Finding The Edge

I turn fifty in a few months and the nature of aging occupies my mind.   The increasing worry is that I've done everything I'm going to do of note and the rest is just living in those memories, but I'm not happy with that diagnosis.  The way of things seems to be that as people get older they become increasingly cautious, especially physically, until they are maintaining themselves to death.  If all I have left is a continuous receding of activity into a safety cocoon designed to keep me alive as long as possible, I'm bereft of hope.  If that's the trajectory I need to do something about it because it's causing me a great deal of anxiety.

This isn't so much about thrill seeking as it is about finding meaningful ways to challenge myself.  I'm not looking for overt or pointless risk, I'm looking for ways to engage and challenge myself physically and mentally.  Motorcycling, for me, is a lifeline to that realm of vital engagement - it can turn even a simple commute into an adventure.  To accept the challenge of motorcycling well you need to acknowledge the risks and manage them effectively.  You can't do it with one hand on the wheel and your thoughts elsewhere as so many other road users do; motorcycling well demands that you live in the moment.

The meditative nature of riding can't be overstated, especially in my case.  It's taken me most of my life and my son's diagnosis to realize I don't think like most people.  Whereas others find great traction and joy in social interaction, I've always found it confusing and frustrating.  People are takers who are happy to demand my time, attention and expertise and offer little tangible in return.  I spend my days in this social deficit where many  around me seem intent on using me for what I can do for them but are unwilling to offer anything in return.  The only currency many of them trade in is this slippery social currency, which I find difficult to fathom and so avoid.  Given the opportunity, most people disappoint, and often do it with and edge of cruelty and selfishness that I find exhausting.  Nothing lets me find balance again better than a few hours in the silence of the wind getting lost in the physical and mental challenge of chasing bends on my motorbike; the machine is honest in a way that few people are.

I started riding a motorcycle just over five years ago, after my mother died.  It was a secret as to why motorcycles were forbidden in our family.  A death no one talked about produced a moratorium on riding that prevented me from finding my way to this meditative state for decades.  I didn't realize that the motorbiking gene was strong in my family until I bypassed my mother's fear and found my way back to that family history.  Riding is something we've done for generations, but a single accident produced fear that kept me from what should have been a lifelong passion.  Wondering about what could have been is another one of those traps that people fall into as they get older, but rather than wonder about it I'd prefer to make up for lost time.

There are many aspects of motorcycling that I'd like to try, from exploring the limits of riding dynamics on a track to long distance and adventure travel journeys, or even retracing family history.  Last year I did some off road training and I don't think I've ever seen a photo of me looking happier.  Doing something new and challenging with a motorbike is where I find the edge.  It's also where I find the head-space that eludes me in my very socially orientated professional life.

Unfortunately, I live in the wrong country for exploring the challenges of motorbiking.  Whereas in the UK you can find cheap and accessible trackdays for bikes all over the country, in Canada they simply don't exist.  My only option is to pony up for a thousand dollar course that puts me on a tiny, underpowered bike for one weekend.  In the UK you can green lane and trail ride all over the country, but in Canada that's called trespassing.  We also happen to have some of the highest motorcycle insurance rates on the planet  and one of the shortest riding seasons.  In the UK you can ride virtually the whole year around and the range of biking interests are wide and varied.  In Canada riders are thin on the ground and often interested in aspects of riding that I find baffling.

As I'm getting older I hope I can continue to find ways back to the meditative calm of riding.  It isn't an end in itself, but it sure works as a tool to help me manage my other responsibilities, and as fodder for writing and photography I haven't found much better.  Motorcycling lets me plumb Peisig's depths and clarifies my mind.  Along with that meditative silence, motorcycling also offers a direct line to a thrilling and challenging craft that demands and rewards my best efforts.  Even the most mundane of riding opportunities offers a chance to find that edge, and it's on that edge that I'm able to find my best self, the one I want to hone and improve.  Being able to bring that refined self back into the world doesn't just help me, but everyone that has to put up with me too.

Pennsylvanian Autumn Colours

I've been thinking about an Appalachian ride, but didn't get around to it this year.  So here is a nice travel idea for an end of year ride before the snows fall...


