Trust

I came across this excellent article by the Harvard Business Review about how trust relates to productivity in business. It turns out trust goes a long way towards creating a productive learning environment with students as well. Trust doesn’t end in the classroom though. Between teachers in a building, across entire school boards and in the education system in Ontario as a whole, trust is the cement that turns us from individuals into powerfully focusedl groups. After reading that article I couldn’t help but wonder at the damage done by the aggressive politics that drive out of date and combative management practices in education.

This week we were handed a remedy for a court case won by teacher’s unions in Ontario. In 2012 the Ontario provincial government decided to ignore the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and deny the right to strike and force a contract on teachers in the province because bankers had tanked the world economy a few years before and the government’s way to fix that was to vilify and then bleed public employees dry.

You couldn’t pick a finer example of broken trust within an organization. After a miserable late 1990s under a tea party style conservative government that was bound and determined to diminish the teaching profession in Ontario, the Liberal party was ushered in and a decade of rebuilding occurred. In that time Ontario shot up the ranks in terms of world education. Suddenly, in 2012, in a desperate attempt to garner conservative votes the Liberal party chose to ignore the Canadian Charter – the document at the foundation of our democratic rule of law – and force a contract on teachers, just to move some money around on ledgers so it appeared that they were more fiscally conservative. The strips to sick days actually cost Ontario more even before the government lost the court case and had to pay restitution. It was a case of desperate and illegal law making and profound mismanagement. The people responsible have never apologized. If your boss did that would you trust them?

Since then trust has been thin on the ground in Ontario’s education sector, yet this article on trust goes to great lengths to underscore how important it is to create a transparent, consistent and reasonable relationship between members within an organization:

“Employees in high-trust organizations are more productive, have more energy, collaborate better, suffer less chronic stress & are happier – these factors fuel stronger performance”

Having worked in the private sector for fifteen years before coming a teacher, I’m often surprised at how unenlightened management practices in education are. Perhaps it’s simply a byproduct of being managed by politics rather than productivity. In any case, the mismanagement of Ontario’s education system over the past few years is neither cheap, nor productive.

I’ve worked for my current employer for over ten years. In that time I only ever asked for a single exception to being expected to come in to work every day. In 2012 my mother committed suicide. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown as a result but was expected to be in class teaching volatile teenagers. I went to my principal and asked for help. She called HR for me to navigate the process but we were told by a senior manager, “we have people at work who have had a heart attack and have cancer, what makes you so special?” I went back to work with images of mopping my mother’s remains off the floor still floating before my eyes. Can you imagine my level of trust since then?

This month I just got back from surgery. I went back to work 2 days before I should have because we are only allowed 3 days off before needing to contact HR – something I wasn’t going to do. I’d lost so much blood due to this surgery (sinuses, it isn’t a nice one) that I passed out at the end of the school day while stacking chairs in my classroom. I woke up on the floor in a puddle of blood, cleaned myself up and went home and called in sick again. Damaged trust isn’t easily forgotten and can put people in ridiculous situations that need not occur.

Trust looks wish-washy from a conservative mind-set, but it’s actually a fiscally powerful incentive.

Mismanagement has a trickle down effect. Board level administration is required to support and enable Ministry dictates, no matter how politically arbitrary, damaging to learning or asinine. School level administration ends up in a frictional relationship with their teachers as a result of this trickle down distrust. The end result is that people tend to duck and cover. It’s difficult to get people to raise their heads out of their classrooms and collaborate on anything because they doubt the veracity of the people who manage them.

“when people intentionally build social ties at work, their performance improves. A Google study similarly found that managers who “express interest in and concern for team members’ success and personal well-being” outperform others in the quality and quantity of their work.”

Trust creates a bond between teacher and student and student and peer. Knowing you’re working with someone who has your best interests are at the centre of what they do makes learning more effective. A teacher who students can’t trust is a poor teacher. Students don’t know what to expect or what is expected from them. A teacher who surprises students with tests, sometimes on material not comprehensively covered in class, is a teacher students shy away from. For the rest of us who are trying to establish a trust relationship with our students in order to empower their learning, these teachers are a cancer on the profession.

