Pretty Things

I was at the local dealer yesterday getting parts (just not all the right parts).

There were pretty things in the show room:

The new Yamaha FZ-10. Some don't like the look, but anything inspired by anime mech is mega in my books!
It's arresting in person.

The old school Yamaha yellow & black block looks spectacular on the R1...

Like this...  Kawasaki's awe inspiring H2 supercharged missile.

Kawasaki's Z125pro monkey bike, what a hoot that would be (I'd look like a circus bear on a trike on it)

Logo & strakes on a ZX-14.

There is something about a sexy Italian in a bikini (fairing) that fixates me.

Moto Guzzi V7

Light Cycles & Super Models

I had a beautiful ride home last week in a late June evening.  With the sun backlighting

the western horizon and dusk upon me, I had to stop and take a few pictures of the Ninja at night...

There is something magical about riding at night, the way the light bends with you around corners,
the night smells, the cooling air and long shadows...

... an anime looking bike on a cool June evening.  Whoever did the racing scenes in Akira has ridden motorbikes at night:

Sunday at sunset I was cleaning the bugs off the Ninja...

What a pretty machine, I guess I'm still in love after a year...

... and then Google auto-awesomed this up for me:

That's almost pornographic!

Sonny Barger's Let's Ride

I just started Sonny Barger's Let's Ride.  I have to admit, I'd never heard of him prior to picking up the book.  He's evidently quite famous for uncovering the Hell's Angels in the 1970s in the U.S..

I'm only a couple of chapters in, but he is a straight talker who doesn't come off as weirdly particular about his motorbiking.  He's as hard on Harleys as he is on European or Japanese bikes.  If you're looking for an honest, knowledgeable review of motorcycling over the last half century in North America, this will do it for you.

I just got through his description of the British and North American failure to respond to the Japanese motorcycle invasion of the early 1970s.  He pulls no punches and his insight describes the sense of superiority and apathy that was rampant in non-Japanese motorcycle companies at the time.

Barger is an American patriot at heart, even if it means he had to spend three miserable decades riding under-engineered Harley Davidsons.  I sympathize with his loyalties, but don't share them.  I appreciate how he keeps saying that my own priorities in riding may be different from his.  He offers advice without limiting your ability to express your own interests in riding.  Sonny is a big 'merican bike fan, but he understands that people come to biking from a variety of angles.

One of my earliest motorbike memories was sitting out on
this corner when I was six or seven watching a parade of
old Triumphs, Royal Enfields and Vincents power through
town.

Myself, I'm a complicated guy.  I'm a Brit who emigrated to Canada when he was eight years old and then paid off all his student loans by working in Japan.  I've been living outside of my native culture for so long I'm not even sure what it is any more.  My earliest memories are of watching old British bikes thumping down the road outside my grandparent's house in Sheringham.  

As a teen in Canada I was a giant anime nerd and loved Japanese motorcycle culture.  My dream bike was a Honda Interceptor because it reminded me of Robotech mecha.

So how do I take Sonny's advice?  With the realization that I'm getting into motorcycling from a very different direction than he did, and he seems OK with that.  I'm still finding his experience and explanations of biking to be very informative.

I'm enjoying the book so far, Sonny has a great writer's voice (especially when he goes off the deep end and gets really opinionated).  If you want a book that offers you an inside look at motorcycling, Let's Ride is an enjoyable, informative read.

Finding Meaning on Two Wheels: a philosophy of motorcycling

My professional life is kicking the shit out of me this year, so when the never ending winter of COVID finally ended and the roads cleared so that I could ride again it felt like coming up for air after a winter underwater.  It isn't too far a reach to say that riding feels like breathing to me.

I'm in the process of buying another bike, one big enough for my son and I to go on rides again with, and the current owner said he'd never ride again.  I can't imagine a situation where I'd ever say that.  You sometimes hear stories of elderly senior citizens who still ride.  That'll be me, or I won't be a senior citizen.

In the professional reflections blog I've been thinking about full commitment and how a job that encourages it can make you your best self.  It's a lasting sadness that so many people see work as purgatory rather than an opportunity to find their better selves.