Saturday, October 20:  Ride from Elora to Hotel Crittenden in Coudersport, Pennsylvania (~350kms)
Sunday, October 21:  Cross Fork/Snow Shoe/Jersey Shore loop (~360kms)
Monday, October 22:  Liberty/Hillsgrove/Williamsport (~350kms)
Tuesday, October 23:  Coudersport back home to Elora (~350kms)


Hotel Crittenden is a lovely four star hotel with a pub/restaurant on site.  At this time of year it's only about $150 Canadian a night.  What's nice about returning to the same spot every evening is that I can leave the luggage behind and ride light on the loop days, enjoying the twisty roads without the weight and faff.

The two loop day rides through the Appalachians were generated in Google Maps from Motorcycleroads.com's northern New York State maps.  It's a good site for locating twisties anywhere you want to ride in North America.

All told it would be about 1400kms in four days, but any of the loop days have opportunities to extend or cut short the ride if conditions require it.

One thing to consider when riding this late in the year (within 8 weeks of mid-winter solstice), is that the days are short and getting shorter.  Sunset in northern Pennsylvania in mid-October happens around 6:30pm, so you wouldn't be pushing for 500+km/12 hour days in the saddle  unless you wanted to be out on unfamiliar, rural, mountain roads after dark... in hunting season.

Pennsylvania has some of the largest northern boreal forests in the world.  Most other forests this far north get too coniferous to be colourful in the fall.  From Ontario down through northern New York State and into northern Pennsylvania, it would be a very colourful few days racking up motorcycle miles before the end of the always-too-short Canadian motorcycling season.

Hot Weather Riding

I tend to run hot, body temperature wise, and find that I can ride well into the single digits without too much worry.  My people come from a cold, wet place and that's what I'm built for.  Heat, and especially humidity, are my achilles heel.  I've gone to great lengths to try and find hot weather riding gear that will allow me to ride when it's sweltering.

Currently my go-to hot weather gear is a Fieldsheer mesh jacket in the lightest colours I could find.  I've never understood why someone would go with a black mesh jacket.  It defeats the purpose of trying to stay cool, unless you're just aiming for the other kind of cool.

This jacket is brilliant.  It keeps the sun off you while feeling like you're not wearing a jacket at all.  I think I'm actually cooler wearing this than I am in a t-shirt; much less likely to burn anyway.

The pants are where I'm having trouble.  A few years ago I found the most ventilated pants I could from Twisted Throttle.  These Macna vented pants do a great job of running air over my legs, but do very little where I need it most around my crotch.  To supplement those pants I got some riding shorts with a crotch pad, but they strangely disappeared, leaving me to ride with regular cotton underwear which is not remotely up to the job.

One of the great things about the convertible Roof Helmet is that you can swing it open for some wind on your face.  Even in that configuration the visor covers most of your face protecting you from Canadian sized summer bug impacts.  I just wish Roofs were a bit better ventilated across the top (the newer models might be, but they won't give me one to test).  An adventure/off road styled Roof with a roomier chin bar and more ventilation across the top and back of the helmet would be a must-buy for me.

A long time ago I found the Alpine Stars vented SMX-1 boots and have never looked back.  I've put tens of thousands of kilometres on them and beaten them senseless, but they still do the job so well that anything else on my feet doesn't feel right when changing gears.  They also keep my feet cool and are even good for walking around in (though they are very broken in).  When and if these ones give up the ghost I'll go get another pair just like them.  The lightest ones now have a touch of Valentino yellow on them, which is no bad thing.  They keep changing the colours, so maybe I'll get lucky and have a shot at some Lucifer Orange ones when I need them.

I'm focusing on fine tuning the bike/bum interface.  The best time of year to buy summer gear is the fall, and this fall is no exception.  Klim gear is usually a bit too rich for me, but I was able to find some vented Klim Savanah pants for under $200CAD.  I'm looking forward to seeing if the Klims really are all that.

I'm also replacing the biking underwear that wandered off.  It isn't cheap, but a good pair of technical underwear was the suggestion from many people when I asked.  Sixs makes a wide variety of riding focused sports underwear, so I went with the butt padded, seamless boxers.  The other pair I had looked a little less fancy, so I'm hoping this will be money well spent.  Their range of gear covers everything from top to bottom, so this might be the first of many purchases.

