A Stolen Weekend

About 340 kms over two days...

You know you're cutting it close when you're on your first two wheel road trip of the year and you ride into flurries.  Sunday was supposed to be fantastic, high teens Celsius and sunny, but we headed out on Saturday morning and found ourselves riding into a whiteout.

A bandit hat and some
chemical hand warmers from
Shelburne Home Hardware
saved the day!

We'd pulled into Shelburne after forty minutes on the bike frozen stiff.  Staggering in to Tim Hortons we both sat down and waited for our fingers to work so we could take off our helmets.  Half an hour later, after warming ourselves up on tea and grilled cheese, we crossed the road to the Home Hardware and got the last balaclava and some chemical hand warmers.  We hit the road and rode right into that whiteout, but at least we had warm hands.

As the snow swirled Max tucked in behind me and I tucked in behind the windshield.  The wind had been strong all morning but now with snow it was out to get us.  If accumulation began I was going to pull over, but as quickly as it appeared it blew off again, leaving us with frozen steel skies.  Ah, the joys of riding in Canada.

The plan was to head from the flat and boring grid of roads around us to where the pavement gets interesting.  The Niagara Escarpment is about forty five minutes away, so the plan was to get onto it in Horning's Mills and then wind our way up to Collingwood on Georgian Bay where we had a room booked at the Georgian Manor.

There are twisty roads in Southern Ontario!  River Road out of Horning's Mills is such a one.

Riding through the valley meant being out of the biting wind, but cutting back across the escarpment put us up on a ridge where the wind blasted us sideways.  It was with relief that we wound down next to Noisy River and into Creemore where we had poutine for lunch at The Old Mill House Pub right across the street from the Creemore Brewery.

Connie making Bavarian friends in Creemore.  KMW!

By the time we came out after lunch the sun had appeared and the temperature was up to a much more bearable eight degrees (we're Canadian, 8°C is bearable).  We dropped in to the brewery (they do tours!) and wandered up the main street before getting back on the bike and heading north again.

This was our first trip on my new machine.  I'd sold the dependable, newer/first bike Ninja and purchased a 1994 Kawasaki Concours I'd found in a field.  Over the winter I'd taken it apart and put it back together again.  It had just passed safety the week before our trip.  Riding to Collingwood was my first chance to really get to know this much bigger but surprisingly athletic bike.  That it could manage the two of us with panniers and topbox full with no problems only underlined the fact that this bike is the best eight hundred bucks I've ever spent.

We continued to weave across the escarpment finally cresting Blue Mountain and rolling down into Collingwood at about 4pm.  The Georgian Manor Resort is one of those places that looked like it was really popular in the 1980s.  It has a past its prime kind of ex-Hollywood starlet feel to it.  What I do know is that Max and I had the pool and hot tub to ourselves, and boy did we need it.

We'd bagged the room for a hundred bucks for the night and used the heck out of it.  After a swim and a lay down we went for take out and then came back and had a picnic on the big bed.  We went for a late swim and then passed out early.  Our Sunday ride was beckoning and now that we'd warmed ourselves up and eaten some hot food we were ready for a good sleep.


The next morning we bailed on the free continental breakfast at the Manor after a friend facebooked saying they might hard sell us on a time-share.  That never happened (they were fantastic at the desk getting us in early and getting us out quickly on Sunday) but then we were on the road by 8am on Sunday morning.  We headed over to the Sunset Grill on Blue Mountain and had a fantastic and surprisingly affordable hot breakfast.



Astonishingly the runs were still open and skiers were squeezing a last day out of a long, cold winter.  Max and I stood there with our helmets and biking jackets watching people ski on the very wet snow.

After the resort we headed up and over the (Ontario sized) Blue Mountain...

The roads were empty and bone dry.  It was already warmer at 10am than it had been the day before.  The Concours was running like a Swiss watch and we were warm and loose in the saddle.  The back side of Blue Mountain is covered in apple orchards which led us to Thornbury, the home of one of the best cideries in Ontario.  We passed the cidery and stopped to check out the fish ladder and mill before having a long, slow coffee at Ashanti.

Ever noticed how everyone wants to stop and have a chat when you're on a motorbike?  I'd already had an unrealistic amount of support from the clerk at Shelburne Home Hardware, the waitress in Creemore and the hotel concierge in Collingwood.  People seem to respond to your vulnerability by wanting to connect with you.  While sitting at the coffee shop a local photographer who was leading a group on a photographic tour of the town stopped to talk bikes (he didn't have his out yet).  Another fellow told me about his 86 year old uncle who still rides his BMW everywhere.  A number of people assumed my big Kawi was a BMW on this trip.  I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not.

