Tag: motorcycle

I came up with the idea of setting up motorcycles down south in rental storage units to access over the winter a while back.  This is just the sort of thing I’d do if I had that kind of disposable money laying around.


To set up San Francisco bike storage I’d need to get an Ontario bike down there and parked up in the storage facility.  The idea is to have a ready to go bike that I can fly to with minimal luggage.  I’d eventually be able to fly in to San Francisco with only a carry on bag, take a cab to the storage unit and be on two wheels in one of the best motorcycling locations in the world within a few hours of flying out of the snowbelt.  For the setup I’d take known, works-for-me gear for the ride and then hang it up in the storage unit along with the bike.  Flights back at the moment are one stop, seven hours and about $700 Canadian.


The weather is already closing in here.  We’ve had dustings of snow multiple times.  This would be one of my last chances to make the ride out west before the white wall of winter descends on us.  In trying to make good time to SanFran, I’d also aim to get a motorcycling bucket list item done:  an Iron Butt thousand miles in twenty-four hours:

Day 1:  Elora to Hampton Inn Portage IL.  Just under 500 miles over the border and to the edge of Chicago.  Make sure everything is ready for the big push on Day 2 (the Iron Butt 1000 miles in 24 hours).  Make sure everything is good to go on the bike, get in early, eat and rest up for an early departure.


Day 2:  Portage IL to Denver, CO.  Be on the road by 5am for the big push west.  Cross Chicago before rush hour picks up and then thump across the plains.  1027 miles in 24 hours.  Get in to Denver overnight and then 2 days at the Embassy Suites by Hilton Denver Stapleton.

Day 3:  Rest day in Denver.


Day 4:  Denver to Grand Junction.  Into the Rockies, 333 miles to the Hampton Inn Grand Junction.  A lower mileage day means this should be as much about enjoying the mountains as it is about making time.

Day 5:  Grand Junction to Ely.  429 mountain miles to Ely and the Ramada by Wyndam Ely passing through 3 national parks, so it should be a pretty ride.

Day 6:  Ely NV to San Francisco.  554 mile day to wrap up the trip.  Get into San Francisco late, park up the bike and put everything into hibernation mode.  Load up a carry-on bag with the essentials and take a cab to the airport.  Retrace the four thousand plus miles back in five hours.

I should be able to take the bike out, park it up and be back home within a week, then I’ll have a bike on-call on the West Coast.


For this trip I need something that can cover big miles effectively but is still a useful tool on twisty roads.  The big Triumph Tiger 1200XRx is a long distance capable bike that fits a big guy like me.  It’s also easy to maintain (shaft drive, fuel injection) and comes with many long distance handy abilities like long suspension to soak up bad roads and luggage for the long trip.


A big Tiger in this format costs just over $24k Canadian.  It’s a pretty thing, I saw the new ones in the flesh at the Triumph Tiger ATLAK meet up last summer.  Many magazines describe the bike as very large, but I didn’t find it overwhelmingly so.  In fact, I was surprised at how svelte it was for a 1200cc adventure bike.


But there are some things about the big Tiger that I’m not a fan of.  I’ve never gotten excited about the big aluminum panniers thing on adventure bikes, or any bike for that matter.  I like the colour matched lucifer orange ones on my old Tiger.  I think the aluminum ones look half assed and unfinished, and I get to pay hundreds more for the privilege of having them because others think they’re a fashion item.


The other issue is a recent BIKE Magazine review in which their Tiger developed a number of electrical issues.  Whatever is waiting for me on the West Coast would need to work when I opened that storage unit roller door.  The Tiger is also a reasonably sensible choice, but it’d be nice to have something a bit more come-hither waiting for me in San-Fran.


For surprisingly similar money there is something that I’d describe as more of a dream bike:  the Kawasaki H2 supercharged demon bike in sport touring form.  The H2 SX is an efficient, powerful, supercharger-chirping-as-it-breaks-the-sound-barrier thing of beauty.  It weighs about as much as the big Tiger but produces prodigiously more power and looks like a Japanese super model.


On top of that it has beautifully designed and colour matched panniers that practically disappear into the stunning looks of the bike, rather than looking like tacked on, low-rent metal boxes.


Having the SX sitting in a storage unit in San Francisco would be a constant West Coast siren call.  If I wanted to go far, it could handle it, if I wanted to canyon carve in and around San-Fran, it’d do that to.


As much as I love adventure bikes for how well they fit me, I think I’d have the Kawasaki super model waiting for me on the west coast.  It’d be a blast to ride on the trip out there and would fit in with Californian bike culture much better.

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If you had £70k to spend on a car, which would you choose?

