Page 61 – Mechanical Sympathy

Micro Ninja

I picked up a Celestron digital microscope/camera a few weeks ago. These are surprisingly cheap and let you take some astonishing video and photography on a micro level you might not otherwise get to see with a normal camera and even the fanciest macro setup.

The model I got takes 4mb images and does high-def video at high frame rates (for smooth slow motion). After messing around with ice crystals and eyeballs I turned the it on the Ninja.

I’ve always thought the petal type rotors on the Ninja are a nice feature, and up close they take on an abstract modernism that is really beautiful. I couldn’t help but critically exam them while they were under the microscope, they seem to be wearing very evenly.

Looking at the chain up close was another matter. What I thought was a clean, well lubricated chain didn’t look so clean under a microscope. The road grit that gets caught up in the lubricant is obvious at even low magnification. I suppose the only time your chain looks nice is before you use it.

The radiator fins made another interesting closeup. These look perfectly formed and even to the naked eye, but up close the folds in the cooling fins look like they were made by hand. It’s another world when you get to micro-photography. No corrosion and they look to be wearing well though.

The small-print on the tires are very sharp considering that they are branded into rubber. The sidewalls look to be in very clean shape after my first season too.

What was freakier was looking at the micro-detail in the treads. Motorcyclists have such tiny contact patches on the road, they tend to be much more tire focused than four wheeled vehicles. With the naked eye the tires on the bike still look in great shape, but under the microscope they made me nervous. Don’t look at your bike tires under a microscope unless you’ve got a strong stomach:

That’s the narrow end of one of the tread cuts on the rear tire (not quite a season old) of the Avon Storms on the Ninja. Once again, they look in great shape to the naked eye, but tires are the sharp end of the spear on a bike and up close they show their wear in the tread grooves. In this case it looks like the contact patch is in good shape but the rubber in the grooves has dried out.

As a photographic exercise the Celestron digital microscope/camera was a lot of fun to play with, and at only about fifty bucks it might also make a handy diagnostic tool (the photos are jpgs and the videos are avi, so you could easily share them with people too). In video mode it could create high-def, high frame rate (slow motion) images as you scan over an area and show cracks or damage in fantastic detail. It would be interesting to run this over internal engine parts after high mileage to get a sense of how they wear.

Escape

It’s that time of year again. Dreams of escape surround me. If I left right now I could get in and out of Tuktoyaktuk on Canada’s north shore before the snows arrive (just). I might have to bomb up there in a van just to get out in time, but then it’d be heading south across the Americas for months, chasing the summer.

The west coast as autumn falls would be glorious. As the snows start to fly in Canada, I’d be into Mexico and Central America. An unrushed few weeks working my down through the many border crossings would be much less stressful if I didn’t have to be somewhere somewhen. Crossing the Darien Gap from Panama to Columbia is five days on a boat and a chance to take a break from the saddle.

The boat lands in Columbia. Once in South America I’d find somewhere to bed down over the holidays in Colombia or Ecuador before rolling south into the South American summer. Spending Christmas on an empty Andean shoreline facing the never ending Pacific would be glorious.

I’d push south and see Machu Picchu after the holidays and then try and catch at least one stage of the Dakar Rally as it thunders around Peru in January. A Peruvian desert stage would be awesome.

As summer wore on in the southern hemisphere, I’d continue south to Ushuaia on the southern end of Argentina. After going from arctic to antarctic, I’d work my way back up to Buenos Aires and start the process of packing up the bike for a trans-Atlantic crossing to Cape Town.

https://adventuremotorcycletravel.com/listing/darien-gap/
http://wildcardsailing.com/motorcycle-shipping-to-colombia/
https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2017/04/todd-blubaughs-too-far-gone.html
…for what it feels like to peer over the edge into a never ending ride.

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The Bike Hole is Completeth!

The bike hole is done! From an unfinished, uninsulated garage, I now have a bike hole that’ll warm up to room temperature with a small space heater. Not only is it warm, but it’s also organized!

