How Bespoke is Too Bespoke?

Owning a Fireblade checked a box, taught me
many things and was a zero cost experience!

I always try to balance out bike projects so that I land in the black on them.  I've gotten pretty good at this.  The Fireblade Project cost me about $2300 all in and then I got to ride it for a season before selling it for $2500, which I then put towards the Concours14.  Even with fancy seats, windshields and other gubbins, the Connie only owes me about $7000.  Older model, double the mileage bikes are going for eight grand, so I'm still ahead there too.

People who throw big money down on customization that they like seem to think other people will pay extra to adopt their choices and tastes, which never made a lot of sense to me.  This goes for houses or in vehicles - just because you're willing to pay a premium to get a certain look, doesn't mean anyone else is, and expecting them to shell out for your choices is a bit naive.

The Concours was a cagey purchase that
still has me well in the black.

What does always sell is functionality.  As much as I'd like to get all romantic and throw money at the old Triumph I'm restoring, I'm more interested in making it work, and then riding it.  To that end, I'm not interested in creating a perfect replica of a 1971 Triumph Bonneville to put in shows, so modern touches (especially when they're more cost effective than stock-at-all-cost options) are something I have no trouble with.  A bike that starts easily and runs sweetly sells itself much more quickly than a cantankerous but period correct trailer queen.  One's a motorcycle, the other is art, and art is notoriously in the eye of the beholder.

One of the reasons I've always gravitated toward cheap and cheerful 80s and 90s Japanese restos was because the parts are usually easy to find, including hard parts from a breaker if needed, and they're as cheap as chips to buy because people tended to use them rather than put them up on a pedestal.

My first brush with 'vintage' (I think a 51 year old air-cooled Triumph from before the collapse of the British bike industry qualifies as vintage) has me wondering if my approach still works.  The cost of parts is much higher than more recent Japanese bikes and this particular Bonneville was half taken apart by a muppet who wanted to be in Easy Rider, so I'm constantly finding parts missing or incorrect.  I'm also struggling with missing non-metric tools after having owned metric bikes my entire life.

When I'm reading Practical Sportbikes I enjoy the articles on DIY and the stories of scratchers who got a machine put together with their own hands.  When they run one of the 'specials' articles where it's a rich guy with clean hands throwing money at a project, I lose interest quickly.  Classic Bike Magazine is similar.  When they're talking about an owner keeping an old machine running on ingenuity and guile, I'm all in, but the minute it's a millionaire adding to his collection with another bespoke machine put together by someone else, I've lost interest.

I just finished Guy Martin's new book, Dead Men Don't Tell Tales, and Guy ends the latest one talking about trying to find what makes him happy.  This requires a fair bit of self awareness - something that most people don't have.  Guy's particularly difficult in that he will often act on an urge that turns out to be incorrect, but, as he says in the book, he's evolving.

There's a scene in Guy's Garage where Cammy, his professional race mechanic mate, knows how to fix the car they're working on but Guy has his own ideas and keeps bashing away at it wrong.  Rather than push the point, Cammy backs off and waits for Guy to realize he's using the wrong tool for the job.

Guy is critical of Cammy for being slack in his approach to work in the book, but I'm left wondering if the truth isn't somewhere in between:  what looks like a lack of effort from Guy's point of view is actually a better use of his energy from the professional race mechanic's point of view.  There's more to all this than just jumping in to the physical labour, you need to be exercising the grey matter too.

What I'm taking from this latest round of Guy Martin media is that you're more likely to stay engaged with and finish big projects if they make sense to you.  To that end, I spent yesterday working out why the kickstarter on the Bonneville wasn't working (the muppet had put it in backwards).

The goal is still to have gone through the whole bike and have it back in working order without breaking the bank.  The amount spent on it matters less than whether or not the project is in the black.  If a functional '71 Bonneville is worth about five grand, then that's what I'll work to on the budget, while keeping an eye on what engages me most about all this:  putting a sidelined bike back into service again... and then riding it!

This morning I'm looking at Motogadget's mo.Unit Blue and considering how to best tackle a 51 year old wiring loom that looks to be in good shape but should probably get rebuilt if dependability is the goal.  An ignition powered by bluetooth on a smartphone is just the kind of steampunk anachronism that a riding focused buyer would dig.  That it's also invisible means it won't hurt the look of the bike (the only change is the ignition key isn't there).

Got into rebuilding the Amal carbs only to discover the muppet who took them apart before didn't install any of the air slider hardware for the choke, so now I'm hunting for hard parts for 51 year old carbs... in a pandemic.  Note my anemic imperial socket wrench set.

Ready to go and then stopped - neither carb has the air slider or hardware in it.  I'd normally call around to the local breakers, find a donor set of carbs and then keep them handy for situations like this.  That isn't an option with a 51 year old British bike.

It's coming along - slower than I'd like, but it's coming along.  When it seems too much I remind myself why I'm doing it: one day soon that engine will turn over for the first time in decades and shortly after that I'll be out riding the thing!

Motorcycle Electrical System Rebuild From Scratch

Researched links on re-wiring the 1971 Triumph Bonneville... 