When you think about your favorite teacher I doubt it’s because they gave you a high mark, or because they were hard to figure out. Teachers that enable us are honest, direct and help us to exceed our own expectations of ourselves. Trust isn’t a nice idea in those cases, it is the foundation of the entire process. After reading that article, I now realize that trust is actually a mechanical process hard wired into how humans think; it’s the mechanism that makes us so socially powerful.

Enabled, energized people in an organization, be it a board of education or a classroom, want to engage. Engagement is a big buzz word in education right now. It occurs in high trust organizations naturally. If it isn’t happening in your school or classroom look to how you are developing trust to see why it isn’t happening. Demanding engagement is a sure way not to generate any.

“Once employees have been trained, allow them, whenever possible, to manage people and execute projects in their own way. Being trusted to figure things out is a big motivator: A 2014 Citigroup and LinkedIn survey found that nearly half of employees would give up a 20% raise for greater control over how they work.”

I’m at my best in a classroom when I’m able to define goals, ensure students have fundamental skills in place and then give them the time, space, equipment and positive encouragement to figure it out for themselves. This light-handed approach means that when they get something to work they feel that they’ve figured it out themselves. This is very empowering. Another benefit of this light handed approach is that I’m not so focused on talking at everyone that I’m able to see what individual students need to move forward. I’m happiest when a student learns things they weren’t able to do before and feel that they did it themselves. I know I’m important to the process, but students need to feel engaged and enabled in order to own their learning. Trust powers that process.

My school and board is at its best when we have clear, tangible goals and decisions are made transparently and rationally. The more this happens, the more effective these institutions become as places of learning, and the more I trust the people who are leading me. When I trust my leader there is little I won’t do for them because I feel that we’re all working toward the same goal.

Much of this article drills into the neuro-science of trust. We are social animals hard wired to use trust as a means of working effectively together. If we want to best make use of our powerful social habits, building trust is where we should be concentrating our efforts, especially within the entire educational apparatus.

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Really Annoying: Talent Show – Funny 2017 Kia Forte TV Commercial

I’d describe this as not funny at all. This ad is all over TV at the moment and it makes me grind my teeth every time I see it. KIA isn’t the only company pushing the “don’t worry if you’re useless, we’ve made a car that puts you on the road anyway!” sub-text.

From a motorcyclist’s perspective, especially one in you-can’t-lane-split Ontario where I’m expected to wait in a lane as clueless drivers imagining they are on reality TV approach me at killing speed from behind, do these systems work on something as small as a motorbike? This article by Consumer Reports suggests that pedestrian aware systems are distinct from vehicle aware systems. “…Some newer systems can also detect bicyclists.” That’s heart warming.

How long will it be before people, already willing to take my life in their incompetent hands while they take selfies and answer texts that just can’t wait, figure that they don’t need to be competent at driving at all? We’re already close.

I haven’t seen anything in motorcycle media about this, but this is turning into a life or death situation for people on two wheels. Someone with more resources than I needs to see just how big the blind spots are on these systems and then tell motorcyclists how best to be seen by them. Our lives increasingly depend on it.

“Motorcycles are the biggest problem, with systems detecting them a full 26% later than other vehicle types, and this with motorcycles already being the hardest motor vehicles on the road to see…” http://ift.tt/1Gu8Ng8

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Replacing Plastic Fuel Fittings: that was a pain in the ass

Well, that was a pain in the ass. It began well enough. Removing the metal clips from the plastic fittings was pretty straightforward. Push the pin in and then gently tease them apart and you don’t have springs flying everywhere. I’m a bit confused as to why I needed to save the bits as the new fittings come with clips, but I’ll hang on to them anyway.

Following the directions online, I next took out the lower plastic fuel fitting in about thirty seconds. The upper one (that leaks) immediately broke (I suspect it already was) and proceeded to spectacularly fall apart. I spent the next two hours with a hot pick pulling bits of brittle plastic out of the metal fuel tank threads. It turned into tedious dental surgery rather than a quick repair.