In order to keep the dreaded monkey butt from rearing its ugly head during hot weather riding you need moisture wicking underwear.  On my long ride last weekend my cotton boxers were soaked when I got back and I was so sore I couldn't sit down.  You do not want to get sweaty and wet under there, but your butt is on a black, vinyl seat so it's going to trap heat.  I've been looking into options to introduce some air under me.  Adventure Bike Rider Magazine mentioned Cool Covers a few issues back, but they don't make a cover for my fifteen year old Tiger.

Another option is the Bead Rider seat cover.  I've heard mixed reviews on beaded seats though.  They work well on shorter rides but over a long day they start to feel like torture.  I'm still considering my options here but the Cool Cover's futuristic look appeals more than the cabbie look of a beaded seat cover.

When I asked online, two super-stars who had just managed to complete a Bun Burner Gold very hard to do long distance ride had some hard won advice.  Everyone swears by technical sports underwear that wick moisture, so that's an easy fix even if you just go for Under Armour or something like.  Wolfe's suggestion of a Bill Meyers custom seat isn't cheap but isn't as expensive as I feared it might be (about the same as a new set of tires).  The old padding on my seat would benefit from a refresh and would go a long way towards making the Tiger all day rideable.

His other suggestion of the King of Fleece cover follows a popular bike habit of using pelts to separate your butt from unforgiving vinyl.  Sheepskin is a traditional choice, but I suspect some of the engineered solutions above might produce better results.

There are various new seat options, but not for my old Tiger, and spending that kind of money on a new seat for an old bike doesn't make much sense.  If I'm going that route, I think I'll be giving Bill Meyers a call.  A Canadian winter would be a good time to send the seat in.

I'm curious to see how the new undies and pants will do on hot future rides (which are only going to become more common).  The old, stiff seat may eventually get some attention, and I have a contact in mind in Bill Meyers.  You've got lots of options for finding ways to ride in comfort even in hot and humid weather.  Hopefully this helps you find ones that work.

Doubt

I did a 360km-ish kilometre ride on Saturday.  All back roads and as twisty as I can find in the farm-desert we live in.  I was gone shortly after 8am and had a coffee at Higher Ground before ripping up and down the Forks of the Credit.  I was then up past Orangeville to Hockley Valley Road, back through Mono Hills and up to River Road into Terra Nova before coming back down to Horning's Mills and north to Noisy River Road into Creemore.  All in all I crossed the escarpment half a dozen times on my way north.

By now it was well past noon and into the high thirties with humidity.  After a great lunch at The Old Mill House Pub in Creemore I was out to Cashtown Corners to fill up and then past Glen Huron and over the escarpment one more time before heading north to Thornbury Cidery and the cooler shores of Georgian Bay.

Nothing Cools you down like the shore of a great lake on a hot, summer day.

From Creemore on I was soaking wet and sweating freely, monkey butt (red and sore on my backside from wet, aggravated skin) was soon to follow.  It wasn't so bad by the lake, but inland it was sweltering.  I was standing frequently to try and get wind under me, but by this point my big ride was just uncomfortable.  The Macna vented pants did ok on my legs, but where I needed it the most they were just trapping heat and leaving me dripping.

I bombed south down Beaver Valley, stopping once at an overlook to finish the Gatorade I had and then on to Flesherton for a stop at Highland Grounds before dodging and weaving south on back roads towards Elora and air conditioned nirvana.

Before I left that morning I learned that Wolfe and Robyn, the founders of Lobo Loco long distance motorcycle rallies, had already started the monumentally difficult Bun Burner Gold, the seemingly impossible fifteen hundred miles (2400kms!!!) in twenty-four hours - yes, that's a 100km/hr average for a whole turn of the earth.  You'd need to be making time every hour so you'd have time to get gas, eat, drink and toilet; it's madness!

By the time I'd seen what these two superheroes were going to attempt that morning they had already done more miles than I was going to do all day (monkey butt and all), and they still had the better part of two thousand kilometres to go... in a day!