After removing the mouse nest from the toolbox and getting rid of three garbage bags of nonsense, the garage is now a workable space. Thanks to a tsunami in Japan the upstairs is a workable storage space (instead of a week in Japan I spent days putting flooring into the attic).

Motorbike prints from Norfolk!

Between prints and some well done motorcycle 4×6 photos, I’ve managed to make a motorbike maker space without a single poster and some inspirational images for a long, cold Canadian winter. With all the mess organized and stored in the attic there would be room for a couple of bikes in there comfortably.

The current list of things to do:

take the fairings off the Ninja and refinish the frame
find an old project bike that I can break down as a learning exercise
find a good introduction to motorcycle mechanics’ text

Learning On A Knife’s Edge

I’m still struggling with my Mum’s recent, sudden death. While that is going on, I’m dealing with a previously signed up for teaching qualification in computer engineering, and a series of slanderous attacks on my profession. I can’t help but be self-reflexive about how I’m dealing with the role of student; I fear I’m not doing it very well.

Culturally, I think I’m on the Ridge

I’ve felt thin since that phone call on June 1st. The North American manly thing to do is dismiss anything to do with it and proceed with a steady course of denial. I suppose the stiff upper-lip English thing is to do something similar. Since being dumped somewhere in the mid-Atlantic as a child, I’m having trouble adopting a social convention to follow.

The thinness I’m feeling has made for some awkward moments with time management. On the first weekend, when I should have been plugging away on our first big assignment, instead I ended up going to the cottage and passing out on the couch. It made for a stressful Monday when I returned, but one of the things about being thin is that there isn’t enough butter to evenly cover the toast.

I feel like we’re over the hump in the course now. I’m finding old habits returning around hard focusing on specific tasks instead of just directionlessly wandering through the material we’re covering. I’m a good student, even when I’m incomplete. The deadlines have been difficult to handle, but perhaps their imminence helped me get my mind off subjects it wouldn’t let go of otherwise. The fact that the emotionally turbulent month of June is slowly receding might be helping too.

I’ve had students who have gone through emotional crisis, some of which make mine look like a walk in the park, yet we still come at them with curriculum expectations and demands. I’ve always tried to step lightly in those cases, out of a sense of compassion. It’s a difficult thing for a teacher to deal with. In some cases a student who has gone through trauma is best left with space, but in others, giving them something else to focus on might help move them on emotionally.

No clear answer to this one, I fear. Some days I’d be driving down to the course with tears rolling down my cheeks because of a song on the radio, right now I’m feeling pretty solid. It comes and goes. I guess the one take-away from all this is that you can’t make an algorithm or develop a system for dealing with emotional crisis; each person experiences it differently, and coming at it in a curriculum orientated, systemic manner is a recipe for disaster.

A good teacher will remember their own ups and downs and differentiate not just in terms of what a student is capable of intellectually, but also in terms what emotional focus they can bring to bear.

In my own case, I’ve been trying to change my mind, but when it runs deep, it’s not always a matter of conscious choice. In the end, if I can remember where I am now with my students in the future, I’ll be in a better place to respond to their needs.

Pretty Calipers

The brake caliper rebuild moved into the ‘nerd-lab’ downstairs where my son does his lego and I usually focus more on digital tech. With Why We Ride playing on the projector I got to enjoy HEAT while I rebuilt the rear caliper.

The only time I had to go out to the garage was to blow out the caliper pistons with compressed air, otherwise it was some light bench work while watching a very pretty film.

I’m still monkeying around with 3d modelling tools. I’m trying different resolution settings on the Structure Sensor. I also tried using itseez3d instead of the factory software. It made for an interesting variation (itseez3d uses the ipad camera to take a lot of texture photos which it mixes into the model).

It only took me a couple of hours to sort out the fronts and have everything looking sharp. Blowing out the pistons was a bit trickier as there are two on the front and the smaller one (less surface area) didn’t come right out with the air. I’m worried that I scored them too much removing them. I guess I’ll see when I put them all back on the bike.

The front calipers are cleaned up and blown apart, waiting for their rebuilds, probably later this week.

3d model of the rear caliper reassembled.

