Two days on the mainland working our way north to the ferry port in Thurso…
TWO WEEKS: SCOTLAND AND INTO THE NORTH SEA
Day 1: Ediburgh to Inverbroom Lodge Day 2: Inverbroom Lodge to Thurso Day 3: Ferry to Orknies Day 4: Orkneys day 2 Day 5: Ferry to Shetlands Day 6-10: Shetlands Day 11: Ferry back to Aberdeen Day 12: Aberdeen to Edinburgh Day 13: Edinburgh
Four social circumstances that have millennials struggling:
1) Failed parenting strategies include children being told they are special and can do whatever they want just because they want it. They have won awards their entire lives for simply showing up. This award inflation devalues excellence and embarrasses the failures these children experience. They’ve learned not to strive for excellence because it doesn’t matter. 2) Technology:Millennials are surrounded by filtered social media where everyone appears to have it figured out and puts on a good face. On top of that they have the same relationship with social media as a gambling addict has with a casino, except this addiction is only ever a touch away. 3) Impatience: They want to reach the summit and have a ‘big impact’ but are unaware that the summit lies at the top of a mountain. Is this related to number one? 4) Environment: Companies (and schools?) should be rebuilding the confidence and resilience of this generation by reconnecting them to personal relationships and long term goals. This means stepping up to combat number 1, something that most school administration really isn’t willing to do.
Now imagine standing in front of thirty one of them.
I’ve struggled with the vagaries of the millennial mindset in the classroom many times over the past few years. From the grade inflation of risk averse learners and five-ohs to the complaints of industry, I’m familiar with the millennial challenges Sinek refers to in his interview above.
Battling these frankly bewildering and fictionally driven parenting strategies seems to be a lost cause for most educators. Since banks and multi-nationals decided to burn the economy down and caused years of austerity, education (and governments in general) have taken on business-think in an unprecedented manner (some kind of Stockholm syndrome?). The modern approach seems to be ‘the customer is always right even if they have no idea what they’re doing’. Rather than expecting competence on the part of the student I often find myself defending a failing grade from a student who has never completed any work at grade level and has missed weeks and weeks of class. Parents don’t want to hear that their child is incapable and they certainly don’t want to accept responsibility for that incompetence. Their only goal seems to be finding ways to blame anything else.
We’re not doing a lot of either these days.
Technology is another place where education has thrown in the towel. Students can do whatever they want with their devices. Any attempt to redirect a student away from inappropriate technology use is wasted as these devices are now considered to be a constitutional right. It isn’t uncommon for me to ask a student to focus on what we’re doing and have them tell me they are in the middle of a text conversation with their parents which is obviously much more important than whatever’s happening in class. They’re probably planning a two week absence from school for a holiday – another exciting new millennial parenting tactic that would have been foreign to my parent’s way of thinking. Sinek’s no smartphones in a meeting rule wouldn’t fly in a modern classroom. You can’t helicopter parent without the tether.
How education is becoming less able to manage these dangers we face.
Patience isn’t lost in all students but even the most capable are dwindling in attention duration. At the beginning of our last unit I showed exemplars of previous projects done over the past few years. The top student in my class asked, “are people getting dumber and dumber?” Good question. They certainly seem to be less and less capable of developing skills complex enough to tackle curriculum level theory and practice. Perhaps if they weren’t taking weeks of unexplained absences and holidays during the semester things would be better. Perhaps if they were expected to attempt all course work to the best of their abilities skill-sets wouldn’t be deteriorating.
In modern high schools students take the courses they want, not the ones they are capable of. Students who fail advanced courses get a variety of options to regain the credit and are seen at the same level next year regardless of how little they’ve proven they can do. Parents demand access to advanced classes for students who barely find time to attend school and are unwilling to actually do anything. If I fail anyone I have to justify the failure, not so the absent, incompetent student. Even trying to offer a range of courses doesn’t work because everyone is an academic all-star who should be getting the most advanced credits.
The complaint from people in post secondary education and the work place is that we’re producing graduates incapable of working effectively in the ‘real world’. Sinek’s comments go straight to this. Any absence or student failure isn’t an administrative issue; the system won’t even address it. There used to be a limit on unexplained absences and then a student was kicked out of a course, that doesn’t happen any more. There used to be criteria for failing late work, that doesn’t happen any more. There used to be requirements for staying within an academic stream, now it’s do whatever you want. When a student is absent or obtuse teachers are told to contact the parents who caused the situation in the first place and work it out. In Ontario this approach has been institutionalized using laws like school until eighteen no-matter-what. By keeping students in school at all costs we’ve effectively removed anywhere to drop out to. With no bottom to fall through, graduation rates are on the rise! We’ve effectively institutionalized failed parenting strategy number one: everyone is a winner!