With the plate now clear of detritus, I should be able to install the new metal fittings and resolve my leaking fuel tank once and for all. Since I have to remove the tank to pretty much do any engine maintenance at all, this fix will make the Tiger maintainable again.

With the fuel tank fittings sorted I’ll next be doing the fork oil (never done that before), change the plugs and do a coolant flush (which requires multiple fuel tank removals). The Tiger will be fit should spring ever arrive.

Online Notes on Fuel Fitting thread sealant:
What to use for fuel fitting thread sealant:
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Don’t use teflon tape for fuel fittings!
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These guys make it:
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It’s available locally:
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The metal plate the fuel pump is connected to on the gas tank has a couple of plastic fuel fittings screwed into it. The top one is leaking and was a pain in the ass to get out, the bottom one came right out easily.

The plastic male ends go into plastic female ends in a metal fuel pump plate. Shortly it’ll all be stainless steel.

Getting it that clean took some patience.

The big, orange Triumph Tiger in maintenance mode – the battery pack is on the back to raise the front wheel off the ground for the coming fork oil change.

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Scotland and Shetland On Two Wheels

Another piece of fantasy trip planning so I’m ready to go when I become pointlessly rich… this time Scotland and into the North Sea!

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Two days on the mainland working our way north to the ferry port in Thurso…

TWO WEEKS: SCOTLAND AND INTO THE NORTH SEA

Day 1: Ediburgh to Inverbroom Lodge
Day 2: Inverbroom Lodge to Thurso
Day 3: Ferry to Orknies
Day 4: Orkneys day 2
Day 5: Ferry to Shetlands
Day 6-10: Shetlands
Day 11: Ferry back to Aberdeen
Day 12: Aberdeen to Edinburgh
Day 13: Edinburgh

FERRY INFORMATION

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Thurso to Orkney Islands: 90 minute crossing: £112

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Kirkwall, Orkney Islands to Shetlands: 7 hour crossing: £225

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Shetlands to Aberdeen: 12 hour crossing: £289

ORKNEY ISLANDS

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Two nights and two full days on the Orkney Islands… Scara Brae!

SHETLAND ISLANDS

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The whole thing on Furkot:

Journey To The End of the Earth

Two weeks beyond John O’Groats…

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Institutionalizing Success and Teaching Millenials

This was shared online this week and it prompts some thinking about how we deal with the generation we teach.

Simon Sinek

Four social circumstances that have millennials struggling:

1) Failed parenting strategies include children being told they are special and can do whatever they want just because they want it. They have won awards their entire lives for simply showing up. This award inflation devalues excellence and embarrasses the failures these children experience. They’ve learned not to strive for excellence because it doesn’t matter.
2) Technology: Millennials are surrounded by filtered social media where everyone appears to have it figured out and puts on a good face. On top of that they have the same relationship with social media as a gambling addict has with a casino, except this addiction is only ever a touch away.
3) Impatience: They want to reach the summit and have a ‘big impact’ but are unaware that the summit lies at the top of a mountain. Is this related to number one?
4) Environment: Companies (and schools?) should be rebuilding the confidence and resilience of this generation by reconnecting them to personal relationships and long term goals. This means stepping up to combat number 1, something that most school administration really isn’t willing to do.

Now imagine standing in front of thirty one of them.

I’ve struggled with the vagaries of the millennial mindset in the classroom many times over the past few years. From the grade inflation of risk averse learners and five-ohs to the complaints of industry, I’m familiar with the millennial challenges Sinek refers to in his interview above.

Battling these frankly bewildering and fictionally driven parenting strategies seems to be a lost cause for most educators. Since banks and multi-nationals decided to burn the economy down and caused years of austerity, education (and governments in general) have taken on business-think in an unprecedented manner (some kind of Stockholm syndrome?). The modern approach seems to be ‘the customer is always right even if they have no idea what they’re doing’. Rather than expecting competence on the part of the student I often find myself defending a failing grade from a student who has never completed any work at grade level and has missed weeks and weeks of class. Parents don’t want to hear that their child is incapable and they certainly don’t want to accept responsibility for that incompetence. Their only goal seems to be finding ways to blame anything else.

