Sunday, 22 June 2025

Tiger Mileage and an Atmospheric Ride

Most recent mileage data: 378kms using 19.5 litres of gas, which is 5.16 litres/100kms or 45.6mpg. The Tiger typically returned just over 50mpg before, so I'm seeing a minor hit in mileage. Triumph claimed it'd get 43mpg, so I'm close to that. Perhaps previously I wasn't wringing it out like I am now that it's healed.

Took it out for a ride on a June Saturday when it was supposed to get very hot. Instead it got very pop up rain stormy and I ended up cold. Love riding in the rain though, it consumes all of my attention...








No issues in the rain and I can live with a small mileage cut, though I'm still not convinced this fix has one. Perplexity agrees with me. 160kms in the rain and the bike purred like a kitten.

Sunday, 8 June 2025

Cross Canada Dreams

 After decades working in the next town over commuting to the same job year in year and year out I found an opportunity to travel with work. My current gig has me doing cybersecurity training and emerging tech outreach across Canada. In the past couple of months I've been coast to coast to coast in Canada, but because it's still fairly new to me I'm not making best use of it just yet.

A good example is a trip I have to Vancouver next week. If I were crafty I'd have the Tiger shipped out to Vancouver the week before, pick it up for the week of work across Vancouver Island and then begin the ride home starting on Sunday morning. At sub 500km days I could do an eight day trek home:


Vancouver to home in 8 days.

A quick poke around suggests it would cost just over a grand to get the bike out there. Considering I'm paying about that for the rental car for the week, I suspect I could get that cost covered.

The tricky bit would be finding the time to ride back, eight days costs more than just dollars.

What's nice about the one way nature of this is that you get to see everything once and soak it up. If I could stretch it to ten days I'd slow things down in the Rockies, perhaps spending a day doing a loop out of Jasper.

Later this summer I'm in Charlottetown and Antigonish, Nova Scotia. That'd make for an even better cross country ride... truly coast to coast. Doing this sort of thing would get the Tiger north of 100,000kms this summer!


Version 2.0 with more BC:



First choice would be to do it do it on the Tiger now that it appears to be healed.


The (luxury) new bike option (in this moment) would be Moto Guzzi's new Stelvio...


...with some Hepco Becker addons: 


The fly out and buy new (ish) option would be this 2023 Katana in Vancouver. That and some soft panniers and then I'd take my Katana and wander like a Ronin back across the country.


The discount option: a $7k f*#& ugly Versys 1000. Most people don't like 'em but I dig the anime-robot vibe they give:


Comes with all the luggage and bolt ons you'd want, one owner, nice bike.


I looked up Africa Twins too, but they are shockingly priced (an eight year old one costs more than the new Katana).