Gitchigoomee Iron Butt

I'd originally read about touring around Lake Superior and called it the Gitchigoomee Goaround.  I figured it'd be a week of riding.  I came across another motorbike blog where the guy was talking about doing it in 24 hours.  It turns out that focused, long distance, intense rides have a club!  The IBA.

It turns out that circumnavigating Lake Superior is 1673kms, which happens to be just over 1000 miles.  Leaving and returning to The Sault and going south through Michigan and around Superior to Ontario again, it would be a two border crossing trip with an awful lot of winding lake-side roads in between.  That would be an ironbutt you'd earn the hard way.

What better time to do it than Thanksgiving Day weekend (October 12-14) in Canada?  If we met up at Sault Ste. Marie on Friday and prepped, we could leave early Saturday morning before sunrise when there is minimal traffic at the border.  As the sun rises we're already making tracks through Northern Michigan.

The route:  Sault Ste. Marie and back to The Sault, 1039 miles in 24 hours!

44 miles per hour (70 km/hr) average speed is needed, so packing in fifty miles per hour (80km/hr) gives you the wiggle room to stop for things like gas, or peeing, or eating, or a cat nap.

In a world of perfect efficiency with no road works, border crossings, traffic lights, mechanical considerations, weather, or traffic, keeping a steady 44 mph would be pretty easy.  Doing it with all those things and the onset of a Canadian winter (along with early sunsets and late sunrises) raises the stakes.

I think I'd want to get in shape for this one.  I was going to dare a buddy of mine to do it this year, but maybe this would be a better next year dare.

Update:

With next year in mind I'm adding in the weather this Thanksgiving weekend for Thunder Bay and Sault Ste Marie, which should give us an idea of what to expect.  With showers on Saturday a Sunday to Monday run looks like it might have been the best bet.  Cold at night, cool during the day, the right kit would be imperative.  Leaving The Sault about 4pm so that the last hours are done in daylight on the afternoon of the next day.  By the time we're pushing east again the sun should be getting high in the sky so we're not riding into it.

Sault weather days

Sault weather nights

Thunder Bay days

Thunder Bay nights

Warming up into the teens during the day, flirting with freezing over night.

The Norfolk Motorcycle Museum

We drove past the entrance twice.  Finally, up a gravel drive we found the entrance to the Norfolk Motorcycle Museum.  This was an impromtu stop between various tourist related day trips.  I'd seen the sign and wanted to go for a wander.  No one else wanted to come in with me, so they stayed in the rental car while I wandered into a warehouse full of bikes.

One of the things you notice in England is just how divergent the technology is, and this museum was no different.  The bikes were odd, different, not a cruiser in sight, no Harleys.  It was decidedly un-North American.

Many of them I couldn't identify at all, some were so old as to be virtually steam powered.  You know you're far from the familiar when you don't even recognize some of the manufacturers.

The building was a working restoration shop with a big warehouse space behind.  Bikes in various states of repair were lined up at the entrance, the finished machines were perched up on a two layer rack that ran through the whole warehouse.

You can poke around the bikes and the father/son duo who run the museum are happy to talk about any of the examples on display.

I had to rush the walkabout because the family was waiting outside, it would have been nice to wander around for an hour taking some good closeups.

If you're ever in the vicinity of North Walsham in Norfolk, England, drop by the museum.  It's a strange trip down someone else's memory lane.

Like what you see?  Many of the restorations are available to buy.

Mainly British bikes, but some others can be found
in the rows

A mighty Vincent!

"Made in England" - getting harder and harder
to find made in not the far East any more

Many parts in the process of being cleaned up...

Old Vintage Cranks: a hidden side to bike culture

Ural project: ready for combat!

I finally made some time to stop by OVC in Hillsburgh this week; it's everything I'd hoped it would be.  Only a few years ago this was a one man operation running out of his garage, but as the need grew he moved into a garage space and now has employees and is so busy that he is thinking about expanding again.

The shop was busy with sidecar projects as well as working on what they sell as a dealership (Urals and Royal Enfields mainly).  It was organized, but busy, and every inch of space was in use.  Out front they had sidecar rigs on a Royal Enfield 500cc and the fantastically Soviet styled Ural.

Royal Enfield & sidecar

I'd gone to see the Royal Enfield, I think the Bullet Classic is a fantastic looking classic bike.  With the modern engine and fuel system it's super dependable.  At 500cc I thought it would be much too small, but I (at 6'3") felt more comfortable on it than I do scrunched up on my Ninja, which has a lower seat and higher pegs.  The problem came when I saw the Ural.