We’re not doing a lot of either these days.

Technology is another place where education has thrown in the towel. Students can do whatever they want with their devices. Any attempt to redirect a student away from inappropriate technology use is wasted as these devices are now considered to be a constitutional right. It isn’t uncommon for me to ask a student to focus on what we’re doing and have them tell me they are in the middle of a text conversation with their parents which is obviously much more important than whatever’s happening in class. They’re probably planning a two week absence from school for a holiday – another exciting new millennial parenting tactic that would have been foreign to my parent’s way of thinking. Sinek’s no smartphones in a meeting rule wouldn’t fly in a modern classroom. You can’t helicopter parent without the tether.

How education is becoming less able
to manage these dangers we face.

Patience isn’t lost in all students but even the most capable are dwindling in attention duration. At the beginning of our last unit I showed exemplars of previous projects done over the past few years. The top student in my class asked, “are people getting dumber and dumber?” Good question. They certainly seem to be less and less capable of developing skills complex enough to tackle curriculum level theory and practice. Perhaps if they weren’t taking weeks of unexplained absences and holidays during the semester things would be better. Perhaps if they were expected to attempt all course work to the best of their abilities skill-sets wouldn’t be deteriorating.

In modern high schools students take the courses they want, not the ones they are capable of. Students who fail advanced courses get a variety of options to regain the credit and are seen at the same level next year regardless of how little they’ve proven they can do. Parents demand access to advanced classes for students who barely find time to attend school and are unwilling to actually do anything. If I fail anyone I have to justify the failure, not so the absent, incompetent student. Even trying to offer a range of courses doesn’t work because everyone is an academic all-star who should be getting the most advanced credits.

The complaint from people in post secondary education and the work place is that we’re producing graduates incapable of working effectively in the ‘real world’. Sinek’s comments go straight to this. Any absence or student failure isn’t an administrative issue; the system won’t even address it. There used to be a limit on unexplained absences and then a student was kicked out of a course, that doesn’t happen any more. There used to be criteria for failing late work, that doesn’t happen any more. There used to be requirements for staying within an academic stream, now it’s do whatever you want. When a student is absent or obtuse teachers are told to contact the parents who caused the situation in the first place and work it out. In Ontario this approach has been institutionalized using laws like school until eighteen no-matter-what. By keeping students in school at all costs we’ve effectively removed anywhere to drop out to. With no bottom to fall through, graduation rates are on the rise! We’ve effectively institutionalized failed parenting strategy number one: everyone is a winner!

The internet is full of memes that suggest the approach we’re taking isn’t helping.

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Daydreaming: Winter Road Trip to New Orleans & Key West

It’s an 11 hour drive down to Knoxville, Tennessee from here. If I took the bike that far south in a van to dodge the snowline, I could then do this!

With two weeks off over Christmas it’d break down like this:

Dec 24th: (van) Elora to Knoxville in the van 1147kms
Dec 25th: Knoxville to Talledega 271 miles the interesting way
Dec 26th: Talledega to New Orleans 420 miles
Dec 27th: New Orleans!
Dec 28th: New Orleans!
Dec 29th: New Orleans to Panama City 304 miles
Dec 30th: Panama City to Tampa 339 miles
Dec 31st: Tampa to Miami 252 miles
Jan 1st: Miami!
Jan 2nd: Miami to Key West to Miami 155 miles there and back
Jan 3rd: Miami to Jacksonville via Daytona Beach 346 miles
Jan 5th: Jacksonville to Greenville 388 miles
Jan 6th: Greenville to Knoxville 212 miles via Deals Gap
Jan 6th: (van) Knoxville to Dayton 304 miles 1/2 day
Jan 7th: (van) Dayton to Elora 410 miles home mid-afternoon
Jan 8th: chill out day before going back to work

Van mileage: 2300kms / 1440 miles
Bile mileage: 4500kms / 2812 miles

I could probably arrange with our Knoxville hotel to park the van somewhere safe and then head south on two wheels. The Tiger could totally handle the job one or two up, but there would be more specialized tools I’d select if given a choice from the new 2017 bikes:

One Up 2017 Minimalist Bike Choice

Kawasaki’s new Z900 looks like a lovely, light weight device to explore some corners with. It’s an upright bike that would be easy to sit on for long periods of time. It’s a minimal machine but that would be ideal for riding into the sub tropical climates down there.

