I’ve never been on a provincial team before, it’s quite the experience. In addition to the unnatural process of leaving school, getting on an aeroplane and flying away from the classroom in early June, it also puts you together with all the other gold medalists, some of whom you lost against in other categories, except now you’re team mates. There are a lot of different students on Team Ontario, from the quietest introverts to the loudest extroverts you can imagine, yet they have all demonstrated advanced skills in their particular field of study and are proven craftspeople. They range from cocky and arrogant to nervous and uncertain; there is no typical Skills Ontario gold medalist. There are a lot of different ways to coach a Skills competitor as well and the teachers here reflect that, but the one thing they all have in common is engagement – I’ve yet to see a shrug of indifference from anyone. I’ve been accused of not always playing well with others, but when the others are this capable and willing, it’s hard not to get caught up in it all. We did a solid day of sight seeing yesterday (photos below) and today we’ve had the day off before the opening ceremonies in a couple of hours. I’m studiously taking notes so I can understand this new part of the process we haven’t done before. I’ve brought the most experienced IT/Networking student I’ve had to date. It occurred to me the other night that IT, like many other stochastic technology skills, depends largely on experience driven intuition to overcome unclear problems in complex systems. A student who was willing to try and fail many times ended up developing into my best candidate because of that resiliency. I’ve brought students more skilled in academics to Skills Ontario, but never seen them break through because everything had to be just so. You can’t clarify a problem let alone solve it if you aren’t willing to flounder around in the dark trying things first. If you read any modern text on how to teach, floundering around isn’t favourable to a transparent, linear process of problem resolution. If everyone else keeps doing that, we’ve got an edge.
If you’re involved in Ontario education at all, the hashtags to follow on twitter are #teamON and #teamOntario, and the National Skill Competition hashtag #SCNC2016. Re-tweets of Team Ontario are appreciated (there is a team spirit award based on social media participation). Later today and tomorrow we’ll be knee deep in the competition, and then I’ll be able to assess how well we prepared for this unknown. Until then, isn’t New Brunswick beautiful?
Team Ontario at Hopewell Rocks in The Bay of Fundy
Now that I’m off a shaft driven bike, I’m back into the black magic that is chain geometry! A trip to Gearing Commander has me working out the details of an ’03 Triumph Tiger 955i’s chain and sprockets. The stock set is a 18T (eighteen tooth) front sprocket and a 46T (forty-six tooth) rear sprocket. The chain is a 530-50 114.
A number of riders suggested a 19T (nineteen tooth) front sprocket to calm the bike down a bit. The chain and sprockets are happy right now, but when it finally comes to a change, I think I’ll go the 19T way. Motorbike sprockets run backwards from bicycle ones – the smaller sprocket is attached to the engine, so the more teeth, the bigger the gearing.
LINKS & CHAIN INFORMATION
The 530 114 chain on the Tiger has a pitch of 5/8 of an inch (the 5 is 5 x ⅛” – a 4 series chain would be 4 x ⅛” or half an inch of pitch). Five-eighths pitch chains have a roller diameter of 0.400″. The 30 part of the 530 refers to roller width, which in this case is 3 x ⅛” or 3/8th of an inch. A 520 chain would have a roller width of 2 x ⅛”, or a quarter of an inch. If you want to understand chain sizes, get a handle on that rule of 8 (all the numbers refer to eighths of an inch).
The 114 refers to the number of links in the chain (its length).
A fifty dollar US ($300CDN) magnetic oil drain plug.
Triumph magnetic oil drain plugs. M14x1.5×16 (that’s a metric 14mm width, 1.5mm distance between the threads, 16 mm long drain plug). Entertaining Triumph oil drain plug banter (and the idea to put hard drive magnets on your oil filter, which is what I’m doing instead of ordering an expensive custom drain plug from The States). The Tiger has been using a bit of oil (which is evidently within spec) but I don’t know what the previous owner’s mechanic put in it – putting in not Mobil 1 Synthetic (which Triumph states is the preferred oil) would be a great way to make money on an oil change. If I swap in the good stuff, then I know what’s in it. I’m also putting on a K&N oil filter with a higher spec than the stock one and putting a couple of hard drive magnets on the bottom of it to catch any metal shavings dancing around in there. I did the oil change yesterday. I’ve done thousands of oil changes (it put me through university). If that oil was changed last fall I’m a monkey’s uncle. The Triumph filter on it had rust on it, the drain plug didn’t look like it had been taken off any time recently. Either the previous owner didn’t do it, or his mechanic lied to him. The oil was black and punky too, looking like it had been in there a long time.
