Autumn Colours

Thanksgiving Monday was warm, sunny and a perfect Fall ride.  I tried to connect two previous rides, but failed because it was a holiday weekend and the city had leaked out all over my quiet, country roads.

Just after lunch I headed north east to Horning's Mills and River Road, a favourite of mine.  The roads were clear and I had an enjoyable time getting off the middle of the tire, something I don't get to do as much as I'd like in southern Ontario.

Coming halfway back down River Road, I turned south to the top of Highway 10 and worked my way south in traffic to Mono Cliffs, where I road through the ridiculously crowded Mono Centre (lots of GTA cars trying to park at the park entrance) before cutting south on Airport Road and enjoying a clear run up Hockley Valley Road.

Things started to go really sideways in Orangeville.  I should have taken the hint and just headed home.  South on 10 turned into a parking lot at the lights on the highway, so I turned around and worked my way through town and down past Alton before heading south on Mississauga Road to Belfountain, where I hoped to grab a coffee and bike-watch.

It wasn't to be.  Traffic was backed up all the way in to Belfountain, and then it started to back up heading onto the Forks of the Credit as a clan of about thirty Indians (of the eastern variety) started to walk in a large clump down the middle of the road, enjoying the fall colours in equally colourful saris.

At this point I u-turned, abandoned any ideas about trying to access the Forks or Belfountain and headed home, tragically, without coffee.

It was a beautiful ride and reminded me of one very important fact: whatever you do, do not go any where near Caledon when Fall colours are on display!

River Road and then a diagonal cut up to Noisy River would have landed me in Creemore (safely out of reach of most day trippers from the GTA) for a nice coffee before the ride home.  Now I know.

Here are the colours!

I'm all about the bike, but if you're going to take a car, a freakin' 427 Cobra would be the one!

The ride through Horning's Mills & River Road

The mile eater!  I sometimes forget I'm on a Concours and find myself dropping a knee
!

Bike Evolution

I've been pondering motorbikes as the season ends here in Canada and the darkness closes in.  I'm only 300 miles away from putting the Concours over the thirty thousand mile mark, which has been the goal this year.

The Concours has been a revelation.  This year I've gone international with it, doing thousand mile trips and circumnavigating great lakes.  I continue to modify and adjust, making it more and more long distance worthy.

Surprisingly, I'm finding it very satisfying in the twisties, and that 999cc Ninja motor wails like a banshee if you wind it up, so there is no lack of visceral thrill in riding it.  So satisfying is it that I'm left wondering what more I'd need in a road bike.

That's where the KLX came in.  As an off-road tool it's purpose built, but I'm finding that I don't have the time or the local access to dedicate to off road riding.  I enjoy it, but the cottage I was thinking of using it at isn't really that accessible and other than riding around on dirt roads, I'm finding it difficult to justify, especially for what it cost.

There is also the culture side of it.  I get a nostalgic jolt out of the idea of riding a classic Scrambler all over the place, but MX riding?  Not so much.  It all seems a bit Ricky Racer to me.  I like green laning, and trail riding, but I'm not so much about the radical off road stuff, so a less MX like bike would do the trick.   One that scratches that nostalgic itch at the same time would do double duty...

Triumph's Bike Configurator makes dreaming a bit too easy...

Maybe next year will evolve into a Scrambler while running the ever present Concours - a sport tourer and a multi-purpose classic would each get a fairer share of the time I can dedicate to the saddle.


The new Bonneville/Scrambler is something else again:

Bigger motor, lighter bike.  The 2016 Bonneville Scrambler is a piece of fast art!

Mechanical Sympathy

I've always had an over abundance of mechanical sympathy.  That sympathy often spills over into full on empathy for machines.  While I derive a great deal of joy from interacting with machines, the satisfaction I get out of fixing them is amplified by this natural inclination.

My first bike was a mechanically bullet proof 2007 Kawasaki Ninja 650r.  It had been dropped and scuffed, but it didn't need open heart surgery.  I was happy to clean it up and send it on its way, and while I got attached to it, it never felt like a two way relationship.

The Concours I have now is a whole new level of commitment.  Not only did I find it sitting in a field, buried in grass, but it took me a winter of rebuilding to get it on the road again.  In my first season riding it I've put on more miles than I ever did on the Ninja (it's a much more comfortable long distance tool).

Call me nostalgic (or perverse), but getting the four carburetors on the Concours running smoothly was very satisfying.  Even though I teach computer tech, I still find the clockwork nature of mechanical parts to have a grace that digital technology is lacking.  Listening to the Connie fire up at the touch of the starter on a cold morning and clear its throat is much more satisfying than listening to the clinical hum of a fuel injector making everything perfect.

