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With some shed-age, I’ve been able to move the gardening stuff out of the bike hole. With a bit of re-arrangement I’ve got plenty of space for the Connie and the Ninja. Being able to park bikes wall to wall means I have more space for more bikes!
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| Even my leaner summer weight is still overweight / borderline obese. |
I got called in for a checkup at my local MDs last week. I’m not a little fellow, at 6’3″ I usually tip the scales at about 110 kilos (~240lbs). At that weight I don’t carry much extra weight anywhere, though my BMI tells me that I’m on the verge of obesity there, which doesn’t make it a very effective tool for encouraging reduction. According to the BMI I should weigh 175lbs, which is astonishing. I think I’d look emaciated at that weight on my frame. Even as a lean teen I was about 200lbs.
The checkup was a followup for blood pressure, which I’m in a healthy range on. The shock came when I got weighed. The middle of winter isn’t the best time to weigh yourself, especially when we’re in the middle of the coldest winter on record. When going outside hurts you tend to turtle by the fireplace.
At 262lbs, I’m well into obesity now, though I still consider myself active and can get out of a chair without making strange noises. I’ve been doing yoga once a week, but dropped hockey because of the driving involved and the general level of jerkiness I experience playing with frustrated middle aged men.
The nurse asked what goals I’d like to set considering the good blood pressure but surprising fat-guy score. I’d been thinking about exercising more, but when you don’t tell anyone about it you’re not held to anything. I told the nurse I wanted to get back to 240lbs, so now I’ve told someone and I’m on the hook.
I’ve been hitting the elliptical twice a week for half an hour each time in addition to the yoga. Between that and not eating everything that comes my way, I’m hoping to get back down under the 75th percentile for my gender and height.
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| Hopefully I can avoid the specialty leathers when I finally get kitted out. |
I’ve always tended to approach getting in shape backwards, I wait for the opportunity before preparing for it. When I was preparing to join the police force, I was working out regularly while aiming for that physical exam. With no reason to get into shape, why bother?
This time round I’ve set a reward for getting in shape. If I can hit the weight goal I’ll sign myself up for the weekend racing school. Those little 125cc Hondas don’t need a fat guy sitting on them, and the other riders don’t need to see a 260+ lb guy trying to squeeze into race leathers. Bruce Willis once said he can’t be bothered to exercise at all, the only thing that motivates him is vanity. If he knows he’s going to be filmed with his shirt off he hits the gym. I’ve got vanity and physics encouraging me.
As the nurse said, it’s not a matter of binge exercise or diet, it’s about habit changing. I don’t need to get all monk like and have only cabbage and water. If I can get into a comfortably doable new normal, I won’t worry about the numbers and just see where I end up. Be active at least 3 times a week (with a heart rate above 130), be reasonable with food consumption, and see where that gets me. Enjoy my exercise (I have been so far, I’ve been watching Closer to the Edge while I get sweaty), and see how it affects my mood (positively so far, I look forward to it).
One of the tough things about getting older is staying active. Life is busy, and the whole, ‘if you stay fit you’ll live longer!’ argument doesn’t do much for me. If that means I’m sitting in an old-age home drooling on myself in forty years, I’d just as soon not be. What is motivating is setting reachable goals, feeling better and rewarding myself for it with a bucket list experience. With any luck I’ll be blogging about that race weekend in June (and looking good in the pictures).
Originally published on Tim’s Motorcycle Diaries in June, 2014:
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I just finished watching Arctic Clutch. He doesn’t go as far as I’m planning to with Coast Cubed and he does it in a more alcohol fuelled young man’s way, but he does shed some light on travelling in the far north. From the video it’s hard to tell whether 150km/day on the Dempster Highway is difficult, or difficult because he’s hungover. He does mention how expensive hotel rooms are up there though, which is helpful.
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| 774kms of gravel before another 140 new kms up to the coast, over 900kms all told – all gravel |
The key to being able to access the arctic coast in Canada and enable a coast to coast to coast trip is the completion of the Dempster Highway up to Tuktoyaktuk. It looks like it will be completed by 2018. A summer 2018 coast to coast to coast epic adventure, sounds like a plan! I’d the first person on two wheels to complete this trip. Anyone interested in joining me?
