Category: Tim’s Motorcycle Diaries

http://cycle-ergo.com/

Looking at a better fit of bike (at 6″3′ I’m a bit of a giant on the ’07 Ninja 650r), I came across Cycle-Ergo, an online simulator that shows you the shape of any number of bikes and how your frame sits on it.  This is an interesting exercise even if you aren’t looking for a new bike.

The FAQ explains that the basic rider model isn’t perfect, but

does show you lean angles and other ergonomic considerations in riding.  The feet on the floor option should be taken lightly (the FAQ explains there are too many factors – rider weight, thigh size, seat shape,etc – that can change it), but it still gives you a rough idea.  

If you want to be a lean into it sport rider, then this will show you just how uncomfortable you’ll be looking cool.  If you are looking for a long distance multi-purpose (as I am),then this will show me which bike offers me the most natural/classic riding position.

There are a lot of options in the menus to the right, so be sure to play with them.  After you put in the rider height and inseam you can modify various parameters of the stock bike (handlebar locations etc).  It also shows you variations in angle due to seat position.  At the riding school they encouraged me to sit as close to the tank as possible, so I tend to sit forward in the seat.  

I looked up my current Ninja (an ’07 650r).  The bike feels too small for me, and it looks it in the diagram.  

I don’t find the wrist position overly uncomfortable, even though I am at quite a forward lean angle.  What I do find uncomfortable are how high the pegs are and how bent my legs are on it.  At 75° it’s one of the most extreme angles I found in the knees.

My feet are flat on the floor with bent knees.  The low seat means I can stand up at a light with inches of light beneath me.  It’s a short bike I have to fold myself onto.  When at speed I’m catching a lot of wind in the face, even with the aftermarket windshield on it.  I have to lay on the tank to get out of the blast.

One of the bikes I’m considering is the Triumph Tiger 800xc.  The seat height on this bike is much (much) higher than the Ninja, and the steering seems to be closer and higher, offering a less stretched forward lean.


Unlike the backward bent legs on the Ninja, the Tiger offers me a more neutral almost 90° leg angle as well.  It looks like it might be a promising fit.

The Kawasaki KLR650 is also short listed as a possible contender.  It too has a tall, upright stance with a more neutral riding position.  At half the price of the (nicer) Triumph I’d also be much less worried about dropping it, which would certainly happen at some point if I’m exploring less paved roads.

As a bike I’ve actually sat on, I have to say this looks pretty close to accurate.



I ran the simulator with a number of other bikes just to see what various styles looked like.  The vague body shape reminds you that this is a rough simulation, but if you’re considering buying a bike why not compare it to what you’re on now or what you think would be your preferred style of riding.

I wish I’d have known about this tool when I was first looking for a bike, it would have given me some stats to consider.

The Ducati all-rounder adventure bike – the seat is supposed to be horrible

I’ve always thought Gixers were cool… painfully cool

Living out my Mad Max fantasies on an Interceptor… worse lean, better on the knees than the Ninja

I was considering this bike last year, but the blandness described  in reviews put me off

I’ve sat on one of these too – it felt small, it looks small in the picture, but classy!

Another rider at work has one of these, loves it, nice riding position!

The simulator lets you put a passenger on too – this is the Tiger with Max on the back

Here is what I’d look like if Ewan McGregor was my best friend…

We drove past the entrance twice.  Finally, up a gravel drive we found the entrance to the Norfolk Motorcycle Museum.  This was an impromtu stop between various tourist related day trips.  I’d seen the sign and wanted to go for a wander.  No one else wanted to come in with me, so they stayed in the rental car while I wandered into a warehouse full of bikes.

One of the things you notice in England is just how divergent the technology is, and this museum was no different.  The bikes were odd, different, not a cruiser in sight, no Harleys.  It was decidedly un-North American.

Many of them I couldn’t identify at all, some were so old as to be virtually steam powered.  You know you’re far from the familiar when you don’t even recognize some of the manufacturers.

The building was a working restoration shop with a big warehouse space behind.  Bikes in various states of repair were lined up at the entrance, the finished machines were perched up on a two layer rack that ran through the whole warehouse.

You can poke around the bikes and the father/son duo who run the museum are happy to talk about any of the examples on display.

I had to rush the walkabout because the family was waiting outside, it would have been nice to wander around for an hour taking some good closeups.

If you’re ever in the vicinity of North Walsham in Norfolk, England, drop by the museum.  It’s a strange trip down someone else’s memory lane.

Like what you see?  Many of the restorations are available to buy.