I was out on the Concours again today - if the weather's dry I'm out on it.  I'm always astonished at how responsive such a heavy machine can feel.  It fits me well, needed me to save it, and then responded to that saving with thousands of miles of riding.  There may come a time when the Connie is more trouble than it's worth, but at the moment it's what I was looking for all along.

It's getting kind of crowded in there...

The Yamaha XS1100 sitting in the back of the garage will be my first go at a restoration, but as an owned bike it isn't really what I'm looking for.  It'll be my first go at a bike purchased for restoration rather than riding.  I'm curious to see how that process goes.




In the meantime, and completely off topic, here is some nice motorbike art I saw at Blue Mountain last weekend:

Last Light of the Sun

I'm thinking about a final trip before the snows fly.  I did Georgian Bay early in the perilously short Canadian motorcycling season, but now I'm thinking about a circumnavigation of Huron to end it.  I've never been to Northern Michigan before and I'd be passing right past where Hemingway spent his summers as a child.

It's an epic sweep worthy of Hemingway!

The trip is roughly 1600kms.  If I struck north out of Elora I'd aim for the 1:30pm Chicheemaun Ferry out of Tobermory but instead of heading right around Georgian Bay I'd swing left toward Sault St. Marie.  Overnighting in the Hemingway-esque Petosky puts me about half way around.  I'd strike south through Northern Michigan the next day before coming through Sarnia and cutting back across Southern Ontario to home.

It's ~776kms to Petosky, or about eleven hours of riding.  A normal departure and then the 1:30pm ferry puts me in Manitoulin at about 3:30pm.  That would get me into Petosky well after dark, which isn't the way to do it.  There is an 8:50am ferry that puts you on Manitoulin just before 11am.  That would put me in Petosky around dinner time.  It's a nicer fit, but it would mean a 5:30am departure, which would be brisk.  On the upside, the only riding I'd be doing in the dark would be in Southern Ontario on familiar roads, and once I'm on the ferry I could catch up on the sleep I missed.

After overnighting in Hemingway's summer retreat, it's a straight shot with no ferries back to Ontario.  The ride back from Petosky could be done in six and a half hours and 673kms.  The 8 hour version with a few hours next to Huron would be the preferred route.  A nine to six day with an hour lunch would get me home well before sunset.

Doing it backwards might work better.  After spending the night in Petosky, I'd be aiming for a 3:50pm ferry to Tobermory where I'd be riding south on the Bruce Peninsula at 5:50pm.  I'd need to be on the road from Petosky by 9am to make the Ferry.  Backwards might be better...  You're looking at 7:20am sunrises to 6:20pm sunsets in mid-October around here, so the last bit home would be in dusk and dark.

The temperatures are on their way down in October.  With some luck I'll have a weekend that is precipitation free to make this run on.  Night temperatures are dropping toward freezing by the end of the month, but with some luck I'd be riding into some amazing fall colours.

I don't mind riding in cool temperatures. The Concours is built for it with a good fairing, and sitting on it is like sitting on a volcano.  With proper kit even single digit temperatures are easily dispatched.

The trick will be to get a couple of days free to go ride through Hemingway's Michigan the way he'd have done it himself nowadays, on a motorbike.  I couldn't find any motorcycle specific quotes, but I know he'd approve of the method of transport...

The write up on this trip would be damn right hilarious!

Lots of time for self improvement while riding a motorbike

... practically written for riders!

There is a physical challenge to riding that does make you stronger

I think I'll bring along some Hemingway to read during breaks in the ride...

Yamaha XS1100: The Midnight Saga

Buddy Jeff gave me a hand getting the XS1100 home the other day; he's an enabler.

Getting it on the trailer was a bit tricky as the front calipers were seized.  A couple of whacks with a rubber hammer loosened them up enough to get the wheel rolling.  It took three of us to get it up onto the trailer - it's heavy (600lbs), had mostly flat tires and was still grabbing the brakes, but we finally got the job done.  We ended up settling on $400 as is, which gives me a working budget of about $1500 to get the bike back on the road.  It think it's doable.  The only other one like it for sale at the moment is asking $3300.  After looking at the bike again critically before agreeing to buy it, it's in surprisingly good shape for what it has been through.

Once home we had a victory beer after wrestling it off the trailer.  A bit later I had a go at it with a garden hose and some S100 cleaner.  The ride over had blown away most of the cobwebs, but the rest of the bike is quite astonishingly clean considering it has been sitting outside.  The S100 also has a corrosion inhibitor, but I also soaked the bike in wd40 in preparation of trying to remove any fastener on the thing.

Trying to muscle the 600+ pound bike into the garage earned my my first Yama-scar, but I eventually got it nestled in there.

