Tim – Page 51 – Mechanical Sympathy

Sabbatical Rides: Following Grandad On The British Expeditionary Force

I’ve previously written about and done a fair bit of digging into my Grandad Bill Morris’s World War 2 service in the RAF. His time spent in France with the British Expeditionary Force before the Nazis invaded in 1940 highlights a forgotten piece of history. Weeks after Dunkirk had pulled most of the troops out, Bill’s RAF squadron was still flying a fighting retreat against overwhelming odds.

By comparing various historical documents I’ve managed to cobble together the strange course Bill’s squadron took during this desperate retreat. Spending a year following in his footsteps would be a pretty magical experience and a brilliant way to spend a sabbatical away from work.

Conveniently, from a sabbatical time-off scheduling point of view, Bill landed in France in September, 1939 in Octeville and proceeded north to set up an air base in Norrent-Fontes near the Belgian border. They then wintered in Rouvres and as battle commenced were fighting out of Reims before retreating south and then west around Paris, quickly setting up aerodromes for his squadron’s Hurricanes and then breaking them down and moving on while under constant fire. They were supposed to get out on the Lancastria in Saint-Nazaire (another forgotten piece of World War 2 history), but Bill was late getting there (operating heavy equipment means you’re not at the front of the line). He saw the ship get dive bombed and sunk – the biggest maritime disaster in British history, with most of his squadron on it. He spent the next two weeks working his way up the coast before getting out on a small fishing vessel and back to the UK at the end of June, just in time to get seconded to another unit for the Battle of Britain. Being able to trace Bill’s steps would be a powerful journey.

Bill was an RAF military policeman who worked in base security, but his handiest skill was his ability to drive anything from a motorbike to a fuel bowser. It’d be cool to use the period technology Bill used to retrace his steps through France.

This sabbatical ride would have to happen between July of one year and the August of the next. Following Bill’s time in France I would be landing in Octeville from the UK in September, hopefully on a period bike. My preferred ride would be a 1939 Triumph Speed Twin, though an RAF standard Norton 16H would be equally cool.

If I couldn’t find a period bike I’d try and source a modern descendent of the Triumph or Norton. Triumph is actually coming out with a new Speed Twin shortly, so that’s an option. Meanwhile, Norton is coming out with the Atlas, which would be a modern take on the do everything 16H.

I’d arrange to stay in the places Bill did at the same times he did over the winter and spring. With many days at various locations in rural France, I’d have a chance to find the old aerodromes and make drone aerial imagery of each location, hopefully finding evidence of the his war history hidden in the landscape. I wonder if I’d be able to see evidence of the Lancastria’s resting place from the air. With time to get a feel for the place, I’d write and record the experience as I moved slowly at first and then with greater urgency in the spring around Paris, through Ruaudin, Nantes and Saint-Nazaire before ending the trip in Brest at the end of June when Bill left, almost three weeks after Dunkirk.

The research so far on Bill’s World War 2 service in France, the Battle of Britain in the UK and then into Africa!

Living in France for most of a year would offer a cornucopia of travel writing opportunities and the historical narrative I’m following would let me experience a lot of local colour in order to research a fictional novel I’ve been thinking about writing based on Bill’s World War 2 experience.

To get ready for this I’d get Bill’s full service record and research the whens and wheres of his experience on the continent during the Phoney War and through the Fall of France.

When all was said and done I’d pack up the bike and ship it back home to Canada where it would always be a reminder of the year I walked in my Grandad’s footsteps.

Research Links to date:

Bill’s service record research: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PiN1LBIt0sBOa3uYNF6R7WI-5TP-jgOSPu9lrJlzVuU/edit?usp=sharing
Map of Bill’s Squadron movements in France: https://goo.gl/maps/hRr3aRAUFTM2
RAF squadron research: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-XGAS0ajnEVGmJ_8-aATYDJrPWUHoWri8AILsNd1pN8/edit?usp=sharing

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Stealing One From The Icy Teeth of Winter

The days are getting darker, damper and distinctly not rider friendly. One day this week was into the double digits Celsius, so we jumped at the chance to do a big Max & Dad ride, maybe our last one of 2017.