The old Bonnie has an intact loom and many of the original electrical components, but many of these pieces won't have weathered the decades well and I'd be crazy to try and rebuild a hacked on electrical system in a fifty year old bike, so it's all coming out.  I'm going to take a page from the custom scene and build a loom from scratch and design and build a complete electrical system from scratch.

This ain't no modern digital machine so the electrical system in it is prehistorically simple.  Building a dependable replacement with quality modern upgrades (proper copper wiring, modern connectors, new electronic ignition and coils, etc).  The result should be a 1971 Bonneville that is more spritely and dependable than anything that rolled off the line in Meriden in 1971.

Tutorials on creating a motorcycle wiring harness/loom:

BikeExif Tutorial: https://www.bikeexif.com/motorcycle-wiring

Rewiring tutorial:  https://www.liveabout.com/making-a-motorcycle-wiring-harness-743591

Tutorial:  https://purposebuiltmoto.com/motorcycle-electrics-101-re-wiring-your-cafe-racer/

Tutorial: https://www.hagerty.com/media/maintenance-and-tech/building-wiring-harness-from-schematic-to-bundle/

Resource (costs 20 pounds): https://rupesrewires.com/build-your-own-wiring-loom-pdf-book/

Another good resource ($40): https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0760345368/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I've purchased and read that last one - it's a gentle introduction to electrical work but I found it a bit simple and wished it had picked up speed as it went.  If you've never done any electrical work then it's a good place to start, but that's what I do all day so I was hoping for something with a bit more depth.

Replacement harness:

http://www.britishwiring.com/MC-28-PP-p/mc28pp.htm

Prebuilt '71 Bonneville wiring harness: https://www.thebonnevilleshop.com/product/lucas-71-72-triumph-bsa-650-twins-main-cloth-wiring-harness-pn-54959629-g-99-1222-g/

Original loom wiring colours:

• RED (seems to be earth but then battery + so this is a positive earthed bike?)
• WHITE (headlamp loom)
• GREEN/WHITE STRIPE (LH handlebar switch & main loom)
• BROWN/GREEN STRIPE (headlamp loom)
• BROWN/GREEN STRIPE (headlamp loom)
• WHITE/YELLOW STRIPE (L/H handlebar switch) + ignition coil
• BROWN (headlamp switch)
• GREEN/RED STRIPE (L/H handlebar switch)
• PURPLE (horn press R/H switch)
• LIGHT GREEN (L/H handlebar switch)
• PURPLE/RED (earth?) horn
• BLACK/WHITE STRIPE / BLACK/YELLOW STRIPE (contact breakers)
• BLACK/WHITE STRIPE (condesner pack/ignition coil split)
• RECTIFIER:  WHITE/GREEN STRIPE + GREEN/YELLOW STRIPE+BROWN/BLUE STRIPE+RED (earth)
• IGNITION COIL: BLACK/YELLOW STRIPE to coil & condenser pack + WHITE to coil
• RED (earth frame)
• BROWN/BLUE: Zenor diode
• RED to battery positive (that doesn't make much sense)
• BROWN/BLUE: battery negative
• IGNITION SWITCH:  WHITE+BROWN/BLUE+BROWN/GREEN
• FLASHER UNIT:  WHITE+LIGHT GREEN
• REAR LIGHTS:  BROWN/GREEN STRIPE (rear lamp)+BROWN (stop lamp)+GREEN/WHITE STRIPE (L/H indicator)+GREEN/RED STRIPE (R/H Indicator)+RED (earth)
• STOP SWITCH:  BROWN+WHITE
• STATOR (GREEN/YELLOW STRIPE+WHITE/GREEN STRIPE)

https://monomotorcycles.co.uk/ were advertised in the UK's BIKE Magazine...

https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/certified-18-awg-25-ft-0207555p.html

The Motogadget is an all-in-one electrical block for all electrical items on a bike - it also provides you with a bluetooth connection so you could start and stop it by your smartphone:

https://www.motogadget.com/shop/en/electrics.html

Not really what I'm looking for for the Bonnie project, though I'll keep it in mind for a future ground up custom build.

A new ignition barrel with keys looks to be about $80.  I'll see if Britcycle has them.

The existing wiring looks like it was taken apart and left that way - I'm tempted to take it all out and just rewire it rather than trust the old mess.

Electrical Systems Parts List:

• Ignition barrel & key set
• wiring to rebuild loom step by step - I'd need correct gauge wiring & connectors
• fuse box
• fuses
• reg/rectifier
• upgraded/modernized stator

Motorcycle wiring how to: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zm67VyrQTS1_H7WRunfkhOZ1H6wivD6RuK6194P3lvs/edit?usp=sharing  A commonly found writeup someone has done to walk any interested DIYer in how to rewire your bike.

Motorcycle Riding In The Rain: Algonquin Park in October in 360 Degrees

 Deerhurst Resort to Algonquin Park and back again, chased by the rain.