With that all done I’ll now look to see how much oil I’m missing every thousand kilometres (it’s 3-400ml at the moment – but goodness knows what was in it or for how long). The moral here is change the oil when you buy a used bike – you can’t trust what happened before it was yours and oil is vital to keeping an engine running well. I’m looking forward to seeing what new, correct oil does for the bike moving forward. Other than keeping it shiny and lubricating cables and controls, there isn’t much more needs doing. It’s supposed to be a beautiful long weekend. I’m hoping to get out for some time on my very orange Tiger in my very orange Tiger shirt.
It’s also handily central in the province – the easterners could meet up with the westerners at a central location, somewhere like the Opeongo Mountain Resort (3 bedroom cottages for $150 a night!). Ride up Friday afternoon, settle in, leave everything in the cottage and enjoy a day of riding light on Saturday, Saturday night around the camp fire and then riding home on Sunday. That’d be one heck of a weekend. If it worked out well we could do it again at the end of September in the fall colours.
The hardest financial part about a long trip is being out of work. It’s not just costing you for the trip, it’s probably costing you even more for not being at work, but I got lucky in that department. From the beginning of July until the end of August I’m off, and with the semester winding down all I can think about is how I’d best use that time. With the paycheque covered, could I get to Ushuaia in the time I have off? 600km days in North America seem reasonable, and I wouldn’t want to lollygag around where I live anyway. The point of this trip would be to go far in a relatively short time. Moving through The States quickly also means not coughing up for first world accommodation any more than I have to. 600km days would wrap up the North American bit in five days. Mexico is where it starts to get interesting, and it’s also fairly straightforward, though it gets dodgier the further south you go. Travelling the length of Mexico means just over two thousand kilometres of riding. At a reduced 400kms/day (more in the north, less in the south), I’d be at the border to Guatemala in another five days. The urge to photograph would increase exponentially as I got into cultures and geographies I’ve never experienced before, so more time wouldn’t be wasted. Central America is, by many accounts, the slowest part of riding down the Americas. From the southern border of Mexico to the Colon ferry terminal in Panama is only 2300kms, but in that time you cross six international borders that aren’t exactly state of the art. At a further reduced average of 200kms per day, it would be a twelve day ride crossing those borders, mountains and rain forests to Panama. Thanks to the one certain way of getting around the Gap closing down, those twelve days through Central America needn’t be rushed. Crossing the Darien Gap looked like it was solved with a brilliant ferry service to Cartagena, Columbia, but the service appears to have stopped. There are other options, but run much less regularly and are more expensive. The best seems to be the Stahlratte, which will take motorbike and rider to and from Panama to Cartagena in quite nice circumstances for about the price of your typical Canadian airline ticket. The scheduled trips for 2016 pose problems though. The Pan-American Highway portion of the ride is 10.300kms, and involves four international border crossings (five if you count the second Chilean crossing in Tierra del Fuego). At 500km average days I’d be looking at 21 days of travel to get down the spine of South America to the end of the world. It’s another three thousand kilometers back up Argentina to Bueno Aires in order to drop off the bikes for shipping back to Canada. That’d be another six days at 600kms/day back to the big city and the flight home. The Darien Gap poses problems because it throws the schedule off. With the ferry not running it’s either a chartered boat (expensive, timing not great) or air freight (expensive but timely). The schedule below is using the Stahlratte’s 2016 schedule:
… but even with those slack days before the trip over the Darien Gap, it still just fits into a summer off. Air freight over the gap is also an option that could shift those six days in waiting in Panama to the push down South America. Shipping back from Buenos Aires looks possible but unclear. The most likely connection would be overseas from B.A. to NYC, probably getting the bikes back towards the end of October. A weekend flight to NYC, picking up the bikes and riding home would be the final bit of this epic journey.
That guy already looks like he’s on his
way to Ushuaia !
He builds entire luggage systems,
knows his way around a firing range,
and brews beer, and that bike is up
for it!
