Installing LED lighting on the ZG1K Rat Bike

The mighty ZG1K modified Concours is just about done.  I've been plumbing the depths of the wiring loom working out how to integrate LED headlights and indicators into a 1994 electrical harness based on much less efficient bulbs.  Jumping into the future like that freaked out the existing flasher relay that manages how quickly they blink.  

If you're running big, old, inefficient bulbs, you get a nice steady indicator and hazard flash because those bulbs are heavy loads on the circuit.  The LEDs barely use anything at all by comparison, so suddenly the indicator relay is flashing so quickly it looks like a strobe light.

There are various ways to address this, but I think the easiest is to get an adjustable flasher relay (ten bucks on Amazon).  It plugs directly into the harness and can be adjusted for an indicator as quick or slow as you like.

I've still got to wire up the horn and headlights, but the bike is close to finished wiring wise.  I hope to be out later in the week checking off the other details and making sure everything is ready to go.  It has always been a quick bike, but now it's a ninety pound lighter quick bike.  I'm looking forward to seeing what it can do when it's finally road ready.

The ZG1K started out as a café racer conversion, but the muscular feel of the big-4 Kawasaki engine and the heavy duty frame made it look like more of a drag racer than a café racer.  Once I'd stripped it down I went with what I had.  If it had been a light weight single or twin engined machine then the café racer angle would have worked.  Had that been the case I would have gone with a finished, painted look, but once I started down the muscle bike route I started thinking it'd look better as a Mad Max themed post apocalypse rat bike.  Seeing Fury Road was how it got renamed the ZG1K Fury.

Mad Max: Fury Road isn't short on motorcycle inspiration.  The art direction in that film is amazing.

The paint on the bike wasn't too bad (it was rattle can but nicely finished and badged), but I ended up taking a sander to the tank one day and liked the result with the Kawasaki decal half sanded off; it felt much more radioactive that way.

With the old style round headlight but running LEDS and the stainless steel, drilled mounts I made for it, the bike looks old fashioned and rough but with weirdly futuristic details.  The rear lights look like they come out of Battlestar Galactica, but then the rest of the body panels (only where they are needed to cover up plumbing or electronics) are finished in some cut aluminum from the heat-shield that fell off my Mazda a couple of years ago.  Once committed to the rough look, I went looking for ways to stay consistent to it.  Ironically, the least ratty thing about the bike are the refinished and painted rims I had done before these whole thing started with a carb failure.  They never went on the original bike while it was on the road and they are by far the most perfect feature on this one that aims for imperfection.

Technical and aesthetic ideas for the custom bike were collected on a Pinterest board:



Once I've got everything together it'll be a review of all the main systems to make sure everything it tight and works well.  I'll bleed the brakes, make sure the engine is tight and dependable and then see how often I can get out on the thing.

9 Days in March: Exploring The Ozarks

Next week is on or about freezing up here in the never ending winter.  Friday is looking like it might be a possibility with a current suggestion of seven degrees Celsius.  I can handle seven degrees.

In a more perfect world I'd be heading out of work today, jumping in the van and driving south to where things get yellow and orange on the map.

If I was on the road by 3:30pm, I think I could manage the eleven hour drive to St Louis by just past 2am.  I'd park up the van and have a sleep and aim for a morning departure from St Louis aiming South West into the Ozarks.




Seven days of following the twisting roads of the Ozarks would make for a brilliant March Break.  I'd aim to get back up to the hotel in St. Louis the next Saturday and spend one more night there before making the drive back into the frozen north on the Sunday before we're back at work again.  A day of driving, 7 days on the bike, a day driving back.

Yes, please!

Them's some nice March temperatures, especially compared to ours...

Ozarks Resources:
http://ozarkrides.com/
http://www.motorcycleroads.com/Routes/Arkansas_79.html
http://motorcycleozarks.com/
https://www.facebook.com/RideTheOzarks/
http://www.cruisetheozarks.com/
https://www.arkansas.com/outdoors/motorcycling/hot-spots/

Finding a State of Flow in Motorcycling

I just finished Guy Martin's autobiography.  Towards the end of the book he talks about taking a non-rider around a road racing track in Ireland.  The show had a psychologist on hand who talked about the seeming insanity of motorcycle road racing.  Rather than just seeing it as adrenaline junkie speed thrills, the psychologist talks about the state of flow and how an athlete in it isn't in a risk mind-set.  The state of flow is an expanded awareness that most people have insufficient training and skill to be familiar with.  The extreme athlete isn't riding a wave of thrill, they wouldn't be able to perform if they did.

