motorcycle – Page 32 – Mechanical Sympathy

Sabbatical Rides: Riding the Americas

Previously I’ve thought about various ways I could do a four years pay over five years and then take a sabbatical year off work and still get paid. From circumnavigating North America to tracing my grandfather’s route through occupied France in 1940 during World War Two, there are a lot of interesting ways I could take a year off with an epic motorcycle ride included.

One of the first motorcycle travel ideas I had was to do the Pan-American trip from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina, from the top to the bottom of the Americas. This ride is an even more extreme version of the North American circumnavigation as the mileage is mega; over 56,000kms! At a 400km a day average that works out to 141 days or over 20 weeks making miles every day. With a day off every week that adds another 3 weeks to the trip. Fitting it into 24 weeks would mean some rest days and some extra time to cover the border crossings and rougher sections of the trip.

Another way to look at this might be from a Nick Sanders angle. He did Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia and back again in an astonishing 46 days. That’s 23,464kms x 2, so 46,928kms in 46 days, or an astonishing 1020kms average per day, including stops for flights over the Darien Gap between Columbia and Panama two times. That approach (I imagine) gets pretty psychedelic and I might not really get the sense that I’m anywhere doing it that way, but there are certainly ways to tighten up the schedule and move with more purpose if needed.

The actual number of days needed if I ran it over 24 weeks would be 168. The best time to hit Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean coast of Alaska is obviously during the long days of the northern summer. If I left home mid-July I’d be up Prudhoe way eighteen days later at 400kms/day. If I push on tarmac I should be able to get up there by the beginning of August and then begin the long ride south.

A good tie-up in South America would be to follow a bit of the Dakar Rally – this year running in Peru from January 6th to 17th. After that it would be down south to the tip of South America in their late summer before heading back north.

The 2019 MotoGP season lands in Texas the weekend of April 12-14, making a nice stop before the final leg home in the spring. Two weeks before that they are in Argentina. Trying to connect the two races overland would be an interesting challenge. It’s just over six thousand kilometres north to Cartegena, Columbia and the boat around the Darien Gap, or just over seven thousand heading through the Amazon. Then another forty-five hundred kilometres through Central America to Texas for the next race. In a straight run that’d be almost eleven thousand kilometres across thirteen countries in eleven days if I managed to get to Texas for the pre-qualifying. That’d be a Nick Sanders worthy feat.

The PanAmerican Trip Tip to Toe and back again in sections:

North America to Prudhoe Bay: https://goo.gl/maps/RWn36jct6LT2
19,571kms July-August to Prudhoe Bay, August-November to Colon:

South America South: https://goo.gl/maps/nx4i6MwUqYz
11,106kms Nov-Jan to Peru for Dakar, Jan to Mar to Ushuai

South America North: https://goo.gl/maps/P5wQzEND7US2
11,057kms Via Circuit De Rio Hondo MotoGP race in March.

North America North: https://goo.gl/maps/4ZAC686McuC2
6,989kms

56,357kms. @400kms/day average that’s 141 days continuously on the road.

Leave July, Prudhoe Bay by end of July, Dakar in January in Peru, Ushuaia in February, Circuit de Rio Hondo for the MotoGP race at the end of March then a hard 11 days north through the Amazon to Austin Texas for the next race in mid-April. Home by the end of April. And I’d still have May-August to write about what happened and publish.

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Concours d’Elegance

After a couple of weeks of cleanup and repair, the Concours is back together. I’m going to take it in for a safety this week and then see about getting it on the road. I’m waiting on some replacement master cylinder covers and some clutch lever bits. They should be in mid-week. I hope to have the safety done by the end of the week.

Lean Angle and Capturing the Dynamics of Riding a Motorcycle

Since starting the 360° camera-on-a-motorcycle experiment last year I’ve tried dozens of different locations and angles. My favourite shots to date are ones that emphasize the speed and feeling of exhilaration I get while riding. A bike in a straight line is a lovely thing with the wind and feeling of openness all around you, but when you lean into a corner the magic is suddenly amplified. That thrill of leaning into a corner is something most people never get to experience.

