d be looking at 68 days on the road straight. Fortunately, if I wrap up the trip at the end of July I’d have more like 180 days to do it, leaving lots of time to enjoy the magic I’d find along the way.

Cost of a trip like this? A week on the road is cheaper in South and Central America than North America. If this is a 160 day trip (with 20 days for potential slowdowns to stay within the 180 day/6 month goal), then the money can be roughly estimated using these approximations:

$150/day (gas, food, lodging, expenses) in South & Central America
$250 a day in North America

The raw numbers break down like this:

14,500kms in South America (43% of the trip) – 69 days = $10,350
5600kms in Central America (17% of the trip) – 27 days = $4050
13560kms in North America (40% of the trip) – 64 days = $16,000

For a total of $30,400 for the trip + $15,000+shipping to Argentina for a new Tiger

For the low, low price of about $150,000, I’d have a year of unique challenges, once in a lifetime experiences and get a chance to do three things that will only become more and more impossible as I get older. Some people like the idea of a holiday where they can do nothing, but that isn’t for me. I’ll take the challenge any day, if only I had the money and the time money gives.

The goal once I was home and back to daily life would be to collate the notes and media from this year of living dangerously into written and visual mediums. Being able to produce a video and book(s) out of this experience would be the cherry on top.

Besides a fantastic set of memories, some new skills and the material needed to write an epic tale, I’d also have a race bike ready to compete on again the next summer. That year of living dangerously might persist.

Are you ready for your fitting? Tailored Motorbikes & Micro-manufacturing…

I just read a good article in Motorcycle Mojo called, “Building The Perfect Bike.” In the article the author supposed that since no ‘off the rack’ bike fits properly, he would give himself a new bike budget, buy a lightly used machine and create a custom-fit. His exercise made for an interesting process, and he got closer to a custom fit, but it’s still far from a tailored motorbike.

I’ve used Cycle Ergo to great effect when considering off-the-rack bikes for fit,but you have to wonder how long it will be before we migrate from mass-produced, generic machines to personalized/tailored ones. In that future Cycle Ergo two point oh will 3d scan you and get your performance needs and produce a custom machine specifically for you.

My day job is as head of technology at our local high school. My focus there is in information technology and electronics. I work closely with our technology design teacher who has a background in robotics. We’ve both watched the rise of specialized manufacturing with great interest. Our labs have taken on 3d printers, digital routers and five axis digital CnC machines in response to this evolution in manufacturing. The prices on these devices have dropped dramatically over the past few years. It won’t be far off when you’ll be able to custom build parts from scratch for a fraction of what it used to cost.

Computer controlled, small scale manufacturing will radically change our understanding of what have always been industrial scale production processes. I suspect that in the future most of the manufacturing process will decentralize from factories and into regional shops that can produce customization on a scale unimaginable to 20th Century industrialists.

Some of the very high end motorcycle manufacturers are already embracing the idea of tailoring a machine to the rider. Even a tiny volume manufacturer like Brough Superior can now consider machining all its own pieces in response to individual customer demand. As the costs of personalized machining come down, the idea of a tailored motorbike will become the standard rather than the exception.

When you can cut your own pieces,
you can build your imagination.

One of the unseen hands that is encouraging the latest surge in the customized motorcycle scene is access to machining and manufacturing processes that used to only make sense in thousand plus unit runs. You can build an astonishingly well built customized machine nowadays because you can build the bits you need for it to your own specifications. Custom builders are a step toward truly individualized production.

Rather than plugging my dimensions into a database of bikes, one day soon I’ll be plugging my dimensions and performance needs into a blank template and watching the perfect bike form around me. The seat would be designed for my backside, the handlebar grips built to fit my hands. The system would then CAD/CAM out all the parts and custom produce everything from the frame to engine components, all to my specific needs. The distinction between OEM and aftermarket will disappear, there will only be builders.

Now *that* would be a perfectly tailored bike!