It’s a brand new machine but the Z650 it shares parts with already has some luggage bits that might work. Keeping with the minimalist vibe, I’d try and do the whole 3000 mile / two week odyssey using only those two expandable panniers. If I have to expand half way through I could always throw a tie down duffel bag on the back seat.

One Up 2017 not-remotely minimalist Bike Choice

The opposite of the tiny, lithe, naked Z900 is the absurd, over the top and abundantly present Moto Guzzi MGX-21 Flying Fortress. It comes with its own panniers so that’s not a worry. It’s also the kind of bike that would swallow many high mileage days in a row without batting an eyelash. And it’s so pretty.

Two Up Touring Preference

A large, comfortable bike that Max and I could ride the southern triangle on would be the goal here. My default is always a Kawasaki Concours 14. We rented a last gen model last year in Arizona and it was a rocket ship that was also big and comfortable for both of us. The fact that it comes in candy imperial blue this year only encourages me to put it back at the top of the list again.

A more touring focused choice would be the Goldwing F6B which is a more stripped down version of the full on bells and whistles Goldwing. It’s a big, comfortable bike that is surprisingly nimble for what it is and comes with built in panniers. It’d cover the miles with ease while keeping us both in excellent shape for when we arrived at each stop.

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Naked ZG1000 Custom Inspiration

Some Andy Warhol-esque ZG1K shapes to get a feel for what the bike will look like:

I’m still thinking purple with asymmetrical gold racing stripes, but that might change again.

Cardboard cutouts of the side panels I need have gone to the metal shop. I’m going to prototype some 3d models on the printer at work and see what various shapes look like before doing the final cuts in metal for the rear section.

While that’s going on I’ve got to get the front cowling figured out, which is what led to the video…

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Dreamtime Begins

You tend to see a lot more Photoshop post
production during Dreamtime.

The end of riding season means it’s the beginning of Dreamtime. I shift from what I’m doing on a motorcycle to what I wish I were doing but can’t. Things get fictional and funky. Instead of generating footage and photography I’m looking over what I got from the past season and wondering about what I’d like to do in the next one. If I lived further south I’d keep stealing rides when I could get them. If I lived somewhere where feet of snow don’t regularly happen I’d brave the ‘winter’ (what we’d call fall).

I also find I have time to fettle instead of ride so the Concours ZG1000 Fury project will finally start moving at a steady pace. My goal is to have both bikes on the road in the spring.

It’s difficult not to wish for riding season to return but there is value in this change of season, I just need to change my mind.

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Riding on ice is hard

It dawned a cool, foggy morning on Thursday. If it’s hard to take a photo of it I get very interested in trying to do it, and foggy, early morning weather is particularly difficult to photograph.

I hustled out of the house to find the moist air particularly cold. When I got to the end of the street I turned right instead of left, thinking that riding down the dirt back roads to work would yield some exceptional photo ops, it did, but I had to pay for my art!

Frost on the grass and the ice forming on my visor suggested that this was more than just fog. After the photo stop I proceeded up the road very cautiously having to constantly wipe the icy condensation off my visor. Unfortunately, no one else had decided to take the back way that morning and the fog was slowly condensing onto the road as well. I approached the stop sign to a paved cross road very cautiously but the moment I applied the brakes both wheels locked up.

If you’ve ever locked up both wheels on a motorcycle you know how quickly things can go pear shaped. The Tiger started to skittle and my heart rate went through the roof. Reflexively, I got off the front brake immediately and was able to keep the bike upright (barely). Since the rear brake was the only thing stopping me at all I had to keep my foot in it. The back wheel was locking up pretty much every time I touched the pedal, but I kept at it. I hadn’t been going that quickly but when your coefficient of drag is zero you aren’t shaving off much speed.