That night it was going to bucket down with a cold, pre-winter rain storm, but the day promised sun and clouds and a chance to ride, so we took it. We waited until the numbers got well above zero and then got the Tiger out of the garage and put on leathers and layers of fleece; this was going to be a cold one.

There is nothing more ragged and beautiful than a pre-winter sky over Georgian Bay. We pushed north across the barren farm tundra that we live in. Miles upon miles of mechanically tilled and industrially fertilized fields rolled by as we headed toward a first warm-up stop at Highland Grounds in Flesherton on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment.

We staggered into the coffee shop just past eleven. The weather wasn’t anywhere near where the Weather Network promised it would be. Our low teens, sunny morning had turned into a six degree, overcast slog north along your typical, boring, straight Southern Ontario roads. Fortunately, nothing cheers us up more than warming up in an independent coffee shop and then heading onto Escarpment twisties. Highland Grounds was as good as I remembered and we left with warm grins after a vanilla milkshake, a cookie the size of a pizza and a big, piping hot coffee in a ceramic mug. It was a lot of calories, but we’d shivered those off on the way up.

North past Lake Eugenia where I spend a lot of summers at a friend’s cottage, we wound our way into Beaver Valley and the twisties and views we’d been looking for – so much so that we stopped at the scenic look out on our way into the valley.

Of course, as soon as we stopped an elderly couple pulled in behind us and the driver immediately wandered up to find out who made our Triumph.

“Triumph?” I replied, somewhat confused by his question.
“Where are they made then?” he asked. He has (of course) owned old Meriden Triumphs from the pre-80’s collapse of the Motor Company and had assumed they were long gone. He had no idea John Bloor had saved the brand in the early 90s and it was now one of the biggest European motorcycle manufacturers. He’d assumed it was an Asian built Triumph branded thing. When I told him it was built in the UK at a state of the art factory in Hinckley he was gobsmacked. I always enjoy telling the story of Triumph’s phoenix like rise from the ashes. We left him thinking about dropping by the factory next time he’s back in the old country.

We hopped back on the trusty Tiger and headed on through Beaver Valley and out to the choppy shores of Georgian Bay where the sky looked torn and the waves smashed against the rocks, splashing us with spray.

We hung out on the lonely shore for a little while, watching the hyperthermic fisherman standing in the mouth of the Beaver River amidst the surf, casting into the grey water over and over. Georgian Bay skies always look like they are about to shatter, even in the summer, but with a Canadian winter imminent they looked positively daunting. Time for another warm up.

We rode back up the hill onto the main street of Thornbury and got ourselves another warm drink. The goal was to strike south east across the Escarpment toward Creemore for lunch. The sporadic sun had managed to get it up to about ten degrees, but it was only better compared to the frozen morning. We headed south behind Blue Mountain and through the glacial remains of Singhampton before turning onto the positively serpentine Glen Huron road for a ride down the hill into Creemore. Shaggy highland cattle watched us ride by, much to my passenger’s delight.

A hot lunch of philly steak and poutine refueled us at The Old Mill House Pub in Creemore. When we came back out mid afternoon the temperature was as good as it was going to get, eleven degrees. With warm stomachs we saddled up for the ride home through the wind fields of Dufferin County, but not before walking down the street to the ever popular Creemore brewery for a photo op and some brown ale.

When it comes to the end of October in Ontario, Canada, you take what you can get, and I’m glad we did. Soon enough the snow will fall, the roads will salt up and the Tiger will have to hibernate, dreaming of the far off spring.

All on bike photos courtesy of the very easy to operate Ricoh Theta 360 camera – with simple physical controls and an ergonomic shape that is easy to grip, it’s my go-to 360 camera. No worries about framing a shot or focusing, it takes a photo of everything!

Georgian Bay 2017 end of season ride #triumph #roofhelmet #theta360 – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

Our last big ride of the year? Perhaps – it was hot baths and fireplaces when we got home.

Leather, fleece and armoured trousers, and it was still a cold one.

