Last Light Of The Sun: 2020 Edition

Without putting too fine a point on it, 2020 has been a steaming heap of shit.  I can't put it behind me fast enough.  One of the only breaks in a year that seemed more interested in trying to break me than providing opportunities was a series of warm days into November.  Last year the snows descended on Hallowe'en and we were under it for five months, only to emerge into a world wide pandemic.  This year I've been able to steal rides here and there right up until the end of November.  I'll take what I can get at this point.

We looked like we were corked November 1st when we got our first big round of snow, but only three days later the snow was on the side of the road and I was able to take the Tiger out for a late season ride.

Nov 4th:  By Black Power Bison Company

Long shadows in the West Montrose Cemetery

That weekend we were up in the high single digits so I jumped on the Tiger and went for the last long ride of the year, up to the edge of Georgian Bay to have a look a blue horizon before heading back to my landlocked existence. This is close to where the year started off with a banzai ride up to Coffin Ridge Winery out of the endless winter to pick up some pandemic supplies early on in the lockdown, so it was nice to close the loop.  It ended up being about 300kms of the twistiest roads I can find in the tedious riding desert that I live in:

The Beaver River in the Beaver Valley before the snows fall.

Highland cattle grazing in Glen Huron.

With less than six weeks to mid-winter solstice the sun is never that high in the sky in mid-November in Ontario.

I thought that was the end of things.  The Honda had flooded itself and I ended up having to pull the
carbs which led to an inside out cleaning and installation of new airbox boots that I'd been waiting for winter to do.  I spent a warm Sunday afternoon on the driveway doing all that and when it was back together I took this athletic work of art for a shakedown ride and discovered that it was even sharper than it had been.  Honda Fireblades are something special, and this particular generation was ahead of its time. 

With everything sorted I shut off the petcock and ran the bike dry before wrapping it up for the winter knowing that it was ready to roll again in the spring, many months hence.  Surely I wouldn't get another chance to ride again this year.

I got home from work the next day and it was still well above zero and sunny, so I primed the carbs and off I went again.

The Fireblade, already an impressive piece of engineering, felt like a sharpened pencil with the carbs cleaned and the airbox rubbers replaced.  It was a nice final ride.  I once again shut off the petcock and ran the carbs dry before covering it up for the winter.

Of course, things weren't done yet.  We got a couple of weirdly warm days around November 21st so once again I primed the Honda and took it for a blast.  By this point the Tiger was up on stands and getting ready for a deep winter maintenance, but with the Fireblade so frisky I wasn't feeling bike poor.  Running a 17 year old European bike as my regular ride and a 23 year old Honda superbike as my spare, I'm often frustrated if both are sidelined, but not this long autumn.

When I got home I (can you guess?) shut off the petcock and ran the carbs dry before wrapping it up in blankets again for the long, cold winter.

Now I was really done. The Tiger was wheels off and up on blocks and the Honda was in hibernation under a sheet.  No more riding this year. Time to get my hands dirty. The Tiger needs some deep maintenance this year if I'm going to get it to one hundred thousand kilometres by the time it turns 20 years old in 2023. This past summer we did alright miles and it's up over eighty-thousand now, so I have three more riding seasons to put in 20k kilometres to hit my target.  With any luck things will be opening up over the next year and I can get back on track to putting on some miles on longer trips.

Meanwhile, the weather looked like it was getting wintery.  Snow was closing in on the forecast but never seemed to land on us with any real weight.  I ended up priming the Fireblade one more time for a very cold, end of November ride.

One of the benefits of having the sports bike is that it makes even a short ride a thrill, and this one was that.  The 'Blade's telekinetic handling and explosive engine in a very lightweight package shot me down the road.  It was nice to find that feeling of being on two wheels one last time before finally putting things away for the winter.

I couldn't feel my hands when I got home after 40 minutes out, but it was totally worth it. By late November we're typically looking at minus double digits and knee deep in snow.  Since then we've had multiple blasts of snow, a snow day at school and the roads are thick with salt and sand.  The Fireblade is sleeping under its blanket and the Tiger is in the spa.  Today I used my new tire spoons to remove the 10k squared off Michelins on the Tiger.

Changing my own tires may fall into the more-trouble-than-it's-worth category, but it's still a good thing to do at least once just to look things over.  I think I'm going to take the tires in to the autoshop at work to mount them next week rather than try and do it by hand with tire spoons.

Here's a winter moto-themed video to get you in the dark season's maintenance mood:

WAITING OUT WINTER from Andrew David Watson on Vimeo.

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

Snow Garage

The snow's flying.  I like watching Waiting out the Winter for some inspiration at this time of year:



WAITING OUT WINTER from Andrew David Watson on Vimeo.

