ˈentrəpē/ 1. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder. “the old bike finally succumbed to entropy amidst the weeds.” synonyms: deterioration, degeneration, crumbling, decline, degradation, decomposition, breaking down, collapse;
Out of high school it looked like my life’s work was going to be mechanics. I apprenticed as a millwright and quickly found a comfortable living doing work that I found satisfying. When I put down the tools and went to university I spent a lot of time chasing down philosophy and literature that was looking at a perfected idea of the world. The thought of spending my time thinking about machines that were in a continual state of decay (in fact, every time you use them they are literally falling apart), seemed silly. That they also produced pollution (both in operation and manufacture) and were generally quite wasteful put them further from my mind. I ended up leaving mechanics and my love of vehicles behind and going into I.T. after university for those reasons.
I’d been teaching English for a number of years when I had an opportunity to switch to computer engineering. I ended up going back to school to get my teaching qualifications as a computer technology teacher. At that training my instructor put me on to Shop Class as Soulcraft. Suddenly, here was a deep, insightful argument against academics for the sake of academics and a profound argument for why you should not only exercise, but celebrate your manual technical skills. Those skills are what can ground our intelligence and give it meaning in the world around us. You sometimes hear the term, ‘it’s academic‘ – meaning it doesn’t matter in the real world. If you’ve spent any time in institutions of higher learning, you’ve probably noticed how insular and self serving they are. The value they assign to academics is generated entirely by the people involved, there are no subjective criteria. When you tie intelligence to something in the real world, the real world will cruelly and repeatedly correct assumptions that would otherwise happily exist in academia. Having real-world hardened technical expertise is a very different thing than a background in academia. One is relentless and demanding, the other political and collaborative. As long as you tow the line in academia, you generally do well. You can tow the line all you want in engineering, but if you don’t submit to the demands of reality you won’t get anywhere, no matter how well you get on with your colleagues. I find I’m able to integrate the intellectual muscle developed in university with my manual skills very effectively; they aren’t concordant, they’re complimentary, but the idea that what I’m working on is in a constant state of entropy still bothers me. The very best you can hope for with a machine is to maximize the time it’s operational before it inevitably fails. I missed the perfection and timelessness of ideas found in academia.
A meditative mindset in the wind.
Like Pirsig in Zen, I often find myself ruminating while I ride. The complex machine interaction, balance and awareness needed to operate a motorcycle sets your mind in motion, but leaves your intuition free to chase down ideas. I write better after I’ve been riding because my brain is full of meditative juices. On our recent ride around Lake Huron, I was pondering this idea of entropy. I’m in my late forties now and the concept of entropy no longer applies to just machines. I’m watching everyone get older and struggle with the inevitable. Entropy isn’t just a state in machines, it’s how reality works. Everything is in the process of disintegrating, the trick is to dance gracefully in the decay. Holding back the inevitable is what life is, and if I can perform that life affirming act by resurrecting an old bike, or replacing a failed component in an injured machine, it’s not a wasted effort. Perhaps that is part of the joy I feel when I see an older vehicle on the road long after it should have gone to scrap; it’s a symbol of defiance against the inevitable. *** Do not go gentle into that good night Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953 Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) THE SECOND COMING Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Samurai Jack & The Mountain
The journey’s the thing – if you’ve got 20 minutes and
haven’t seen this before, it’s worth the time (and two bucks).
Jeff, the motorcycle Jedi, is crossing Canada with his lovely wife on a Honda Goldwing. They leave shortly and we get to tag along on the first day! We’ll accompany them to Massey, Ontario and over to The Sault the next morning. They then continue up over Superior on their pan-Canadian odyssey while we cut south over the border into Northern Michigan and hug the shore of Lake Huron before popping back into Southern Ontario in Sarnia.
While Jeff and MA are heading west for days on end, we’ll be wandering through Hemmingway’s Michigan before arriving back home. This’ll give me my second great lake circumnavigation (or maybe my first real great lake because Georgian Bay is a bay).
https://goo.gl/maps/UTLra6j7ZEL2 Daily Schedule: day 1- The Mohawk Inn, Massey ON day 2- The Breakers Resort, St Ignace, MI day 3- Bay Valley Resort & Conf Ctr, Bay City day 4- Home Mileages: Elora to Massey, ON: 496kms Massey to St Ignace, MI: 296kms St Ignace to Bay City, MI: 381kms Bay City to Elora, ON: 395kms
We’re looking at a few days in The Thousand Islands at the end of Lake Ontario before my wife goes to a conference and my son and I head home. Fortunately, between here and there lie some of the best riding roads in Ontario. I finally get a chance to Ride the Highlands! The ride out is going to be an avoid the GTA at all costs exercise (like most things are). Other than getting pinched in Newmarket, it should be a straight shot across the top of population. Port Perry is nice and once I’m past Peterborough, Highway 7 is a winding ride into Canadian Shield. Where I drop off Highway 7 at Mountain Grove and cut down to the godforsaken 401 looks like a roller coaster of a road. A quick blast (no such thing any more) down the 401 should finish the trip at Gananoque where I’ll meet up with the family and we’ll hang out for a couple of days.