Compared to the rusty lump it was before, it’s night and day. I can’t wait to feel the change.

The rusty, pockmarked disk bolts got dremelled clean and repainted too.

The Machine As Narrative

Eighteen months ago I found a 1994 Kawasaki ZG1000 sitting in a field. It was in pretty rough shape, unused with grass growing up through it. I was immediately drawn to it, though I was worried about transitioning from my relatively modern, fuel injected, first bike (an ‘07 Ninja) to this twenty year old, carbureted machine that clearly needed TLC to be roadworthy.

One of the reasons I got into motorcycling was to re-spark my dormant love of mechanics, which had been prompted by Matt Crawford’s brilliant little book, Shopclass As Soulcraft. I briefly battled with worries about my abilities and working on motorcycles (of which I had no previous experience). When you get a car repair wrong you tend to roll to a stop surrounded by a big cage. If you get a bike part wrong it can throw you down the road. I’d been away from mechanics so long that I was afraid I’d lost the touch.

Once I got my hands moving again they quickly remembered what they once knew. My ability to repair machines hadn’t been unused, it had simply been focused elsewhere, on IT. Those years of rebuilding cars and working in the industry quickly came back to me.

The Concours was stripped down, old gauges were fixed, oil lines repaired and it sailed through safety. The old dog immediately rewarded me with a ride up to Blue Mountain though a snow storm, and a ride around Georgian Bay. The only mechanical failure as the bike began to rack up miles was Canadian Tire’s fault.

By the end of the summer the old Kawasaki had ridden down the back straight of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and clocked up over thirty thousand miles on the odometer.

This winter I’ve been deeper into the bike than ever before. Besides maintenance items like spark plugs, I also had a close look at the tires, and elected to retire the mis-matched, old tires. With the tires off and the wheels naked, I looked into industrial coating options. Fireball Performance Coatings is only about half an hour away in Erin. After meeting with the owner Mark, I went with a candy coated gold that’ll gel nicely with the red/gold trim look the bike is developing. The rims are done and are currently at Two Wheel Motorsport getting Michelined up. Future bike projects are definitely going to make use of Fireball’s coatings.

This week things start to go back together in a big way. With the tires and rims back I’ll be popping in the new bearings, putting the balancing beads in (first time trying them), and installing the wheels back on the bike. With the wheels (and disk brake rotors) back on I’ll be able to finally finish the rear brake lines and reinstall the rebuilt calipers. It’s a lot of bits and pieces that need to come back together, fortunately I’ve been taking photos as I go (a good way to keep track of what goes where). Between that and the Clymer shop manual, everything should come back together nicely.

A big part of taking things apart is cleaning them up, even if parts don’t get replaced. I’ve been into many dark places that haven’t seen anyone since 1994.

The clean and shiny drive disk in the rear hub – it’s what the shaft drive feeds into.

A cleaned up shaft drive housing on the back of the bike.

The rear suspension is cleaned up, but it needs a good greasing.

Owning an older motorcycle can be frustrating, but it’s also very rewarding. The operation of the machine is only one part of your relationship with it. By laying hands on the mechanicals you become familiar with your motorbike in a new way. That mechanical relationship integrates with the riding relationship, creating something richer.

It might be nice to have a newer machine that always works, but even if I could afford that, I don’t know that I’d sell off the Concours. It’s nice to have a machine I’m this intimate with.

As I finished writing this Triumph emailed me with a link to the new Street Twin configurator. That’d be a lovely machine to start another story with…

Triumph Tiger 955i Graphic Ideas

The old 955i Tiger is now a long ago thing in Triumph’s lineup, but mine is still going strong. I dug up an old print I made of a tiger face and digitized it before playing with skins on the 955i logo…

I might monkey around with producing a custom sticker set for the bike. The new Tigers all look like special forces bikes, but the old one had some whimsy to it and asked the obvious question, “why so serious?” Some whimsical stickers for a whimsical machine that just keeps going.