I did my own less cool and moody version of it here:

I'm beginning to see why I'm sore after doing a few hours in the garage.  I'm all over the place!  The Tiger has new oil and filter and has been cleaned and coated and is now living under a blanket until the weather comes back to us.  The battery's in the basement on a smart charger.

In the process of cleaning up I noticed a missing rubber on the bottom of the seat.  Gotta figure out how to get that, the cracked rubbers on the mirrors and the rubber thing that covers the rear brake wiring.  



The Tiger's going on fourteen years old.  Fourteen years in Canada means wild swings in temperature.  The rubbers need renewing.  There's a winter project.

Stealing One From The Icy Teeth of Winter

The days are getting darker, damper and distinctly not rider friendly.  One day this week was into the double digits Celsius, so we jumped at the chance to do a big Max & Dad ride, maybe our last one of 2017.

That night it was going to bucket down with a cold, pre-winter rain storm, but the day promised sun and clouds and a chance to ride, so we took it.  We waited until the numbers got well above zero and then got the Tiger out of the garage and put on leathers and layers of fleece; this was going to be a cold one.

There is nothing more ragged and beautiful than a pre-winter sky over Georgian Bay.  We pushed north across the barren farm tundra that we live in.  Miles upon miles of mechanically tilled and industrially fertilized fields rolled by as we headed toward a first warm-up stop at Highland Grounds in Flesherton on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment.

We staggered into the coffee shop just past eleven.  The weather wasn't anywhere near where the Weather Network promised it would be.  Our low teens, sunny morning had turned into a six degree, overcast slog north along your typical, boring, straight Southern Ontario roads.  Fortunately, nothing cheers us up more than warming up in an independent coffee shop and then heading onto Escarpment twisties.  Highland Grounds was as good as I remembered and we left with warm grins after a vanilla milkshake, a cookie the size of a pizza and a big, piping hot coffee in a ceramic mug.  It was a lot of calories, but we'd shivered those off on the way up.

North past Lake Eugenia where I spend a lot of summers at a friend's cottage, we wound our way into Beaver Valley and the twisties and views we'd been looking for - so much so that we stopped at the scenic look out on our way into the valley.

    

Of course, as soon as we stopped an elderly couple pulled in behind us and the driver immediately wandered up to find out who made our Triumph.

"Triumph?" I replied, somewhat confused by his question.
"Where are they made then?" he asked.  He has (of course) owned old Meriden Triumphs from the pre-80's collapse of the Motor Company and had assumed they were long gone.  He had no idea John Bloor had saved the brand in the early 90s and it was now one of the biggest European motorcycle manufacturers.  He'd assumed it was an Asian built Triumph branded thing.  When I told him it was built in the UK at a state of the art factory in Hinckley he was gobsmacked.  I always enjoy telling the story of Triumph's phoenix like rise from the ashes.  We left him thinking about dropping by the factory next time he's back in the old country.

We hopped back on the trusty Tiger and headed on through Beaver Valley and out to the choppy shores of Georgian Bay where the sky looked torn and the waves smashed against the rocks, splashing us with spray.

We hung out on the lonely shore for a little while, watching the hyperthermic fisherman standing in the mouth of the Beaver River amidst the surf, casting into the grey water over and over.  Georgian Bay skies always look like they are about to shatter, even in the summer, but with a Canadian winter imminent they looked positively daunting.  Time for another warm up.

We rode back up the hill onto the main street of Thornbury and got ourselves another warm drink.  The goal was to strike south east across the Escarpment toward Creemore for lunch.  The sporadic sun had managed to get it up to about ten degrees, but it was only better compared to the frozen morning.  We headed south behind Blue Mountain and through the glacial remains of Singhampton before turning onto the positively serpentine Glen Huron road for a ride down the hill into Creemore.  Shaggy highland cattle watched us ride by, much to my passenger's delight.


A hot lunch of philly steak and poutine refueled us at The Old Mill House Pub in Creemore.  When we came back out mid afternoon the temperature was as good as it was going to get, eleven degrees.  With warm stomachs we saddled up for the ride home through the wind fields of Dufferin County, but not before walking down the street to the ever popular Creemore brewery for a photo op and some brown ale.

When it comes to the end of October in Ontario, Canada, you take what you can get, and I'm glad we did.  Soon enough the snow will fall, the roads will salt up and the Tiger will have to hibernate, dreaming of the far off spring.

All on bike photos courtesy of the very easy to operate Ricoh Theta 360 camera - with simple physical controls and an ergonomic shape that is easy to grip, it's my go-to 360 camera.  No worries about framing a shot or focusing, it takes a photo of everything!

Georgian Bay 2017 end of season ride #triumph #roofhelmet #theta360 - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

Our last big ride of the year?  Perhaps - it was hot baths and fireplaces when we got home.

Leather, fleece and armoured trousers, and it was still a cold one.