Algonquin Park in the rain at the height of autumn colours. The Theta 360 camera held up but I eventually pocketed it when the deluge become too heavy.  The camera is mounted on a ball mount on the handlebars and set to fire automatically every 10 seconds.  Photos captured in the Theta camera app and then modified/enhanced in Photoshop.

This is the raw photo out of the camera. The fixed lense doesn't collect a lot of light, so on a dim, rainy day like this the image is quite muddy.  I brought up the shadows in Photoshop and the result (with a bit of cropping) is the same photo above.

If you're curious about how to put together on-bike photos, check this how-to out.  It's also available on Adventure Bike Rider Magazine's site here.  You can pick up a simple 360 camera for a couple of hundred bucks.  Fully waterproof ones (which I obviously need) start a bit higher.

I got into this with Ricoh's Theta way back in 2013, but Ricoh has been stingy about support and won't even offer me at-cost options for educational use.  Looking around recently, the Insta360 offers some interesting combinations with next generation 360 imaging, though it's very video focused and I prefer still shooting.  Gopro also has the 360 Max, though it isn't as aerodynamic and therefore might not be the thing to put on a bike in the wind, though I'm willing to give it a go.

Gopro goes out of its way to support users and especially ones who advertise for them on social media.  I wish Ricoh were so forward thinking, but they aren't.  I'd suggest the Gopro if you want to get into 360 photography.  It's remarkably easy to set up and the results look fantastic.  You should give it a try.

Post from RICOH THETA. - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA

A British Appreciation for Industrial History & Hands-On Restoration

There is an element of British television that revels in the industrial history that many generations of us lot lived through, and I'm hooked on it.  My favourite is Henry Cole & Sam Lovegrove's Shed & Buried which follows the two as they dig up hidden treasures found in some of the more eccentric sheds in the U.K., including a lot of older motorbikes:

They find all sorts of old machines in people's sheds which often leads to impromtu history lessons on brands I've never heard of or hidden bits of industrial history I hadn't heard of before.  From seed fiddles to motor memorabilia to the esoteric history of British motorbike production, it's never dull and usually enlightening.

They don't just rummage around in other people's sheds.  The show also casts a light on the 'car boot sale' and the used sales trade in the UK.  This culture of reverance for past technology is completely foreign in Canada.

It's tough to find anything motorbikey in Ontario to begin with let alone anything old and interesting, yet Henry & Sam seem to be able to find any number of interesting old bikes for around £1000 ($1700CAD).  In a country like Canada that prefers to hide its history under a modern marketing blanket, throwing stuff away is a cultural imperative.  This (very colonial) approach means there simply isn't an ecosystem of old machinery to explore.  This is exacerbated by Canada's history as a resource extractor rather than an industrially focused manufacturer; we don't make much here so there is no home-grown pride in any vehicle.

These cultural differences in background prompt media and awareness that is distinctly different in both countries.  The British produce a plethora of programs that explore industrial history and mechanics.  Shows like this would never fly in consumerist focused Canada.

Here's a case in point:  Shed & Buried started out with a '69 Triumph Daytona project, sorta like the one below described as 'an excellent buy' in Ottawa right now for $4650 Canadian .  Henry paid £600 ($1000CAD) for his old Daytona in similar condition.

If they exist at all, older bikes in Canada are prohibitively expensive.

What got me thinking about this was someone else on FB Marketplace offering disorganized boxes of old Triumph parts for $3600 without even a clear idea of what's in there.  Henry and Sam picked up a 1950s BSA for £400 they found in pieces in a caravan.  Canada's disinterest in and lack of history around industrial manufacturing make it a very difficult place to find old project bikes - unless you want to go into massive debt for an incomplete box of shit.

If, like me, you find living in this vacuous, consumerist wasteland frustrating, there are a lot of British TV programs that will remind you that finding old things and getting your hands dirty restoring them is a viable thing to do.  Here's a list of what to watch if you're looking for some proof that you're not crazy:

Find It, Fix It, Drive It: if you're crafty with VPNs you can stream this on Channel4.

Guy Martin's How Britain Worked:  Guy's background as a mechanic comes up in most of his shows

Car SOS: one of my favourites - restoration leading to catharsis

Wheeler Dealers: started in the UK, went to the US and lost its way, now back to UK

Even Top Gear makes a point of mechanics, though often in jest:

Motorcycle Media Review: Itchy Boots Vlog and Social Media Supporting Professional Travel

I can't say I'm a big fan of the YOOTOOB.  I make a point of not reading the comments because they're some of the most asinine on the internet, but something caught me recently and now I"m a regular watcher.

Noraly Schoenmaker started a video blog called Itchy Boots in 2017 and has been a professional traveller ever since.  She has ridden tens of thousands of kilometres on a variety of bikes on many continents:

Noraly hits all the social media portals, so you can find her Instagram and elsewhere, but YouTube is where she video-blogs and what got me hooked was both her personality and her technical expertise.  I can't stand YouTube videos for all the preening and wasted time telling me shit I don't care about.  Trying to watch a how-to video on TOOB is infuriating and ends up with me giving up and trying to find the information elsewhere.