To make it even more plausible I’d tap a couple of buddies who happen to have bikes totally capable of making this trip. Jeff’s Super Ténéré and Graeme’s V-Strom would both be more than ready to join the Tiger on a trip south, and both riders have the kind of skills and experience that would allow them to carry me so that I barely had to do anything! Jeff has been riding bikes since biblical times and Graeme has years of riding experience plus a long stint in the military, so he can read maps and everything! I could wander around taking photos of butterflies and videoing bikes winding through the Atacama while these two made sure we were moving in the right direction. Having a couple of capable, experienced riders on this burn south would help keep it on schedule.
Adventure motorcycling bits are wicked expensive!
I’d take Austin’s advice in Mondo Sahara and change all the wearable bits (tires, chains, fluids, etc) prior to leaving, but otherwise the bikes would be as they are. A Triumph, Yamaha & Suzuki tumbling down the Americas over a brief summer. If we’re not getting manufacturer support (unless all three band together in an alliance against the unholy absolutism of celebrity BMW adventure motorcycling!), maybe we can chase down some support gear. We could do a lot worse than an assisted walk through the Twisted Throttle adventure catalogue. They’d do popular Japanese bikes like the V-Strom and Super10, but they also offer a lot of kit for my older Triumph. The last weeks of school get pretty manic. Daydreaming of massive rides that last all summer is a survival mechanism. Links & Maps
Info on the Bueno Aires to North
America transport is thin on the
ground- we might have to ride
home from NYC!
This quote was used in a presentation I gave in 2013. The revolution is
sneaking up on us, changing our habits and how we think and learn
without us even realizing it.
Recently a number of people have told me something along these lines: “I don’t have to remember anything any more, I can just Google it.” I don’t necessarily disagree, but this approach to off-loading knowledge does raise some interesting questions. In a best case scenario we end up with people who have the cognitive freedom to make more diverse and interesting connections, but more often I see the other side of the coin, where people are using technology to reduce their effort and involvement.
With information readily at hand, we still fall back on old
concepts of information management in order to try and
understand it. Computers don’t use file folders, the text we
save on a computer isn’t even text, but rather than update
our ideas of how information is being stored, we force it into
paper based memes so we can relate inaccurately..
When knowledge was rare and few people read or owned books the holding of knowledge internally made you powerful. Being able to learn and retain information was a key focus of education in those days. That rigorous approach, which was a necessity because of the scarcity of information, produced tough minded academics who could dismiss the unintelligent if they couldn’t internalize what was needed. Our school system today is a historical descendant of that information scarce world – still testing students on information that is readily available to them. Yet we still value that academic rigour, and for good reason. A student who develops the mental toughness to internalize and retain information, even if they could just Google it, is building habits that will allow them to tackle increasingly complex materials and processes, especially when that knowledge is implicit to skillsets that demand immediate response. If you’ve got to Google how to spell every word in your essay, you aren’t going to write a good essay. If you have no understanding of the French Revolution, including what led to it and what happened after, you’ll be hard pressed to create a nuanced presentation about it, no matter how handy you are at Google Presentations and searches. Using the proliferation of information as an excuse to do less is where we run into problems.
The information revolution has pushed cross curricular
collaboration into overdrive. Formerly siloed branches of
academia are finding connections through the free-flow of
digital information – a good example of the information
revolution being used to enhance rather than minimize effort
Vehicle based digital control systems offer an interesting parallel to information technology and learning. In racing the electronic subsystems that have evolved in vehicles aren’t used for safety, they are used to increase lap times and allow the vehicle operator to reach limits and stress equipment to levels before unimaginable. They don’t crash less than they used to, and when they do crash they tend to be going faster than before. Digital enhancement of driving skill is the focus of racing electronics. Electronic controls on vehicles designed for the general public don’t increase operator ability, they leap in and interfere with it. As a skilled driver I am able to stop a car in snow in a significantly shorter distance than computer controlled anti-lock brakes (locking the wheels causes them to build up snow in front of the tires stopping the car sooner, but anti-lock braking keeps the wheels spinning, preventing that from happening). For most people who are happy to operate a two ton vehicle with no understanding of vehicle dynamics or interest in improving their skills, anti-lock brakes are a saviour – they prevent those incompetent drivers from having to care. Most cars come with anti-lock brakes nowadays for that reason. Instead of improving the humans we developed systems to take over from them. Google’s self-driving car is the logical conclusion of the electronic controls that have been seeping into vehicles over the past thirty years. For the vast majority of people a self-driving car is a far better way of getting around than them doing it themselves because they do it so poorly. For the few who are willing to work at it, electronics could amplify their skill, but those kinds of electronics aren’t an option in cars sold to the public. The lowest common denominator (the indifferent human operator) dictates public sales and determines what everyone can have. The result of this human expectation deflation is to demand less from everyone. Even those who want to learn more eventually won’t because the skills required are obscured by mandated electronics.