By this point the white line is coming up quick. I’m auto-locking the rear brake but I’m not going to stop in time. I get back on the front brake and it grips this time and I stop right on the line. A woman thumping down the road at 20 over the limit (in thick ice fog) suddenly bursts out of the white to my left and leans on the horn as she flies by inches in front of my front wheel. It’s nice to know that my hands are what saved me and not her considerate driving.

Once on well used pavement it was pretty stable. I got myself the rest of the way into work without any problems other than having to constantly wipe the ice forming off my visor. Sometimes being a photographer is a dangerous business. At least I’ve got quick reflexes and don’t panic when things literally go sideways.

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Sometimes Indiscretion is the Better Part of Valour

It was a good week of riding. On Saturday, Sunday and Thursday I covered over six hundred kilometres around Southern Ontario.

Saturday had us dancing around in front of the coming storm. The horizon south of us was ominous to say the least. We dodged and weaved but eventually rode into the curtain of rain only to have one of the old Kawasakis in the group (and I mean old, it was almost as old as I am) run rough when it got wet. Fortunately we had already been to three local microbreweries and had loaded up on craft beers, so we were all set for a rainy evening indoors in Owen Sound.

Neustadt Brewery, where you find a variety of craft beers not available for general distribution. The bikes ranged from a modern GSX-R to forty year old Kawasakis, a modern Super Tenere, my Connie and a Triumph Scrambler.

Maclean’s in Hanover, with impending doom on the horizon.

We rode into the rain and then away from it as quickly as possible – but it was coming again in 30 minutes! In the meantime the cranky old Kawi worked enough to get us home.

Not so happy in the rain (though the other 40 year old Kawi was flawless and my Connie ran like a Swiss watch).

Scrambler pipes in the rain.

After watching Canada’s girls’ team get kicked out of the world cup (but England won so I was still happy), we watched some Isle of Man TT, talked bikes and drank local brews. The next morning the torrential rain continued. After some hot coffee I hit the road to test my rain gear like never before, and get to the family cottage in Bobcaygeon where my wife and son were worrying about me.

I was the warm and dry centre of the universe making a Tim-on-a-Concours sized hole in the rain. Since Jeff had told me to move the petcock from “Pri” to “On” (Pri doesn’t mean the primary tank, it means prime, as in giving the engine lots of extra gas to start after being off for a long while), the Concours had developed a new smoothness with no more lumpy low RPM or gas burning backfires when I came off throttle. With the Connie running better than ever I was ready for a challenge.

The south shore of Georgian Bay in Midland.

I tried to stop at Blue Mountain for breakfast where my son and I had gone ten weeks earlier on our first ride of the year, but it was a zoo. I eventually found a Tim Hortons and had some hot tea and breakfast. Pushing on from Collingwood I kept hoping I’d ride out of it, but it only came on heavier.

Riding in the rain is nice, everything smells fantastic and the colours are super saturated. It gets less magical when you’re doing it in heavy traffic. Drivers see you even less than they normally do and you’re dealing with spray and slick pavement as well. Many moons ago a friend of mine (an ER nurse) invented the Trotter Precipitation Index, which theorized that driver IQ is inversely proportional to the amount of precipitation falling (drivers get dumber the more it rains). I’ve generally observed this to be true, but it takes on terrifying new dimensions on a motorbike.

The slog in traffic from Collingwood to Orillia was tense and the rain had finally found a way into my rain gear, soaking my crotch. Nothing makes you crankier than a wet crotch.

I’d been on the road about three hours when I got to Orillia. I was on my way (still in heavy traffic) across the causeway on the north end of Lake Simcoe when everything stopped due to an accident. The road was closed, it was pelting down with rain and so dark street lights were kicking on. I pulled off into The Point restaurant and was saved with excellent service, hot coffee and home made soup. I looked so bedraggled that the waitress didn’t even charge me, but I left a big tip.