Ongoing 360° On-Bike Photography

With some second generation parts I’ve got the on-bike portrait down to a fine art. The Lammcou durable flexible tripod is a solid, dependable thing compared to the cheap and terrible flexible tripod I used before that I had to keep gluing back together. The light, inexpensive and easy to use Ricoh Theta is still my favourite go to camera. I’d like to try the higher resolution ThetaV but they aren’t cheap.

Here are the latest round of photos and video from the ThetaSC. On the afternoon of the longest day of the year my wife and I went for a romantic ride over to where we got married almost twenty years ago. On a rainy Saturday I put the waterproof cover on the camera and tried to get rained on. I didn’t get wet, but I did see a ghost on the covered bridge in West Montrose. That was a weird, atmospheric ride.

Solstice Romantic Ride:

Creepy, Atmospheric, Rainy Saturday Ride:

OK, so it’s not a ghost. A young old-school mennonite woman was walking across the bridge complete with bonnet and black dress. This is the covered bridge they used in the Stephen King movie, IT. Creepy, right?

Staying ahead of the end of the world.

Dark and sinister…

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Riding A Motorcycle

I’m up into third gear coming up on the cones fast. The wind is pressing into my chest and starting to roar around my helmet. On this introduction to motorcycling course this is as fast as we get going, I’m probably doing about 45km/hr. As my right hand rolls off the throttle and reaches for the front brake my left hand reaches out to the clutch lever and begins squeezing. As the engine disengages my left foot begins tapping down the gear shifter and my right foot is already on the rear brake and squeezing in time with the front brake, hauling the bike down from speed in surprising time. As the bike slows, the centrifugal force of the wheels spinning aren’t enough to keep the bike balanced any more, my backside and legs are also subtly beginning to balance the bike. I’m now only doing about 5 km/hr as I enter the turn but this is a tight box of cones leading to ninety degree left exit. I turn the handle bars into the corner, trying to keep my eyes up instead of looking in front of the wheel. At that moment I realize I don’t have enough momentum to get through the corner, I’ve scrubbed off too much speed. I let go of the clutch in the middle of a sharp, slow speed left hand turn, dumping the bike into first gear, it’s a jerky exit I make as I dump the clutch clumsily and begin to regain some lost momentum.

At the motorcycle course I just took many of us went from never having sat in the saddle to realizing just how complicated riding a bike is. Unlike a typical car with one hand on the wheel and one foot operating pedals, you’re using all four limbs and your body mass as a whole when riding a bike; it’s a surprisingly aerobic exercise. At the end of the first day, 2-3 hours in the class room, 7+ hours in the saddle, I was exhausted. The physicality of it is one thing, then there are the mental demands, especially when you’re new.

An instructor told us of a new rider who had just finished the course and decided to drive his new bike out to Alberta for a job. It was all very romantic. He never made it out of Ontario. The truck driver saw him coming from miles away, he even managed to slow down and stop completely when the kid on the bike, in the oncoming lane, plowed into the front of the truck at high speed… asleep on the bike. Riding a bike is a good bit of exercise when you’re experienced. It verges on a mind and body marathon when you’re new and having to think about everything you’re doing.

In addition to the technique of operating a vehicle that asks you to steer with your whole body, change gears manually using both hand and foot, and operate two sets of brakes independently, again, using both hand and foot, the bike rider is also developing a constant 360° awareness of what is happening around them. Your head is a on a swivel, you’re constantly assessing threats and dangers. It matters much less who is at fault if you’re in an accident on a bike, it isn’t likely to be a fender bender you drive away from. Defensive driving on a bike takes on dimensions that car drivers would find extreme locked away in their metal boxes.

After a weekend of getting familiar with the basic operation of a motorbike, my back is sore, my arms ache and I’m still getting over the wind/sun burn, but it was a purging exercise. If you ever wanted a challenge that puts you into a very intimate relationship with a machine, motorbiking is that. It isn’t easy. It’s demanding mentally and physically and requires your undivided attention. You can’t walk into it after drinking, drugs or even emotionality and hope to do it well enough to not be at risk, and the risk is about as high as it can get. In a world of safety at all costs, insurance company run nanny states, I’m kind of surprised that motorcycling is still allowed, but I’m glad it is.