Mainly British bikes, but some others can be found in the rows

A mighty Vincent!

“Made in England” – getting harder and harder to find made in not the far East any more

Many parts in the process of being cleaned up…

7940kms… according to Google Maps

Another dream trip.

I’ve done most of the north end of the main island in a car, and traveled as far south as Kyoto by train, but the motorbike offers a new way to see the archipelago.

Google maps suggests that this can be done in 6 days and 16 hours, that’s at a continuous average of 50kms/hr 24 hours a day.  Assuming we’d want to sleep and eat, the old two to three tanks a day might be the way to go.

At two tanks a day (about 600kms depending on the bike), we’d be back to Narita in just over thirteen days.  Call it two weeks of steady riding.

Being what it is (a volcanic island chain), there aren’t many straight roads in Japan, especially if we want to stick to the coast.

When you’re riding around volcanoes, the roads get creative

The epic ferry ride to Okinawa in the south is almost a day in itself.  The riding would never be boring, and it would be miles away from interstate mile making.  Japan is a crowded but super organized kind of place, you can get places as long as you avoid the major urban centers.

Late summer would avoid the tsuyu (rainy season), so landing in Narita in the last week of August, then head north, do Hokkaido, then down the Japan sea coast to the south end of Honshu, a long ferry ride across the East China Sea to Okinawa, two days circumnavigating the island before taking a slow boat back to Honshu.  The last leg would be up the Pacific side of Honshu, through Kyoto and Tokyo and back to Narita.

It’d be nice to do the trip while riding the Japanese bike industry.  Split into four sections, we could ride Honda, Kawasaki, Suzuki and Yamaha for a quarter of the trip each.  That way we could meet up with various clubs and groups without being manufacturer specific.  Riding all four big Japanese manufacturers also lets us experience the fantastic bikes Japan makes.

Two weeks, some serious mileage, from a tropical 26 degrees above the equator in Okinawa (roughly in line with central India) to a northern 45.5 degrees at the top of Hokkaido (right next door to Russia),  we’ll experience everything from palm trees to snow.  It is entirely possible to climb five thousand feet if we’re working our way through mountainous areas and wind up at sea level again by night fall.

Two weeks would be intense, but that’s kind of the point.  The route picked out avoids any repeated tarmac other than driving on and off one ferry.  Every mile would be new as we circumnavigate these beautiful islands.

My dream garage always had to be kind of huge to fit all the cars I wanted in it.  With the new bike
infatuation I get to dream of a more condensed (and plausible) dream garage.  It’s still got room for the necessary evil (I live in Canada, some days a bike just won’t do it), so I took the two car garage and doubled it to make a workshop in the back.

The car garage is separated by a dividing wall with a single garage door in it to allow larger vehicle access into the workshop.  There is a half size roll up door on the side for direct bike access.  The garage is wired in, but also has a turbine and solar collection.  In the winter this runs the high efficiency heater in the workshop.  In the summer is pushes a small, high efficiency air conditioner into the workshop.  The goal is to keep the workshop above freezing in the winter and below 25 degrees in the summer.

The battery packs and computer controls for the wind turbine and solar inputs are upstairs, as are the heating and cooling units, both of which feed into the workshop directly.  There is also room for storage upstairs.  Access is made through a pull down staircase in the back of the car garage.

The workshop has space for 5-6 bikes, though I think I’d keep 3 working bikes on hand, and one project bike.  I’d also keep a shed at the side for a couple of dirt bikes.

As for what I’d fill the workshop with, at the moment I’m all about the British bike.  A Triumph Street Triple, a Royal Enfield Classic with a sidecar and a Triumph Tiger 800XC would be what I’d have on had to regularly ride.  The other side of the shop has the half car/half bike Morgan3 Trike.

Royal Enfield Classic with sidecar

Triumph Tiger 800XC

The Tiger is a great all rounder that can get you anywhere.  A nimble adventure bike that also loves to carve up roads, this’d be my go to for long rides.

The Royal Enfield Classic with sidecar is a classic with modern technology.  It would let me share the open road with my son in a way he’d truly dig.

Triumph Street Triple

Morgan 3 Wheeler

The Triumph Street Triple is a naked bike built for the road.  It’s fast, responsive and sounds wonderful.  This would be my dedicated road bike.

What I don’t show in the plan is the project bike.  This would change quite frequently, depending on how much work the bike needs.  At the moment I think I’d like to bring an ’80s Honda Interceptor back from the dead.