The Japanese are much better at this than westerners are.  They don't wish each other good luck when doing something difficult, they simply say, "gambate!" or 'do your best!'  And that effort is what is respected regardless of outcome.  They make effort a socially appreciated thing where western cultures tend to fixate on winning.  There is a great scene in the Tokyo Ghoul anime where the bad guy is dying after a vicious fight.  He's an evil, cannibal ghoul so there aren't many redeeming features there, but everyone stops to listen respectfully to his last words because he put up such an epic fight.  We're all too busy trying to win to care about anything like that.  We'd vilify and belittle him rather than respect the effort.  This makes us remarkably unhappy because the problem with competition is that there is always a loser.

When you're approaching an activity that makes full use of your facilities you get lost in it.  It doesn't limit you, it expands you, makes you better.  Motorcycling is a technically complex, physically and mentally demanding activity that asks a lot of you, but the rewards are worth the risks.

If you're Simon Pavey or Guy Martin or Valentino Rossi, you race because that's where you have to get to in order to find the edge of your skills and give you that sense of complete immersion.  The leading edge of my own motorcycling has also moved on.  Where I'd once be happy with commuting on a small bike, I'm now working my way through ownership of different kinds of bikes and wish to expand further.  The limits I'm seeking in motorcycling aren't just in riding, but also in mechanics.  It's for that reason that I find events like the Dakar, especially when someone like Lyndon Poskitt does it in the malle moto class, so fascinating.  They're combining that technical skill with riding ability in a way that most racers can't or won't.

My work is usually able to give me enough latitude to fully immerse myself, but this year COVID has made it a broken thing unable to do anything well.  It has changed from an opportunity to seek excellence to never ending triage in mediocrity.  This has me asking hard questions about what I'd do if I didn't need the money it provides.  These are questions you should ask yourself before retirement, but they're also questions you should ask yourself when you're in danger of getting mired in work that doesn't let you find your best self.

Watching Ride With Norman Reedus last week, he was on the South Island of New Zealand where he had a chat with a young man from Canada who had opened up a business there.  One of his reasons for living where he does was that there had to be good riding roads easily accessible nearby.  This means he can explore riding in challenging circumstances, which seems like enlightenment to me.

In my final years of teaching I hope I can rediscover that sense of energizing peak performance that improves rather than limits me, and if not there then in another job that gives me the latitude I need to chase excellence while supporting my family.  Should I ever get to the point where I don't need to spend my days working for someone else, then it'll be time to move to a place where I can explore riding more fully.

That somewhere would have easy to access track days that let me explore riding dynamics at the edge of road riding, complex local roads that make me a better rider and off road opportunities that let me explore riding in a variety of unpaved situations.  Where I am now offers none of these things.  I'd also have the means to develop my mechanical skills to the limit.  I'm fortunate in that I have such a rich hobby and sport to explore.  I feel sorry for those that don't.

How Many Motorbikes is Enough?

One of Peter Egan's articles in Leanings is an answer to the age old motorcyclist's question: how many
motorcycles is right?  Egan's list follows his own interests in the sport.  His suggestions are:

1. a sportsbike for short, focused rides that are all about dynamics
2. a sport touring bike for spirited long distance riding
3. an off road bike (though this could be a bigger dual sport or adventure bike, not just a dirt bike)
4. a Harley for long distance 'Merican Dream type rides
5. an old nostalgia machine that takes you back to a bike you couldn't afford when you wanted it

He suggests that more than five bikes is too many and you end up with them going stale and getting covered in dust or getting so few miles they get musty.  Collectoritus is another thing,but if you're a rider with a working stable, five's the limit.

I've had a crack at the bike stable before, though Ontario's craptastic insurance system makes that more frustrating than exciting.  There are a couple of Peter's choices that are very specific to his interests that I think I can cut or clump into efficiencies.

The easy drop for me is the Harley.  I'd combine the touring with sport-touring in a Kawasaki Concours 14 that is big but athletic and can carry more weight two-up than a Harley anyway and with suspension and serious performance.