After our coffee break we rode down to the still frozen harbour in Thornbury and spent a few minutes watching the fisherman fish and the boat owners doing maintenance, all while ice broke off from the shore and floated out into the bay.

We then saddled up and took a winding, scenic ride down through Beaver Valley to Flesherton.  After another stop to stretch we jumped on the Connie and thundered south across the never ending farm fields toward home.

The Concours was flawless.  It fired up immediately and ran perfectly.  I'm astonished at how well it handles when I'm out on it alone, but even more astonishing is how well it handles with full panniers and top box and my son on the back.  The suspension is light years beyond the hard ride of the Ninja, and the big motor swallows miles with ease.  Sometimes, if you get off the gas suddenly you can get a bit of a belch out of the motor.  Not a backfire, but a nice pop out of the exhaust.  The bike toodles along around 3500rpm at 100km/hr and leaps down the road if you twist the throttle.

Heading out this early in the season meant we got home and there wasn't a single bug splat anywhere.  That won't be the case on future trips.  Canada goes from snow season to bug season pretty quickly, but in between we stole a weekend and got to know and love the new bike.

Greasy Hands Preachers

I got a copy of The Greasy Hands Preachers through Vimeo the other day.  I enjoyed Long Live The Kings, though the hipster meter got pegged a couple of times, TGHP was similar.

The Greasy Hands Preachers interviews builders in the current custom motorcycle scene under the pretext of emphasizing the value of skilled manual labour.  The movie is nicely shot (though sometimes gratuitously hand held and pull zoomed).  By using off-the-cuff interviews you get glimpses into the deeper motivations of these custom builders, most of whom have more in common with sculptures than mechanics.

I've spent most of my life in an orbit back to valuing my smart hands.  In my late teens I was apprenticing as a millwright and struggling with the idea that I was undervaluing my mind.  The thought of decades of repetitive, menial work drove me to eventually quit and go to university where I could finally prove to myself that I'm smarter than people told me I was.

But smart hands don't like inactivity.  The intimate act of dismantling, understanding and healing a machine stays with you, and your hands itch to make things work again.  Cars had devolved from a special interest to a utilitarian necessity for me.  Working on them was menial rather than scratching an infatuation.  It wasn't until I started riding a couple of years ago that I found a machine that fostered a sufficiently intimate relationship to warrant infatuation.  The ability to express my smart hands on a motorbike and heal the machine is half the thrill of riding.

The Greasy Hands Preachers are preaching to the converted with me.  The

arc from white to blue collar work experienced by several of the people in the film is one familiar to me.  But rather than pierce the veil and coherently express the underlying urges behind the resurging DIY ethos, GHP only hints at it.  I think this is a result of their unscripted interview approach.  Asking an artist to spontaneously and coherently express their process is unlikely to produce a clear view of what they do.  Expecting them to be able to do so while on camera isn't going to lead the viewer to a deep, nuanced understanding of how a mechanical artist values their hands.

Were it me, I would have started with the interviews and then had a scripted followup that clarified and deepened the narrative.  I can't help but think GHP is an opportunity lost.

If you want to look right into the heart of the DIY resurgence pick up Shopclass As Soulcraft and discover an intelligent explanation of the value of skilled labour.  I was hoping that Greasy Hands Preachers would approach Crawford's brilliant little book in terms of realizing the value of hands-on work, but instead it's a pretty, sometimes banal film that hints at deeper ideas.

Would I recommend The Greasy Hands Preachers?  Certainly.  It's a beautifully filmed opportunity to consider an important part of being human.  If you read Shopclass As Soulcraft first (as I'm guessing the makers of GHP didn't) you'd be ready to create your own meaning, which is probably better than being spoon fed anyway.

Space Limitations

At 12x20ft, I'm feeling the pinch...

I wish I had a bigger bike cave.  With only a one car garage I'm having to pick and choose my next steps.  In a perfect world I'd have room for active bikes and a workshop at the back with longer term projects on the go.

The 2 ½ car option at 24x30ft would feel cavernous by comparison to my cramped 9x20ft space, but a garage that big would mean I'd probably have to keep cars in it.  A safer bet would be an outbuilding workshop, like this Canadian made prefab kit.

They have an A style 20x30 footer for just over $12 grand.  That would be wider than my current space is long.  Instead of my meagre 180 ft², I'd have a whopping 600ft².  That kind of space would let me chase down all the loose ends I'm considering right now.