Riding is a Zen thing that demands you surrender distractions and live in that moment, your whole body and mind deeply involved in the task before it. It’s a task that rewards you with a sense of freedom and the thrill of open speed that I’ve never experienced in any automobile; it’s the most honest form of motorized transportation, which is exactly why I answered the call. Taking the course made me realize that motorbiking was everything I’d hoped it would be.

360° Video on a Motorcycle

I borrowed a 360° video camera from work to see what it could do. This one is Ricoh’s Theta, and it produces some astonishing results (you can move the point of view around with your mouse as you watch it):

On occasion I teach media arts and one of the key aspects of that course is considering point of view in the media you create. These 360° cameras ask some challenging questions around how camera operators will present point of view in the future. At some point we’ll be telling our grand kids that we once all watched the same movie at the same time and they’ll look at us like we’re old and backwards.

Immersive video like this means the viewer tells the story by controlling their own point of view. You can watch the bike going down the road, watch me on it, watch what the other traffic is doing – it’s a different video for each person who views it.

When you upload this to youtube it’s a big file. Youtube throws up a low resolution version very quickly, but if you give it some processing time you’ll eventually get access to a full 1080p version, which offers impressive detail in all directions.

For three hundred bucks Canadian the Theta does things the more expensive GoPro can’t. It isn’t as tough as the GoPro, but forty bucks will get you a waterproof case that resolves that. If you’ve never tried 360° video, the Ricoh Theta makes for an easy introduction. I wish I had it for more than a short term loan!

It also does a good job of 360° photography:

trying the photo app on the phone with the 360° Ricog Theta.. – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

For the video above I clipped the camera to the windshield with a rubber clamp. It’s so low profile that the wind had no effect on it.

Below are some screen grabs from the video that show the native resolution of the video in the Ricoh app. In that Ricoh software you can zoom in and out of the 360° image as well as pan around it. This is as close as I’ve seen to the Bladerunner photography tool Harrison Ford uses – you can use the video or photo to actually explore the scene you’re looking at.

If you zoom right out you can see the native/fisheye view of the camera. It does an impressive job of managing the
geometry of filming in all directions simultaneously.

Stills from the garage showing off the resolution of still images on the Ricoh

You can get some pretty interesting perspectives and abstract images out of this kind of camera:

Taken at pretty much the same time as the one above. This gives you some idea of what the 360° can catch at once.

Revised Seat Geometry=Happiness

After installing a new seat cover (with some modifications), I took the Connie out for a ride. The change in geometry is a compromise, but I think it’s one I prefer. In raising the seat height I’m causing more forward lean, but I’m also easing knee flex.

The gel cushion and extra padding on the new seat cover raises the seat a couple of inches. I notice the forward lean a bit more, but the bike already has bar risers, so I’m not laying on the tank or anything. The 6° knee angle relaxing is dynamite though. I’d gladly take a bit more lean to ease the knee cramping.

The extra height above the windshield is negligible as I’m already looking over it by quite a bit. With the extra height the bike feels like it fits me better. A shorter rider would find a taller, wider seat difficult to manage, but I still have no trouble getting feet flat on the ground and riding is a much more comfortable proposition.

The seat itself is also much firmer. Instead of squishy foam I’m sitting on thicker vinyl backed by higher density form over the gel pad. The Corbin seat I was thinking about looks very low profile, so it would probably have bent my knees even more. I think I’ve made a cheaper option actually work better for me.

A ride to the Forks of the Credit on a sunny, cool Sunday tested the new setup.

Your typical weekend in the parking lot at Higher Ground in Belfountain – everything from a
1947 sidecar outfit to Ducati Monsters to the latest Yamaha R1, and everything in between

Panniers make handy coffee holders
(I used them for a bakery pick-up in Erin)

Back home, the new seat’s looking the business