Stressed but prepared athletes enter a state of flow where they are so engaged with what they are doing that they disappear into their actions.  This isn't an act of imagination where they are thinking about what they look like from the outside, it's self awareness through the act itself.  This is a truer mirror of the self than any imaginative act.  

Many people consider self awareness to be this moment of recognition where you're constructing how you think you fit into the world around you, but this is ultimately fictional and prone to psychological abstraction.  A doubting person won't see themselves as they are any more than an arrogant person would.  It might provide you with a vague sense of your place in the world, but it isn't trustworthy.

Bull Durham is one of my favourite sports films.  The moment when Crash Davis catches himself thinking when he should only be a quick bat is a great example of an athlete being aware of a break in their state of flow.

Awareness in the state of flow has much more in common with the long tradition of Zen and other Eastern philosophies where the practitioner's sense of self is lost in the act.  But being lost in that act allows you to live in the moment more completely.  Instead of thinking about what might happen next or self-criticizing while performing, someone in the state of flow isn't conscious in the typical manner.  The wasted energy spent on consciously being self aware is instead spend in the activity itself; the activity becomes who you are.

When a talking head asks an athlete what they were thinking about when they were performing, the athlete always seems confused by the question.  When they ask if the audience was a factor in their performance they are baffled.  If you're rolling ideas around in your head while you're trying to perform you know you're not at peak performance, you're not the moment itself.

One of the reasons I enjoy riding motorcycles is because I've been doing it long enough that I can get into the process and become a part of the ride.  Zen monks use physical tasks like sweeping the floor to put themselves into the present.  I find riding a motorcycle does the same thing for me.  The complexity of using all of my limbs and my whole body to operate the machine allows me to let go of my conscious self and become something more.  

In a more extreme case like Guy Martin's, he is able to get into a flow state while doing almost two hundred miles an hour on a motorbike on a public road.  This can seem like breath taking daredevilry, but it isn't, it's a master in the state of flow.  The mind is clear, you're aware of more than you ever can be when you're looking through the pinched viewpoint of your conscious mind.

That expansive state of awareness is what happens when you're in flow, and it feels wonderful.  You can see out of the back of your head and your body seems capable of reflexes that would confound you if you tried them consciously.  If you've ever experienced that moment of bliss,  you know it's worth finding again.

Photos from the Winter Road

These are some video screen grabs from the long way home commute from work last week.  Windy and cool, but still up near ten degrees Celsius with bright, winter sunshine.  The roads were relatively sand and salt free thanks to days of rain and floods.  The Ricoh Theta 360 camera is wrapped around the mirror with a Gorilla Pod.  A 360 video clip to start off followed by some photoshop post production...

February Ride - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

 

All the screen grabs with various modifications can be found in this album.

If you're looking for a motorcycle friendly camera, the Theta 360 has push button controls that are easy to use (most others have finicky wireless connections through a smartphone).  You don't have to aim it or focus it, it just grabs everything in an instant.  The screen grabs on here are from the 1080 video the Theta made while attached to the rear view mirror.

My last ride was November 28th, so this was a soul destroying thirteen weeks between rides.  I really need to find somewhere twelve months a year motorcycle friendly.  There's another bucket list goal:  live somewhere where I can ride for an entire year without having to take three miserable months off.

On the upside, it won't be 13 weeks until I'm riding again...

Stealing One Back From Winter II

I stole one from February last year.  This year the weather aligned again and I was able to get a ride in between snow storms.

It was a cold commute in before 8am, about freezing, but clear and sunny.  I took it on the chin knowing that it'd be worth it on the way home.

Coming out of work past 4pm it was about 10°C and windy, but I can go all day in ten degrees.  I took the long way home, 27 kilometres of leafless trees, rivers with cubist banks of ice shoved into  the new mud by our recent floods, and a sky so winter blue that it wriggles before your eyes; all while leaning into fifty kilometre hour gusts of wind.  It was glorious!

I can still operate the bike without a thought, but I missed all sorts of apexes.  I'm rusty with neglect.

Note the snow pile in the middle of the road....

The smug I-stole-one-from-winter face

Icy verge