The Soviet cool Ural

I was indifferent to it, though impressed by how tough it is from online writing like Hubert's Timeless Ride.  When I finally saw one in person it has a unique aesthetic that you don't find in any other bike.  The lights are blocky and purely functional where an Italian would have made them streamlined and an American would have drenched them in chrome.  There is nothing dainty about the Ural, it's a tough machine built by tough people for a tough environment.  If you dig Soyuz space capsules and the no-nonsense style of Russian technology, you'll totally dig the Ural.  It comes with a movable spotlight (standard), but machine gun mounts are an option... this is the bike that Russians manufacture for their own military, and it looks it.

Max digs that Bullet Classic

After looking at the Royal Enfield and the Ural, I wouldn't want to saddle the RE to a sidecar, it's such a pretty bike on its own, and without the extra weight, even with 500cc, it would move around in a spritely fashion.

The Ural is a beast, and with the sidecar it looks like it could come thundering out of Moscow to chase the Nazis back to Germany (the bike itself is copied from German designs).

OVC's busy show room

If you have the time to drop by Old Vintage Cranks in Hillsburgh, it'll show you another side of motorcycling culture about as far away from the big manufacturer's aesthetics as you can get.  With no American=too much, German detailism or Japanese techno-crush, the bikes at OVC offer you another
avenue into biking that's so not mainstream that it's shocking.  That it's a tiny, independent, busy, working shop packed to the gills just adds to the flavor.

It's only a matter of time before my son and I are on a Ural pounding through the woods, or I'm on a Royal Enfield weaving along back roads, enjoying a bike that's as much a part of the scenery as the scenery is.

If you're heading out of the GTA, I have a suggestion, head north on the 410 out of Brampton (it turns into Highway 10) and hang a left onto Forks of the Credit Road (about 10 minutes up the road after the 410), enjoy that, grab an ice cream or coffee in Belfountain.  Hang a right onto Bush Street/Wellington Rd 52 until it Ts in Erin, go right to the light, left to the next light and you're at Trafalgar Road North.  Hang a right there and OVC is on your left about five minutes up the road as you ride into Hillsburgh.

There are lots of nice riding roads around there if you've never been up that way before.

Forks of The Credit to Old Vintage Cranks, a nice ride out of the GTA for an afternoon
link to GOOGLE MAP

FYI: OVC has now moved to Acton!

Going Places

The first real cross country trip

I've been going out on local jaunts, no more than an hour out and back again.  Last weekend I did my first cross country trip, actually going somewhere.  A Saturday trip from Elora to Ancaster for an education conference.  75 kms each way and well out of my right around the house roads.

The ride down was a bit awkward.  It was cool, but I went light knowing that it was getting hotter later in the day.  After about half an hour on the bike I realized that I was tense all over, not the best approach to riding.  I made a point of unclenching and trying to go for alert and relaxed.

I got there early, elated, and a bit cold,
the Starbucks on tap helped

The ride had a lot of firsts: my first passing of another vehicle, my first time on a divided, multi-lane highway and my first time on non-local, unfamiliar roads.  I stopped a couple of times to make adjustments and to stretch.  That unclenching thing is perhaps the best thing I learned.  Rather than gripping the handlebars, I started holding them more loosely, which stopped the fingers from stiffening up.  I also made a point to move around a lot on the bike, sometimes getting down behind the windshield and out of the blast, other times sitting up into it.

The ride ended uneventfully with me pulling in to the school parking lot early and parking next to another teacher I'd been talking bikes with the week before.  I was able to drop my gear in an office in the school and enjoyed the gathering.  Showing up to something like this after a bike ride has you full of oxygen and feeling energized, it's a nice way to start the day.

Sulfur Springs Road out of Ancaster

I left from downtown Ancaster in late afternoon.  The temperature was about fifteen degrees warmer than it had been, but the nicest surprise was stumbling across Sulfur Springs Road as I was mapping my way out.  This was five kilometers of decidedly un-Ontario curvy road.  I got my gearing wrong on almost all of it, but it was nice to wind my way through.  If you're down Hamilton way, I'd highly recommend it.  There are some really nice, old pubs on Ancaster's main street as well, which was the only time I regretted riding the bike (no Guinness for me).

The ride back was beautiful.  Warm but not hot, sunny, but I wasn't riding into it, mostly empty roads, and the ride down had shown me a couple of ways not to get too tense while in the saddle for a long time.  If you can stay loose, you'll be more aware of what's going on around you and be better able to respond to it.  If that's a 150 kilometer trip then I think I could squeeze out 100km bursts four or five times in a day with breaks between quite comfortably.  On a more comfortable bike (the Ninja is a little high strung), I'd do a couple of tanks (about 160 miles to a tank on the Ninja) a day and feel like I'm covering miles well without pushing hard.  That puts me well over 500kms a day on two tanks (about thirty bucks worth of premium gas).