Next to the extreme distances involved (the Earth’s circumference is just over 40,000kms, this trip is over half that, all in one country!), the hardest part of this trip is the ride north to the Arctic Ocean. I’d originally thought that since eighteen of the twenty thousand kilometres of this trip will be on pavement, I’d get a bike focused on that task. I’d stop in Dawson and prep the bike for the rocky portion of the trip with an engine guard and some dual purpose tires tough enough to handle a couple of thousand kilometres over rocks.
An argument could be made for an adventure bike for this, but unless it’s a very road focused adventure bike I wouldn’t consider it. Having to put up with a tall, wallowy, wrong-tired, road-awkward bike for just 10% of the trip still seems wrong headed. What is vital is a bike that can handle high kilometre paved road days that wouldn’t fatigue me.
Having seen Nick Sanders double Pan-America Highway run on a Super Ténéré, I’m thinking that a multi-purpose bike might work better, though with having to deal with Central and South America, Nick had a lot more unpaved road to deal with. There are, however, a number of ‘adventure’ bikes that are much more comfortable on pavement and can eat huge miles easily.
I’m still always thinking about lighter weight bikes and don’t want some litre plus monster to lug around. With that in mind I’m rethinking choices for this trip, especially if I’ve got a couple of years to get my ducks in a row.
An early favourite of mine is the Triumph Tiger. Described more as a good road bike with some off road ability, it would be putting the priorities in the right order but would still have no problems with the Dempster Highway. Being made-in-England myself, I’d enjoy doing Canada’s first coast to coast to coast ride on a compatriot.
I was all set to be a Triumph guy from the start, but my Ninja has snuck up on me, and Kawasaki offers some interesting long distance options. I’ve already thought about the Kawasaki Concourse, which would handle the big miles in an athletic but capable manner. Then there is the odd, but Cyclon-looking Kawasaki Versus (the odd cousin of my Ninja), which looks like it could handle the Dempster. Maybe Kawasaki would like to bring the Versus out of the shadows and make it the first bike to ride coast to coast to coast in Canada.
Since I’ve got a couple of years to work this out I’ll pound the pavement and see who wants to be involved. OLN Canada should probably be on the ground when someone completes the first coast to coast to coast Canada ride. Isn’t this like finishing the railroad (finally)? Canada is, at last, truly a three coast entity and we can all enjoy it. Over twenty thousand kilometres of travel without crossing an international border.
Canada really is something rare in the world, enormous and unfinished… especially to the north.
Whatcha think Kawasaki Canada?
Time to get the Versus out of the shadows and make it the first bike to ever go Coast to Coast to Coast in Canada?
We just spent a delightful dam day riding north and west from where we live looking for water themed locations for this year’s Lobo Loco all-season Water is Life rally.
If you find that your riding is a bit aimless, or you’re always showing up at the same places over and over, a long distance rally is a great way to break those habitual rides. You get a theme and some specific targets, but you also get some special monthly targets in this rally. It runs from May to October, so you have lots of time to get points. You can set up rides with intention and ride as hard as you like. Some people go and go if they’re all about the points (and have a lot of free time). I’m more about the exploration and photography opportunities, even more so If I’ve got a pillion along, but you can do it however you like. My son and I have done this a few times now, and my buddy Jeff and I have had some epic rides, but this time it was all about my wife and I getting points and spending some quality time together.
For May the water specific theme was dams, so we went looking for the damned things in our area. It’s amazing what you can find when you ride with a purpose. Only fifteen minutes from home we were stumbling across secret Mennonite fishing holes at the Woolwich Dam, and twenty minutes later chatting with dreadlocked sports bike riders on the Conestogo Dam causeway. We bumped into a number of riders on the trip and always suggest they look up the rally as a way of extending their riding destinations.
Further north we stopped just past Harriston (after getting a photo of their water tower), and got lunch at The Red Caboose. If you’ve never had an Ontario chip truck lunch, this would be a great place to start. Everything is grown in the fields around you (including the beef). It’s what you’d expect to pay for a burger and fries, but this’ll be the first time you’ve ever had something this fresh. Some fancy burger joint in Toronto will but sriracha on it and charge you five times as much for something that tastes half as good. The fries actually taste like potatoes. We would never have stopped there had we not launched ourselves on this exploratory rally adventure.