My current urges run toward a couple of dirt bikes for my son and I, a distance capable road bike and something more intimate for short blasts and track days.  While the working bikes get their occasional maintenance, I'd also like space for a project bike.

Roughly to scale, that 20x30 workshop would fit the bill nicely.

Out On Me Mota!

The Connie at the covered bridge in West Montrose

Finally got out for an hour today.  Only about 5°C, but sunny.  With a sweater and my swish new jacket I was comfortable behind the Concours' fairing.  At speed on back roads you only get a bit of wind around the head.  Your hands are protected by the wing mirrors and the rest of you is behind fairing.  The Connie is comfy in the cold.

The bike feels very light once it's in motion, very flickable.  I'm coming off a Ninja 650r, so I'm riding 350 more ccs, two more cylinders and one hundred more pounds of bike, but the Concours feels quick.  It doesn't spring forward with a banshee's wail in the upper rev range in the startling way that the NInja did, but it's not nearly so peaky either.  It also has suspension more than up the task of dealing with Canadian roads.  Where the Ninja used to rattle my teeth over a pothole, the Connie manages to swallow the worst of it while still feeling very connected to the pavement.

The Concours pulls with urgency off idle, but that urgency becomes an avalanche of torque as the revs rise.  I gave it the mustard off one stop light and was shocked with how quickly 100km/h appeared.  Both bikes are quick, but I always assumed the bullet shaped, lighter, sportier Ninja would have been the quicker of the two, that stop light torque avalanche made me doubt that.  I ended up looking up the stats on both bikes.

The bikes are coming out of hibernation in Canada - like this
little jewel of a Honda with not a spot of rust on it.

The Ninja 650r does a 12.06s quarter mile at 108.79mph, the Connie edges it the quarter with a 12 flat at 109mph!

While almost identical, how they do it isn't.  The Ninja needs a lot of throttle and a glib clutch to hook it up in the top half of the rev range, and then judicious gear changes to keep you in the top four thousand RPM through many gears.  It's a thrilling, high tension rush up through the gears.  With the Concours you drop the clutch at about four thousand RPM and the motor just picks up the bike with no wallow and storms to the redline.  A single gear change gets you up to legal limits.  Where the Ninja had that intoxicating banshee wail, the Concours has a baritone bark that becomes a godlike roll of thunder.  I used to think the Concours inline four wasn't as happy a creature as the Ninja's parallel twin, but after hearing the big-four warm and in voice today I'm starting to think she just sings a different tune, but it's no less happy.

The ride was only about an hour, but I went from constantly comparing the experience to my dear, departed Ninja to wondering just what the Concours is capable of.  As a shakedown after a long winter of maintenance, it has begun the process of rebuilding my confidence in this new machine.

Pannier Thoughts: Motorbike Repair Kit Gear

Having never had on-bike storage before, or a bike designed to cover big distances, I'm thinking about what I could leave in the bottom of the panniers to keep us on the road. 

Here's the short list so far:

A bike specific multi-tool, this BikeMaster metric device covers a lot of bases in terms of general usefulness.

$16.18 from canadasmotorcycle.ca
300g

Puncture Repair Kit.  Many moons ago I used to do this at Canadian Tire, so plugging a tire is nothing new, and if I've got the bits I need on the road I'll be able to get us going again in short order.

$~20 from Canadian Tire
200g

Yukon Steel Multitool.  I use a generic one at work all the time.  They work well and I don't need a fancy brand to somehow validate my handiness.

$30 from Canadian Tire
325g



I'm also going to grab a lightweight nylon tarp.  You can get tough, camping ready ones that only weigh about 500 grams and fold up into the size of an envelope.  Along with a little roll of duct tape, small hand pump, some nylon string and a mini wd40 can, I'd have a very light and small collection of handy bits and pieces that would keep us moving if we ran into a problem.

Creating Paint Decals For a Motorcycle

With weather like this,
who needs enemies?

I've been floored with a wicked stomach flu the past couple of days, but I had enough in me today to get the last of the painting done and finish assembling the Concours.  It's safetied, insured and ready to launch.

As expected, Canada isn't cooperating.  I'm hoping I can go for a short jaunt on Monday, but otherwise the week is looking pretty dismal for riding.

The finishing touch was my first go at a stencil on a bike.  I tried paper, then plastic film with no luck (it lifted off the compound curves of the fairing), but eventually created a sticky template using printable stickers.  Some research suggested that frisket film would have been ideal, but it's expensive and hard to find.  Another alternative is transfer tape.  Having said all that, printing your design on sticker worked well and what it did leave behind was easy to clean off.