The internet is full of memes that suggest the approach we’re taking isn’t helping.
Van mileage: 2300kms / 1440 miles Bile mileage: 4500kms / 2812 miles I could probably arrange with our Knoxville hotel to park the van somewhere safe and then head south on two wheels. The Tiger could totally handle the job one or two up, but there would be more specialized tools I’d select if given a choice from the new 2017 bikes:
One Up 2017 Minimalist Bike Choice
Kawasaki’s new Z900 looks like a lovely, light weight device to explore some corners with. It’s an upright bike that would be easy to sit on for long periods of time. It’s a minimal machine but that would be ideal for riding into the sub tropical climates down there.
It’s a brand new machine but the Z650 it shares parts with already has some luggage bits that might work. Keeping with the minimalist vibe, I’d try and do the whole 3000 mile / two week odyssey using only those two expandable panniers. If I have to expand half way through I could always throw a tie down duffel bag on the back seat.
One Up 2017 not-remotely minimalist Bike Choice The opposite of the tiny, lithe, naked Z900 is the absurd, over the top and abundantly present Moto Guzzi MGX-21 Flying Fortress. It comes with its own panniers so that’s not a worry. It’s also the kind of bike that would swallow many high mileage days in a row without batting an eyelash. And it’s so pretty.
Two Up Touring Preference
A large, comfortable bike that Max and I could ride the southern triangle on would be the goal here. My default is always a Kawasaki Concours 14. We rented a last gen model last year in Arizona and it was a rocket ship that was also big and comfortable for both of us. The fact that it comes in candy imperial blue this year only encourages me to put it back at the top of the list again.
A more touring focused choice would be the Goldwing F6B which is a more stripped down version of the full on bells and whistles Goldwing. It’s a big, comfortable bike that is surprisingly nimble for what it is and comes with built in panniers. It’d cover the miles with ease while keeping us both in excellent shape for when we arrived at each stop.
Some Andy Warhol-esque ZG1K shapes to get a feel for what the bike will look like:
I’m still thinking purple with asymmetrical gold racing stripes, but that might change again. Cardboard cutouts of the side panels I need have gone to the metal shop. I’m going to prototype some 3d models on the printer at work and see what various shapes look like before doing the final cuts in metal for the rear section.
While that’s going on I’ve got to get the front cowling figured out, which is what led to the video…
You tend to see a lot more Photoshop post
production during Dreamtime.
The end of riding season means it’s the beginning of Dreamtime. I shift from what I’m doing on a motorcycle to what I wish I were doing but can’t. Things get fictional and funky. Instead of generating footage and photography I’m looking over what I got from the past season and wondering about what I’d like to do in the next one. If I lived further south I’d keep stealing rides when I could get them. If I lived somewhere where feet of snow don’t regularly happen I’d brave the ‘winter’ (what we’d call fall).
I also find I have time to fettle instead of ride so the Concours ZG1000 Fury project will finally start moving at a steady pace. My goal is to have both bikes on the road in the spring.
It’s difficult not to wish for riding season to return but there is value in this change of season, I just need to change my mind.
It dawned a cool, foggy morning on Thursday. If it’s hard to take a photo of it I get very interested in trying to do it, and foggy, early morning weather is particularly difficult to photograph.
I hustled out of the house to find the moist air particularly cold. When I got to the end of the street I turned right instead of left, thinking that riding down the dirt back roads to work would yield some exceptional photo ops, it did, but I had to pay for my art!
Frost on the grass and the ice forming on my visor suggested that this was more than just fog. After the photo stop I proceeded up the road very cautiously having to constantly wipe the icy condensation off my visor. Unfortunately, no one else had decided to take the back way that morning and the fog was slowly condensing onto the road as well. I approached the stop sign to a paved cross road very cautiously but the moment I applied the brakes both wheels locked up.
If you’ve ever locked up both wheels on a motorcycle you know how quickly things can go pear shaped. The Tiger started to skittle and my heart rate went through the roof. Reflexively, I got off the front brake immediately and was able to keep the bike upright (barely). Since the rear brake was the only thing stopping me at all I had to keep my foot in it. The back wheel was locking up pretty much every time I touched the pedal, but I kept at it. I hadn’t been going that quickly but when your coefficient of drag is zero you aren’t shaving off much speed.
By this point the white line is coming up quick. I’m auto-locking the rear brake but I’m not going to stop in time. I get back on the front brake and it grips this time and I stop right on the line. A woman thumping down the road at 20 over the limit (in thick ice fog) suddenly bursts out of the white to my left and leans on the horn as she flies by inches in front of my front wheel. It’s nice to know that my hands are what saved me and not her considerate driving.