The first weekend I ever rode a bike on tarmac (at the training course at Conestoga College in Kitchener) way back in 2013 I discovered this magic while working through a beginner’s gymkhana style obstacle course. After shooting through the cones a few times at faster and faster speeds I said to the instructor, “I could do that all day!” He just laughed. I wasn’t kidding, I could happily spend all day leaning a motorbike into corners. Each time I do it the complexity of what’s going on is fascinating as hundreds of pounds of machine and me lean out into space, all suspended on two tiny tire contact patches. It’s when I’m most likely to forget where I end and the bike begins.

Lean angle in corners is an artform that many motorcyclists (but not bikers so much) practice. Being able to use your tire effectively means you aren’t the proud owner of chicken strips. Underused tires tend to show a lack of experience and an unwillingness to explore lean. There are exceptions (knobblies on off road focused tires, anything made in North America) that aren’t about lean angle on tarmac, but it is a way to analyze your cornering comfort level.

Mounting the 360° camera on the bike is one of the only ways I’ve been able to catch the feeling of this complex dynamic in an intimate way. MotoGP makes extensive use of 360 camera technology for on-bike photography and video, but they tend to be rear mounted. Using a front mount means you get to see the rider’s face in the shot. It would be fascinating to watch the rider/machine interface from a 360 camera mounted out front of the bike while various riders do their thing on track.

I’ve got good road tires (Michelin Pilots) and a tall adventure bike, so it’s not exactly ideal for exploring lean, though I think I do OK considering the weight and shape of the bike – the Tiger is surprisingly frisky in the corners. But I’d love to get my hands on a sports bike and see just how more dynamic and exciting the on-bike 360° photography could be on a machine built solely for tarmac.

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Peaks & Aerodynamics

This might be a n00b question, but I’ll ask it anyway:

Why do dualsport/off road helmets have those giant peaks on them when road helmets don’t?

Do they serve some sort of purpose? I’d think having a peak that could catch on things when you come off would be a bad idea, and you’d come off much more often when you’re riding off pavement, wouldn’t you?

Wouldn’t having a big peak on a helmet catch wind and tire you out on the road as well?

I just watched Ewan and Charlie do their Long Way Round and noticed the big peaks on their helmets and wondered why they wore those when they could have had something more aerodynamic and safe.

FOLLOWUP: The baffling dual sport helmet part 2

Halliburton Highlands Birthday Holiday

A birthday long weekend riding holiday… based out of the Pinestone Resort in Haliburton (so easy access to the Haliburton Highlands Riding Roads).

The Ride Out:
http://ift.tt/2rwWG1D
356kms

Haliburton Highlands Research:
http://ift.tt/222AdG2

The Dynamite Loop:
http://ift.tt/2rx8lxv

Possible Sunday Loop:

http://ift.tt/2rwWGPb
287kms

The Ride Home:
http://ift.tt/2rwXNyd
283kms with a stop at The Millpond Restaurant for breakfast.

Total kilometres: 926 over three days

The weather:

Sunday’s going to make for some nice, rainy photographic opportunities.

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It’s so not everyone else…

I went to Roof Helmets to see if I could find a Canadian distributor. They put me on to Fullbore Marketing, a company that delivers motorcycle gear to retailers. They told me that they aren’t distributing Roof Helmets any more, but they have a couple of models left over. They put me on to Blackfoot Motorsport, and after a number of emails we got it a deal sorted out: a Roof Desmo for $400 Canadian (they usually run 469€ or about $673CAD, but you can’t get ’em here).

If you dig it, they had a pearl/white one still kicking around in XL too. Good luck chasing the distribution flow. If you succeed, you can get your Jo Sinnott on (Wild Camping is where I first saw the Roof and thought, wow, what a cool lid). I’m going to!