With our stomachs full of goodness, we continued north. After a water tower hit-and-run in Clifford we eventually found ourselves in the place where government cuts made the water kill people: Walkerton, Ontario. We got to the Walkerton Heritage Water Garden only to discover it wasn’t running – a local walking by told us they weren’t turning it on due to new cut backs. Thousands got ill and e Coli in the water killed seven, and now a similar government has cancelled the memorial to what their predecessors did – I imagine they’re thinking this is best not remembered. The irony runs thick, unlike the water in the monument. The local said the politicians all spent more time making sure they weren’t liable than they did actually trying to solve the problem. Walkerton is now a vibrant community that has bounced back from this tragedy, but the damage runs deep, and more cuts are coming.
We left the park in a sombre mood and headed through the lovely town before striking out east on Highway 4. Another water tower hit and run in Hanover and we were on our way to Durham and the ride south to home.
I’m sure I’ve passed through Durham before, but have no memory of it. It’s a pretty little town in rolling Niagara Escarpment country. Alanna eagle-eyed the Garafraxa Cafe on the main street and we pulled in for a caffeine boost to get us home strong. Things looked promising with an Italian coffee machine that looked like a Vespa scooter and a proprietor who knew what he was doing with it. It ended up being one of the best Americanos I’ve ever had.
We pushed south to Holstein Dam while picking up water towers in MoFo and Arthur. Our last stop was the Shand Dam that created Belwood Lake just down the road from our home in Elora. To maximize points you want to get your bike in the photo and have signage and the dam itself in one of the two photos. I find the Ricoh Theta 360 camera handy for doing this because it grabs everything at once, but many others just use their smart phone camera and get a lot more points than I do. Naming conventions on your photos are important too – you lose points handing things in the wrong way. Having Alanna along really helps with this as she actually reads the instructions.
All told we think we cracked a thousand points on this ride, and discovered all sorts of strange little spots we’d have otherwise missed. The Water is life Grand Tour full summer rally is running from May to October, so you’ve still got tons of time to sign up and give it a go. If it grabs you, Lobo Loco is also running more intensive weekend and one day rallies throughout the season.
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Lobo Loco Rallies on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LoboLocoRallies/
Like the page and see what’s going on – there is a vibrant community of riders involved with this.
Lobo Loco Homepage: https://wolfe35.wixsite.com/lobolocorallies
Includes the intensive weekend events as well as this season’s grand tour. You can sign up on there through RideMaster – the same group that handles Iron Butt Rallies (if you want to get really serious).
NOTES:
Some dammed stops on this year’s Grand Tour Rally:
Stop One: Woolwich Dam & Reservoir
https://theta360.com/s/o3txOAqc332jOD4u4RDytX4Hg
43°37’21.3″N 80°33’51.9″W
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| Getting signage with the name on it counts for points! |
We went a bit overboard with this one. It was our first stop, it was a lovely dam surrounded by Mennonites fishing and we wanted to make sure we got the required things in the photos (and they are many!)…
You will need to have the following in order to collect points:
A) A photo of the dam itself
B) A photo of signage indicating the name of the dam, or a photo indicating the name of the town the dam is in
– We will accept a “Welcome To”, City Limits, or Town Hall sign.
C) The GPS coordinates, approximate street address, or nearest cross street to the dam
Your motorcycle MUST be in at least one of the 2 photos.
You will receive the highest points ONLY for whichever you achieve for each individual dam:
99 points – motorcycle with the dam (which I think we got with the bottom one with me standing with the bike in front of the gate)
66 points – motorcycle with the dam signage
33 points – motorcycle with the town signage
… but I think I like the one with us leaning over the dam more. Sometimes the photographer gets in the way of the rally requirements.
#loboloco Water is Life Rally 2019 Summer Woolwich Dam #theta360 – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
We found a squirter at the Woolwich dam!