In other news, here's something to know about bike ownership in Ontario (and probably elsewhere): if you're buying a bike off someone who bought it and never transferred ownership to themselves, you need to make sure you've still got chain of ownership intact.  This means either a piece of writing from the legal owner saying that the bike was sold to the intermediary or a signed ownership.  The kid I bought the bike off had neither (can't find them).  He's looking.  More updates to follow.

It's getting crowded in there - once the season ends
the garage will only need to hold the Concours &
the Yamaha, everything else will winter in the shed.

In the meantime, the history of this old bike is long and storied.  I'm the fourteenth (!) owner (almost).  It's a 1980, not a '78 as the kid selling it thought it was.  In the early '80s it went through three owners before finding itself at Norwich Collision Service in South West Ontario in the spring of '82.  The crash owner had owned it since Christmas and had probably been on the road for a few weeks in the spring before spilling it.  Idiots buying bikes too powerful for their experience level isn't a new thing then.  He got the bike back from repair and immediately sold it.

After the n00b crash and the repairs it got picked up by a guy who owned it for six years.  He then sold it on to a series of owners through the '90s and zeroes, the longest being eight years by a guy in Halton.  The last legal owner was a guy from Stoney Creek in 2009.  

Whoever said the Ontario vehicle history was boring or a waste of money?  This one reads like a Jane Austen novel!

I'll update the ownership situation as I hear more, hopefully it'll be resolved by the end of this weekend.  I'll hold off on working on the bike until I know I can own it, that seems prudent.

Revised Seat Geometry=Happiness

After installing a new seat cover (with some modifications), I took the Connie out for a ride.  The change in geometry is a compromise, but I think it's one I prefer.  In raising the seat height I'm causing more forward lean, but I'm also easing knee flex.

The gel cushion and extra padding on the new seat cover raises the seat a couple of inches.  I notice the forward lean a bit more, but the bike already has bar risers, so I'm not laying on the tank or anything.  The 6° knee angle relaxing is dynamite though.  I'd gladly take a bit more lean to ease the knee cramping.

The extra height above the windshield is negligible as I'm already looking over it by quite a bit.  With the extra height the bike feels like it fits me better.  A shorter rider would find a taller, wider seat difficult to manage, but I still have no trouble getting feet flat on the ground and riding is a much more comfortable proposition.

The seat itself is also much firmer.  Instead of squishy foam I'm sitting on thicker vinyl backed by higher density form over the gel pad.  The Corbin seat I was thinking about looks very low profile, so it would probably have bent my knees even more.  I think I've made a cheaper option actually work better for me.

A ride to the Forks of the Credit on a sunny, cool Sunday tested the new setup.

Your typical weekend in the parking lot at Higher Ground in Belfountain - everything from a
1947 sidecar outfit to Ducati Monsters to the latest Yamaha R1, and everything in between

Panniers make handy coffee holders
(I used them for a bakery pick-up in Erin)

Back home, the new seat's looking the business

The Seat of my Bike

After the ride to Indy I have a much stronger opinion about the Concours' stock seat.  It's soft and comfy on short rides, but on long rides it turns into a kind of torture device.  There are options for Concours seats that I can't justify on an $800 bike, but the cheaper option arrived, so yesterday during the rain I gave it a go.

It's tedious, but loosening the staples with a screwdriver makes
for clean removal with needle nose pliers.

The process took about an hour and a half to swap out the seat cover.  The seat fabric is held down by industrial staples.  I loosened them with a small flat-head screwdriver and then pulled them out with needle nose pliers.  It's time consuming because there are a couple of hundred of them holding the seat to the plastic base.

The cover peeled off relatively easy, only sticking where the Gorilla tape I'd used on the torn seam was touching the foam (that stuff is mega).

With the foam exposed I tried fitting the new seat skin and found that it had much more extra material on it.  I was looking to firm up the seat a bit any way, so I took the gel pad I got on the Indy trip and found it would fit under the new cover.  It would also raise the seat slightly, which would do my knees some favours.

Attaching a new seat cover is a tricky business.  The vast majority of swearing happened while doing this.  Rotating the seat so you can put weight on the staple as you squeeze the handle of the stapler helps seat it properly, but it's a pretty muscley process.  Getting the edges tight requires some practice.  This one came pretty close, but future ones I'll be pickier about and get even snugger.

In the meantime I've got a seat that feels firmer, sits a touch higher and isn't covered in tape.  I think the end result looks pretty good, and for thirty bucks plus shipping, it's a good cheap alternative to those sweet Corbin seats.

I found this seat cover maker on ebay.  The seat arrived quickly and is as advertised.  I can't speak for its toughness yet, but installing it I found that it was made of thick vinyl and the sewing was very strong.  It's a cool sunny day today, I'm going to give it a whirl and see how it does.

The stock seat tore on the stitching, Gorilla tape did the business until I could find a better solution.