In the meantime, I might be the only person in Canada this year with a new Roof Desmo, and it looks fantastic! (and also a crime). All of those Arais and Shoeis on the road are going to look so… common.

The helmet fits my temples better than anything else previously. It’s snug front to back, but it’s wearing in nicely. When on it has a fantastic anime feel to it!

On the way home today it started to rain. With a single motion I went from open face to closed face, but this isn’t just a modular helmet, it safeties as a full face helmet. I can’t understand why these aren’t for sale in Canada any more.

Winter Dreams: what I’d do the first week in January

Snow is flying outside. It’s supposed to be -20°C by the end of the week with more snow on the way. Working on the bike in the garage only gets me so far. Time for some quality daydreaming…

Goal: Find a quick bike, ride the Dragon, bring it home to race in the spring.

Looking around online I found a wounded Kawasaki ZX-6R for sale in Clinton, Tennessee for about $3400US. It happens to be off the interstate right on the way to Knoxville (the city nearest the Smokey Mountains where the Tail of the Dragon is). I’m a sucker for a wounded motorcycle. The store selling it says it needs tires and they sell ’em, so I’d arrange them to do it and a tune up and then pick the bike up ready to ride.

Fixing the fairing is a little trickier, but Performance Bikes UK had an article on cheap Chinese replacement fairings which would be perfect for a bike that’s going to be all about track days and quick rides.

The only issue is whether or not I could get the bike road legal for a few days while I was down there in order to ride The Dragon.

A long drive to Clinton and a night in a hotel followed by a morning sorting out the bike and loading it into the van before driving down to Pigeon Forge for a few days riding the Smokey Mountains.

The slog back north into the frozen darkness would be a lot easier to take if I had a few days on two wheels before I had to do it.

Of course, if I’m getting a sports bike I can loose my mind on some sports bike kit. If I’m on a quick Kawasaki I’d opt for gear that’d do me on track days as well…

Nothing like a little fantasy shopping to make the snow fly by.

Some colour matched gear to go with the new fairings and I’d be ready for race school in the spring.

Carbon fibre bits are also available for this ZX-6R, but if it’s going to be a track bike they seem like a silly expense.

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Were I Home

March Break in the UK is a very different proposition to March Break in Ontario, Canada. Here we’re looking at freezing temperatures, snow storms and general misery. Everyone who was able has left. A few minutes outside today in -20° wind chill left me broken.

Back home it’s mid to high teens with sunny spring days and flowers blooming.

Were I home I’d be rolling the Triumph Speed Triple out of the shed and going for a ride along the North Norfolk coast. It’d be cool but clear. Norfolk roads are medieval narrow, especially out in the country. With tall hedge rows and few shoulders you don’t travel at break neck speed, but that’s kind of the point.

Enroute I’d be passing by small fishing villages, medieval priories and castle ruins. Lunch stops could be any one of a dozen centuries old pubs. When not doing that, pulling up a a seaside layby to watch the waves roll in would beat frostbite any day.

Do I ever miss being home sometimes.

Speaking of which, a nice little house on Beeston Hill is going for about £200k. With a shed in the backyard to park up the motorbikes in, I’d have the ideal place to ride out into Norfolk from, and it’s less than a mile from each of the two houses I grew up in.

What would I do on these beautiful spring days? Familiarize myself with the back roads of the country I grew up in for eight years before being emigrated to the land of ice and snow.

Triumph Scrambler might be a better choice for going off piste in deepest, darkest Norfolk where mud is the norm rather than the exception.
I’d be sharing roads that generations of my people have ridden on two wheels. Maybe while out on those roads I’ll meet up with some family ghosts and be able to go riding with them for a while…

My great aunt died on the roads of Norfolk before I was born. It’d be nice to be back sharing that space with her, if not the time.