Honda VFR 750 Interceptor

The idea behind the dream garage is to have a workshop for bike maintenance and restoration.  I’ve really enjoyed restoring the 650r Ninja I’ve got now, and I’d like to keep doing that kind of work.  To that end I think I’d include a bike sized bench style spray booth, as well as a compressor in the workshop.  I enjoy both mechanical as well as body work, and it would be nice to have the space and tools to do both well.

I looked at the odometer today as I pulled into the parking lot after my forth straight day of commuting and realized my ’07 Ninja has finally hit the 10k mile mark.  The commute got her there, it’s about 70kms each way with the first two thirds a country ride through the Niagara Escarpment, then an 11 km blast down the 401 before it slows down going into the GTA, then another couple of kms in Milton.  It’s a nice ride.  Less so when it’s pouring buckets of rain out of the sky, as it has for the last two days, but those were memorable rides too, even if uncomfortable, and a bit treacherous.

This weekend the Ninja gets round two of its spa treatment, a coolant flush and change and a cleanup after all that wet riding.

I was at Two Wheel Motorsport the other day getting oil filter and gaskets and the older guy behind the counter was talking about how it isn’t about how you do the miles, but about getting the miles in.  I’m beginning to see his point.  Wheelies and high speed corners are all well and good, but there is something to be said about being the saddle and putting miles behind you while you’re out in the world.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m taking a movie break with the family before coming back and finishing putting the bike back together again.  I got the coolant flush done (though what came out was about as perfect as I’ve ever seen used coolant), cleaned the engine while I had the fairings off, and stripped the black off the tank.  The goal is to get the bike roadworthy for another week of commuting to Milton… that’ll be another 700kms behind me.

It’s the first day of summer holidays, so I’m going to push the envelope and hit the road on my longest ride yet.  Elora to just past Bobcaygeon.  It’s all paved except for the last couple of miles on gravel.  I’ll be passing through villages, towns and a couple of cities en route.  236kms.

The Cottage Run

The weather is cooperating and the rain has dried up.  I’m going to have to break my iron man habit of doing long drives in single marathon runs.  Stopping along the way is going to be prudent.

The bike has new oil and filter and is half blue, so I’m in good mechanical shape and looking like a fine arts project.  The partially stripped black paint looks like it got pulled off by going too fast.

I’m not worried about it mechanically, it’s super solid, the weakest link on this trip is the n00b rider.  As long as I can remember that and pace myself, it’ll be a great step forward in riding.

The most exciting bit should be the logging road at the end of the trip.  It drives like a rally stage, but I’m going to be riding it with a light touch.  The Ninja isn’t built for this kind of work, so it’ll be a gentle last leg on the best roads.  I’ll save the rally driving for the ATVs once we’re at the

The Cottage Road

cottage.  Though now I’m wishing I had a little 250cc dirt bike up there to get muddy on.

The map doesn’t do the cottage road justice.  It’s been straightened out, graded and widened in recent years, it used to be even madder.  The road weaves around stone outcroppings in the Canadian Shield and includes a lot of elevation drops you don’t see on the map.  The tight corners come up on you suddenly because you can’t see over the hill you’re on to what’s next.

It’s roads like this that make me wish I had something more dual purpose.

The Triumph Tiger 800xc would snort and stomp down that road.  The new KTM Supermoto would make that cottage road a tail wagging good time, though that’s a much bigger bike.  I think I’d prefer the Triumph.  It’s lithe, and agile where the KTM is a monster.

In the meantime, I’m going to gingerly nurse the Ninja to the cottage after a beautiful Saturday afternoon ride across rural Southern Ontario.  Pictures to follow.

I picked up a magazine called Rider the other day.  It’s American, and written by an older crowd, but offers a less adrenaline driven and more wise look at the sport.  There were a couple of articles that pointed me toward some interesting motorbiking.

RIDER magazine

The first was about Hubert Kriegel’s 10 year epic ride around the world.  Hubert has been doing long distance adventure riding since the 1970s, and his Timeless Ride shows you just how active retirement could be.  That he doesn’t over plan his trips and encourages the use of something other than a massive BMW is also refreshing.  Like the best adventures, Hubert stresses that wanting to do it is all that really matters, the rest is just noise.

The follow up editorial by Clement Salvadori was a detailed list of the adventure riding books that might lead you to your first RTW trip.  Now he has me looking for old, hard to find books such as Around The World With Motorcycle & Camera by Eitel & Rolf Lange, a father son duo who did it back in the 1950s on a old German bike with sidecar.  He also mentioned Ted Simon’s Jupiter’s Travels, which I first heard of while watching Long Way Round.