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A Media Comparison: Hactivism Then & Now

In 2012 I saw We Are Legion – The Story of the Hactivists at the Toronto Hot Docs film festival. It’s a full length film so it’ll take a while to get through, but it’s worth it. It’s an inside look at the birth of hactivism from its early roots in 4Chan to the birth of Anonymous. It’s edgy, funny and surprisingly gripping…

There is a kind of poetry in the chaos of those early moments of online activism, it makes me hopeful. Technology used to overcome tyrannous governments, churches and corporations? Technology used to bypass media control and free information? I’m a fan.

Fast forward six years and we seem to be on the other side of this revolution. Instead of technically skilled mischief makers fighting against systemic inequality, we have Nazis using that same technology to self-organize, tech-corporations removing net-neutrality and making advertising revenue from fake news and foreign governments disrupting elections. The technology that once promised to set us free is being used to craft even thicker chains.

You can always count on WIRED
graphics to back up a powerful story

WIRED has hit this from a lot of different angles, all of which prompt some hard questions about how the technology we thought would free us has turned into a means of disenfranchisement and control. Here are a couple of articles that highlight this change:

It’s a difficult thing to see such a promising revolution end up serving the moneyed interests it claimed to stand against.

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Learned Helplessness

Reading often creates strange resonances. Most recently the latest edition of WIRED struck a chord with Paul Theroux’s 1975 classic, The Great Railway Bazaar. What could a travel book from the seventies have to do with a Twenty-first Century technology magazine?

Theroux was on a train trip across Asia. In India he came across a taxi driver who did a brilliant job of looking after him. After weeks on the road he found himself becoming desperately dependant upon this support. I’ve read a lot of Theroux and he circles this theme again and again; the idea of how the ease that accompanies wealth leads to a kind of learned helplessness.

Way back in 1974 Theroux suddenly found his confidence eroded by an assistant too good for his own good. Sahib is one of those words loaded with colonial weight. In India it was used as a title of respect toward European men. Theroux takes that supposed superiority and dismantles it with American anti-classist zeal, describing the wealthy people who came to depend on their servants as childlike in their helpless. It’s an interesting twist.

In The Happy Isles of Oceania, Theroux lives the high life for a week in a luxury hotel cottage used by the PGA. He becomes frustrated at how isolated, unproductive and paranoid he felt by the end of it, even though his every need was taken care of. The next week he tried to live on one thousandth the money, or four bucks a day. By the end of that week spent living rough on an empty beach and kayaking about, he felt empowered, productive and alive. What most people do with money (having other people serve their needs) often leads them to a state of childlike dependence. Theroux is often tempted by it and then hates himself for doing it.

In WIRED this week the Angry Nerd goes on a rant about Google’s gmail predictive text technology that keeps jumping in front of you as you’re trying to write an email. No, I’m not a fan of this use of AI, I can type quickly and it breaks my flow. There is a function for AI in writing, but leaping in front of composition, or worse yet, replacing the writer entirely, isn’t it. The Angry Nerd is especially worried about the inflationary nature of this interference:

“Once we embrace the personalized simulacrum, we start letting AI speak for us. Soon we let it speak as us. It’s … almost soothing. Frees up time. I’m nearing inbox zero! Ah, Grandma just checked in. She’s not feeling well. I’ll select “Oh no!” Yes. She’ll care that I care. And she’ll reply, so kindly, so expediently: “Thanks so much!””

Before we know it the ever so helpful, never resting artificial intelligence is speaking for us, replacing our voice in our most intimate relationships. This echoes Theroux’s eroded competence, but the way AI is doing it is much more insidious than the old fashioned human servant. The AI never rests, is always there and is always looking for ways to step in front of you and help until you become so atrophied that it assumes your voice. Worse still, the companies peddling these virtual assistants aren’t interested in small scale adoption, they want everyone to have the luxury of a virtual servant.

Between the industrial scale of adoption and the dissemination of personal electronics into all aspects of our lives, it’s only a matter of time before we’re all as atrophied and helpless as Theroux feared. If we don’t start setting limits on AI to prevent it replacing human being, we’re in for a rough ride. Don’t expect the Silicon Valley giants to do what’s best for humanity. They’ve already proven that profit comes first. They’ll happily create a society of illiterate social idiots as long as the money keeps pouring in.