Shaft drive means it'd be a low maintenance device and, being a Kawasaki, it would run more or less forever.  We rode a previous generation one in the Arizona desert and it was brilliant; powerful, comfortable two up with luggage and surprisingly agile in the twisties, just what I'm looking for.

I figured that the sportsbike thing would get sorted with the Concours, but the Fireblade has changed 

my mind.  I don't need a brand new digital weapon.  Something light weight and minimalist would do the trick.

The 'sportbike' is more a 'cornering dynamics bike' - the point of it is to go on engaging rides where you're riding to ride rather than get somewhere, so a naked bike could do the job too.  To that end, if I had my choice I'd look for a naked alternative as it'd be easier on my old bones, though for anything up to 90 minutes I'm fine on the 'Blade, so I'm not in any rush to swap it out.  The naked bike I've always had a thing for is the Kawasaki Z1000 with it's anime like sugomi styling.  If it was a cost-no-object thing, I'd have a Z1000 in the most lurid orange I can find in the garage.

The dirtbike thing is another one of those opportunities to splice together a bike that'd do many jobs.  If you really wanted to condense things you could take the sports touring, touring and off-road categories and combine them together in something like the spectacular new BMW 1250GS that I rode last summer at SMART Adventures Off Road Training.

But as I get better at off road riding I realize what a compromise a big adventure bike is in really doing it.  Like the SUV that proceeded them, ADV bikes are so expensive and heavy nowadays that, while they might handle a bit of gravel, they aren't useful for trail riding or anything like off roading in more than an unpaved road kind of way.  I like the idea of getting deep in the woods and I like things that aren't so special that you're always worried about scratching them.  I wouldn't want to think about one falling on you in the woods.

This Honda 600XL came up last week on Kijii for under two grand.  I'm a sucker for that colour scheme and the gold rims - very 1980s.  Having something that old and simple would be nice to work on and straightforward to maintain, even if I wanted to get down to complete engine rebuilds.

It might be a bit too old for what I'm looking for as its function would be to get beaten up in the woods so something newer would be better, but that colour scheme...

Back in 2019 I went and looked at a Suzuki DR650 that had been purchased by a local farmer as a field bike.  He had a heart attack and died shortly after bringing it home and it sat in his barn for four years with no kilometres on it.  His wife was selling it for $4000 and I still regret not picking it up, basically a brand new machine (albeit one that's sat for a while) for 60% the price of a new one.

Something like that would be light and capable of trail riding while also being dependable and not so precious that a scratch would wind me up.

At the end of the day, if space wasn't an issue in my wee garage and Ontario's insurance system wasn't so nasty, I think these would be my five:

1. Athletic Distance Machine: (Kawi Concours14)
2. Dynamic Rider: (Fireblade, Z1000, or another light weight sport or naked machine)
3. Adventure Bike for Canadian Exploration (roads suck here, even if they're paved, and they often are suddenly not. An ADV bike will cover the rough over long distances)
4. Dirt/Trials Bike (a pedigree machine for intentional deep woods trail riding)
5. Revolving Door Bike (project, by and sell, experience something new bike - sometimes even a Harley!)

Motorcycle Social Media

The online motorcycle community is a beautiful thing.  I've been following a number of people on Google+ who are into the two wheel craft, as well as Tumblr and Pinterest, and the more established social media platforms.  I'm a visual thinker, and being able to find images of bikes on these platforms really feeds my motorcycle aesthetic.  If you're into motorcycle design and aesthetics, these are good places to find ideas:

Pinterest:  a online graphic pin-up tool designed to share images.  Nice because it focuses on the visual, also nice because it is predominantly female, so you get a different vibe out of it when it comes to motorbikes (less pin-up, more motorcycle as art).

Tumblr: a bit more rough and tumble but offers an immersive graphics format and a staggeringly wide range of images including some very specific sub cultures of biking.  If you're into cafe racers, Tumblr doesn't disappoint.

Want something really specific, like motorcycle anime?  Ok!  Tumblr is also heavy on the animated GIF, so you get a lot of motion in your visual soup.

