Category: Tim’s Motorcycle Diaries

Costello’s BMW is a thing of beauty.

Digging out an old BMW from the woods the other day was an emotional roller coaster.  What we ended up finding wasn’t what we thought it was though.  Jeff’s original plan was to find an old air head BMW and convert it into a cafe racer.  Bill Costello’s wonderful example was what motivated him aesthetically.  BMW turned out a lot of air cooled boxers before recently adopting an air/water cooled combo.  You think it’d be easy to pick one out to strip apart back to basics.

Turns out that isn’t the case.  As we wheeled the old R100RT out of the shed we were struck with a custom paint job and some interesting looking badges.  It turns out that in 1983 BMW Motorrad was celebrating its 60th anniversary and produced 300 special edition machines, and we were looking at one of them that had been sitting in a shed for eleven years.

It took a few hours to get back with the bike, but once in the driveway we were looking it over by flashlight, trying to get a handle on what it was that we’d recovered from the grips of time.

The next morning over coffee a discussion started around just how special this anniversary model might be.  It took Jim showing up with a cell phone that actually worked at the cottage (thanks Bell) to get online and begin filling in the gaps.

As the rain thundered down outside we discovered that these bikes often sell for three times what Jeff had bought it for.  On top of that a lot of BMW aficionados are against pulling apart and cafe-ing older BMWs, especially anniversary specials.  This left us in an awkward place.  Do you cut it to pieces and build the cafe racer you’ve been dreaming of building, or do you restore what might be a valuable piece of history?

If you’re going to run into problems buying an old bike, this is a good one to have.

Putting air in the tires for the first time in a long time, they held it too!

A CRV, the perfect off road towing vehicle!

It took a lot of pushing to get it that far.

Ever wondered what eleven years of dirt looks like?  Like that.

Lots of nice details on this old BMW

Even my leaner summer weight is still overweight / borderline obese.

I got called in for a checkup at my local MDs last week.  I’m not a little fellow, at 6’3″ I usually tip the scales at about 110 kilos (~240lbs).  At that weight I don’t carry much extra weight anywhere, though my BMI tells me that I’m on the verge of obesity there, which doesn’t make it a very effective tool for encouraging reduction.  According to the BMI I should weigh 175lbs, which is astonishing.  I think I’d look emaciated at that weight on my frame.  Even as a lean teen I was about 200lbs.

The checkup was a followup for blood pressure, which I’m in a healthy range on.  The shock came when I got weighed.  The middle of winter isn’t the best time to weigh yourself, especially when we’re in the middle of the coldest winter on record.  When going outside hurts you tend to turtle by the fireplace.

At 262lbs, I’m well into obesity now, though I still consider myself active and can get out of a chair without making strange noises.  I’ve been doing yoga once a week, but dropped hockey because of the driving involved and the general level of jerkiness I experience playing with frustrated middle aged men.

The nurse asked what goals I’d like to set considering the good blood pressure but surprising fat-guy score.  I’d been thinking about exercising more, but when you don’t tell anyone about it you’re not held to anything.  I told the nurse I wanted to get back to 240lbs, so now I’ve told someone and I’m on the hook.

I’ve been hitting the elliptical twice a week for half an hour each time in addition to the yoga.  Between that and not eating everything that comes my way, I’m hoping to get back down under the 75th percentile for my gender and height.

Hopefully I can avoid the specialty leathers when I finally get kitted out.

I’ve always tended to approach getting in shape backwards, I wait for the opportunity before preparing for it.  When I was preparing to join the police force, I was working out regularly while aiming for that physical exam.   With no reason to get into shape, why bother?

This time round I’ve set a reward for getting in shape.  If I can hit the weight goal I’ll sign myself up for the weekend racing school.  Those little 125cc Hondas don’t need a fat guy sitting on them, and the other riders don’t need to see a 260+ lb guy trying to squeeze into race leathers.  Bruce Willis once said he can’t be bothered to exercise at all, the only thing that motivates him is vanity.  If he knows he’s going to be filmed with his shirt off he hits the gym.  I’ve got vanity and physics encouraging me.

As the nurse said, it’s not a matter of binge exercise or diet, it’s about habit changing.  I don’t need to get all monk like and have only cabbage and water.  If I can get into a comfortably doable new normal, I won’t worry about the numbers and just see where I end up.  Be active at least 3 times a week (with a heart rate above 130), be reasonable with food consumption, and see where that gets me.  Enjoy my exercise (I have been so far, I’ve been watching Closer to the Edge while I get sweaty), and see how it affects my mood (positively so far, I look forward to it).