You don't need to worry about any of that with Noraly.  She edits tight and even her music and post-processing work has a professional sheen to it.  It plays at least as well as Long Way Up or another big budget stars-on-bikes production, but it's all just her.  The fact that she's festooned with GoPros and has her audio properly balanced while even throwing in drone footage has me loving the technical proficiency; this is travel video as it was meant to be done!  Even the music's good!

She was in South America when COVID kicked off and ended up getting repatriated to the Netherlands where she attempted to keep travel blogging from home, but you can imagine how that went.  If, like me, you pick this up with her deciding to press on regardless of COVID, you'll start season 5 with her getting herself sorted out and going to South Africa:

As a cure for the COVID travel blues, this is pure gold.  She finds herself a bike in Jo-Berg and before you know it you're with her on South African dirt roads seeing an amazing menagerie of spectacular wildlife in surreal scenery.  If you've missed travel, this'll immerse you in it again in an intimate way.

I had a moment last year in the first lockdown where I was in Google Earth in VR on the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa trying to remind myself that the rest of the world was still out there.  I had a jarring moment when the sign on Google Earth said that the park might be closed due to COVID.  Not only is the world out there, but it's covered in COVID.

Noraly might be taking a risk, but travelling around the world solo on a motorbike is risky and if we only let risk dictate our lives then what tedious and barren lives they'd be.  If you feel the pull of the nomad inside give Noraly's vlog a watch, I betcha you'll get hooked.

Tech to Amplify Rather than Atrophy

I just finished Matt Crawford's latest book, Why We Drive.  This challenging read unpacks how we've backed ourselves into an intellectual dead end under tech driven surveillance capitalism.  Crawford comes at it from the big-tech push to colonize one of the last moments in our lives where human skill is tested and judged by reality rather than marketing expectations, vehicular operations.  Advertising companies like Google aren't trotting out self-driving cars for safety or efficiency (though that's the marketing), they're trotting them out so they can take all that consumer attention wasted on driving and advertise to it.  Even with this problematic impetus and misleadingly media spin self-driving vehicles are imminent and this leads Crawford to (quite rightly) question the intent of the companies pushing them.  The assumption that self-driving cars will somehow be  better for us is undressed in many ways in the book.

Seeing where Matt's head is at in 2020 encouraged me to reread his first book, the bestselling Shop Class as Soulcraft, which came out in 2009 in response to the market crash that everyone seems to have forgotten now as we're increasingly told we need austerity to pay back the predatory organizations who caused the debt in the first place. Running the economy is a good gig if you're one of the 'financial class' who maintain the fiction.  You can crash the market and make billions of people poorer and then profit from it indefinitely as you charge interest on the loans you handed out to 'solve' the crisis you caused.  It takes a special kind of stupid to buy into this.

Looking at Shop Class now years later it has historical context to it I didn't see in earlier readings where the response to the market collapse wasn't as obvious.  Back then it was just timely.  One of the themes that follows Matt's thinking through all three of his books is his dislike of automation.  In Shop Class he talks about situated knowledge and the importance of having an intimate relationship with reality.  Fundamentally, Crawford believes this vital to human beings fully developing their abilities.  When we're devalued by monied interests into simplistic consumers we are unable to fully develop our human potential.  Surveillance Capitalists intent on monetizing every moment of everyone's existence for their own financial advantage have coupled with safety and efficiency movements in government and society to create a brave new world of atrophied people.

I've come at this digital prejudice from an educational technology point of view on Dusty World, but it bears examining from a motorcycling perspective too.  Crawford is a physicist and mechanical and electrical technician, but he seems to have drawn a hard line between digital technology and everything else.  It's probably an age related thing.  Matt's about five years older than I am.  As I was getting into early home computers and figuring them out he was already through high school and working in his trade.  I ended up heading towards IT because when I was working as a millwright I was the only one willing to take computer controlled systems on in a department full of older people who couldn't be bothered.

The idea that digital technology is opaque and unknowable is a continual professional frustration for me as a computer technology teacher.  Other educators, students and parents all buy in to this opacity even while they embrace information and communication technology in more aspects of their lives.  I understand the reluctance to make ourselves literate in this emerging technology, but if we're all going to use it I'd suggest we're all responsible for having at least a basic understanding of how it works or else we're going to all end up illiterate in a digitally powered world.

A bunch of smooth talking sociopaths have taken over the face of digital technologies, but I can assure you that Google, Facebook and the rest are not the limit of what digital technology can do for us.  Thinking that is dangerously reductive.  There was a time when the internet was newly birthed from academia and the people on it were exploring a new frontier rather than leveraging it in an Orwellian attempt to monetize our attention.  I'm a digitally literate person and I have no love for them, but I get the sense that Matt truly despises computing to the point of lumping any digital tech in with the sociopaths.  It's a hard distinction to make, though John Naughton does a good job of coaxing it out of author Shoshan Zuboff:

"While it is impossible to imagine surveillance capitalism without the digital, it is easy to imagine the digital without surveillance capitalism. The point cannot be emphasised enough: surveillance capitalism is not technology. Digital technologies can take many forms and have many effects, depending upon the social and economic logics that bring them to life. Surveillance capitalism relies on algorithms and sensors, machine intelligence and platforms, but it is not the same as any of those."