1️⃣ Porsche Cayman GT4
2️⃣ Renault Megane RS Trophy-R
3️⃣ A second-hand Lamborghini Gallardo

This Sunday, #TopGear tackles the £70k Renault-shaped elephant in the room with a good ol’ shootout at the TG track pic.twitter.com/46ThMytfSR

— Top Gear (@BBC_TopGear) February 15, 2020

£70k?  Yikes, that’s $121,026 Canadian!  If I can opt out of the dick swinging options above, here’s how I’d spend my hundred-and-twenty-K on things with four wheels, and two:

Mazda 2019 MX-5 RF GT
$44,870 CAD
That’s a GT model with bells and whistles.  Put me on a twisty mountain road in this and your typical knuckle dragger in one of Top Gear’s choices and I bet I’m the first one to the end… and I won’t be sending it in for service and repairs every five minutes – and it looks spectacular!



RAM ProMaster Van
$44,625 + $15,375 upfit = $60,000
If you’ve read this blog before you know I’ve got a Guy Martin/van obsession that often coincides with a mid-Canadian-winter psychotic episode (I’m getting close now) involving escaping south with a bike in the back for a chance to get on two wheels again.  The Ram’s a funky van.  I’d keep back another $15,000 to upfit it into a long distance camper/bike hauler/multi-use vehicle.




That puts me at about $105,000 Canadian with two new, very different vehicles.  What to do with the other sixteen thousand?

Suzuki DR650SE
$6000 (!)
They’re on sale at the moment and a rock solid piece of off the tarmac ready kit.  It’ll keep up with traffic on the road (unlike the KLX250 didn’t) and take me anywhere – including expanding the short Canadian riding season by tackling the odd bit of snow.  I might look into some enduro competition with it too.  It’s be a rough and ready option in situations where I’d be worried about a more road ready bike.




I’ve still got ten grand to play with and I’ve already had more fun than any of the try-hard Top Gear choices.  Time for something really frivolous that’ll be as fast or faster than any of Porsche/Renault/Lamborghini nonsense that kicked this off.

’08 Suzuki Hayabusa
$7000
The first thing I stumble across on Kijiji is a $7000 ’08 Suzuki Hayabusa.  Odd that Suzuki is the only Japanese manufacturer I’ve never owned and I’ve got two on the list this afternoon.


I’ve got a thing for orange bikes, and this one looks a peach – older rider, low mileage for the year and well looked after.


I’d hold back the other three grand just to make sure this is faster than anything on Top Gear’s list because I like to be Tom… Petty.




If I had £70k to spend on a car?  I’d buy a nice car, a useful van and two awesome and very different motorcycles!  Why be dull?

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I just finished Elspeth Beard’s Lone Rider on Kindle.  In the early 1980s Elspeth rode around the world on her already well used BMW.  I’m a big fan of neuro-atypical voices in writing being one myself.  As a dyslexic (who I also suspect is on the ASD spectrum) who struggled in school, Elspeth isn’t your typical writer’s voice, and the book is all the better for it.


From her struggles with family and friends when preparing for her around the world ride decades before it became a television opportunity, to her honest observations of what it was (is?) like to travel solo as a woman, you get a sometimes painfully transparent look at the emotion and effort stirred up by such a massive undertaking.  The repeated machismo she runs into in the motorcycling community in 1980s London is frustrating.  What’s more frustrating is that it hasn’t changed as much as it should have in the past thirty years.


The way that Elspeth describes the eccentricities of her dad and herself, I suspect they both live somewhere on the ASD spectrum (something I empathize with).  This atypical way of thinking, in addition to her dyslexia, gives her descriptions of the cultures she is riding through a degree of perspective and originality missing in other travel books.

Travellers tend to throw on the rose coloured glasses when describing India, ignoring the difficulties of trying to move across a continent with well over a billion people on it.  Elspeth’s experiences, exacerbated by her gender, along with her brutal honesty, give you what is probably the most accurate description of riding in India you’ll ever read; no rose tinted glasses on here.  From the fumbling sexual advances of men stuck in the middle ages to breath taking child cruelty, Elspeth’s wide open eyes see it all and she doesn’t shy away from telling you about it.


I would highly recommend this book if you enjoy motorcycling, travel writing and/or feminism and aren’t frightened off by people who think differently.  It doesn’t read like your typical motorcycle travel book, but Elspeth wasn’t just riding, she was also elbow deep in keeping an already old, high mileage 1970s BMW running through sandstorms, biblical rain and everything in between.  If you have any mechanical sympathy at all, Elspeth scratches that itch too.


As much as I enjoyed the travel writing, what I missed most at the end of the book was Elspeth’s unique way of seeing the world.  Her struggles understanding people and dealing with bureaucracies, especially with her wit and dry humour, are often hilarious, disheartening and hopeful all at the same time.