One of the tough things about getting older is staying active.  Life is busy, and the whole, ‘if you stay fit you’ll live longer!’ argument doesn’t do much for me.  If that means I’m sitting in an old-age home drooling on myself in forty years, I’d just as soon not be.  What is motivating is setting reachable goals, feeling better and rewarding myself for it with a bucket list experience.  With any luck I’ll be blogging about that race weekend in June (and looking good in the pictures).

Originally published on Tim’s Motorcycle Diaries in June, 2014:

.

I just finished watching Arctic Clutch.  He doesn’t go as far as I’m planning to with Coast Cubed and he does it in a more alcohol fuelled young man’s way, but he does shed some light on travelling in the far north.  From the video it’s hard to tell whether 150km/day on the Dempster Highway is difficult, or difficult because he’s hungover.  He does mention how expensive hotel rooms are up there though, which is helpful.

774kms of gravel before another 140 new kms up to the coast, over 900kms all told – all gravel

The key to being able to access the arctic coast in Canada and enable a coast to coast to coast trip is the completion of the Dempster Highway up to Tuktoyaktuk.  It looks like it will be completed by 2018.  A summer 2018 coast to coast to coast epic adventure, sounds like a plan!  I’d the first person on two wheels to complete this trip.  Anyone interested in joining me?

Next to the extreme distances involved (the Earth’s circumference is just over 40,000kms, this trip is over half that, all in one country!), the hardest part of this trip is the ride north to the Arctic Ocean.  I’d originally thought that since eighteen of the twenty thousand kilometres of this trip will be on pavement, I’d get a bike focused on that task.  I’d stop in Dawson and prep the bike for the rocky portion of the trip with an engine guard and some dual purpose tires tough enough to handle a couple of thousand kilometres over rocks.

An argument could be made for an adventure bike for this, but unless it’s a very road focused adventure bike I wouldn’t consider it.  Having to put up with a tall, wallowy, wrong-tired, road-awkward bike for just 10% of the trip still seems wrong headed.  What is vital is a bike that can handle high kilometre paved road days that wouldn’t fatigue me.

Having seen Nick Sanders double Pan-America Highway run on a Super Ténéré, I’m thinking that a multi-purpose bike might work better, though with having to deal with Central and South America, Nick had a lot more unpaved road to deal with.  There are, however, a number of ‘adventure’ bikes that are much more comfortable on pavement and can eat huge miles easily.

I’m still always thinking about lighter weight bikes and don’t want some litre plus monster to lug around.  With that in mind I’m rethinking choices for this trip, especially if I’ve got a couple of years to get my ducks in a row.

An early favourite of mine is the Triumph Tiger.  Described more as a good road bike with some off road ability, it would be putting the priorities in the right order but would still have no problems with the Dempster Highway.  Being made-in-England myself, I’d enjoy doing Canada’s first coast to coast to coast ride on a compatriot.

I was all set to be a Triumph guy from the start, but my Ninja has snuck up on me, and Kawasaki offers some interesting long distance options.  I’ve already thought about the Kawasaki Concourse, which would handle the big miles in an athletic but capable manner.  Then there is the odd, but Cyclon-looking Kawasaki Versus (the odd cousin of my Ninja), which looks like it could handle the Dempster.  Maybe Kawasaki would like to bring the Versus out of the shadows and make it the first bike to ride coast to coast to coast in Canada.

Since I’ve got a couple of years to work this out I’ll pound the pavement and see who wants to be involved.  OLN Canada should probably be on the ground when someone completes the first coast to coast to coast Canada ride.  Isn’t this like finishing the railroad (finally)?  Canada is, at last, truly a three coast entity and we can all enjoy it.  Over twenty thousand kilometres of travel without crossing an international border.

Canada really is something rare in the world, enormous and unfinished… especially to the north.

Whatcha think Kawasaki Canada?

Time to get the Versus out of the shadows and make it the first bike to ever go Coast to Coast to Coast in Canada?

We just spent a delightful dam day riding north and west from where we live looking for water themed locations for this year’s Lobo Loco all-season Water is Life rally.