That old Coventry Eagle disappearing around the hedgerow ahead of me could be Grandad Morris out for a spirited ride.

A modern roadster to tackle twisting Norfolk lanes single handed?

… or the more tractor like Scrambler to occasionally get dirty on the tractor splattered lanes of rural Norfolk?

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Is Ontario Anti-Motorcycle?

Motorcycle insurance in Ontario has always thrown me for a loop. To emphasize that strangeness the Toronto Star recently printed a searing indictment of Ontario’s motorcycle insurance policies. In it a rider who has been out west (California and B.C.) comes back to Ontario to experience the disastrous way Ontario does things. He suddenly finds his $2-300 a year insurance rates multiply by ten to well over two thousand dollars a year, for the same bike!

In breaking down Ontario insurance he discovers some discrepencies that appear to be practically criminal:

“My motorcycle was assessed as if it was new — $20,000. But if I have a crash and the 12-year-old bike is destroyed, will I receive $20,000? Of course not. The payout would be more like $4,000 or $5,000. For the insurance companies in Ontario, this must the gift that keeps on giving.”

So, you’re insured on a new bike no matter what, but you’re only paid as little as possible on the back end. That’s the kind of quality fairness that exemplifies Ontario’s approach to insuring motorcycles.

When I called in to see what a second bike would cost to insure I was told that another bike would essentially double my insurance. I pointed out that I could only ride one at a time and having two would mean both would have fewer kilometres than a single bike. They just smiled and said that’s the way it is. If you read that Toronto Star article you have to be asking yourself, “why is this the way it is?”

Last year we went out to B.C. and discovered that my wife could easily rent a scooter with a G license and go for a ride around Victoria. We had a fantastic time and she came closer to considering two wheels as a mode of transport, but not in Ontario.

To ride a scooter in Ontario you need to take courses and work your way through the graduated motorcycle license. Ontario is determined to keep people off two wheels even if it is a much more efficient way of getting around.

The block is systemic, from insurance practices that are out of sync with the rest of North America (and the planet) to governmental regulations that are more focused on milking citizens for license money than they are on offering access to an environmentally friendly, efficient and exciting way to get around. Ontario couldn’t help but become more efficient with more people hoping on scooters and motorbikes to get where they’re going, but that isn’t the vision. Ontario isn’t about environmental consideration, efficiency or excitement.

Free parking, but Ontario makes riding so difficult to access that it’s empty.

How un-bike focused is Toronto? On my recent trip down there I could use HOV lanes and park for free downtown, but the bike parking area was virtually empty.

After reading that Star article I’m thinking that Ontario is anti-motorcycle. The government supports an insurance industry out of whack with the rest of the world and throws as many blocks as it can at riding. Ontario may be the most over licensed and expensive place to insure a bike in the world.

Below I looked up costs randomly in the US and the UK and Ontario is way out of whack with the the results. If I lived five hundred kilometres south of here in urban Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (instead of in rural Ontario), I’d be paying about $295 Canadian for my insurance this year (that’s with equivalent policy). I currently pay almost $900 a year on a twenty year old bike that I bought for eight hundred bucks. A second bike in PA would cost me an additional hundred bucks, so I’d be paying about $400 a year for both. In Ontario I’m paying three times that.

When I first started riding I considered a new bike for safety reasons. When I requested a quote on a new Suzuki Gladius (a 650cc, mid sized, standard motorbike), I was quoted at about $3000, but most insurers just refused to offer coverage – this on a guy in his forties, married with auto and home insurance and a family. Had I been in England I could have quickly been insured with equivalent coverage AND road support and bike transport in a breakdown for about $950 Canadian in my first year of riding.

Considering the blocks to access on basic scooters and the insurance madness, Ontario isn’t maybe anti-motorcycle, it’s systemically anti-motorcycle.

Inside Motorcycles had a good article on the benefits of integrating motorcycles and scooters into a coherent traffic plan. It would be nice if Ontario followed the research and encouraged more people onto two wheels.