The Ride Back is an even greater attempt to avoid the GTA, but this time with a find the twisty roads vibe. Using ridethehighlands.ca I linked together a series of suggested roads to get my son and I back to South Western Ontario in the lest efficient but most pleasurable manner possible. We meander north west from the east end of Lake Ontario before finally cutting south around the end of Georgian Bay. If we leave Tuesday morning, we’ll overnight somewhere around Haliburton before finishing up the ride on Wednesday.
All told it should be about 1300kms of riding some of Ontario’s best roads.
Elora to Creemore to Owen Sound to Lion’s Head to Oliphant and back home again in about 30 hours. We started out as three and expanded up to seven at one point before finishing with the original three again. It’s amazing how much you can get done in a day… Photos and video done on a Ricoh Theta 360° camera and my Samsung S5 smartphone.
When I started riding I began to voraciously consume motorcycling magazines. It took me a while to figure out which ones were good, but for a while there I just went all in. Being Canadian I thought it prudent to get a sense of Canada’s motorcycling media, so I made a point of looking past the wall of American magazines to find a Canadian voice.
The two I settled on were Cycle Canada and Motorcycle Mojo. CC seemed to be edited by a writer with lots of motorcycle experience (rather than an expert motorcyclist with little writing experience). Reading other magazines sometimes felt like reading a kid’s essay that they’d been made to write. No one seemed to revel in writing like Neil Graham did. He was consistently acerbic, challenging and opinionated, but he clearly enjoyed writing. I really looked forward to reading him each month. I found Mojo a short while later. Its modern layout (many other Canadian magazines looked like they’d been designed on a photocopier), and crowd sourced travel pieces got me hooked. Mojo feels like it’s put together by a community rather than a small group of motorcycle industry insiders who don’t know how to write very well. A few months ago CC arrived at my door. As I got into it I discovered that the two writers who do the majority of the heavy lifting in producing the magazine were leaving. Many readers seemed relieved to see the back of the complicated and difficult Graham, but I missed that voice. A magazine that was once a drop-everything-and-read-it proposition (and Canadian!) was now filled with news pieces that looked like they were written by an ESL writer in single, giant paragraphs; a computer could construct better grammar. The new writer they brought in was an old writer they’d let go. His MO seems to be to say something controversial at the beginning of each article even if what he’s saying is inconsistent from page to page. The article on the new Harley Davidson is making fun of sport bike riders, the article on a sports bike makes fun of cruiser riders, and his recent piece on the new Honda Africa Twin allowed him to take pot-shots at adventure bike riders. I get no sense of who he actually is or what he likes. This approach seems disingenuous and makes me hesitate to trust him. The newsletter modelledmagazines that feel like they are driven by industry interests rather than independent editorial opinion have already been dropped. Mojo & CC were my only Canadian subscriptions to renew, but now it’s down to a single Canadian mag. The hole left in the Canadian motorcycling publication landscape by Graham leaving Cycle Canada has made a sure thing a has-been.
In the meantime I’m looking world-wide for my motorcycle periodicals. The three I’ve settled on are Motorcycle Mojo (Canada), Cycle World (US) and BIKE (UK). The last two are driven by professional writers who know motorcycles and not only write well, but seem to enjoy doing it. I’ve never read a complaint about having to fill up space with writing or meet deadlines in either, although this seems to be a common subject for editorial discussion in many Canadian magazines. I’m not reading any more magazines, Canadian or not, that make me feel like I’m reading an essay a kid was forced to write for school. If the writing is that difficult, don’t work for a magazine. Writing is a skill unto itself, and it should be something you enjoy (it’s what will make you work to improve it instead of just trudging up to deadlines while complaining about them in print). Just because you’re an expert in the subject area doesn’t mean you’re an expert at communicating it in writing. Life’s too short to read things written badly by people who aren’t that good at it and couldn’t care less about their writer’s craft.
No Moncton Airport, you can’t cheer me up with a rainbow.
I’m in the middle of a five hour wait at Moncton Airport for a flight back to Toronto and then a shuttle up to Centre Wellington. All told it’ll be a 2pm to midnight commute, all on public transit. Ten hours of tedium, uncomfortable seats and no leg room… and constantly being reminded that you’re much bigger than most people. To fend of the insanity of canned air, lousy, overpriced food and being herded like cattle at an abattoir, I’m dreaming of the best possible way to get home. Riding from Moncton would offer a geographical opportunity as the Appalachian Mountains are in the way. The best route I can manage on Google maps takes me through Maine, Vermont and New York to Niagara Falls, before a quick blast up the QEW home.
Anything out in the wind on two wheels would be better than this synthetic hell I find myself in. At the moment I’d opt for a Honda VFR800 Interceptor and a good set of leathers, and nothing else. My only goal: to wind my way across some mountains to home. If I left at 2pm from Moncton I’d have gotten to Augusta, Maine by about 8pm in the evening. A good sleep on a real bed and I’d chew up the remaining eleven hundred kilometres home the next day, wind blown, engaged and full of feeling instead of slowly dying inside in a darkening airport terminal waiting to be herded onto a plane.
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!