Stop 3: Conestogo Dam
43°40’32.4″N 80°42’56.0″W
#loboloco Water is Life Rally 2019 Conestogo Dam #motorcycle #rally #theta360 – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA
Gotta get that signage in for maximum points.
Stop 8: Holstein Dam
44°03’36.0″N 80°45’29.4″W
… that was a buggy one. Dam in photo, check, rally flag, check, bike in photo, check!
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| My great aunt and Granddad across the page from a Triumph, I think they’d approve! |
It’s been a good month for publishing. Glenn at Motorcycle Mojo ran two pieces I’d submitted.
In the Remember When section I’d sent in the family photos I’d discovered while back home in Norfolk, England in 2013.
It was a real joy to see Grand-dad and a great Aunt I’d never met in pages that I knew were being seen across Canada.
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| Our Vancouver Island adventure got many pages! |
I was then astonished to see that Glenn had also run the article I handed in last year on our ride on Vancouver Island. Seeing my byline right behind Lawrence Hacking‘s was a real rush!
There is no greater satisfaction for an English major than seeing your writing published. I’ve managed it academically, but this was my first go at motorcycle media and it was no less satisfying.
The Motorcycle Mojo piece reads well (and I’m a tough critic with myself). After seeing myself in print I think I might be addicted. I’m so glad I brought the camera and aimed to write this up from the beginning, it’s like reliving the trip over again, and my son Max is over the moon!
I’ve already pitched another piece to Glenn.
If you’ve thought of writing out a motorbike experience but didn’t, give it a go! Glenn is a considerate editor and the joy of seeing your words publicized is powerful!
Vancouver Island?!?!? How can you not want to read that?!?
The old bike is coming back together again. I’ve learned a couple of valuable lessons in the process:
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| a $30 toolbox should prevent $50 in lost parts, every time |
1) Don’t take your parts to high school to get them worked on, they lose parts, don’t do the work anyway and it causes confusion and headaches when you’re trying to reassemble the thing.
2) I tried taking photos as I took the bike apart, which works well when you’re putting it back together, but with so many small fasteners and other odds and ends it pays to have a parts tray set up and labelled.
I’ve since purchased a cheap sectioned toolbox that will serve as a parts holder. I’ll use an erasable marker to label the parts as they go into each section of the toolbox. That should resolve future finding-the-right-fastener headaches.
In the meantime, after multiple trips to dealer to pick up bits and pieces, I think I’m putting this all down as lessons learned and moving on.
The geometry of the bike is coming back together, but I’ve still got some work to do. The rear brake went back on well, bled well and works perfectly. It even has good pedal feel. A concern in the rear is that the rotor suddenly seems out of round (it was fine before). I’m going to get it back on the road and see if it needs reseating – it’s a 20+ year old bike, so maybe I put the rotor back on the hub in a different way and it’s not happy.
The front end all went back together without problems, but the front brakes don’t seem to want to bleed to a tight lever. Fortunately CoG has a solution. After leaving the lever tied closed for the night the brakes are starting to come back. Another round of bleeding and I should have some sharp feeling front brakes again.
If I can get the front brakes finished up and the fueling sorted, I should be ready to go just in time for the roads to get rained clear of the sand and salt of winter.
It crawled up to near double digits on Saturday, April 1, so Max and I took the Tiger by the tail and went for our first ride over to The Forks of the Credit.The ride from Belfountain out to Highway 10 was lovely – clear of speedbumps (both on the road and the four wheeled kind). It was cold and there was still a lot of snow runnoff crossing the road, but I could let the bike go as fast as it felt comfortable without having to worry about some Ontario numpty in a box in front panicking that the road actually has curves on it.
On the ride back to Belfountain for my first coffee of the year at Higher Ground, we quickly caught up with just such a numpty driving a Subaru WRX… and he was driving it like he stole it his grandmother. Baffled by every bend in the road, this toolasaurus in his rally car practically stopped every time the road got interesting. Max and I, two up on our fourteen year old adventure bike almost pulled off to let this guy have his moment of sheer driving brilliance. I guess that’s why you buy a forty thousand dollar rally car knock off and then drive it out to one of the few twisty roads in the area.