Part of this is making sure you've got the right gear for the job.  I'm going to address that in another post, but the other side of this is do I think I can actually pull something like that off.  I'm months away from turning fifty and I'm starting to get a sense of what getting older is going to feel like.  Doubt is what starts you thinking that you have to act your age.

The two doing that epic bun burner are fifteen plus years younger than I am and much more experienced riders.  My starting to ride late grates on my nerves.  Despite numerous opportunities, events beyond my control conspired to prevent me from finding my way back to a hereditary hobby.  Those lost years still haunt me.

No point in moping about it.  I've gotta grab the opportunities as I find them and not let doubt weaken my resolve.  If I want to get an Iron Butt done then I need to get it done.  You don't get shit done by moaning about it.  But first I've got to get my seat and kit sorted.  No point in trying to do a job without the right tools.

Riding the Rocky Mountains

I drove the Canadian Rockies this past summer.  Riding from Ghost Lake in Alberta to Chilliwack in British Columbia would be one hell of a few days.  We did it in a crazy day and a half going the most direct route we could with one missed turn having us drive the wrong way to Boston Flats to get back on the Trans Canada.  Doing the Rockies like that it was pretty exhausting, even in a car.

On a bike it'd be dangerous to try and pull that off, especially as none of the roads are straight and you're fighting altitude too.  It would be a shame to rush through it anyway, so taking your time is the way to go.  When I eventually ride the southern Canadian Rockies it'll be a multi-day trip that makes use of every road I can find.
  

Day One:  Cochrane, AB to Radium Hot Springs, BC.  323kms via 40/742.  Lunch in Banff.  That's just over five hours of riding at a sixty kilometre per hour average.  With multiple stops, it'd be a full day of riding twisty roads before hanging it up in Radium Hot Springs for dinner.

Day Two: Radium Hot Springs to Revelstoke, BC. 252kms via 95 and TransCanada.  This might seem like a short day, but it's high altitude passes over top of the world stuff.  We staggered into Revelstoke around dinner time and wanted to stop, but had to push on.



Day Three:  Revelstoke to Vernon along Upper Arrow Lake.  300kms via 23 and 6.  We didn't go this way last time and bombed down the TransCanada behind infinite numbers of campers and eighteen wheelers who were wheezing up and down the inclines.  This route is at least as twisty but should offer less heavy traffic than on the more direct route.  Kamloops was a pretty rough spot, so I wouldn't miss it the second time through.

Day Four:  Vernon to Hope via Boston Flats and Hell's Gate.  After a couple of light days, the last day going West is a kicker.  Just over 400kms of very twisty mountain roads.  Google maps says it's a five hour effort, but with traffic, twists and roads that'll leave your mouth hanging open, that's an optimistic ETA.  This would be an all day ride along some unforgettable roads.  I ran into a new rider at Hell's Gate who had ridden up from Vancouver.  He was grinning ear to ear.



From Hope you're ideally poised to hit the west coast, but this isn't about that.  If you still haven't had enough of your Canadian Rocky Mountain High, a trip back skirting the US border offers you a whole new set of twists, turns and stunning scenery.  I'd be hard pressed not to want to head toward Valhalla...

You could do a lot worse than giving yourself a couple of weeks (or months, or the rest of your life) wandering the Canadian Rockies.  This trip doesn't even touch Jasper or Whistler.  There are also a number of roads that don't go anywhere.  Chasing down those dead ends would be an obsession of mine if I lived out there.

Here are some of those roads we saw this summer... 

...and these are all 'main' roads!

Like most Canadian Roads, they suffer huge swings in temperature.  The ideal thing to tackle them on would be a road focused adventure bike.  The extra suspension travel would help soak up the inevitable imperfections while allowing you to still enjoy the twists and turns.  They also happen to be the ideal ride for a big guy like me.

KTM focuses on fast ADV bikes, but you'd also be spoiled for choice if you looked at Triumph's big Explorer, or BMW's bonkers XR sports ADV.  

Yamaha's Super Ten is a solid, fast choice, as are the other larger capacity Japanese bikes (though they all seem to object to defining the category).