Another motorcycling angle to come at this from might be Neil Spalding's MotoGP Technology. This technical manual charts the evolution of the top prototyping class of MotoGP motorcycle racing over the past twenty years. These have been years of digital integration and management in terms of rule making and deciding how much of an influence computer assistance will have in the sport. Unlike Formula One, which many have suggested has gone too far down the technology path, MotoGP has evolved to focus on enhancing rider abilities rather than replacing them. Spalding mentions the estimate that F1 is an 80% car engineering 20% driver skill equation, where as MotoGP is the opposite. Marc Marquez winning championships on the third best bike would certainly suggest the humans operating MotoGP bikes matter more than the tech, and yet these are digital machines.

There is a point in the book where Spalding has to re-orientate the reader on how electronics work in MotoGP. Unlike what a consumer is used to, racing electronics have nothing to do with safety.  Their only intent is more speed even if it means more effort and skill is expected from the rider.  While everyone watching a race has only ever experienced electronic interventions (anti-lock brakes, traction control etc) as a safety blanket thrown over their incompetence, a racer only experiences them through the lens of performance.  Electronic intervention on a race bike make it more extreme and harder to ride.  That alone should make the true breadth of electronics and digital technology in riding a bit more clear.  They are only self-driving us because someone wants them to for their own reasons, not because the tech is inherently focused in that direction.

Crawford often speaks of the mechanical work he's doing on various machines, but mechanical work doesn't end where a computer is involved.  There are some parts of vehicular evolution where automation is a much needed advance.  Crawford does make a point of mentioning this, but grudgingly.  Reading Classic Bike Magazine a few weeks ago I came across a great article about Dr Desmo, Fabio Taglioni, the Ducati engineer who spent his career continually looking for advancements for the brand.  His quote about computer controlled fuel injection is much like a MotoGP team's fixation on performance rather than protecting a rider from their own incompetence and is yet another reminder that electronic and digital technology does not have to replace human agency but can in fact enhance it.

Sorting out the Triumph's fuel injection system
by finding a modified fuel map and installing
it on the bike's FI computer was one of this 
year's most satisfying repairs.

I like getting a bank of carbs sorted out as much as the next person, and sometimes I make a point of working on bikes without electronics to distance myself from what I do at work all week (mechanical repairs offer a more immediate kind of satisfaction), but I've also had great technical satisfaction from the hybrid mechanical and electronics repairs I've had to make on the Tiger.  I realize that electronics and computer based repairs are often out of the comfort zone of the home mechanic, but that's based on the kind of anti-digital prejudice Crawford carries through his philosophy.  If we could all get passed that prejudice perhaps we could reclaim the digital tools we've surrendered to the attention merchants.

It's critically important we don't romanticize old technology for the same reason we shouldn't romanticize previous time periods.  If you think the 1960s were some kind of magical time in human history odds are you're a heteronormative, neurotypical white male.  From the point of view of the vast majority of the people on the planet the nineteen sixties were fucked, and so was much of the technology we were using back then.  That time of excess and privilege has led us to the brink of disaster fifty years later.  Longing to go back to it or recreate it is a kind of insanity.

This is distinct from respecting culture and engineering from a certain time period when it showed us a better way forward.   I greatly enjoy working on older machines in order to keep that history alive, but if you're putting on rose coloured glasses that make you blind to the possibilities of today's technology then you're just as manipulative as the sociopaths who are destroying society for their own gain.

Crawford talks about technology that is locked and closed, like Mercedes without dipsticks to check your own oil, or electronics that are sealed to prevent 'tampering'.  Corporations are able to do this because people have been convinced that digital technologies are something they can't comprehend, but this is bullshit.  The companies offering to do everything for you aren't technology companies, they are advertising companies.  Ignore them and ignore authors who dismiss digital technology as inherently nannying.  Modern technology can just as easily be used to enhance human ability and force us to be smarter, stronger and faster as it can be used to make us stupid, docile and compliant.  The issue is the intent of the people peddling it, not the tech itself.

If I can't convince you maybe Kenneth Clark's angle in 1969's award winning documentary 'Civilisation' will highlight things:

Clark's concern is that automation plays to the hands of authoritarian regimes.  He couldn't see the emergence of multi-national corporations that we're now under the yoke of back in 1969, but he isn't wrong about automation playing to fascists.  Crawford shares the same concerns, and they're well founded, but one of the best ways to take back control for more people is to make them literate in the technology being used to enthrall them.

All that to say don't be afraid of the digital aspects of motorcycle maintenance.  This tech was made by people so you can figure it out, and in doing so you will also teach yourself to author the technology the attention tyrants are using to snow you under.  From that point of view of self sufficiency and understanding of technology Matt Crawford should be on board.

Norfolk Wisdom on BBC's Speed Dreams

I just finished watching BBC 2's Speed Dreams: The Fastest Place On Earth, a documentary about a group of British motorcyclists who travel to Bonneville to see how fast their folk-engineered motorcycles can go.  It's a great watch and one of the best motorcycle focused things I've seen about Bonneville, and there have been many.