If you find that your riding is a bit aimless, or you’re always showing up at the same places over and over, a long distance rally is a great way to break those habitual rides.  You get a theme and some specific targets, but you also get some special monthly targets in this rally.  It runs from May to October, so you have lots of time to get points.  You can set up rides with intention and ride as hard as you like.  Some people go and go if they’re all about the points (and have a lot of free time).  I’m more about the exploration and photography opportunities, even more so If I’ve got a pillion along, but you can do it however you like.  My son and I have done this a few times now, and my buddy Jeff and I have had some epic rides, but this time it was all about my wife and I getting points and spending some quality time together.



For May the water specific theme was dams, so we went looking for the damned things in our area.  It’s amazing what you can find when you ride with a purpose.  Only fifteen minutes from home we were stumbling across secret Mennonite fishing holes at the Woolwich Dam, and twenty minutes later chatting with dreadlocked sports bike riders on the Conestogo Dam causeway.  We bumped into a number of riders on the trip and always suggest they look up the rally as a way of extending their riding destinations.

Further north we stopped just past Harriston (after getting a photo of their water tower), and got lunch at The Red Caboose.  If you’ve never had an Ontario chip truck lunch, this would be a great place to start.  Everything is grown in the fields around you (including the beef).  It’s what you’d expect to pay for a burger and fries, but this’ll be the first time you’ve ever had something this fresh.  Some fancy burger joint in Toronto will but sriracha on it and charge you five times as much for something that tastes half as good.  The fries actually taste like potatoes.  We would never have stopped there had we not launched ourselves on this exploratory rally adventure.


With our stomachs full of goodness, we continued north.  After a water tower hit-and-run in Clifford we eventually found ourselves in the place where government cuts made the water kill people: Walkerton, Ontario.  We got to the Walkerton Heritage Water Garden only to discover it wasn’t running – a local walking by told us they weren’t turning it on due to new cut backs.  Thousands got ill and e Coli in the water killed seven, and now a similar government has cancelled the memorial to what their predecessors did – I imagine they’re thinking this is best not remembered.  The irony runs thick, unlike the water in the monument.  The local said the politicians all spent more time making sure they weren’t liable than they did actually trying to solve the problem.  Walkerton is now a vibrant community that has bounced back from this tragedy, but the damage runs deep, and more cuts are coming.


We left the park in a sombre mood and headed through the lovely town before striking out east on Highway 4.  Another water tower hit and run in Hanover and we were on our way to Durham and the ride south to home.

I’m sure I’ve passed through Durham before, but have no memory of it.  It’s a pretty little town in rolling Niagara Escarpment country.  Alanna eagle-eyed the Garafraxa Cafe on the main street and we pulled in for a caffeine boost to get us home strong.  Things looked promising with an Italian coffee machine that looked like a Vespa scooter and a proprietor who knew what he was doing with it.  It ended up being one of the best Americanos I’ve ever had.


We pushed south to Holstein Dam while picking up water towers in MoFo and Arthur.  Our last stop was the Shand Dam that created Belwood Lake just down the road from our home in Elora.  To maximize points you want to get your bike in the photo and have signage and the dam itself in one of the two photos.  I find the Ricoh Theta 360 camera handy for doing this because it grabs everything at once, but many others just use their smart phone camera and get a lot more points than I do.  Naming conventions on your photos are important too – you lose points handing things in the wrong way.  Having Alanna along really helps with this as she actually reads the instructions.

All told we think we cracked a thousand points on this ride, and discovered all sorts of strange little spots we’d have otherwise missed.  The Water is life Grand Tour full summer rally is running from May to October, so you’ve still got tons of time to sign up and give it a go.  If it grabs you, Lobo Loco is also running more intensive weekend and one day rallies throughout the season.

***


Lobo Loco Rallies on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/LoboLocoRallies/
Like the page and see what’s going on – there is a vibrant community of riders involved with this.
 
Lobo Loco Homepage:   https://wolfe35.wixsite.com/lobolocorallies
Includes the intensive weekend events as well as this season’s grand tour.  You can sign up on there through RideMaster – the same group that handles Iron Butt Rallies (if you want to get really serious).

NOTES:

Some dammed stops on this year’s Grand Tour Rally:


Stop One:  Woolwich Dam & Reservoir 
https://theta360.com/s/o3txOAqc332jOD4u4RDytX4Hg
43°37’21.3″N 80°33’51.9″W

Getting signage with the name on it counts for points!

We went a bit overboard with this one.  It was our first stop, it was a lovely dam surrounded by Mennonites fishing and we wanted to make sure we got the required things in the photos (and they are many!)…

You will need to have the following in order to collect points:
A) A photo of the dam itself
B) A photo of signage indicating the name of the dam, or a photo indicating the name of the town the dam is in

– We will accept a “Welcome To”, City Limits, or Town Hall sign.
C) The GPS coordinates, approximate street address, or nearest cross street to the dam
Your motorcycle MUST be in at least one of the 2 photos.