After printing a design, I exacto-knifed the text out and then put the stickers on the bike.  A few light coats of spray and the sticker came off with no problems.  Now that I've got the hang of it, creating layered decals should be a pretty straight forward process.  Finishing them with my preferred clear coat seals the whole thing up and gives it an even surface.

The Concours came to me with all sorts of cracks on the right side fairing (it had obviously been tipped over at some point).  The previous owner had done a pretty good job of reattaching everything with plastic weld, but it would never be perfect.

Rather than trying to hide those imperfections, I remembered a kind of Japanese pottery I once saw in Tokyo.  Kintsugi (金継ぎ) literally translates as 'golden joinery'.  It's a form of pottery that, rather than hiding the blemishes caused by age, emphasizes them by using gold to seal the cracks.

What I've done with my old Kawasaki is highlight those cracks in gold and put the kanji for kintsugi on there.  She should be proud of those cracks.  Twenty years of living in Canada will give you wrinkles, they should be celebrated.

How to Pick a Project Bike

I'm still wallowing in the sense of satisfaction from taking an old, field-found Concours and putting it back on the road again.  With a road-ready bike in the garage I'm looking for another project bike.  I'm not short on choices, a quick look online revealed a wide variety of 'project' bikes; apparently a lot of people start them and don't finish them.  You can pick up failed projects that run the gamut from boxes of bits to a machine that just needs a bit of TLC.  I'd think you have to feel like a real burk if you bought a bike, dismantled it and then walked away from the mess you made, but people do it.  I'm left wondering if some people start projects just to waste time rather than aiming for a finished product.

Knowing which bike to pick is a big part of selecting a workable project.  The Concours was owned by an older fellow who knew what he was doing and fully intended to ride the bike again.  It wasn't stored properly or used, but the attention paid to it was knowledgeable, making it a good choice for a project.  I was able to hear it running and even rode it home, so I knew what I was getting into.  

The Connie is also a popular bike with a huge online community.  The ZG1000 Concours I have was in production from 1994 up until 2006 and '86 to '93 in a previous, similar generation.  A lengthy production run means lots of parts out there.  I had no trouble finding both new and used parts for it and getting advice was as easy as logging into the Concours Owners Group or referring to the easily found shop manual.

As a starting project the Concours was a good choice.  For my second project I'm looking for a bit more of a challenge.  Just north of me a 1989 Suzuki DR600 Djebel came up for sale, menacingly suggested as a project bike.

The DR600 evolved into the DR650 in 1990.  DR650s are still in production today, but the DR600 was quite a different machine.  After doing some digging on the interwebs I discovered that finding parts for it might be a real problem (one Suzuki dealer said there was no such bike).  There is no shop manual available from any of the usual publishers and the only thing I could find that was close was a photocopied PDF of a 1985 model from a guy in Australia.  The bike was available in continental Europe and Canada, but not the UK or the US, so I'm looking at a long out of production bike that was never sold in the largest market in the world.  This didn't stop me from going up to look at it though.

The DR600 is a huge trailee machine.  The young owner had the ownership, but it was still in the previous owner's name in spite of the bike being in his possession for a couple of years; the project had obviously gone stale.  The amount of rust on fasteners suggested that the bike had been left in the weather for at least some of the time.  It won't run, rust in the tank and fuel system was the diagnosis.  Aftermarket tanks are pretty easy to find for off road bikes (and look very Mondo Enduro), but there are none specifically for the DR600.  A DR650 tank might fit... might.

A non-running machine means you're missing a chance to get a sense of the internal workings.  You're probably walking into a complete engine rebuild if the bike has had rust force fed through it during two years of failed diagnostics.  An unplugged speedo cable and loose, corroded wires also raise questions around the accuracy of the mileage as well as the potential for annoying electrical issues.

I'm looking for a challenge, but the Djebel (an Arabic mountain!) is one I'm too cautious to climb.  If I'm a decade in and have wrenched a lot of bikes, I might have taken a swing at it, but not when the asking price is similar to a ten years newer, running KLR650.  I still had to fight my mechanical sympathy which was tugging at me to take the bike home and make it whole again.

So, I'm still looking for another project bike.  An '81 Honda CB400 came up nearby for half the price of the Suzuki.  Also not running, but a much more popular machine that isn't a problem for parts availability or service manuals.  Stored inside, it looks like a good candidate for my first rebuild.  It also looks like a good choice for a more complicated customization.  A CB400 Scrambler would be a sensible evolutionary step in bike builds for me.