Performance and Practicality

I'm finding myself suddenly reading Practical Sportsbikes because the winter subscription I get to Performance Bike Magazine has migrated over as PB ends a three decade run and merges with their more practical (and I'm assuming more popular) child publication.  

I'm enjoying Practical Sportsbikes (they offered me a couple of back issues during the transition), though I miss some of the best bits from Performance Bikes like the Rutter comparison tests and the general focus on riding.  There is a rawness to Performance Bikes that sometimes reduces itself to the juvenile, but you can't deny their love of riding.  If the new combined publication can keep Performance Bike's active, athletic and obsessive focus on riding then I think I'll enjoy the new combination.

I've tried Practical Sportsbikes a few times but find it gets a bit lost in nostalgia driven mechanical minutia.  I've never been much of one for nostalgia, it's never as good as you remember.  Mechanics and practicality are all well and good too, but for me, for now at least, it's the visceral act of riding that should take centre stage.  If practicality was the primary motivation, I wouldn't ride a motorbike in the first place.

Here's hoping...

PB has always tapped racers and performance focused riders to shine a light on the act of riding, something they obviously love obsessively.  If the new magazine can combine that love with the mechanical sympathy needed to enable it, then I might be in for a whole year subscription instead of just using PB to get me through the neverending Canadian winter.

I usually look to BIKE Magazine for my joy of riding buzz.  This new publication might be able to give them a run for their money by offering a wider range of performance focused riding while still scratching that mechanical itch.

Here's hoping they find a way to balance the two into a monthly ode to the visceral art of motorcycle riding and graft of mechanical sympathy that enables it.

Bun Burning MotoGP

A few years ago we rode down to the last Indianapolis MotoGP.  It was a great few days in Indiana and it was pretty close to us.  At a push the ride there could be done in a day (we took two because I had my ten year old son with me).

This year's only North American MotoGP is in Texas and happens the weekend before Easter.  How few days could I do it in?  It just happens that Austin is a Bun Burner Gold away, just over 1500 miles south west of here.  I watched a couple of fellow motorcyclists from the Lobo Loco long distance rallies pull a Bun Burner Gold off in the fall.  If I could get to COTA in 24 hours I'd be a rockstar!

If I left on Thursday evening I'd be down there Friday evening or a bit later if I missed it (BBGs depend a lot on construction and delays to pull off).  Either way I'd be up Saturday morning with some kind of Iron Butt ride (if I missed the BBG there are half a dozen other, easier ones that I could still aim for) under my belt to catch qualifying.  Early to bed Saturday night and then another day at the Circuit of the Americas on Sunday for the races.  After a good dinner I'd be back on the road again making tracks north to home.

If I missed the Bun Burner Gold on the way down, I could attempt it again on the way back!  Either doing a Sunday night to Monday night blitz to get the gold, or breaking it into two long days and going for a plain old Bun Burner 1500 (1500 miles over 36 hours).

In a perfect world I'd do the BBG on the way down, enjoy the weekend and rest up again before getting a Bun Burner 1500 on the way back, riding Sunday night after the race as far as I can, having a sleep and then getting up and finishing the ride within 36 hours.  If I'm back Monday night I would have only missed two days of work while getting to watch a MotoGP live and picking up multiple iron butts!  That'd shake the rust off after a long, cold, Canadian winter.

Does two Iron Butt rides around a weekend of MotoGP sound extreme?  From the dark depths of February after weeks and weeks out of the saddle, it sounds like a brilliant idea!  When you're trapped under a polar vortex and some truly grim, neverending Canadian winter, the thought of trying to cross much of North America twice in five days on two wheels scratches an itch.

Slow motion through the esses at Indianapolis...

COTA has all sorts of pretty views for video and photography...

The long way down... and back.

Winter Maintenance: Triumph Tiger 955i Engine Guard Install and plasma cutting!

How cold has the polar vortex been?  So f#*%ing cold!  Our garage is attached to the house and we're in and out of it quite often, so it benefits from a lot of residual heat.  Even with this insulated garage with heating pipes in the attic and a lot of sympathetic heat from the attached house, the Tiger was a solid block of ice (pic on right shows it thawing) when I went in to attach mine Hepco & Becker motorschutzbügel (engine guard) in schwarz (black).  I ended up giving up on the -36°C degree Saturday and went back when it was only -17°on Sunday.


I've been looking for ways to protect the Tiger as I aim for more off-tarmac activities with it, and an engine guard seemed like a good idea.  Finding such an engine guard for a European (at least until Brexit) bike that's sixteen years out of date isn't easy, but I came across the German manufacturer Hepco & Becker and then followed links to their American distributor, Motomachines, who happened to have just what I needed in stock and have no problems shipping to Canada.  They're also really quick to respond if you have any questions and give you quick, friendly, concise communication, I'll use them again.