I’d urge you to give this book a read, it’s available on Amazon as an ebook for less than ten bucks Canadian.  When the movie comes out in a couple of years, I hope they give it the nuance and depth it deserves.  Elspeth provides a voice and insight into a lot more than just her gender.

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Neil Spalding‘s MotoGP Technology is a dense read.  I got it in September and I’m still only two thirds of the way through.  I read a bit, then chase down details so I make sure I’ve got the concepts understood.  This approach isn’t very efficient, but it is thorough, and I’ve got fuck all else to do motorcycle wise over this long, cold, Canadian winter.

I’ve been an avid watcher of MotoGP for seven years now, including riding down to the last Indianapolis MotoGP race in 2015, but this book has made me literate in the mechanics of grand prix bike racing in a way that I never was before.

I’ve also spent a fair amount of time coming to terms with motorcycle dynamics and especially how these bizarre machines move around corners.  From watching Keith Code and reading Twist of the Wrist 2, I’ve tried to understand the inputs I need to make to control a bike effectively.

After all the team histories that kick off MotoGP Technology, Spalding goes after the various technical tricks that make a grand prix bike move like a jet plane, at least in the hands of the maestros.  The last chapter was on reverse rotating crankshafts, which led to a look at the complex gyroscopic effects happening on race bikes.  Spalding suggested looking up Eric Laithwaite and gyroscopic procession, which led me to this!

As Professor Laithwaite describes it, the spinning weight already has a path it wants to follow, he simple lets it follow it.  In doing so what was suddenly a difficult to lift weight becomes effortless.  There are a lot of gyroscopic forces happening on a motorcycle in motion, and Spalding addresses this in the later chapters of the book.

Curiously, considering it’s 2020 and we have computer technology that can accurately model complex physics, it arises in the book that what’s happening on a motorcycle in extreme cornering is more a matter of educated conjecture than known fact.  Our best guesses are still what drives our understanding of the complexities of motorcycle dynamics, which is an incredible thing to realize.

As has often happened when reading MotoGP Technology, the suggestions for finding online resources to better understand a problem lead to other online resources that weren’t necessarily part of the original search (which might be part of the reason why it’s taking me so long to read the book!).  In talking about gyroscopic forces acting on the bike I ended up stumbling across this information packed piece by CanyonChasers.net on how to ride more quickly safely:

Recently I’ve become increasingly frustrated by the sheer amount of shitty media there is online, but this is a good example of a well edited, erudite video that doesn’t waste my time with other people’s inanity.  Just because the majority of people online are a waste of time (read any comments anywhere), doesn’t mean there aren’t gems out there.


Speaking of which, Neil Spalding’s MotoGP Technology is super current (just got updated in the summer), written by an expert with decades of experience and insider knowledge, and delves deep not only into recent MotoGP technical history, but also into the physics that this technology is up against.  If you’re interested in taking your understanding of one of the most extreme sports on earth to the next level, MotoGP Technology will help you get there.

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MotoGP starts this weekend in Qatar.  Maverick Viñales has launched his first season on the championship capable Yamaha with zeal, topping the time sheets in early free practice.

This year’s shakeup, with new riders in many teams, promises to stir in some chaos.  Marquez doesn’t seem to be able to catch Viñales and this tends to make the volatile Spaniard crashy and dangerous.  A newer, more mature Marques appeared last year more intent on getting points than always being out front, but that was tempered by him actually being out front sometimes.  If Maverick runs away and Marc gets frustrated, this could make for a very interesting season.

I think Lorenzo will only improve as he develops the Ducati into the instrument he needs it to be.  He might be a surprise on Sunday.  I’m a Rossi fan through and through, but unless he can sort out the bike (and if anyone can the Doctor can), he will be an afterthought.  Speculation is already rife around that, but don’t give up on the old dog yet, he’s still got some new tricks I think.

Not to wish ill on anyone, but if Maverick can knock the cocky Marques back a step,  Lorenzo sorts out his Ducati and Rossi does what he always does and remains relevant against all odds, this could turn into a four-or-more-way run at the championship across at least three manufacturers.  That would be epic.  If Dani and Iannone could find form and the rookies (especially Zarco, I love Zarco) keep nipping at their heels, this could be a perfect storm.

… and there’s always Cal Crutchlow to shock and awe when no one thinks he will.  This year might be one for the history books.

Marc has put me off and I’ve always found it difficult to like Lorenzo, but Maverick is much like Dani Pedrosa. I’d be happy with either of these gentlemen winning a championship, though it looks like Maverick is leading the charge.

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