Once on well used pavement it was pretty stable. I got myself the rest of the way into work without any problems other than having to constantly wipe the ice forming off my visor. Sometimes being a photographer is a dangerous business. At least I’ve got quick reflexes and don’t panic when things literally go sideways.
Motorcycle buddy Jeff decided he needed a motorcycle stand for his BMW Airhead café racer project. He found some plans online and proceeded to execute that build!
It’s a camera taking a photo every five seconds over a weekend of building.
I put the Concours up for sale for a very reasonable $1200 and immediately got a bunch of low ball offers. After a week of talking to cheap idiots I pulled it back off Kijiji, this bike deserves better than that. I sympathize with people who can’t afford the hobby, but I never agreed to support that charity. Jeff’s recent adventures with getting an old bike to modify into a cafe racer got me thinking about what a naked Concours might look like. The ZG1000 is based on the Ninja sport bike (one of the reasons it’s so agile), so as a donor bike it has a lot going for it. I wasn’t the first to wonder…
It shows how clean you can make the engine and wiring without all the plastic covers, not radical enough though.
That’s more like it! The logo is a bit heavy handed though. The rear seat frame is a bolt on piece. Shortening the bike doesn’t even require cutting. The front end on this is also what I’m aiming for.
Love the paint on the gas tank. It makes me look forward to stripping mine. No airbox and exposed air filters are sweet.
Stripped down but looks half finished.
Front and rear fenders are sweet. Suspended seat and tail look a bit awkward though.
I’m interested in a single seat saddle, not so much for a bobber look, but for a historical connection.
I stripped off the front fairings, mirrors and windshield. That has to be about twenty pounds right there. At the back I removed the pannier frames and the rear tail light assembly. That’ll be another easy ten pounds worth of odds and ends. By the time I’m done, this bike will be an easy 100lbs lighter. The entire rear frame that holds the panniers, seat and rear light assembly is bolted on under the seat. Removing it seems pretty straightforward. With the rear frame gone, the Concours starts to look more like a streetfighter than a sport tourer. With the back end gone it was easy to remove the rear tire and get into the shaft drive which has been leaking. While I was stripping things down I removed the bar risers, which lowered the controls a couple of inches and further lightened the bike. With all the plastic and back end metal work off, the bike has already undergone a dramatic diet. People tend to pick smaller, lighter bikes to cafe, but as I’m neither small nor light, the Concours makes for a big, muscly and quiet unique power cafe racer project. With everything in the process of a strip down, I was easily able to get the back wheel off and uncover the shaft drive axle. It’s been leaking, but some research on CoG (the Concours Owners Group, which I just re-upped my membership on) suggested that a leaking shaft drive can be the result of over filling, which it was. I’m going to clean it all up, fill it to spec and then keep an eye on it before I go all crazy tearing it down (which looks like a hassle because you’ve got to heat parts to get them apart).
I’m hanging on to the Concours because of some magic moments on it. The sound of that engine at full song is exceptional. The thought of giving it away after all the work done grates on my nerves as well, especially to some tool who is just looking for a handout (one guy, after trying to talk it down $500 then complained about the state of the fairing – screw him). Had I sold the Connie I’d have gone looking for a bike I could strip down and customize. Hanging on to the Concours means I’m doing that with a low mileage bike full of new parts. One that I’m already really familiar with. Since I’m not depending on the Concours to be my everything bike any more it can become a blank canvas, which is what I was looking for in the first place. A stripped down, restyled Concours isn’t going to be a Concours any more, but it is going to exploit that big Ninja engine and nimble handling it already had. Best of all, I get to hang on to those fantastic gold rims, and build up a custom around them. Much better that than my resurrected ZG1000 going to motorcycle welfare.
Even the instrument cowl is a big, heavy old thing. I’m aiming for an analogue speedometer and then a microprocessor controlled LCD screen.
Don’t know if I’ll keep the Ironman theme, but I might, it’s eye catching.
Someone somewhere might be looking for just this thing!
All that weight hanging behind the rear wheel will be gone. The Concours always felt frisky for a big bike, I can’t imagine what it’ll feel like with all that weight gone. A custom LED tail light in in the planning.
I’m going to take a note from Jeff and see if I can sell off parts others might need for their complete Concours in order to help pay for the bits I need for mine.
Bar riser still on to the left, the one on the right is a couple of inches lower.
With the mystical, multi-talented Tiger on hand, the Concours can take its time becoming a specialist. It seems happier with that prospect. So am I.
These little imaginings are a nice escape, and if I ever become pointlessly rich, I’ll be able to torment friends and family who ride with ridiculous Top Gear like challenges.