It was about a week to get here through US and Canadian federal mail services and cost me another thirty bucks at the door in border fees, so all in I was at about $350US to get the thing into my hands.  It arrived well packaged and in new condition.  There was some surface rust on the threads into the pipes, but it cleaned up easily with WD40. 
  

Some German engineering for my British Bike, except Triumph was founded by a German immigrant, so it's kinda German already!  Bet that makes Brexiteers angry.

After not being able to feel my hands anymore despite propane heaters blaring away in the corner on Saturday, I finished the job on Sunday.  Holding the nuts on the back while securing the bolts is a bit fussy (these guards attach right to the engine frame mounts), and swearing increased trying to do it on a frozen bike, but I eventually got them sorted.

The guards are very sturdy and the welds on them are a thing of beauty.  They're low profile things that should protect the tank in case of a spill.  The finish on them is excellent and looks to be very long wearing.  With a couple of places to kick my feet up onto, they might help me stretch out my legs on a long ride too.  I'm tempted to throw some fold up highway pegs on them, but this aggravates the adventure bike image police.

I'm still some weeks (months, who am I kidding, though if I can't be optimistic in February I start to go bonkers) away from having a chance to ride with them, but they look good on the bike, got here pretty quickly and with a lot of quick and clear communication from Motomachines.  If you're looking for an engine guard for an older Tiger (or anything else, they have a big selection), I'd suggest heading over to their site and then get in touch with them on email, you'll hear back quickly from responsive customer service.

In completely different news, thanks to all of this lousy weather we've had a number of no-bus days at school which gave me a chance to ask our metal shop teacher to exercise his plasma cutter on my behalf.  I gave him a vector image of the Concours tail piece I wanted cut and the machine ripped through the aluminum I got for the job in about five seconds, cutting a perfect outline of the cardboard piece I'd wrapped around the tail section before unfolding.  This strange shape lines up with the frame bolts on back end of the bike and covers all the wiring and ugly bits in the most minimal way possible.  I'm going to form it over a wood buck and then paint it to match the tank.  That should take care of the back end of the Concours ZG1K custom project.

Now I need to get the carbs balanced and tuned and it should be good to go, which I intend to do as soon as the roads are clear... in, like, ten years.

Dark Arts: Motorcycle Digital Art from the Depths of Winter

January 13th, 2019.  High of -21°C, low of -29.  I'm months away from riding with months to go until I do again.  This is as close as I can get to the saddle, some motorcycle digital art...

 

Riding in Style Out of the Rust Belt

How best to drive south out of the snow and salt?  A limo styled Benz!  They're asking about forty-seven grand for it out of a place in Toronto, and it has almost no miles on it.  The Metris gets the highest reviews in terms of work vans, and this one has been blinged up to make it a comfortable mile muncher.

How disco is it?  Built in TV, tall roof and power everything.  It'll easily swallow the Tiger along with the family and then make for a comfortable and pretty thrifty ride.

A good first escape out of the snow would be Louisiana over the new years.  It's two thousand kilometres and twenty hours south.  With a stop between Louisville and Nashville, we'd be in the Mississippi Delta in two days, then the bike can come out the back and I'd have a couple of days discovering the roads of the lowlands at a time of year when I'm as far from two wheels as I ever get.

Mississippi Loop: From the Gulfport coast up the shores of the Mississippi before looping back around.  355 miles all in:

Louisiana South: Through New Orleans and to the ends of the Delta.  436 miles:

How I found those routes:  http://www.motorcycleroads.com/Routes/Louisiana_94.html

Two days down, two days on the bike, two days hanging out in New Orleans and then a couple of days back means we could squeeze this all in before going back to work.

Leave Friday, Dec 28th and get back home Saturday, Jan 5th.

Lean Angle and Capturing the Dynamics of Riding a Motorcycle

Since starting the 360° camera-on-a-motorcycle experiment last year I've tried dozens of different locations and angles.  My favourite shots to date are ones that emphasize the speed and feeling of exhilaration I get while riding.  A bike in a straight line is a lovely thing with the wind and feeling of openness all around you, but when you lean into a corner the magic is suddenly amplified.  That thrill of leaning into a corner is something most people never get to experience.

The first weekend I ever rode a bike on tarmac (at the training course at Conestoga College in Kitchener) way back in 2013 I discovered this magic while working through a beginner's gymkhana style obstacle course.  After shooting through the cones a few times at faster and faster speeds I said to the instructor, "I could do that all day!"  He just laughed.  I wasn't kidding, I could happily spend all day leaning a motorbike into corners.  Each time I do it the complexity of what's going on is fascinating as hundreds of pounds of machine and me lean out into space, all suspended on two tiny tire contact patches.  It's when I'm most likely to forget where I end and the bike begins.