Now, more than ever, we need some Asimovian laws in place to moderate the introduction of artificial intelligence. We’ve already run into problems with digital technologies in terms of news and politics. If we leave artificial intelligence to develop without ensuring it isn’t atrophying human potential, it will relentlessly drive us into a dystopia we’ll all be too helpless to recognize, let alone escape.

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Zen and the art of running out of gas

Went out for a nice ride on a beautiful spring evening. The bike was low on gas but I was still in the red, so I pushed on.

Couldn’t have asked for a nicer night. Bikes were out everywhere, me along with them. I looped out east and then passed south of home and followed the river west.

In the setting sun I came across the Black Power Bison Farm. The big furry creatures were grazing in the golden light… very idyllic.

From there I continued west downstream and turned onto highway 86, wondering when the gas light would come on to give me the immanent fill up warning. Instead of the light coming on the Tiger hesitated as I accelerated up to speed on the highway, and then stalled. I rolled to a stop on the side of the road and it wouldn’t restart. I gave the bike a shake and it started, so I looped around and started heading back toward the river and the road home, when it stalled again. I kept it rolling and pulled back on to the side road I’d just ridden up.

As I ran out of momentum I could see the Kissing Bridge Trailway parking lot. It was only a short push up a slight hill into the lot. The sun was casting its last rays across a beautiful evening. I got out the phone and called home – fortunately my son picked up and mobilized the cavalry.

I pushed the Tiger out to the front of the empty lot so my rescuers could see it and spent my time in the dying light reading about the Trailway and taking photos. There is a video where a guy is riding his old Triumph and it won’t restart after he stops for a pee. He rages at the machine, but eventually ends up soaking up the nature around him. With a Zen like calm, he eventually kicks the old bike over and it starts – it wouldn’t while he was angry. I wish I could find that video and share it again here. No point in being angry, best to be where I am doing what I’m able to do.

Soon enough my lovely wife and son showed up with the gas can. I put a litre into the tank and the Tiger immediately fired up. They followed me the ten minute ride back to Elora and we topped up the bike and refilled the gas can.

Now to figure out why the low gas warning light isn’t working on the Tiger.

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The Kingfisher Logo

The kingfisher logo comes from a tatoo I designed way back in the Naughties and got put on my leg. I did it shortly after returning to England for the first time since I’d immigrated when I was eight years old. It’s a European kingfisher of the kind I used to see when I was little. It reminds me of where I came from.

I took a photo of the tatoo and then photoshopped it into the logo as it is now. Kingfishers are a triple threat: they can fly like missiles, swim like a fish and move about on land. A good metaphor for the kind of photography and art I like to do (the technically difficult kind).

I took the glow from the original photo out of the middle of the bird…

The headers for all my blogs are made in Photoshop from images I’ve created…

Tim’s Motorcycle Diaries (my Triumph Tiger photoshopped into colour matched text)

Previous TMD logos went through a series of evolutions, as did the Mechanical Sympathy logo…

The Dusty World logo (my oldest blog) has been stable for a number of years…

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#BIT17: 360 media takes a completely different approach to production

This week I brought some 360° cameras to the 2017 ECOO Conference to show how (kind of) easy it is to make immersive media for virtual reality viewers like Google Cardboard. I brought along my favourite 360 camera, the Ricoh Theta (physical controls, good shape, very intuitive to use, easy to manage and produce files), and some others:

a Samsung Gear360 4k camera (harder to access physical controls buried in menus, awkward shape, files that are such a pain to use in the Samsung software that it will take you days to turn out content)
a 360Fly 4k not-quiet 360° camera (awkward wireless controls over smartphone, doesn’t stitch together 2 180° images into a full view, water/cold proof and tough, easy to manage files, useful time lapse functions built in)
at the last minute I brought along the Instapro 360 8k professional camera, but it demands a special type of SD memory card so I couldn’t make use of it. The software and hardware is also very difficult to manage – it’s going to take a while to figure this camera out.