I can’t wait to get stuck behind one of those when I’m parking.
I need to develop a jammer so I can stop that car and drive around it
The trajectory electronic vehicle controls have taken parallels the path that information technology and learning is on. If we’re not bothering to remember anything any more because we can Google it and not bothering to learn anything any more because a computer can do it, we end up at a pretty dark conclusion. Ignorance of computers in people who use them constantly gets me so wound up because you can’t effectively use a tool if you don’t know how it works. Before school our cafeteria is full of teens using information technology with no understanding of how what they’re using works. I walked by a health class the other day and the teacher said, “you guys and your phones… I’d be happier if you were all just talking to each other (and not doing class work) than I am with you all looking at screens.” Less than 1% of students in my school take any computer courses in order to understand how they work, yet pretty much all of them depend on computers every day all day – and many teachers are expecting them to integrate that same technology into their learning.
Your modern race-car steering wheel has more in common
with a space shuttle console than a wheel.
The race car driver who is tweaking their electronics in order to improve lap times does so because they have an in depth understanding of how the technology at their disposal can improve their process. You can’t use electronics to improve your performance if you know nothing about how this technology works; modern racing drivers and engineers are all electronics experts, modern students are not and neither are the vast majority of their teachers, yet electronics continue to insinuate themselves into learning. Like the intervening vehicle management systems that assume control in order to do a better job than indifferent drivers, so educational technology is stepping in to assume control of learning for indifferent students and teachers. Until we start treating education technology as an enhancement to learning rather than a replacement for it we remain headed on the same trajectory as the driverless car. If that is the case we’d be more pedagogically correct to ban digital tools in learning until we’ve clarified the learner as the race car driver who will understand and use educational technology to amplify their effectiveness, and not the gormless driver on public roads who needs technology to step in and do their work for them.
A bit of paint and I can now tell the ignition key from the nearly identical pannier key.
Regularly riding is a nice thing in mid-April up here. It rained yesterday, so I commuted in the box, but today has dawned foggy and damp but with no rain in the forecast, so it’s off I go again on two wheels, hopefully with the actioncam on video this time. Getting to work after a ride in is invigorating. Instead of a tedious trundle in a car you’re full of oxygen. You’ve smelled everything on the way in and you’re switched on because you never ride a bike half aware. The other morning I was at an all day meeting only five minutes from home, so rather than go straight there I shot past it and went for a ride along the river. I still ended up being one of the first to arrive, and I was cold but lit up in the way that only a bike ride can do. At the end of a day of meeting about something I get the sense has already been decided (but we had to talk about it all day anyway – yes, it was tedious), instead of going home I took the bike down the Grand River to the covered bridge and then came back on the north shore. Even a short, twenty minute ride like that put the spring back in my step and cleared away the Kafkaesque cobwebs in my head from that day of soul sucking, meaningless blah blah.
The foggy and damp ride in this morning. The smell of earth and new shoots filled the heavy air as the Tiger purred to work…
When you want to start riding in April in Canada you need to take precautions!
Today saw a 150km round trip down to Ancaster and back; the first ride of the season. It was 2°C when I left at 7:15am this morning. No frost, but a cold ride to start. I stopped in Kirkwall, by the kirk, for a stretch and to remove the balaclava. By the time I got down to Ancaster for an educational conference it was warming up nicely. I was out of the conference about 2pm. By that time the temperature was pretty much perfect for a ride. I took the main road into Ancaster and then up Sulfur Springs and Mineral Springs Roads, doing a loop before heading back north.
A cold start.