Soon enough we got to Higher Ground where only the very serious people were out. The parking lot was littered with half a dozen BMW adventure bikes, a Ducati Multistrada and two Triumph Tigers once we got there. Ours was the oldest bike by ten years. There were a lot of peaked adventury helmets and Klim clothing. Everyone felt very robust and adventurous.
Off the bike it was twelve degrees and sunny, so looking at all the bikes and chatting with the other riders was a nice break from the frost bite at speed.
We wrapped up our coffee break and took Mississauga Road north past the ski hill still thick with snow before heading back home a bit wind burned and out of practice saddle sore, but happy to have gotten the first two up ride of the year in.
| Loading up at High Ground for the Ride home. |
| Mississauga Road north behind another four wheeled speed bump |
| A veil of beautifully scalloped clouds followed us all the way home. |
| All taken from the 360Fly4k suction cupped to the wing mirror and edited in-camera. |
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Lexus has this ad about being in the perfect moment:
The real question is: what is it about riding a motorcycle that causes this kind of continuous immersion in the perfect moment? (redundant perhaps, every moment is perfect isn’t it?)
When I ride well I find myself immersed in what I’m doing I lose myself in it. It’s only when conscious thought arises that my corners aren’t carved perfectly and my gears are wrong. Some of this has to do with the fact that I’m still relatively new to motorbiking and very conscious of improving my process, but the majority has to do with the immersive nature of riding a motorcycle.
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| I even look happy parking the bike at work! |
Being in the wind means you are enveloped by the world you’re passing through. Your senses are alive to sounds, smells and the panorama around you. You aren’t seeing the world through a letterbox wind shield and smelling recirculated A/C. The sensual nature of riding, the wind tugging at your clothes, the sun on your back, goes a long way to making you the ride rather than you doing a ride.
If the sensual side of it isn’t enough (and it’s often overwhelming, ask any biker who has felt the temperature drop and smelt the ozone as they’ve ridden into a thunderstorm), there is always the mechanical intimacy of riding a motorcycle to make you forget concious thought and become one with the moment.
Unlike the hand on the wheel, one foot on the gas approach to driving, the motorcyclist is changing gears with their left toe, rear braking with their right, operating the clutch and indicators (and sometimes horn, lights and choke) with their left hand and twisting the throttle and applying the front brakes with the right. On top of that they are using both arms to counter-steer into corners and their whole bodies to manage those turns. Motorcycling is a viable and complex form of exercise for both the mind and body.
So what we have here is a mode of transport that is physically taxing, mentally demanding and sensual. On top of all that, if you do it badly it can very quickly become fatal. You very quickly want to be able to fall into the zone when riding. Peak performance and awareness it fosters isn’t nice to have but a necessity when operating a motorbike. Fortunately, getting to that state is fantastically rewarding. There are a lot of ways to get there but seat time seems to be the magic ingredient.
In a cruel twist, this morning I got the bike out for the short commute to work. The rain had stopped and the smell of water soaked plants filled the humid air, but my up-until-now bullet proof old Concours wouldn’t start, it had a dead battery! Maybe I left the ignition on? Maybe some water got into things? Maybe something broke? Suddenly that string of contented moments I was looking forward to became a morose push back into the garage after changing out of my gear. My commute turned from fifteen minutes of bliss to the tedium of driving. The bike is a wonderful form of therapy, except for when it doesn’t work.
On the bike I tend to pay very close attention to people piloting the boxes around me, mainly because they can quite easily hurt me. That close attention has shown me that a surprising number of drivers (anecdotally more than half) are in a constant state of surprise. They jump when they notice someone walking down the sidewalk, they start when a light changes in front of them; they are permanently startled by everything around them.
These jumpy people must be exhausted when they get out of the car. I wonder if they are equally surprised by everything when they go for a walk. Perhaps their subconscious is just continually reminding them that this driving thing is a bit more than they can manage. Next time you’re riding or driving try to consciously register how often you’re surprised by events around you. It’ll say something about how well you’re doing it.