One of my favourite bits about this one is that it isn't one of those (insert celebrity name here) explorations of extreme motorbiking.  Those can get thin pretty quickly when they lean mainly on the twist of watching a footballer or actor doing something that hundreds of others have done with less while the poor celebrity laments their fame and finds ways to make the trip as expensive as they possibly can.  It might be time to shelve that formula.  Motorcycling is inherently egalitarian.  Millionaire problems while doing it just aren't that interesting. Meanwhile, Speed Dreams covers the gamut from build-it-in-your-shed eccentrics to bank funded high end amateur riders, but I find the ones who do it with less far more interesting.  Money makes people tedious and shallow.  It's not their fault, they can't help it, it's just what money does  They end up with an audience because people like to watch wealth.  The characters underneath it are nearly always atrophied by it.

Speaking of interesting, my favourite bit of Speed Dreams is when the Scottish lead engineer of the high end team comes out and waxes poetic about the shear size of the place...

Then the old fella from Norfolk who picks up the litter on the beach after he had a nervous breakdown and built an old Indian bike in his shed with recycled parts walks out and does us all Norfolk proud:

'ha''s Norfook for yow.  It made me miss home.

You can catch this one on Motortrend TV with a free trail, or on BBC if you're somewhere they'll let you stream it.  Amazon also looks like they add it in occasionally.  Back in the day Top Gear (with the old guys) liked it too.

Other Bonneville Motorcycle Media:

Guy Martin and the world's fastest motorbike.  I usually like Guy's stuff, but this isn't one of my favourites, probably because it comes off as a Triumph ad, he never gets his hands dirty.  Even the Triumph bit is outsourced to another engineering group making it look even more like a marketing exercise.  They don't manage to break any records either.  You can stream this one on Channel 4 UK, though there are other Guy motorbike themed things I prefer (his run at Pike's Peak on a custom hand made machine is fantastic).

Henry Cole's Worlds' Greatest Motorcycle Rides is a good series to get you through long Canadian winters and his run at Bonneville is a genuine tear jerker.  That he's trying to do it on a Brough Superior is English eccentricity at its best.  First time he met Sam Lovegrove too, so there is a good bit of engineering/technical to it as well.

Odin, Thor's dad (Anthony Hopkins), plays Burt Munro in The World's Fastest Indian, a well put together film telling the story of one of Bonneville's heroes from down under.

Out of Nothing is another shed-built Bonneville attempt from an American North West perspective.  It sometimes wanders dangerously near to hipster philosophical - Americans tend to take themselves very seriously when doing manly things.  I prefer the UK self deprecating humour rather than the chest thumping, but it's still a good film.

Long Way Up & Valentino: Rage Against The Dying Of The Light

My escape is usually to find some motorcycle media to get lost in but a theme this week in it was 'getting old', which is a tricky one to navigate.  I've started watching Long Way Up and seeing two of my favourite adventure motorcyclists getting old is difficult.  I got into Long Way Round and Long Way Down early on in my motorcycling career and they've saved me from many a long Canadian winter.  I'm up to episode four now and they've hit their stride and are coming close to their earlier trips, but watching everyone looking for their reading glasses and groaning as they saddle up has been difficult to watch.

Many moons ago I read Melissa Holbrook Pierson's The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing.  In it she makes the startling observation that one day everyone realizes they're probably having their last ever motorcycle ride.  It's a terrifying thought that has come up in TMD before in For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Long Way Up happened because Charlie almost killed himself and it prompted Ewan to reconnect with him again after they'd drifted apart when Ewan moved to the US.  Maintaining friendships among men as they age seems to be exceptionally difficult these days.  I recently worked on a charity program for The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride that considered ways to keep men socially connected as they age.  Speaking from personal experience, getting older is a lonely experience.  Men seem uniquely suited to doing it poorly in the modern world.  As I watch the boys figure out their new fangled electric bikes and work their way out of deepest, darkest Patagonia it's nice to see the power of travel and challenge bring back some sense of their former selves, we should all be so lucky.

Harley Davidson's involvement in the program has been fascinating.  I can hand on heart say that I've never once had the remotest interest in owning one of their tractors.  I don't like the brand or the image, but what they did with Long Way Up was daring in a way that KTM was incapable of being way back when they did the first one in the early naughties.  I admire that kind of bravery, especially when it's with such untested technology.  Harley's willingness to chuck an prototype electric bike at Long Way Up is even braver than BMW's has been in previous trips where they provided the measure of long distance adventure travel that had been evolved and refined over decades.  Even with all that evolution those BMWs sure did seem to break down a lot.  That the Livewires the boys are riding appear to be doing so well managing freezing temperatures and doing long distance adventure travel when our battery technology is so medieval makes me wonder why The Motor Company clings so tightly to its conservative cruiser image, they could be so much more than big wheels for red necks.  If I had the means I'd drop forty large on a Livewire tomorrow (I'm a school teacher, there ain't no forty grand bikes in my future).