Google+: is more of an open social media platform, but in it you can find all sorts of motorcycle communities.  Motorcycles and technology, yep, there's a community for that.  Like Royal Enfields?  So do these people.  Want a motorcycle group with a worldwide focus?  Right here.  There you can hear Australians rail against their stupid government advertising.

Facebook:  Of course, you can find lots of motorcycle related material on Facebook too, I like it specifically for following motorcycle celebrities:

Think Nick Sanders is cool?  You can follow him across Asia live on Facebook (he's doing it right now).  


Are you a fan of Austin Vince?  He's well connected on Facebook where you can keep up with his latest work.

Think Guy Martin is the man?  His racing management team keeps you up with what he's doing on big blue.

You can find all sorts of local companies on there too.  If I'm going to get advertised to on Facebook I'd rather it be by local companies that I'm actually likely to shop at.

Facebook is also a good place to find motorcycle media updates.  Why We Ride is a lovely film, but they didn't stop there.  The Facebook site is a great place to find the latest in riding inspiration.


It might sound odd, but traditional media

still plays a big role in connecting me to online media.  Bike Magazine connected me to Greasy Hands Preachers and Rider connected me to my favorite motorcycle author.  Between traditional and new media, we're living in a motorcycle media renaissance, I hope you're partaking.  It feeds all interests from the most general to the most mind-bogglingly specific.

mid-life crisis

I turn 45 today.  I don't feel old, but that isn't stopping the math from bullying me.  As I told a friend, the only way to battle this age thing is by acting as immaturely as possible.  With that in mind, here are my top six motorcycle choices for a mid-life crisis:

#6 Off Road Opportunity

The chance to experience off-road riding with a focus on bike control would be awesome.  It so happens that Yamaha offers just such a course a pretty hour and a half ride north of me.  That would be a fantastic day in the dirt.



#5 Kawasaki Z1000

The anime dream machine.  Twitchy, not as good as other naked bikes according to Bike, but it's one I got excited about throwing a leg over and I'd never get tired of looking at it, though it makes little sense and would be a handful.  What's a mid-life crisis without making silly, emotional choices?


#4  Triumph Thruxton

The start of an ongoing cafe racer makeover.  The basic bike is sufficiently hooliganish so it speaks loudly to that vanishing sense of immaturity.  This bike begs for leathers and old school style.  I'd ride it like a rocker to pub brawls.  This Thruxton would turn into the bike I'd ride to Fight Club.  It wouldn't be shiny for long, more like a rolling black eye.


#3  Royal Enfield Bullet Classic

For those moments when I want to feel like Indiana Jones outrunning Nazis.  The classic Bullet is an old school thumper that would take me back.  It's the next best thing to being there because it'll start every time.  Seeing if I could ton-up on it would be a long term goal.  Old people like me like things that remind them of their pre-war childhoods.

#2  Leather pants... or worse!

I went all modern textile with my first round of motorcycle gear, but nothing says mid-life crisis like leather pants!  

In my year of riding I've come to appreciate leather riding gear for the level of protection it gives.  I've also come to realize how much more effective leather is at keeping you warm in less than comfortable Canadian riding conditions.

All that aside, leather looks cool!  If not the pants, then a full race suit and some track days to wear it in on.


#1  Suzuki Hayabusa or Kawasaki ZX-14R

I got all glassy eyed when I sat on a 'Busa at a show, it feels really special.  It's a big, beautiful bike that will go faster than light speed.  I've always had a soft spot for Suzuki and the Hayabusa is about the most beautiful thing they've ever made.  The other super bike that took me by surprise was the super Ninja ZX-14R.  Either one would scratch that mid-life crisis itch (really quickly).

Oddly enough, the whole adventure bike thing doesn't seem to tickle the mid-life crisis itch, though perhaps it's because adventure riding is so far away from normal life while a road bike is a daily opportunity.  To make the list the adventure bike deal would have to get all Ted Simons (I'm reading Jupiter's Travels at the moment) and involve a long term opportunity to travel too.  I get the sense that another post is forming around this.