Lean angle in corners is an artform that many motorcyclists (but not bikers so much) practice.  Being able to use your tire effectively means you aren't the proud owner of chicken strips.  Underused tires tend to show a lack of experience and an unwillingness to explore lean.  There are exceptions (knobblies on off road focused tires, anything made in North America) that aren't about lean angle on tarmac, but it is a way to analyze your cornering comfort level.

Mounting the 360° camera on the bike is one of the only ways I've been able to catch the feeling of this complex dynamic in an intimate way.  MotoGP makes extensive use of 360 camera technology for on-bike photography and video, but they tend to be rear mounted.  Using a front mount means you get to see the rider's face in the shot.  It would be fascinating to watch the rider/machine interface from a 360 camera mounted out front of the bike while various riders do their thing on track.

I've got good road tires (Michelin Pilots) and a tall adventure bike, so it's not exactly ideal for exploring lean, though I think I do OK considering the weight and shape of the bike - the Tiger is surprisingly frisky in the corners.  But I'd love to get my hands on a sports bike and see just how more dynamic and exciting the on-bike 360° photography could be on a machine built solely for tarmac.

Sabbatical Rides: Riding the Americas

Previously I've thought about various ways I could do a four years pay over five years and then take a sabbatical year off work and still get paid.  From circumnavigating North America to tracing my grandfather's route through occupied France in 1940 during World War Two, there are a lot of interesting ways I could take a year off with an epic motorcycle ride included.

One of the first motorcycle travel ideas I had was to do the Pan-American trip from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina, from the top to the bottom of the Americas.  This ride is an even more extreme version of the North American circumnavigation as the mileage is mega; over 56,000kms!  At a 400km a day average that works out to 141 days or over 20 weeks making miles every day.  With a day off every week that adds another 3 weeks to the trip.  Fitting it into 24 weeks would mean some rest days and some extra time to cover the border crossings and rougher sections of the trip.

Another way to look at this might be from a Nick Sanders angle.  He did Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia and back again in an astonishing 46 days.  That's 23,464kms x 2, so 46,928kms in 46 days, or an astonishing 1020kms average per day, including stops for flights over the Darien Gap between Columbia and Panama two times.  That approach (I imagine) gets pretty psychedelic and I might not really get the sense that I'm anywhere doing it that way, but there are certainly ways to tighten up the schedule and move with more purpose if needed.

The actual number of days needed if I ran it over 24 weeks would be 168.  The best time to hit Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean coast of Alaska is obviously during the long days of the northern summer.  If I left home mid-July I'd be up Prudhoe way eighteen days later at 400kms/day.  If I push on tarmac I should be able to get up there by the beginning of August and then begin the long ride south.

A good tie-up in South America would be to follow a bit of the Dakar Rally - this year running in Peru from January 6th to 17th.  After that it would be down south to the tip of South America in their late summer before heading back north.

The 2019 MotoGP season lands in Texas the weekend of April 12-14, making a nice stop before the final leg home in the spring.  Two weeks before that they are in Argentina.  Trying to connect the two races overland would be an interesting challenge.  It's just over six thousand kilometres north to Cartegena, Columbia and the boat around the Darien Gap, or just over seven thousand heading through the Amazon.  Then another forty-five hundred kilometres through Central America to Texas for the next race.  In a straight run that'd be almost eleven thousand kilometres across thirteen countries in eleven days if I managed to get to Texas for the pre-qualifying.  That'd be a Nick Sanders worthy feat. 

The PanAmerican Trip Tip to Toe and back again in sections:

North America to Prudhoe Bay:  https://goo.gl/maps/RWn36jct6LT2
19,571kms July-August to Prudhoe Bay, August-November to Colon:

South America South:  https://goo.gl/maps/nx4i6MwUqYz
11,106kms  Nov-Jan to Peru for Dakar, Jan to Mar to Ushuai

South America North:  https://goo.gl/maps/P5wQzEND7US2
11,057kms  Via Circuit De Rio Hondo MotoGP race in March.

North America North:  https://goo.gl/maps/4ZAC686McuC2
6,989kms

56,357kms.  @400kms/day average that's 141 days continuously on the road.

Leave July, Prudhoe Bay by end of July, Dakar in January in Peru, Ushuaia in February, Circuit de Rio Hondo for the MotoGP race at the end of March then a hard 11 days north through the Amazon to Austin Texas for the next race in mid-April.  Home by the end of April.   And I'd still have May-August to write about what happened and publish.