I also recently came across Mondo Enduro, an epic, low budget ’round the worlder by a group led by a teacher!  It’s much less a star struck thing than Long Way Round, but very genuine and a joy to watch.  I can see why it has cult status amongst RTWers.

Clements also mentioned a number of pre-war attempts to circle the globe. Greg Frazier’s Motorcycle Adventurer tells the story of Carl Clancy who made an attempt in 1925.  He also mentions Bernd Tesch who is trying to create a listing of RTW trips on motorbike.  It appears that ’round the world motorbike trips are a vibrant, world wide subculture.  Other pre-WWII books of interest are Nansen Passport: Round The World on a Motorcycle, by a white Russian fleeing the revolution, One Man Caravan, a mid-thirties American’s Long Way Round from London to New York City, and the eight year epic journey by a pair of Hungarians in Around The World On A Motorcycle: 1928-1936.

Curse you designers!

Rider Magazine also pitched some interesting theory on design trends.  I hate it when I’m pigeon holed into a market segment (I’m Gen-X, we’re like that), but they were bang on in describing how designers are aiming for post-boomers with less chromey, blinged out touring bikes.  I hate to admit it but Honda’s getting it right with the new Goldwing – I never thought I’d say that.

I think I’ll give Rider another go before I commit.  Many of the rides were American based, which is a bit tedious, especially when I think about the Adventure Bike Rider UK magazine I stumbled across a month or so ago.  Only one of their road trips were based in the British Isles, the rest took me everywhere from Beirut to Greece to South America, but then they don’t think they are the world.   If it weren’t so expensive to buy a UK magazine in Canada, I’d go for Adventure Bike Rider immediately.  They do offer a digital edition.  I might give that a go, but for a digital guy, I’m pretty paper bound when it comes to magazines (reading tablets in the bath gives me the willies).

No matter what, it’s nice to know that there are thoughtful, quirky publications about motorcycling out there, it’s not all about how much leather you can wear on your Harley or how long a wheelie you can pull.

I’ve been careful to ride with the weather so far.  When I could have taken a big risk and crossed Toronto in thunder showers, I didn’t.  I guess this is what comes of being in your forties and starting to ride; twenty year old me would have been off into the lightning with no experience in the rain or four hundred series highways, through Toronto.  There is something to be said about risk taking, but it’s something that happens more in your youth.

I’ve only got a 15 minute ride to work, so I tend to grab the bike whenever the weather is nice.  Last week on my way home I rode into some dark clouds which turned out to be hail.  At sixty kilometers per hour hail feels kind of like paintball strikes.  I got in behind the fairing and windshield and rode through a torrential downpour that left slush on the side of the road and the pavement drenched.  I also discovered that wind proof jackets aren’t waterproof  (I guess to help with breathing).  I got back to my driveway soaked and steaming as the sun came out complete with rainbow.

Taking it easy around a corner, the backend stepped out when I went into second.  It was easily tamed by easing off the gas, but boy do bike backends break free easily in the wet!

Whenever something like this happens I try to grok it as completely as I can.  I was amazed at how efficient my helmet was at keeping my visor clear, even in heavy precipitation.  Vision is much less of a problem than I thought it would be.

As I went back out to pick up my son about ten minutes later, the road had a layer of mist a foot deep as the sun burned the rain off.  I could smell the ozone as the storm hit, the vegetation as it got wet, the steam as it burned off the road.  Smell is one of the great things about riding.

Back home again, I spent ten minutes wiping off the bike and put it away as another storm rolled in.  A good first experience in the wet.

Nothing like a bit of media making on your ride.  This video is courtesy of a GoPro Hero electrical taped to the rear right passenger foot peg looking out over the back wheel.

The route is 60 kms through Elora, Arthur and Fergus.  It ended up being 51 minutes of footage, but I clipped it down to 12 minutes so it would fit on the youtubes.


The vehicle of choice is a 2007 Kawasaki 650R Ninja.

Here’s the video!  That GoPro takes mighty nice footage, even at higher speeds…

Running electrical tape over the camera 4 or 5 times kept it securely in place for the whole ride and came off afterward without leaving any tape marks.  Putting it on the right side passenger foot rest means it was just above the muffler, so you can hear the engine clearly and wind noise wasn’t too bad because it was behind the fairing and my leg.  Having it on the frame rather than the suspension means that it doesn’t bounce around as much as it otherwise would.

If I ever get some time on a race track, I’m totally taping a GoPro on for a few laps.