I’ve been monkeying around with Furkot and have come up with a themed trip to the end of South America and back. Starting in October, just as the darkness and cold is closing in on Canada, we head south. Over the next six months while ice and snow reign in the north, we enjoy equatorial heat and spring in the southern hemisphere. We reach the southern terminus of our trip in mid-winter/summer (December 21st) on the longest day, and then begin the climb back up the globe on the other coast of South America before finally stopping in Rio and shipping the bikes back to NYC. With the best part of three months to get south, this isn’t a ragged rush to the end and should offer time to really get a sense of the places we’re passing through.
We’d be in Buenos Aires two weeks after Ushuaia, coincidentally, just when the Dakar Rally kicks off, which would be an exciting thing to try and follow on lightened motorcycles (we could store most of our luggage in B.A. while we chased the race). The Dakar wraps up in mid-January after we follow it into the Andes and through Bolivia before coming back to Argentina for the start/finish. We’d recover in Buenos Aires and then begin making our way north into Brazil. A tour of Brazil would have us seeing the Amazon before coming back down to Rio. If we left South America from the port of Rio and headed back to New York City, it would take about three weeks on a slow boat; a good time to rest, recover and write! The final piece would be the two day ride home from NYC to Southern Ontario in April, just when we’re ready for spring in Canada.
The Five Thousand Dollar Challenge
The evil-rich me would offer to pay for the trip, but we’d be riding the whole way on bikes that cost less than $5000 Canadian (Top Gear style).
I’m still crushing on Tigers. I think I could talk this one down to $4200 to get it under the $5000 limit with taxes. An oil change and a check of the obvious bits (chain, tires, cables) and I’d be ready to go. The North American bit will be a lot of tarmac, but the Central and South American bits will take some tougher tires, which I’d aim to pick up en route. A quick trip to Twisted Throttle (who have a whack of 1050 Tiger gear) and I’d be ready to take on the escape from winter. With a $5000 limit on the bike (taxes in), what would you take?
Another benefit of doing a trip as a class project was pushing me to find alternatives to Google Maps, which I generally use for trip planning. It makes pretty maps and I like that I can get a sense of what I’m looking at through street view and satellite imagery. It’s relatively easy to use and lets you quickly put together distances, though not easily in segments.
Google Maps lets you switch to Google Earth view and show the geography of the area (in this case The Twisted Sisters – the top motorcycling road destination in the US). It makes for pretty maps, but I had to add in extra waypoints to keep it off the boring highways and on the interesting tarmac.
Where Google Maps really falls short is on longer trip planning as it tends to be car focused and can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to sit on an interstate all day in a box. Trying to coerce Google Maps onto twisty roads is a tricky business, especially with limited way point options. You quickly run out of pins to stick in the map when you’re constantly fighting the software’s predilection for making your trip as short and boring as possible.
Google Maps’ real talent is ease of sharing – it’s easy to get links or embedding code.
Being back in the classroom has me looking for escapism, so I’ve been reading ADVrider’s Epic Ride Reports. There is nothing like reading a ride report from someone’s RTW trip to set you free from a regimented schedule. While on there I came across a couple’s ride from Toronto and around the US. Chelsey was planning their trip on Furkot, which I’d never heard of before. This piqued my interest because some of my students would benefit from an easier/more fully featured digital trip planner. Getting into Furkot was pretty straightforward, you can login using a social media account. It took me about five minutes to transfer my pieces of Google Map from my road trip project into it, and there were no stingy limits on way points. It was when I got into the details that Furkot really lit up. Not only does it auto-set your stops for each day based on what you think your mileage is going to be, but it’ll also find you hotels and preset you gas stops based on the range of your vehicle. When you make a map you can keep it private or share it, and if you share it you immediately get a link to it. Furkot also gives you a share page which has more social media connections (left) than I thought existed, so it shares well. I only monkeyed around with it for twenty minutes, but I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface. You can set your trip to your vehicle and I get the sense that a motorcycle selected trip gives you motorcycle specific results. I look forward to sharing it with my class tomorrow as well as playing with it more myself.
Where the journey’s the thing…
In the meantime I’ve been thinking about Google Maps. The API for Maps is open and used by lots of people to create custom mapping applications. Had I more free time on my hands I’d get into it and build out a motorcycling focused mapping app using Google Maps. The idea came up at the Lobo Loco rally as well. A rally specific app that allows for many GPS way points and more motorcycling focused roads would be a real treat. As would a simplified interface that would work from the busy and limited input environment of a motorcycle saddle. A simplified G-Maps that focuses on the ride would be a cool project.