My buddy in Japan got back to me – he pays $161 a year in motorcycle insurance… in Japan, one of the most expensive places to live in the world!

LINKS

Just to torture myself I got a quote from Progressive as if I lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – my stats, my bike. The cost for basic insurance was $75 a year. To get Ontario equivalent insurance it went up to $226 a year.

Are you feeling the love yet?

Think it’s expensive to live in the U.K.? Not if you’re insuring a motorbike. MCN’s site has a listing of new motorbike insurance costs (on the right). A new Gladius in Ontario will cost you well north of three grand to insure new if you’re a new rider and assuming you can find someone to insure you at all. The quote on the right is full insurance with more bells and whistles than the Ontario minimum including road side assistance and bike return in case of a breakdown.

What is the average cost of motorcycle insurance?

“Drivers above the age of 25 with a good driving record usually qualify for good prices. Combine those factors with liability only coverage and a touring bike and you are looking at $200 to $500 a year” – Ha! Not in Ontario
“You can reduce your rate further by purchasing motorcycle insurance through your auto insurance carrier, owning a home, having good credit, and taking a motorcycle safety course.” – I have all those things (auto, house, good record, good credit, a safety course) and my auto insurer wouldn’t touch me. They said to come back after I’d been riding for a few years.

The Utterly Baffling Biker

We’re minutes away from collapsing from heat exhaustion on our rally ride the other week when I start to hear voices. We’re riding through Elora on our way to Fergus and a flock of cruisers have just pulled out in front of us. The large man on a Harley ahead of me creates concussive sound waves that knock birds out of the sky whenever he cracks the throttle, which he has to keep doing because his Milwaukee iron doesn’t idle very well.

Between hundred and forty decibel POTATO POTATO, a voice, as clear as a bell was talking directly into my ear. It was telling me about carpets, I should buy them, but they’re all out of off white Persian.

From this far back you can’t hear yourself think.
I wonder if he’s in his happy place. I’m not.

Am I losing my mind? It took me several moments to realize that the three hundred pounder in beanie helmet, t-shirt and shorts on his baaiiiike in front of me had the radio so loud it was like I was in the front row of a concert, if it was a concert about carpet advertising. That we were at the end of a marathon ride and I was exhausted didn’t put me in the greatest of moods, but genuinely, other than making me think I’d lost my mind, what was the point of this man?

Mushin: literally means no mind,
but he’s doing it wrong.

I’ve had Lee Park’s Total Control on Kindle for a while. I got lost in Park’s OCD maze of suspension minutia, but the latest chapters are much more accessible and are about your mindset when riding. Lee describes the perfect motorcyclist in Zen terms: completely in the moment, aware of everything with no specific focus drawing attention away from that whole. You should be using all of your senses to do this. He’s quite serious about how you should approach the zone of peak performance while riding (and make no mistake, you should treat riding like a competitive sport – one you don’t want to lose). None of it involves pipes so loud they cause small children to cry, a radio turned up so loud someone a hundred yards back can hear it clearly or wearing a beanie helmet and next to no clothes.

There is much I really dig about motorcycle culture, but it all has to do with excellence. Watching a thirty-eight year old, six foot tall Valentino Rossi win a race again at the pinnacle of motorcycle racing last weekend was an example. Watching Dakar riders survive the marathon they run (if marathons were run over two weeks) is another. Watching a skilled road rider showing how it’s done on a high mileage bike with a kind of effortless ease, that’s impressive. I’ve got a lot of words for what I saw last Sunday, but impressive isn’t one of them.

At one point I’d closed up on him while he was adjusting his radio. I revved the bike to let him know I was there and he practically jumped out of his skin. As far as awareness and respect for the act of riding goes, I’m just not seeing it.

They puttered down the road ahead of us when we pulled over in Fergus. A steady stream of traffic followed them down the road at their leisurely but loud pace.

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