Open Face Lid Dreams

My most comfortable helmet is the cheapest one I've bought.  That Hawk open faced helmet from Leatherup.ca is a simple device with barely any padding in it, yet I can wear it for hours without any pressure points.  It's a flip down, open faced lid with a built in sun visor, but it solidified for me my preferred helmet type - the open faced, modern helmet.  You can get out of the wind with the full face visor, or just use the sun visor and enjoy an unencumbered view of the road.

With the open faced thing in mind, here are my latest helmet dreams, but they ain't cheap (or easy to find in some cases):

ROOF HELMETS: Desmo

I've still got a huge crush on these French helmets that you can't get here.  I'm going to have to take a trip to the south of France just to pick one up.  The orange Desmo on the left has an A7 Corsair vibe to it that I dig.  It still looks like the perfect helmet: an open faced helmet that can transform into a fully safetied full face helmet when needed without having to carry around bits and pieces with you.

Price?  No idea, you can't buy them in North America and the former distributor hasn't been forthcoming with where to get the last ones in-country.  These guys have it for €469 ($649CA), but then there will be shipping and customs fees.  I'd be the only one I see on the road though.

SCHUBERTH:  M1

Schuberth just came out with a new version of their open faced helmet.  Once again, these aren't everywhere, but they are a heck of a lot easier to find than the Roof.

Compared to the French jeux de vivre in the Roof, you get some pretty German meh when it comes to style, though I bet its engineered to within an inch of its life. 

Price?  $680 from a trusted source, canadasmotorcycle.ca

NEXX HELMETS: X40 Vultron (!)

Wired did an article on these many moons ago.  Also a modular helmet, but rather than the Roof's elegant hinge, you end up with a handful of bits when you want to go open face.

It still has a neo-tech look to it that I like, though their webpage is a bit of a pig (my laptop is in overdrive trying to make sense of it).

Price?  Good question, NEXX Canada doesn't appear to offer the X40 for sale.  You can find them for sale in the UK for £249.99 ($484CA), but you also facing those shipping and customs costs.

SHARK: Soyouz

An open faced helmet that comes with all the bits and pieces to make a closed lid if you so wish. It also lets you live your Clint Eastwood Firefox dream.

The Soyouz is also made by a much better known and distributed manufacturer than some of the dodgier off-shore helmets I seem drawn to.

Price?  $299 in Canadian dollars with free shipping and no customs surprises from motorcyclesuperstore, a trusted source who go over the top to make sure you're happy with your order.  If they go on sale, I might not be able to help myself.

Thoughts on Bump Starting a Motorcycle

It's been one of those days.  I have a 21 year old motorbike but the 10 week old battery in it failed and almost stranded me on my way to an exam.

I'm still not sure how the Concours found a way to start with next to no electricity but I'm mighty glad she's looking after me.  I ended up making it to work in plenty of time.

The other day the Connie wouldn't start, plunging me into despair.  Had I wrecked the electrics with my wash last week?  Had I wired something wrong?  It turns out no, I hadn't.  On the upside, it wouldn't start in my own driveway, which makes for cheaper towing costs.

Thanks to some quality engineering by Motormaster I was the proud owner of a 10 week old Eliminator battery that had a bad cell.  Want to hear the sound of frustration (and Concours magic?), here it is:

I'm still not sure how the Connie got going again with almost no electricity, but she pulled it off and got me to work.  I had the auto-tech teacher handy in case my bump start failed, so here's how it went:  I duck walked the Concours to the slight downhill out of the parking lot and got it going down the hill as quickly as I could.  I had it in second gear with the clutch in.  Dumping the clutch I got a couple of big chugs and then the bike stopped.

I've had a lot of experience bump starting cars.  I was the proud owner of a series of Chrysler and Ford products in the 1980s, many of which seemed determined not to start.  I've bump started everything from Chrysler Lasers to Ford Escorts and Mercury Capris (all manual shift, I've never owned an automatic).  If it's got four wheels, I can probably get it going.

Made in Vietnam this year or made in Japan 21 years ago?
I'll take the 21 year old Japanese bits, thanks.

There is something you need to know about bump starting a bike if you've only ever done it in a car.  When you get a car rolling you don't need a lot of speed because you've got so much momentum thanks to the weight of the vehicle.  With the bike you need to get more speed going because you've got much less weight.  My first motorbike bump start didn't because I didn't recognize the difference in mass.  Get your bike going faster than you do with a car before you drop the clutch.

Of course, no one bump starts anything any more because it would damage the on-board computers, so this is an academic discussion.

After a jump from the auto-shop at school I was rolling again.  I got home, took out the battery and brought it over to my local Canadian Tire where it failed the tester in less than thirty seconds with a bad cell.  Twenty minutes later (there was a lot of paperwork) I walked out with a new replacement.  It's since been filled and charged.  Hopefully the new battery can keep up with the 21 year old parts around it this time.

What does a new battery do?  Well, the bike starts the moment you touch the starter.  It feels more awake.  I imagine the plugs were putting out some pretty weak spark at idle on a dying battery.  While riding the bike seems to lug less at low rpms and feels sharper.  The lights glow brighter too.

The parts desk at Canadian Tire said they've never had an Eliminator fail like this before.  If it's a one off I'll shrug and take it as bad luck.  If I'm swapping it out again under warranty then I won't be buying another one.  There was no real cost because it died in my driveway, but had it died on the far side of Georgian Bay it would have been much more expensive.

Perfect Moments

Lexus has this ad about being in the perfect moment:

Other than the narrative (I find that I'm lost in moments like this, not narrating them in my head), I like the idea. I was editing footage from riding last week and had trouble finding a frame where I didn't have a perfect moment look on my face:

Even pausing during the high speed sections of that video shows a series of very content micro-expressions.  You might find a perfect moment once in every blue moon in your Lexus, but I find them almost constantly when out on the bike.  I'm starting to get the idea behind the 'you never see a bike in a therapist's parking lot' saying.

