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.

Riding to a MotoGP Race, Next Level

Riding to Indy was a blast, one of the highlights of my summer.  I was all keen to sign up for the whole weekend next year, but then this happened.  With no Indy on the calendar any more, the chance of me riding south to see Valentino and Marc do their thing has just gotten quite a bit more extreme.  If Indy was level one, here is what more commitment would look like.

Level 2:  THE RIDE TO TEXAS

Riding to Texas, ironically, takes us right past the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  This one's a bit tricky.  The Texas race next year is in April.  We can still get snow in April so it would have to be a weather permitting exit and then get south as quickly as possible to get clear of impassable roads.




Indy was a ~780km ride, Texas is over three times further at 2564kms; it's basically a diagonal trip across the majority of North America.  The IBA has a Bunburner 1500, and the ride to Texas just happens to be 1593 miles.  Could it be done in 24 hours?  If it could, it would need some recovery time afterwards, and some serious physical and bike prep beforehand.

If the race is on Friday, Saturday and Sunday of April 8-10, 2016, I'd leave on Wednesday, April 7 (very) early morning, aiming to cross the border and be out of Detroit before anyone wakes up.  Baring any major traffic problems I'd land in a hotel in Austin Thursday morning early, and pass out.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday would be practice, qualifying and race day, and then I'd begin the trek back at a more sedate pace.  Five hundred mile days would mean a stop in Arkansas and Indiana on the way back, leaving Sunday afternoon and getting home late on Wednesday, April 13th.

Could a ride to The Circuit of the Americas be completed within a week from Southern Ontario?  That would be over 3000 miles or a touch over 5000kms in seven days.  Boo ya!

Level 3:  THERE IS ANOTHER!

There is another MotoGP even I could ride to, but if you thought Texas was a stretch, this one is something else entirely.

The Argentinian MotoGP event takes place the week before Texas at the other end of the world.  If you thought the exit for Texas might be tricky, this one is downright diabolical.

This is a 13,655km (8485 mile) odyssey that would mean riding across two continents and crossing one of the highest mountain ranges in the world (not to mention the rain forests and dozen or so international borders).  Nick Sanders managed three trips up and down the Americas in 45 days, but he's crazy, and legendary.  John Ryan, introduced to me through Melissa Holbrook Pierson's fantastic book, The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing, did Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to the tip of Florida in an astonishing 86.5 hours, but he too was crazy, and legendary.

The ride to Argentina would have intention.  This wouldn't be a wishy-washy wandering around the world ride, it would have Terra Circa like intent.  I've thought about riding the Americas before.   Riding to Rio is about 16,500kms and I thought it would take 60 days (275kms/day - higher in North America, lower elsewhere).  Riding to Termas de Rio Hondo would be marginally shorter.  Pushing the average to 340 kms a day, it might be doable in 40 days.

That would mean a departure date of February 18th.  If you thought leaving in the first week of April might be weather problematic, leaving in the third week of February is positively terrifying.  I'd aim for a leaving 'window' between February 15-20 looking for clear roads to make a quick break south to get clear of the hard water.

This happens to fit nicely into a semester at school so it would be an easy absence to manage logistically.  With that in mind, I'd find myself in Argentina in the first weekend of April.  The end of the world is in the same country south of me, so hitting Ushuaia before coming back north and seeing Machu Picchu would be a nice idea.  Going down that way is a few hundred extra kilometres out of the way.

At this point do I have to return the bike?  If so, the ride back could take place over 18 weeks.  If not, the flight back happens in just under one day (though coming back via Texas would mean I'm on a plane with a whack of MotoGP types!

What to take?  Honda, Yamaha, Ducati and Suzuki all have factory presences at MotoGP and they each offer a viable choices:

Yamaha's Super Ténéré is what Nick Sanders does his double ride up and down the Americas on.  When they took it apart after the trip the engine still looked brand new.  This is one tough bike.  That story impressed the motorcycle Jedi I work with so much he bought one.  It'll handle less than perfect roads and swallow miles with ease... and it's bullet proof.  I'd get mine in Rossi colours.  Whatcha think Yamaha Canada?

Honda's African Twin is being resurrected next year.  Rumours have this bike being off-road capable and more than able to manage anything Central and South America might throw at it.  Canada to Argentina would be a solid way of proving the new Africa Twin's metal, whatcha think Honda Canada?  I'd get mine in Marquez colours.

Ducati's Multistrada is a long distance beauty with lots of tech thrown at it.  It doesn't have the dependability rep of the two Japanese bikes above, but it appears a very capable all-rounder that would have no trouble managing the variety of roads to Argentina.  It's so pretty and I haven't heard of any epic treks made by one, so it's a bit of a risk, but what's a trip like this without some risk?  This ride would give the Multistrada that world beating rep.

I'd get mine in Ducati red, whatcha think Ducati North America?

Suzuki's V-Strom is a road focused adventure tourer, but it has some off road cred after BIKE Magazine took one from the UK back to the factory in Japan where it was made.  Anything that can ride across Asia can manage Canada to Argentina.  Suzuki has only recently returned to MotoGP, it'd be nice to remind everyone that they're there by riding a Suzi through all those countries.  Whatcha think Suzuki Canada?

My opportunity to ride to a MotoGP race hasn't ended with the death of Indy, it's just taken on a higher level of commitment.