You will receive the highest points ONLY for whichever you achieve for each individual dam:
99 points – motorcycle with the dam (which I think we got with the bottom one with me standing with the bike in front of the gate)
66 points – motorcycle with the dam signage


33 points – motorcycle with the town signage

… but I think I like the one with us leaning over the dam more.  Sometimes the photographer gets in the way of the rally requirements.

#loboloco Water is Life Rally 2019 Summer Woolwich Dam #theta360 – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

We found a squirter at the Woolwich dam!



Stop 3:  Conestogo Dam
43°40’32.4″N 80°42’56.0″W

#loboloco Water is Life Rally 2019 Conestogo Dam #motorcycle #rally #theta360 – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

Gotta get that signage in for maximum points.
Stop 8:  Holstein Dam
44°03’36.0″N 80°45’29.4″W

 … that was a buggy one.  Dam in photo, check, rally flag, check, bike in photo, check!

from Blogger http://bit.ly/2Mqp0BZ
via IFTTT

My great aunt and Granddad across the page from a Triumph, I think they’d approve!

It’s been a good month for publishing.  Glenn at Motorcycle Mojo ran two pieces I’d submitted.


In the Remember When section I’d sent in the family photos I’d discovered while back home in Norfolk, England in 2013.

It was a real joy to see Grand-dad and a great Aunt I’d never met in pages that I knew were being seen across Canada.

Our Vancouver Island adventure got many pages!

I was then astonished to see that Glenn had also run the article I handed in last year on our ride on Vancouver Island.  Seeing my byline right behind Lawrence Hacking‘s was a real rush!

There is no greater satisfaction for an English major than seeing your writing published.  I’ve managed it academically, but this was my first go at motorcycle media and it was no less satisfying.

The Motorcycle Mojo piece reads well (and I’m a tough critic with myself).  After seeing myself in print I think I might be addicted.  I’m so glad I brought the camera and aimed to write this up from the beginning, it’s like reliving the trip over again, and my son Max is over the moon!

I’ve already pitched another piece to Glenn.

If you’ve thought of writing out a motorbike experience but didn’t, give it a go!  Glenn is a considerate editor and the joy of seeing your words publicized is powerful!

Vancouver Island?!?!?  How can you not want to read that?!?

The old bike is coming back together again.  I’ve learned a couple of valuable lessons in the process:

a $30 toolbox should prevent $50 in lost parts, every time

1) Don’t take your parts to high school to get them worked on, they lose parts, don’t do the work anyway and it causes confusion and headaches when you’re trying to reassemble the thing.

2) I tried taking photos as I took the bike apart, which works well when you’re putting it back together, but with so many small fasteners and other odds and ends it pays to have a parts tray set up and labelled.  

I’ve since purchased a cheap sectioned toolbox that will serve as a parts holder.  I’ll use an erasable marker to label the parts as they go into each section of the toolbox.  That should resolve future finding-the-right-fastener headaches.

In the meantime, after multiple trips to dealer to pick up bits and pieces, I think I’m putting this all down as lessons learned and moving on.

The geometry of the bike is coming back together, but I’ve still got some work to do.  The rear brake went back on well, bled well and works perfectly.  It even has good pedal feel.  A concern in the rear is that the rotor suddenly seems out of round (it was fine before).  I’m going to get it back on the road and see if it needs reseating – it’s a 20+ year old bike, so maybe I put the rotor back on the hub in a different way and it’s not happy.

The front end all went back together without problems, but the front brakes don’t seem to want to bleed to a tight lever.  Fortunately CoG has a solution.  After leaving the lever tied closed for the night the brakes are starting to come back.  Another round of bleeding and I should have some sharp feeling front brakes again.

The bike is running rough, and I can’t tell if this is because it’s been sitting over the winter or it needs the carbs tickled.  I’m going to have to look into it in more detail.  A short run yesterday in double digit temperatures showed that the back end is back together perfectly.  The beads are doing a wonderful job of keeping the wheels balanced and the new bearings and tires make for very smooth and quiet operation.

If I can get the front brakes finished up and the fueling sorted, I should be ready to go just in time for the roads to get rained clear of the sand and salt of winter.

from Blogger http://ift.tt/2oxaUSz
via IFTTT