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Saints & Sinners Long Distance Motorcycle Rally

Lobo Loco long distance rally. If you’re iron butty you could do the 3 day event. I’m in for the one day on Sunday: https://wolfe35.wixsite.com/lobolocorallies/saintssinnerssunday2019

Lobo Loco Rallies are based out of South/Central Ontario, but if you’re anywhere in the mid-west or on the eastern side of North America it’s easy to get to.

It’s a great excuse to find weird things and pile up alotta miles on your bike, and it’s based in the middle of some beautiful Canadian shield riding:

https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2017/05/any-day-on-two-wheels-is-good-day.html

https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2018/07/kawartha-highlands-circumnavigation.html

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Niagara Escarpment

I’ve been chased off the road by lousy weather, so the dream trips begin again (it’s a form of therapy).

The Niagara Escarpment

Since moving to Southern Ontario when I was nine, I’ve had a fascination with the Niagara Escarpment. There are a couple of parks (Rockwood & Rattlesnake Point) that featured prominently with my younger years; I learned to rock climb at Rattlesnake Point.

When I got my driver’s license and couldn’t handle the tedium of arrow straight Ontario roads any more I’d drive up to Belfountain (where I got married years later) and drive the Forks of the Credit. When I got my motorcycle license, one of the first long trips I ever took was to a conference in Ancaster where I was introduced to Sulphur Springs Road, one of the first times I got that feeling of flying while riding.

Southern Ontario is surrounded by interesting geology, but the only
thing that breaks up the monotony around here is the Escarpment

Last year I took a ride out to Horning’s Mills, one of the prettiest places I’ve ever wanted to live and road River Road down through Mono Hills (somewhere else I’ve looked at houses). All of these places happen to trace the spine of the escarpment.

Geological scars have always fascinated me, I think the energy coming out of the ground in these places is palpable; the Escarpment is one of those places.

I usually design trips that go long or take me to exotic place, but this one is a close to home and very doable trip. The Escarpment enters Ontario just below Niagara Falls at the Queenston Heights (where I attended my wife’s cousin’s wedding). Starting there, I’d trace the Escarpment through Niagara wine country and past my wife’s alma mater (Brock University). A logical first stop would be on the turn around Hamilton in Ancaster. Day One would be only about 100kms, with lots of stops and turns up and down the Escarpment. Passing through the rows of grapes, we may end up testing the carrying capacity of our rides.

Day 2 would mark the swing north, starting with Sulphur Springs road and winding through Rattlesnake Point and The Forks of the Credit before parking it up for the night at The Millcroft Inn in Alton. This one’s about 120kms as the crow flies, but includes a lot of switchbacks again. Pulling in early at the Millcroft spa is never a bad idea anyway.

After a restful night at The Millcroft we head north past my wife’s childhood home in Mono Hills and up to Horning’s Mills before tracing River Road and heading north to the bottom of Georgian Bay. Blue Mountain looks like a nice place to stop. This is another 120km day, but with a lot of room for exploration and switchbacks.

Day four has us tracing the shore of Georgian Bay for 150kms on increasingly quieter roads as we head away from the noise of the Golden Horseshoe. We’d aim for Wiarton to stop for the night before tackling The Bruce Peninsula on the final day.

It’s tricky following the Escarpment up the Bruce Peninsula, road access is spotty at best. If we try to hit every bit of coast we’re looking at over 200kms of riding. Many roads don’t appear to join up on the map but might in real life, it’ll be an exploratory day of trying to find the wild edge of the Bruce.

The trip ends in lovely Tobermory. If we left on a Monday we’d be in Tobermory by Friday night. The goal wouldn’t be miles covered, but rather how much of the Escarpment could we ride. Relatively known roads like Forks of the Credit might get company from some Escarpment roads that only locals know of (like River Road out of Horning’s Mills).

The Niagara Escarpment Run

Without any highways or long distance hauling, this begs for a light touch as far as gear

goes. The bikes would be minimally laden. In a perfect world I’d do this with my wife and two friends from Ottawa. Considering the nature of the trip, I’d be tempted to try and do this zero emission. The Zero DS with the power tank would easily cover the mileage requirements every day and be able to charge overnight at each stop.