360° cameras offer a unique opportunity to capture a moment in a way that hasn’t been possible before. When combined with immersive VR viewers like Google Cardboard, full systems like HTC’s Vive or upcoming Google Daydream platforms, 360 video and photography allow the viewer to inhabit the media, looking out into it as a part of it rather thank peering at it through a framed window as we’ve always done before.

This is our presentation from our Minds on Media VR & 360 Media Station from #BIT17

This lack of perspective, framing or directional intent makes 360 video and photography a very different medium to work in. The tyranny of the director’s eye is gone, leaving the viewer to interact with the media as they see fit. This is both good and bad. If you’re watching a film through Steven Spielberg’s director’s eye you’re seeing it better than you probably could yourself; you benefit from that framing of a narrative. If you’re looking at an Ansel Adam’s photograph you’re experiencing what he saw and benefiting from his genius in the process. That eye and the ability to effectively use a medium to demonstrate it is what makes a good film director or photographer, but 360 media tosses all that out.

The irony in all of this is that being a good 360 director has more to do with setting a scene and getting out of the way than it does with framing everything just so. It also means that if your viewer has a trained eye they can find moments in your media that you might not even have intended. It also means that if the viewer of your 360 media is technically incompetent or has the visual standards of an amoeba they won’t find anything of value in it at all. Suddenly the audience has a lot of control over how effective your media is when you’re shooting in 360.

The examples below show just how 360 images can be directed like former ‘windowed’ media or left open and viewer directed:

When the media maker directs your view, you see what they want you to see:

Or you can produce 360 media that the viewer controls that maybe tells the whole story:

#BIT17 keynote about to start – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

Teaching visual intelligence will become much more important in the future if 360 media and immersive virtual media viewing become the new norm. If your audience is too visually ignorant to make effective use of your media they won’t recognize the value in it. I wonder if you won’t see directed views of 360 media done by people who can still provide the majority of people who aren’t interested in building up visual media fluency the chance to enjoy media at its maximum effectiveness.

Beyond the director/audience change in power there are also a number of challenges in producing effective 360 media. The biggest problem is that the camera sees everything, so you can’t have a crew out of sight behind the lens because there is no out of sight. We’ve gone to ridiculous lengths in producing 360 video for our virtual school walk through in order to try and let the viewer feel like they are immersed in the media without drawing their attention to the apparatus that is being used to create the media.

Tools like GiimbalGuru’s 360 friendly gimbal that minimizes wobbles that are much queasier in immersive VR viewers than on screen helps the process. This gimbal is 360 friendly because unlike other camera gimbals that block views to the sides and back, the GimbalGuru 360 is vertically balanced and so stays out of the shot. One of the issues with the Samsung Gear is that the short handle means you have a lot of hand in any photo. The shape of the Ricoh Theta minimizes that problem. A good 360 camera should be stick shaped, not stubby to minimize hand in the shot.

The last piece on 360 media making concerns the audience. At the ECOO Conference keynote the ever aware Colin Jagoe asked the obvious question, did you get everyone to sign waivers? It’s a question you see on lots of people’s faces when they see you take a 360 photo or video. The answer to this runs back to the idea of a director or photographer directing the viewer’s vision.

If take a photo or video of a person, I’m pointing the camera at them and they are the subject of it. As the subject of a piece of media it’s fair to ask if that subject should have a say over whether or not I can make them the subject of my media making. However, since the 360 camera isn’t taking a picture of them (it’s taking a picture of everything), they aren’t the focused subject of my media.

The assumption they are working under is one that has been drilled into us subconsciously by the directed, ‘windowed’ media we’ve had up until now. If someone points a camera at you it is about you, at least mostly. If someone takes a 360 image in the same moment, you are just one of many possible focuses in that image. If I had any advice for those pursed lips I see whenever I take a 360 media image it would be, ‘chill out, it’s not all about you.’

The law around this is fairly straightforward: “when people are in a public space, they’ve already forfeited some of their right to privacy… Generally, as long as the images of people aren’t offensive, defamatory or unreasonably invade their privacy, you don’t have to get every person in the crowd to sign a release.”