The Tiger was fantastic, feeling more powerful than the Concours with a much more relaxed riding position. At first the higher riding position felt a bit awkward, but I quickly discovered that the Metzeler tires and taut suspension, even though it’s long, could handle any corners I threw at them. Any cornering awkwardness had at least as much to do with me being rusty from a winter in boxes as it did with the bike’s geometry. There were dozens of other bikes out and about in the warm weather. The Tiger got a lot of double takes. I know it shouldn’t matter but in a couple of days of riding I’ve already had more compliments than I did in a year of riding on the Concours. Halfway home I was thinking I could leave for Ushuaia immediately on this fine machine. Once home I checked over the fluids. The Tiger barely used any gas, and the oil and coolant was right where I’d left them. I’ve got an air filter on hand (the previous owner said, “air filter?” when I asked if it had been done recently), but I don’t want to miss a ride while I’m doing it now that the weather’s good. I’m hoping a mid-week after work change will give me the time to get it done. To do the air filter means pulling the gas tank – it’s not as easy as it’s been on previous bikes.
A short stop in Kirkwall got the balaclava off (t made the helmet uncomfortably tight)
The twisty road sign is in short supply in Southwestern Ontario – Sulphur Springs Road & Mineral Springs Road are exceptions.
Riding a Tiger really is a magical experience!
We’ve already got a route planned out for a sunny, warm Sunday in April:
Back in August of 2014 I wanted to take a more active role in my motorcycle maintenance. At that point I’d been riding for just over a year on my first bike, a very dependable 2007 Kawasaki Ninja 650r. I learned a lot on that bike, but it was a turn-key experience, the bike needed very little in the way of maintenance. The Ninja went from flat black to metallic blue and orange. It was the last bike I rode that people commented on (I’d often get a thumbs up or have someone stop and chat in a parking lot about how nice the bike looked, which was satisfying as I’d been instrumental in restoring it from angry-young-man flat black). The Ninja was, without a doubt, a good introduction to motorcycling, and was the king of the roost for my first two seasons.
As a first bike, the Ninja led the way both on the road and at the top of the blog.
I wanted my next bike to be one that ran because of my mechanical skills rather than one that didn’t need them. I found a 1994 Kawasaki Concours sitting in some long grass about twenty minutes away. I quickly discovered that sense of satisfaction I was looking for. The Concours was an eager patient who rewarded a winter of mechanical work with a rock solid five thousand miles of riding the next summer. The Concours has offered some memorable rides, especially looping Georgian Bay and riding on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. For a bike that looked like it was being permanently parked with only 25k on it, suddenly it was back in the game, going places other bikes only dream of. That busy season of long rides took its toll on the Concours though. It isn’t a spring chicken and after having spent the better part of two years parked before I got to it many of the soft parts on the bike were getting brittle. I parked the Concours early and began winter maintenance knowing that the bearings and brakes both needed attention only to miss out on a late season warm spell at the end of November and into December. I took that one on the nose figuring that’s what happens when you ride an old bike as your daily rider.
The header on this blog for the past eighteen months, but running a twenty-two year old bike as your daily rider makes for frustrations. Time to be less sentimental and more rational in how I manage my stable.
That summer we were touring on the Concours I picked up a KLX250 to experience off road riding, but doubling insurance costs for a bike that I only managed to get out on a handful of times didn’t feel very efficient. That I struggled to keep up with traffic on it didn’t support the way I like to ride. Motorcycles are open and unprotected, but they are also agile and powerful enough to get out of a tight squeeze – except when they aren’t. The Concours was always there and the preferred ride, owning the road when I was on it. When I went out with my co-rider he also loved the big red Connie, not so much the rock hard, under-powered KLX (he only ever rode on it once for less than five minutes). Over the winter I put some money into the Concours, doing up the rims and getting new tires. With the rims off I also did the bearings and brakes. As everything came back together again, suddenly the carburetors weren’t cooperating. They’re since being rebuilt and the bike should be back together again this weekend, but instead of always being there, suddenly the Concours wasn’t. As winter receded I could hear other bikes growling down the road, but I was grounded (again), even though I was paying insurance on two machines and longing to get back out on the road after an always too long Canadian winter. The KLX was the first to go. I’d never really bonded with it and, even though I always figured I’d run this blog with my most recent bike in the graphic at the top, the KLX never made it there; it never felt like the main focus of my motorcycling. In the same week my son’s never-ridden PW-80 got sold, and suddenly I had some money aside.
Ready to go with a new header, but it never took.