Between acclimatizing myself to the reading glasses and stiff joints of the Long Way Up I also watched the Barcelona MotoGP race.  Valentino Rossi is an astonishing 41 years old and still a regular top ten finisher in this young man's sport.  He managed his 199th podium earlier this year and looked like he was on track to hit 200 podiums in the top class this weekend when his bike fell out from under him while in a safe second place.  It was tough to watch that opportunity fall away from him after he lined everything up so well, but old muscles don't react as quickly, though Vale was hardly the only one to crash out of the race.  I'm hoping he can make that 200th podium happen, but it's just a number and if he doesn't, who really cares?  He's still the GOAT and will be until someone else wins championships on multiple manufactures across multiple decades through radical evolutions in technology.  He managed wins on everything from insane 500cc two strokes through massive evolutionary changes to the latest digital four stroke machines.  Winning year after year on the top manufacturer on a similar bike just ain't gonna cut it if you want to be GOAT.

Valentino just signed a contract for another year with one of the top teams (Petronas) in the top class of MotoGP.  He has battled against generations of riders who have come up, peaked and been beaten to a pulp by this relentless sport, and yet he still seems able to summon the drive and discipline to compete at the highest level.  If that isn't Greatest Of All Time inspirational I don't know what is.  I suspect Charlie Boorman might empathize with him.  Charlie's another one who doesn't know when to stop, even when he probably should.  Watching him bend his broken body onto his bike in Long Way Up is also inspirational though it took me a few tries to see it that way.

This all reminds me of a poem...

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright

Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

                                                                  Dylan Thomas

Fucken 'eh.

A Tim's Top Gear Rick & Morty Themed Travel Challenge: We're going to Windigo, Morty!

I'm a big fan of Top Gear, and I especially enjoy their travel/challenges.  I've always dreamed of planning one, getting people silly enough to commit to it and then making it happen.

In the summer of COVID I'm finding myself daydreaming of possible adventures, so I started poking around on the internet trying to find how far north roads go in Ontario.  Bafflingly, Ontario has never connected to its own north sea shore by road.  For a province that has thousands of kilometers of ocean shoreline, Ontario seems intent on convincing its citizens that it's land locked.  I'd love to ride 1000kms north to the sea, but it's not an option.  James Bay is roughly in line with Scotland, so its not like it's in the arctic.

In the meantime, it looks like Windigo Lake north west of Thunder Bay is as far north as you can ride in Ontario on your own wheels:

...which offers us a great thematic riding challenge!  It's time to go to Windigo (instead of Bendigo), Morty!  Here's the inspiration in case you're not hip to Rick & Morty:

Here's the Top Gear style WE'RE GOIN TO WINDIGO, MORTY! Moto Travel Challenge:

• Each participant gets a $3000 budget for a bike and any farkles that must include a safety certificate.  Ownership is by WG2W Productions, pending the bikes return to Elora within 10 days of the event, at which point ownership is signed over to the rider.  Safety and taxes should be about $400, so that leaves about $2600 for a bike and farkles
• Insurance and ownership is managed by the event
• All riders must have a valid Ontario M class license
• Camping equipment is provided to each rider individually based on a sponsored selection of gear (rider's choice)  Each rider will be provided with bear gear.
• Each participant has to do any repair or maintenance on their own bike.  Only other competitors can assist.
• Google maps says it's a 27 hour ride to Windigo.  Riders can only be on the road between 7am and 7pm, so the most efficient (and luckiest) should arrive in Windigo on day three in the morning.  At 12 hours per day of possible riding, 27 hours =  2..25 days of riding.  The earliest rider with a perfectly timed ride would arrive at Windigo at 10am on day three of the event.
• Timing for the event takes into account speed limits.  Any rider caught speeding is disqualified.
• Any overnight stops while riding to Windigo must be wild camping following leave-no-trace rules.  Proof of camp site cleanup must be included on rider GoPro footage or a time penalty is applied.
• The rider who gets to Windigo (getting to Windigo means arriving at the lake on your bike and dipping a toe in) as close to 27 hours of riding after leaving the start line as possible, wins!
• Riders can choose how to use their daylight hours to ride.  In the case of a tie, the rider to get to Windigo the soonest and closest to 27 hours of riding after race start wins
• Winner gets a We're going to Windigo, Morty gold medal.  There will be silver and bronze finalist medals too.  Smallest displacement and oldest bikes who finish also get awards
• Any participant who finishes this long distance riding rally and is able to ride back to the start line within a week of the competition end can keep their bike! 

...followed by 469kms of
challenging unpaved roads
to the end of all roads.

A paved odyssey...

This isn't an easy ride.  It starts with almost 1700kms of riding on paved roads ranging from the biggest freeway you can imagine to single lane tar patched, northern frost heaved back-road.  You've then got almost 500kms of riding gravel up to where all roads end at Windigo.  Trying to do this on a one trick pony like a cruiser would be entertaining, but likely unsuccessful.  This is a challenge for a multi-purpose motorcycle!

The 599 highway isn't Google car photoed once you get on the gravel, and you're constantly dodging lakes this deep into the Canadian Shield.  The closest I could get was this photo of the Mishkeegogamang Band Office, which shows a graded gravel road out front.  Fuel stops are few and far between, some cunning planning will be required!