360 media, because of its lack of point of view, is even less likely to invade anyone’s rights to privacy, especially if you’re taking an image in a public space with many people in it. It’s going to take a while for people to realize that 360 media isn’t all about them just because they happened to be in the vicinity when it occurred. The short answer to Colin’s question on Twitter is easy, “I don’t have to get a waiver from you dude!”

There are a number of media production and social issues around 360/immersive media production, and I’m sure we’ll be working them out for years to come. Spielberg is currently working on the VR futurist movie adaption of Ready Player One, coming out in the spring. He is developing a lot of VR/immersive/360 content for that film – it may be the first big budget picture to really embrace immersive 360 media. I imagine he’s working through a lot of these problems in post production (green screening out the crew in 360 shots?).

I haven’t even gotten into the technical requirements of 360 media production. If you think hi-def ‘windowed’ video makes a lot of data, 4k 360 video will knock you flat on your back. The 8k camera I’ve yet to get going requires such a strange, high performance SD card that I’ve had to special order it. The camera is going to use tens of gigs of data to make even short videos and post-processing on even a descent desktop computer will take 15 minutes for every minute of footage. Working in high def 360 footage is very storage and processor heavy work.

All of this will get sorted out in time and the benefits of immersive 360 media are obvious to anyone who has tried it. In the meantime I got to experiment with this emerging medium at #BIT17 and really enjoyed both my time catching moments with it and swearing at how awkward it was to get working. My next goal is to exercise my new UAV pilot qualifications and explore 360 media from an aerial perspective. Hey, if it was easy, everyone would experiment with emerging technologies.

Here is some of our media from the ECOO 2017 Conference in Niagara Falls:

Using the time lapse function (one image every 10 seconds) on the 360Fly camera, here’s a morning of VR demonstrations at Minds on Media on the Wednesday of #BIT17

My 13 year old son Max takes you on a virtual tour of Minds on Media on Wednesday morning using the Samsung Gear360 camera and the GimbalGuru mount to steady it.

Pushing the limits of the GuruGimbal and Samsung 360Gear – a motorcycle ride around Elora. If you’ve got the patience for how long it takes to process in the Samsung Action Director software, it produces some nice, high definition footage.

360 Photography on the Ricoh Theta:

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Pigeon Forge Motorcycle Base Camp Trip Planning

The Smokey Mountains are a motorcycle Mecca for a reason.

Using a combination of motorcycleroads.com and Furkot.com I’ve been planning day trips from Pigeon Forge, which seems a sensible place to explore the Smokey Mountains from. The process can serve as escapism on a foggy, freezing drizzle Boxing Day, or it could be pre-planning for an inevitable trip.

I’ve variously daydreamed about driving the Tiger down in a van over the Christmas break to New Orleans and Key West, as well as riding down to The Tail of the Dragon next August for a complete solar eclipse. There are a lot of good reasons to figure out possible rides for when I’m eventually in the area.

Pigeon Forge is located just south east of Knoxville and offers a great launching point into the Smokey Mountains. The area around there is covered in desirable roads:

The only trick with a winter trip is changeable weather. It looks like next week in Pigeon Forge would have been a bit challenging:

It’s a roll of the dice going south in the winter but the summer’s a sure thing. Maybe I’ll find myself in the Smokey Mountains next summer when the moon hides the sun.

200 KM East Loop

230KM Pigeon Forge low land loop

Pigeon Forge 300km South Smokey Mtn loop

240 KM loopback Dragon’s Tail

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Lobo Loco Water Is Life Summer Rally

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.

By
this point we’d been on the road for well over six hours and were ready
to go put our feet up, fortunately our circuitous route took us in a
big loop back home:

https://goo.gl/maps/4SQrADMcDpTKAQvf6

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.

***

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

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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Iceland Travel Photography

From a ten day stay over in Iceland on our way to the UK this past summer (July, 2017). We travelled for three days around the south east travelling as far as Vik and then did a week with family friends up and over the north coast to Akureyri and beyond and then back to Reykjavik. All in all it was well over 2500kms in ten days.

Photos shot with the shiny new Canon T6i Rebel with a variety of lenses. 360 photos done with a Ricoh Theta. The full album is here.