Back over the 401 on my way back I came upon a multi-vehicle accident with ambulances tearing away with lights and sirens and several police and fire/emergency units on hand.  The wrecked vehicles were both SUVs... those things just aren't safe, especially when one runs a four way stop and broadsides another one.  Many people were very anxious about my riding down to this thing.  I wonder how many worried about making the trip in SUVs.

I'm suspicious of anyone in a car when I'm on the bike, but I find that bleeding over into when I'm in a car too.  I'm beginning to think anyone who wants to drive a car should have to do a year on a bike first, it'd give them some much needed humility, and an opportunity to appreciate the physics of driving without being isolated in a metal box.

Philosophy of Riding: choosing a bike

Buying that first bike has a lot of philosophical underpinning to it.  Do I go with the swiss army knife of bikes, used by the Navy Seals themselves?  Or do I go with a road specialist with ungodly dexterity?  What I ride dictates how I ride.  A dedicated road bike offers a very different experience to an enduro.  To KLR or to Ninja, that is the question.

I should add, that I have always loved Suzukis, the GSX-R 750 was my dream bike when I was younger, and the Gladius is exactly the kind of naked bike that I like. I'd been kinda hoping my first bike would be a Suzi, perhaps a Vstrom, but they are hard to find used!  I was originally going to get a new KLR (only $6300+taxes brand new 2012), but I'm just getting out of five years of car payments and would like a break, so I'm going all in on a used bike.

The KLR? 

• A big bike with a comfortable driving position for me (a big, six foot+ guy)
• Can go just about anywhere - handy for a guy who lives in the country (dirt roads)
• This particular one has only 1200kms on it
• Lets me practice many different riding environments.
• as sensible as a bike choice can be

The Ninja?

• road specialist bike with a wide range of performance (won't outgrow it quickly)
• an emotional choice that feels fantastic
• dexterity (ungodly braking and acceleration) would get me out of trouble
• able to handle all aspects of road driving well (KLR isn't highway/high speed friendly)

Ups and Downs

The KLR is far away in Milton - meaning I'm spending a couple of hours just to go see it, and it might not be as nice as the pictures suggest (which obviously weren't taken recently).  The Ninja is five minutes away in Fergus.

The Ninja has low miles (only 8000 miles), but the KLR has fantastically low miles and is 2 years newer.

The Ninja has been repainted and has been dropped at least once.  The KLR has been dropped too, but they aren't trying to hide it. The Ninja appears to be in good working order, but it's also had a long list of owners in its short life (I'd be #6 or 7?).  This is a Ninja with a shady past.

The KLR owners aren't responding to communications and are far away.  The Ninja owner was immediately available, has been completely upfront with the bike (even pointing out blemishes) and lives around the corner (I taught his cousin English).  He has put half of the 8000 miles on the bike.

The KLR is a bit more expensive, and obvious (nothing hidden).  I don't know what its history is.

The Ninja has charisma... and I've had a habit of wanting to save orphaned machines (my long and storied car history is full of examples).  I sympathize with the Ninja, I want to give it a good home.

The KLR would let me learn on and off road riding, all in one bike, though it wouldn't do either thing as well as a purpose built bike would do - it's a swiss army knife.  The Ninja is a scalpel, very good at what it's designed for, but it isn't going off road.

Any used vehicle has secrets, the KLR might be the lemon, the Ninja the safe buy, but the Ninja's history, paint job (which is peeling and showing the much nicer blue underneath) and history suggest that it might have been abused.  That just makes me want to save it more.

Either bike would let me get my hands dirty maintaining and modifying it.  Both Ninja and KLR appear to be easy to work on.  They insure for the same amount (it's all about engine size and they are within 2cc of each other - though they couldn't be more different bikes).

If there's a sure choice, it's lost on me.  I'm looking for an emotional relationship with my first bike.  The come hither looks, lovely sound and mysterious history of the American Ninja suggest she's trouble; I just don't know how much trouble I'm looking for.

Coolness

When the Navy Seals want a bike, they go to the KLR!  The Navy Seals!

The Ninja can do this!!

... and if not that, then at least this:

Wow...

We worked out $3800 safetied - it needed a new rear tire and some reflectors.  It also needs fluids changed, some TLC and the fairings taken off and painted so that the bike doesn't look like a stunned sixteen year old's idea of exciting.

Nexx MaxiJet X40 Modular Helmet

The new Ninja 650 has a nice white option. High visibility and going with the Star Wars Imperial pilot theme I've been going for.  It'd nicely match up with my dream helmet and the black and white gear I'm going for.  I suspect my juvenile, flat black ninja will become ivory white shortly.


I'm hoping to have it in the garage in a couple of days.  In the meantime, I found the manual online and hopefully will know my way around the bike when it gets here.