BIKES

There are some interesting choices at the bottom end of the bike market in Ontario:

A bike that'll handle the off-road part of this trip, though it isn't built for the thousands of kilometres of paved road leading to the hundreds of miles of gravel fire roads.  Capable of handling the camping gear too.  Should come in on budget on the road.

Low mileage, in good shape and comes safetied, so you'd have a bit left over for farkles.  It'd chew up the pavement side of WG2W effortlessly, but that windshield might never see Windigo (Morty).

Big Honda touring bike, high miles, but it's a Honda.  It'd be a handful on nearly a thousand kilometres of gravel, but some people like that.  Should come in under budget and ready to make miles.  The paves stuff would flash by on this and it could carry camping gear with ease!

Low miles, Kawasaki dependable, in great shape.  The Versys is short for versatile bike system, just what you'd need to get to Windigo (Morty).  The 650 is a lightweight bike that'll handle gravel, and it has luggage and mounting points for some soft bags.  I'd probably be able to get it for $2300 certified, which gives me a bit for some soft saddle bags, then I'm off to the races!  This'd be my choice.  Might spill my extra cash on some 70/30 semi-off road tires.

There are lots of other interesting choices that you could get road ready for under three grand in Ontario.  Seeing what people choose and how they prep the bike for long distance, multi-surface, remote riding would be half the fun.  To stretch the choices there would also be trophies for the oldest bike and smallest displacement bike to finish the ride, so some people might go after those rather than the timed competition.

PRODUCING IT FOR TV

All bikes have GoPros to capture footage and all riders agree to provide at least 15 minutes of speaking to camera dialogue per day while in the rally.  All competitors have to document their camp build and take down.  There will be a production/sweeper vehicle with a trailer in case of any bike failures.  The vehicle will be able to provide technical support in remote areas and be designed for the gravel portion of the event as well as offer a central point for production and media management.

Competition begins when all riders have their bikes delivered to a shared garage space in Elora.

Film Schedule:

Day 1:  All bikes have arrived.  Bike familiarity and maintenance, bike paperwork taken care of, all riders and production crew doing piece to camera introducing themselves and talking about the event and prep

Day 2:  Bike familiarity and preparation, filming continues

Day 3:  Bike familiarity and preparation, finalizing ride planning, filming continues.  All bikes in park ferme at the end of the day ready for the morning's off.

Day 4:  7am Race start in Elora.  Filmed by production vehicle crew and GoPros on bikes.

Production vehicle stopping in Thunder Bay on Day 1.

Day 5:  7am start.  Production vehicle stopping at Windigo to await arrival of riders (riders who arrive early will have a major penalty, so no one should be there until day 3)

Day 6:  Production vehicle at Windigo Lake awaiting arrivals.  End of day 6:  close of event party on Windigo

Day 7:  All rider camping gear to be taken in by the support vehicle for a lighter ride back.  Sweeping the road south to Silver Dollar (the beginning of pavement).  All competitors camping at Silver Dollar Campsite that night.  Confirm end of event with all riders.

Day 8:  Retrace/sweep route to Thunder Bay.  End of rally event in Thunder Bay.  Riders who want to keep their bikes have 3 days to return to the workspace in Elora in order to claim ownership.  Riders who want to find their own way home can do so and bikes will be transported in the trailer.

Day 9:  Production vehicle sweeps south clearing any bikes that have been parked.

Day 11:  Any bikes that have returned to the workspace in Elora have their ownership turned over to their riders.

Episodes:  45 minute edited

1)  Introducing riders, bike selection and  preparation - possibly include off-road training at SMART Adventures?

2) Rally Start:  day one on the road

3) Rally Continued:  day two on the road

4) Rally Conclusion: day three on the road and rally winners and finishers highlighted

5) where did they go missing riders review, post rally interviews while returning to Thunder Bay, final presentations in TB, sweeping up, who got to keep their bikes

Total production time:  3.75 hours of edited footage

Other opportunities:  Work with SMART Adventures out of Horseshoe Valley - include bits on how to ride off road, what riders can expect, how to manage bikes on loose surfaces.

Rough costing:

8 Competitors @ $3000 per bike = $24,000

Production Vehicle Cost (rental & gasoline):  $3000

Insurance & Paperwork costs at $1000 each competitor = $8,000

Production equipment (cameras, drone, on bike GoPros):  $5000

Production team hotels:  4 people x 2 nights Thunder Bay, 1 night on the road back, 2 nights camping in the north = $2000

Camping gear:  $1000/competitor + production crew = $10,000 (mitigated by sponsorship?)

Total rough budget:  $52,000.  Estimated budget:  $60,000   (mitigated by sponsorship)

Sponsorship opportunities:

- workshop/repair centre where bike setup takes place

- motorcycle farkle manufacturers or suppliers

- camping gear supply

- Tourism Ontario

- Northern Ontario

- motorcycle manufacturers

- competitor sponsorship

- Rick & Morty Themed prize swag