As days of potential riding keep ticking by and the carburetor work drags on, the Concours started to feel like an expensive anchor rather than the wings of freedom. I had a long talk with my wife about it. She asked why I don’t unload it and get something dependable. Keep the old XS1100 for that sense of mechanical satisfaction, but have a bike that’s ready to ride. I think sentiment was paralyzing me. Hearing a rational point of view with some perspective really helped.
Many moons ago, a pre-digital Triumph
With cash in an envelope I began looking around. Before Easter we weathered an ice storm, but only two days later it was suddenly in the teens Celsius and bikes could be heard thundering down the road. Meanwhile I was waiting for yet more parts for the Concours. Online I was looking at sensible all purpose bikes that would fit a big guy. Vstroms and Versys (Versi?) came and went, but they felt like a generic (they are quite common) compromise, I wasn’t excited about buying one. Since I started riding I’ve been on Triumph Canada’s email list even though I’ve never come close to owning one (out of my league price-wise, no one else I know had one, no local dealer… pick your reason). As a misguided teenager I purchased an utterly useless Triumph Spitfire, and in spite of that misery I’ve always had a soft spot for the brand (your adolescent brain makes your teenage experiences sparkle with emotion even when you’re older, that’s why we all still listen to the music from our teens).
A Tiger? On Kijiji? Must have escaped from a zoo!
While trawling around on Kijiji looking at hordes of generic, look-a-like adventure bikes I came across an actual Tiger. It was (as are all Triumphs I’ve mooned over) too expensive for me, but that Lucifer Orange (!) paint haunted me. Another rare warm afternoon wafted by with the sounds of motorcycles on the road so I thought, what the hell, and emailed the owner. He’d been sitting on the bike for the better part of two months with no calls. He was going down to the Triumph dealer on Thursday to trade it in on a new Street Triple and knew he was going to get caned by them on the trade in price. He emailed me back and said if I had three quarters of what he’d been asking, he’d rather sell it to me than give the dealer the satisfaction. Suddenly this fantastic looking machine was plausible.
The garage is 100% more functional than it was last week, 100% more glamorous too!
A trip up to Ontario’s West Coast and I got to meet a nice young man who was a recent UK immigrant and a nuclear operator at the Bruce Plant. The bike was as advertised (well looked after, second owner, some minor cosmetic imperfections), and suddenly I owned a freaking 2003 Triumph Tiger 955i! Most used bikes offer up some surprises when you first get them, and they usually aren’t nice surprises. The Ninja arrived with wonky handlebars the previous owner told me nothing about. The XS1100 arrived with no valid ownership, something the previous owner failed to mention during the sale. So far the Tiger has had nice surprises. It arrived with a Triumph branded tank bag specific to the bike. Oh, by the way, the previous owner said, the first owner put a Powercommander on it, and then he handed me the USB cable and software for it. It had also been safetied in October, less than two hundred kilometres ago (paperwork included), so while I didn’t buy it safetied, it shouldn’t be difficult to do. The bike has fifty thousand kilometres on it, but I then discovered that the first owner did two extended trips to Calgary and back (10k+ kms each time) – so even though it’s got some miles on it, many of them are from long trips that produce minimal engine wear. After giving it a clean the bike has no wonky bits under the seats or anywhere else. I cannot wait to get riding it.
So, here I am at the beginning of a new era with my first European bike. I’ve finally picked up a Triumph from the other side of the family tree (the bike and automobile manufacturing components of Triumph split in 1936), and I’ve got a bike I’m emotionally engaged with. It might even be love! Like the BMW I rented in Victoria, the controls seem to fit my hands and feet without feeling cramped and the riding position is wonderfully neutral. When I’m in the saddle my feet are flat on the ground – just. Best of all, I don’t look like a circus bear on a tricycle on it. With the Concours officially decommissioned and awaiting (what are hopefully) the last parts it needs before being road worthy again, it’s time to update the blog header:
What’s next? The Concours will be sold with only a modicum of sentiment, the Tiger will be safetied and on the road (it cost $90 a year more than the Concours to insure), and I’ll enjoy having an operational, trustworthy machine made in the same place I was with lots of life left in it. The fact that it was getting me thumbs up and one guy stopping to say what a nice bike it was when it was on the trailer on the way home doesn’t hurt either. Riding a tiger has a certain magic to it. When I want to turn a wrench I’ll work on the XS, getting it rolling again for the first time in years. I’ll get the ownership sorted on it (affidavits are required!) and eventually sell it without losing a penny, and then I’ll go looking for my next project bike. Maybe a scrambler Versys, maybe an old Interceptor, maybe something I haven’t thought of yet.