When I started driving I found that my mind wandered and I wasn’t always paying attention to what I was doing. After an accident (not entirely my fault, but I could have avoided it had I been paying better attention) I made a promise to myself to make driving the priority in my mind when I’m at the wheel. I developed a relaxed, alert driving style that allowed me to take in what was around me while also being able to respond to it quickly and smoothly. When I did something wrong or found myself in a bad situation, I’d consciously review it and ask myself how it got like that and try think of alternatives for the next time. It took me a long time, some advanced driving courses and some track time to get me where I wanted to be in terms of driving, but I don’t look surprised or start at everything I see like a rabbit in a field. I suspect most people are lost in thought when driving matters interrupt them, and if something bad happens embarrassment forces them to ignore it rather than critically review it.
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| Most drivers behind the wheel. Being freaked out is not the same thing as being alert or responsive. |
If you don’t make a conscious effort to develop a skill it atrophies. Practice by itself isn’t improvement. In many cases it’s just reinforcing bad habits, which is what I see every day when I’m closely watching the habitual people around me with years behind the wheel driving in a constant state of shock and awe.
When you consider that the last time most drivers made an effort to learn how to drive was when they needed to get a license, many of them are not only trapped in bad habits but have also forgotten what little they did pick up years ago. Bafflingly, insurance companies award these ‘expert’ drivers with lower rates. There is nothing expert about them.
People often say that riding a motorcycle on the street is a dangerous business and they aren’t wrong. Getting hit by a startled rabbit in a three ton metal box is gonna hurt no matter how startled they are. The trick is to see the rabbits and give them enough space to drive badly, it’s all they know how to do.
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| The spark plug (bottom right) is easy to get to once you remove the distributor caps mounted to the frame. |
Yesterday began with a spark plug change on the Concours. There are two (for lack of a better term) distributor caps (CoG got me sorted, they’re coils!) in the shape of cylinders attached to the frame under the fuel tank. Removing these makes for a fairly straightforward spark plug swap. Someone had been in here before as one of the distributors wasn’t properly attached to the frame (the rear bolt was seized). With the unit removed it was relatively easy to free everything up in the vice.
I used to be pretty good at gapping plugs by eye, but I hadn’t done it in a while. I got better as I worked through the plugs and the last one only needed a minor adjustment. The plugs all came out without issue and the new ones went in by hand and then got torqued to spec (14Nm).
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| The two middle plugs are tucked in behind the radiator and don’t collect much road cruft. The two on the outside have a tougher life. Other than being filthy, the plugs didn’t show any internal issues. |
With the plugs sorted and the under tank electrics cleaned and seated properly, I turned my attention to the rear brake caliper. I’ve got a replacement metal brake line, so the old rusty rubber one is going in the spares bin. The caliper came apart quite easily. The rear brake on the Concours has always been excellent, but was starting to whine as the pads got thin. With nothing seized and the main bits just needing a good cleaning, I think this will go back together nicely with new pads and brake lines. I’d meant to order a caliper rebuild kit from Canada’s Motorcycle, but my order got mixed up with a bearing puller I didn’t need. At least now I can tell you how good their return process is.
follow-up: I requested a return on January 24th and got a shipping label in a reply email a day latter (which I thought was good). I sent it off that day. I just got a confirmation email today (Feb 3 – 10 days later) saying it will be another 3-6 days before I see a refund… and I’m charged seven bucks for returning it. Compared to motorcycle-superstore.com’s over the top customer service (immediate, free returns, what can we do to prevent this happening in the future?), I’m left thinking twice about shopping on canadasmotorcycle.ca.
While I’m waiting on the rear caliper rebuild kit I can do the fronts, which is what I’m aiming to get done today. It’s officially frickin cold outside (-20°C overnight, -12°C now), and even with the thick rubber mats I’ve got down in the garage and the heater going, I still ended up with foot cramps from the cold at the end of three hours in there yesterday. Winter in Canada can get pretty tedious. This is one of those days. If someone called and said they could fly me somewhere warm to ride a bike next weekend, I’d be in heaven.
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| The two cylindrical distributor caps (COILS! bottom middle & top right with the spark plug wires coming out of them) are held down by two bolts. Once removed from the frame spark plug access is straight forward. |
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| A longer view of the spark plug. |