The real question is: what is it about riding a motorcycle that causes this kind of continuous immersion in the perfect moment? (redundant perhaps, every moment is perfect isn't it?)

When I ride well I find myself immersed in what I'm doing I lose myself in it.  It's only when conscious thought arises that my corners aren't carved perfectly and my gears are wrong.  Some of this has to do with the fact that I'm still relatively new to motorbiking and very conscious of improving my process, but the majority has to do with the immersive nature of riding a motorcycle.

I even look happy parking the bike at work!

Being in the wind means you are enveloped by the world you're passing through.  Your senses are alive to sounds, smells and the panorama around you.  You aren't seeing the world through a letterbox wind shield and smelling recirculated A/C.  The sensual nature of riding, the wind tugging at your clothes, the sun on your back, goes a long way to making you the ride rather than you doing a ride.

If the sensual side of it isn't enough (and it's often overwhelming, ask any biker who has felt the temperature drop and smelt the ozone as they've ridden into a thunderstorm), there is always the mechanical intimacy of riding a motorcycle to make you forget concious thought and become one with the moment.

Unlike the hand on the wheel, one foot on the gas approach to driving, the motorcyclist is changing gears with their left toe, rear braking with their right, operating the clutch and indicators (and sometimes horn, lights and choke) with their left hand and twisting the throttle and applying the front brakes with the right.  On top of that they are using both arms to counter-steer into corners and their whole bodies to manage those turns.  Motorcycling is a viable and complex form of exercise for both the mind and body.

So what we have here is a mode of transport that is physically taxing, mentally demanding and sensual.  On top of all that, if you do it badly it can very quickly become fatal.  You very quickly want to be able to fall into the zone when riding.  Peak performance and awareness it fosters isn't nice to have but a necessity when operating a motorbike.  Fortunately, getting to that state is fantastically rewarding.  There are a lot of ways to get there but seat time seems to be the magic ingredient.

In a cruel twist, this morning I got the bike out for the short commute to work.  The rain had stopped and the smell of water soaked plants filled the humid air, but my up-until-now bullet proof old Concours wouldn't start, it had a dead battery!  Maybe I left the ignition on?  Maybe some water got into things?  Maybe something broke?  Suddenly that string of contented moments I was looking forward to became a morose push back into the garage after changing out of my gear.  My commute turned from fifteen minutes of bliss to the tedium of driving.  The bike is a wonderful form of therapy, except for when it doesn't work.

Two Wheel's Mega-Edifice

Two Wheel always had a Bartertown/Beyond the Thunderdome/
post-apocalyptic kind of feel to it, but it's all gone now!

My son Max and I went for one of those perfect rides today.  We headed down to Guelph in sunny, room temperature air with no wind.  It was glorious.

After a few stops and lunch we headed back north and swung into Two Wheel Motorsport's new digs.  The building looks impressive from the outside but the insides are something else!  Two Wheel used to have a kind of organic, bigger than where it was situated/post apocalyptic vibe to it, the new place is enormous, modern and shows off their stock like a bike show.

With walls of glass and an open concept, if you've never been to Two Wheel before, it's worth a trip north of Guelph on 6 - you can't miss riding past this motorcycle Mecca now.

Shock & Awe when you walk in the front door of the new building!

Not only can you actually sit on the bikes now (they used to be piled on top of each other so you couldn't get a leg over),
but there is so much space the stock on hand feels more like a bike show than a dealer!

They even had examples of modern art on display!

I could happily walk in to Two Wheel Motorsport and drop fifty grand.  My local dealer has gone pro.  I can't wait to see how they evolve into their new space.

The only downside was having to dual sport my way across the unpaved parking lot on a Concours with a passenger.  Hopefully the drive will be paved soon and then this place will become a beacon for bikers all over the area.  It's worth a ride over to see what they've done.

Dinosaurs & Motorcycles

The only thing cooler than hunting with velociraptors on a
motorbike is hunting with velociraptors on motorbikes!

I don't know how Triumph manages it, but they got a Scrambler into most of the scenes that involve chasing dinosaurs in the new Jurassic World flick. We just got back from it today and it's a good time, especially if you've seen the original.

You see Chris Pratt fiddling with the bullet proof fuel injected Scrambler in an early scene, then he breaks it out for the big hunt half way through the film.  The kids in the film point out, "your boyfriend is pretty bad ass!" - well of course he is, he's riding a classically styled form before function bike!

My hair never looked that good,
even when I had some.

So just in case David Beckham riding into the unknown (except for the people who live there - they know about it) on a Triumph Scrambler wasn't enough, you've now got hunting dinosaurs WITH DINOSAURS!

The former might have pegged the hipster meter, but the later turns it up to eleven!



Needless to say, the interwebs couldn't resist, and it didn't take long to get a parody out of it:

I didn't realize I was sitting on a
movie star at the Toronto Bike
Show this year!

The Triumph Scrambler seems to have this magical ability to look like a capable off road bike while weighing over five hundred pounds (handy perhaps if you're riding with dinosaurs).

I'm still looking for my basic dual purpose machine, but I can't say that Triumph's cunning placements don't have be jonesing for a Scrambler, at least until I've had to pick it up out of the dirt a couple of times and discovered that the retro look is also very breakable, then I'd be begging for the two hundred (!) pound lighter and more robust Suzuki I've been longing for, though it wouldn't be nearly so nostalgic and hipster chic.  

I've always gone for function over appearance in my motorbiking, but Chris Pratt on a Scrambler isn't making it easy.