An hour later my core temperature was back up and I was uncramped and ready to take another run at this underwater ride. The traffic had finally cleared and the road was reopened so I crossed the causeway and headed south around the east side of Simcoe. No sooner had I saddled up than it began pelting down again. My warmed up dampness became cold and rain soaked in short order, but I was closing in on my goal.

I pulled out of the stop-start traffic on the local through road and headed toward Beaverton and some dirt bike boots I saw on Kijiji, but missed a turn in the torrential rain and ended up 10 miles down the road I needed to take to the cottage before I realized I’d missed it. I couldn’t bring myself to turn around so I pushed on toward the finish line.

The air temperature was only about 15°C and I was soaked again. Just when it looked like I had this thing in hand, and with no warning, the road was suddenly gone, replaced with deeply rutted mud and gravel. The old guy ahead of me in his new SUV was worried about getting it dirty and kept stopping (!) in the mud while he tried to figure out where to drive next. Ever tried riding a loaded Concours in ankle deep mud and ruts? It isn’t easy to keep upright, especially when you have to keep stopping and starting.

My Zen beginning to this trip was ebbing away. I was cold, sore, and tired, and I’d missed my turn and a chance to pick up some lovely Alpinestars dirtbike boots for a song. Now I was hanging on for dear life, trying to keep the big bike upright in this strange, slippery, grey mud. To top it off I was stuck in traffic that had been inflicted with the TP Index.

I might have stopped but there was nowhere to do it. Cars (but mostly SUVs) were splashing around in both directions, and I was covered in mud. There were no shoulders to speak of. At this point I started to get angry. Alright, fuck this, I’m getting where I’m going instead of doubting myself. Standing on the pegs I aimed the Concours around the deepest ruts (courtesy of yahoos in cars spinning out in the start-stop traffic) and picked my way through. When you take doubt out of your riding the bike responds to your determination with a sure footedness that I found encouraging. Ten agonizing, slow and muddy kilometres later I emerged onto tarmac once again.

As I rolled into Fenelon Falls I grabbed the brakes for a stop sign and nothing happened. The gravel they’d laid down in the construction was full of limestone dust and that grey paste had gotten into everything, especially my front brakes. I got it stopped and pulled over for a pee in the rain. By this point I was ready to pick up the bike on my back and carry it the rest of the way, some squishy brakes weren’t going to slow me down (literally or figuratively).

I saddled up again and rode through Fenelon Falls which was backed up with cottage traffic. Passing the mall some yahoo in a Mercedes SUV thought he’d suddenly pull out to get into the line of traffic inching along the other way. I hit the brakes, skidding the back tire in the never-ending rain, he saw me at the last moment and stopped. Had he hit me I’d have jumped through his windshield and beaten the shit out of him, I was pretty wound up at this point. He got a fine what-the-hell-dude gesture but didn’t want to make eye contact with the guy he almost hit so he could sit in a line of traffic.

I was finally out of Fenelon and on my way to Bobcaygeon. The bike was running on empty, but I was ok with that, I still had miles of gravel fire roads before I got into the cottage and lighter would be more manageable. I ignored the gas station in Bobcaygeon and pushed on to the cottage road with the odometer showing 236 miles since the last fill up.

The cottage road was slippery, but not like that damned construction, and it was graded properly. I was making my way down this roller coaster of a road when the bike started to chug. I was monkeying with the choke to keep it going when I remembered how low I was on gas. A quick twist of the petcock to Reserve (which got me all the way back out four days later to fill up at 248 miles on the odo) made everything happy again and I road the final couple of miles without incident.

The cottage road – sort of like a rally stage. The Concours was sure footed on the wet gravel.

It was still hosing down when I pulled into the cottage garage and took off my helmet with shaking hands. Should I have stopped? Hells no! I was looking for a challenge and the weather, traffic and horrible roads had provided one. Doing a difficult thing well is its own reward, and this epic submarine riding trek becomes another unforgettable experience that I can add to my riding résumé.

Still the most comfortable (and cheapest) helmet I own. Hours in the rain it kept me dry, was virtually fog free (I waxed the visor before leaving – water beaded off), and comfortable.