Time for some unbridled Tiger enthusiasm!
Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp! When the stars threw down their spears And water’d heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Teaching computer technology has me expanding and
enhancing our program to make it as current and
relevant as possible – the DIY lab is a key to that.
My ECOO16 presentation suggestion: We’re used to being handed locked down, turn key computer labs by our school boards, but this approach doesn’t teach technological understanding. The future of technology is diverse and individualized and we should be striving to encourage a deeper understanding so that students can find the devices and software that suit their needs. Many boards have suggested BYOD as a solution, but this amplifies socio-economic differences that public schools should be trying to mitigate. There is another way. I’m a teacher who gave back the lab that was given to me. Over the past two years I’ve developed a digital learning space that is made by students at the beginning of each semester. Students build PCs, upgrade parts and install and maintain software. In doing so they learn how to build current and relevant technology to suit their own needs. In this presentation I’ll explain the process, costs (and free things!) as well as how the lab works on a day to day basis. DIY computer access offers students a chance to become authors of their technology use instead of being mere users. Interested? I’ll be presenting on this at ECOO in November. This whole post is pasted out of my application to present. Learning Goals – how to make DIY technology work in the classroom – using current (like, made THIS YEAR!) software in a classroom – learning technology by building it rather than just using it – developing technological fluency in students and staff – exploring educational freeware – exploring beta software available for free use – how to source hardware (suggestions based on experience) – changing students & staff from users to authors of technology
Windows 10, the latest in graphics and processor technology and twice the memory of your typical school PC. What do we do with all that horsepower? We run Unity (professional license given freely by Unity for our educational needs), and build 3d models in Blender. None of this would be possible on existing school board basic Dell PCs.
With flexibility in how we build a lab, we can pursue advanced technology, giving our
students authorship over their technological fluency.
Agility is key if you want to keep up with technology – you’ll never develop it if you’re kept as a pet user.
A Blender model made by one of our grade 12s last year – this kind of experience allowed her to build the kind of portfolio that got her into the heavily contested Sheridan College video game design program
Selling a bike is always difficult. In the case of the KLX it happened very quickly. It didn’t cost me anything to own it (what I got for it covers what I paid for it including the safety). Unlike the Ninja before it, the KLX didn’t get much seat time with me so I don’t have a strong emotional bond with it. I also didn’t modify it at all, though I was tempted to. In a funk the other week because I couldn’t go for a ride on one of the first ride-able days of the year, my wife suggested I get rid of some bikes and get something dependable. If I have to pivot around a bike, it would be the Concours (I’m emotionally invested). It’s a bit much to ask a 22 year old bike to be a daily rider, but that’s what I was doing. The goal now is to have two bikes: the Concours and something newer and more dependable that can do commuting duties when needed but also offers me a different kind of ride than the big two-up friendly Concours.
I’m still fixated on a Versys. There are a number ranging from just over $3000 for ’07s to up in the 5ks for a 3-4 year old model. If it is the all purpose/dependable machine I’m looking for, then a KLE will soon replace the KLX. Having said that, this is an opportunity to consider a wide range of general purpose machinery, and I should take it.
Now to get the XS1100 running so I can sell it and look to create a more ride-able stable of bikes. Looking at the brakes yesterday, I suspect the XS is need of some pretty serious fettling before it’ll roll anywhere. The calipers are unseized and rebuilt. Now I’m looking for the source of the leak in the master cylinder. With the front brakes sorted I’m going to try and fire up this dinosaur. A running bike sells for way more than a door stop, and I want to hear it running before I let it go. If next fall I’m putting the Concours and a more modern dependable bike to sleep and wheeling a winter project bike into the garage, I’ll be in my happy place. A winter project like this!
I’ve never been on a provincial team before, it’s quite the experience. In addition to the unnatural process of leaving school, getting on an aeroplane and flying away from the classroom in early June, it also puts you together with all the other gold medalists, some of whom you lost against in other categories, except now you’re team mates. 