It would even be able to handle the ride from Tobermory home at the end of the trip in one gulp.

The Bruce Trail runs along the Escarpment, which itself is a world biosphere reserve. Being able to ride the escarpment without a whiff of CO2 not only honours the biosphere, but also points to a future of environmentally gentler motorbiking.

Pinterest A.I. Points Out Some Annoying Associations With Motorcycling

I’m a visual animal to begin with, and Pinterest feeds my first language directly without any words; I’m usually a fan. As my collection of pins grow the feed starts to show things that the Pinterest A.I. thinks I’ll be interested in. That impartial comparison revealed a number of interesting and not particularly flattering connections to motorcycles.

Apparently a large number of people who make motorcycle themed boards on Pinterest don’t think too much of women. They either enjoy taking shots at their biological functions or treating them like sex toys. This gets tiresome quickly when you post nothing like this on your boards.

How overt sexism possibly has anything to do with motorcycles is beyond me, other than the fact that a lot of people who profess to love motorbikes also evidently have strongly held beliefs about the inferiority of women and like to post disparaging images to support and publicize that belief.

The A.I. isn’t judging, it’s just matching up evident associations between what I would have described as diverse, unrelated interests. But there is a calculable statistical connection between people who post pictures about motorcycles and people who like to advertise the fact that they are a sexist asshole. If there wasn’t the maths wouldn’t have put that crap in my feed. I find it all a bit embarrassing.

When you tell Pinterest you’re not a fan of these suggestions it begins to tune them out. It’s taken the better part of a week of continual weeding to clean out my feed, which makes me sad. The clingyness of this statistical connection suggests it’s a strong one, which leads to the question: are the majority of motorcycle riders sexist? If they are then I guess Pinterest’s AI should keep doing what it’s doing, but I hope my actions are making that AI a bit better at connecting interests.

Not everyone who is into bikes is a mouth breathing jerk.

When the AI isn’t battering you with overt sexism, it’s hammering you with what appears to be insecure man syndrome. Apparently the women hating angry men are also very insecure and like to post images and words that I can best describe as mad-bragging. I’ve never gotten the chest beating “I’m a tough guy” talk. Anyone who spends a lot of time telling you how tough they are probably isn’t.

Evidently there is mathematical evidence that many people who like motorcycles also have a tendency to hate women and nurse giant insecurity complexes; or perhaps they are just the loudest ones.

What got me wondering about this was a sudden increase in the bimbo on a cruiser/angry man images in my feed. What really pushed me over the top was an overt reference to Trumpist conservatism that verged on white supremacist. I was so shocked by the pin that I removed it immediately. I’d be embarrassed to be associated with an image like that. Afterwards I was noticing a proliferation of other biker nonsense and started screen grabbing it as it happened. I wish I’d kept the first one as it makes the later ones look tame by comparison. It makes me wonder just how poisonous and nasty some people’s feeds could become. You could make the argument that it’s what they want to see, but if were Pinterest I wouldn’t feel good about spreading that kind of negativity.

If you look at my Motorcycle Media page, you won’t find any bikinis or angry biker threats, yet Pinterest clearly sees a statistical connection between those subjects and what I’m into. Any women in my pages are conspicuous in that they are riders, not adornments, and are clothed as such.

From that Motorcycle Media board.
WTF Pinterest? I’m starting to think
the AI is going full HAL.

From a technical perspective I wonder if Pinterest are looking just at keywords or whether they have something smarter going on with image recognition. Considering it’s Pinterest I’d hope it’s the later, yet they seem intent on trying to hook me up to the angry-white-guy-biker vibe, which I’ve never shown any interest in. Perhaps these are teething pains as Pinterest seems to be exploring AI quite aggressively.

I’ve bumped into North American biker culture before, and it usually hasn’t been all that much fun. It seems particularly comfortable with a view of masculinity that seems pretty antiquated. These archaic misogynists appear determined to cling to their 20th (19th?) Century ideas. This doesn’t bother me that much because they’re on the wrong side of history, I just wish Pinterest wasn’t so intent on slapping me in the face with them.

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