Motorcycle Gear as a Pre-Game Ritual

Long before I got into riding motorcycles I discovered ice hockey as a new immigrant to Canada.  I played whenever I could from backyard rinks to 5am practices to driving miles for games on evenings and weekends.  The smell of a hockey rink is a happy one for me, as is the process of getting ready for a game.  For many years I played net, which involved putting on over 70lbs of gear each time (this was back in the day when it was made with leather and bricks rather than the fancy space-aged stuff they have now).

I enjoyed getting to a game early and made putting on the gear a pre-game ritual.  It gave me meditative time to get into the zone before I had to peak-perform.  Perhaps this is why, when I saw this question on Facebook, it took me by surprise:

My ride starts when I go out into the garage and start putting the kit on.  This isn't tedious, it's a chance to echo all those hours spent in cold arenas getting ready to lay it all out there on the ice; it's an opportunity to put on my game face.  I never end up on the bike out on the road half paying attention or thinking about something else because putting on the kit is a integral part of getting ready to ride for me.

I don't know about a different person, but I am a focused person.  Here's the MotoGP video.

Getting my gear on builds a sense of anticipation, so the idea that this might be tedious feels very foreign.  How can you be bored when you're preparing to do something awesome?  Robert Heinlein gives a good description of the feeling in Starship Troopers:

I always get the shakes before a drop. I’ve had the injections, of course, and hypnotic preparation, and it stands to reason that I can’t really be afraid. The ship’s psychiatrist has checked my brain waves and asked me silly questions while I was asleep and he tells me that it isn’t fear, it isn’t anything important—it’s just like the trembling of an eager race horse in the starting gate.

Perhaps riding a bike for you is a flipflops, t-shirt and loud radio half-paying-attention kinda thing, but I take my riding a bit more seriously.  Every time I'm able to get out onto a bike it's worthy of my full attention, every time.  Making sure I've got the right gear is an integral part of that, but so is the opportunity it provides to cultivate a strong mental riding game.

Back in 2015 we rode down to the Indy MotoGP round.  Helmets are optional down that way and we went out once to pick up dinner just up the road without helmets, and it just felt wrong.  The right kit means you can ride longer without getting wind or sunburned and can even make you more comfortable than free bagging it.  Once you've got that approach, trying it the other way just feels wrong.

The gear makes the rider angle also means you don't buy the cheapest junk you can find to check a box.  I've spent years honing my gear so that when I put it on it fits, feels right and does what I want it to do.  I started off cheap but soon found that if you spend a bit more you get the kind of quality that makes the extra outlay worth it.  You can sometimes save money getting quality things second hand or on sale, but it's false economy to get cheap gear and then expect it to work.  If you get quality ventilated kit for the summer, it can keep you cool while keeping the sun and wind off you.  If you get properly insulated gear for cold weather riding, you can sail for hours in temperatures approaching freezing.  Good gear makes you superhuman.

Helmets are especially important.  I'm partial to Roof Helmets because they're of high quality and are an advanced, modular design that lets you change from a fully safetied full face helmet (lots of flip ups are only safetied as open-face helmets) to an open face 'jet' style helmet with a quick flip.  They're aerodynamic, quiet and ventilate well.  I've tried many different lids, including a dalliance with that beaked adventure nonsense, but (for me) a helmet that lets me feel wind on my face quickly and easily (I can flip it up when passing through a town then be back to full face comfort again in seconds without stopping) was what worked.  Getting into kit that feels this right and is well made is all part of the pre-ride ritual and is no hardship.

I frequently see people out on bikes that are wildly unequipped.  They're usually the cruiser-Captain Jack Sparrow types who are into riding for style rather than, um, riding.  The bikes they tend to ride aren't really into going around corners (or much else) and their riding gear follows suit.  If that's your kind of motorcycling then you're probably not reading this anyway.

If you're curious about sports psychology and how it might serve your bikecraft (assuming you see riding as a sport that demands practice and focus to improve your performance), there are a lot of links below on getting in the zone, peak performance and pre-game rituals.  Pre-ride rituals work the same way, giving you a chance to clear away the clutter and get your head on straight.

If you watch any motor racing you'll be aware of pre-race rituals that many riders adopt.  Valentino Rossi was famous for his pre-race contortions, and those are only the visible ones!  Doing this sort of thing looks eccentric, but you do what works for you in order to get yourself into a peak performance mindset.  The amazing things you see athletes do don't happen without mental preparation.  Riding your bike well won't happen without it either.  Don't get frustrated at putting your gear on, use that time to get yourself into the zone for your ride.

LINKS

Sports Psychology:

https://gladiatorguards.com/the-psychology-of-sports-equipment-how-does-gear-affect-your-team/

https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2011/oct/24/psychology-neuroscience

https://www.youthsportspsychology.com/youth_sports_psychology_blog/when-sports-kids-feel-equipment-is-safe-their-confidence-increases/

https://www.betterup.com/blog/sports-psychology

https://www.billyhansen.net/pregame-meditation

Getting in the Zone:

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/3-tricks-to-help-you-get-in-the-zone.html

https://www.peaksports.com/sports-psychology-blog/mindsets-to-help-athletes-perform-in-the-zone/

https://drstankovich.com/tips-for-athletes-looking-to-get-in-the-zone/

Peak Performance:

https://theathleteblog.com/peak-performance-mindset/

https://www.apa.org/education-career/guide/subfields/performance

Take advantage of pre-game routines:

Athletes stand a much better chance for getting in the zone when they make it a point to engage in a pre-game routine that allows them to think about the upcoming game, elevate their mood state, and lower their negative anxiety.

https://www.peaksports.com/sports-psychology-blog/how-a-pregame-routine-helps-athletes-succeed/

https://thevarsity.ca/2019/01/15/the-power-of-pregame-rituals/

Moto Specific:

https://www.motorcyclistonline.com/valentino-rossi-motogp-rituals-from-circuit-of-the-americas-austin/

https://www.motogp.com/en/news/2018/01/18/racing-together-superstition/248214

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/racing-pre-race-rituals-traditions-and-rules-2015.html

https://www.worldsbk.com/en/news/2022/Rider+rituals+how+do+WorldSBK+competitors+get+ready+for+a+race

https://www.asphaltandrubber.com/racing/motorcycle-ritual-motogp/

https://www.motosport.com/blog/motocross-superstitions-rituals-10-best

Happiness is: Mastery!

 Sometimes the on-bike cameras in MotoGP capture a magic moment.  In this case it's Sam Lowes knocking out a fastest lap in free practice before qualifying at the Doha GP in the spring of 2021.

Sam Lowes putting in a fastest lap at the Doha GP in the spring of 2021

Doing something difficult that you love well is one of the foundational ideas behind my own motorcycling.  The glint in Sam's eye there as he blasts down the straight approaching 300kms/hr is magical.  You don't get that kind of intensity when you're being leisurely, it only happens when you're using all of yourself to do something difficult well.

Wayne Gretzky's dad replied to a reporter who described Wayne as a natural by saying that
he wasn't a natural at all - what Wayne Gretzky did was be out every day, stick in hand,
playing hockey more than anyone else: his mastery was hard earned but based on his
love of the game.  You can see that love in the glint in Sam's eye!

WOMBO.ART: How AI generated art offers insight into motorcycle marketing

Wombo's a rocket ship!

I teach computer technology in my day job and I've watched the coming of artificial intelligence over the past decade with interest.  AI and machine learning is getting better at managing real world data like visual information.  Recently, a Canadian company named Wombo have created an abstract art creation tool that builds original images from some key words and a selected art style.  This AI art generator offers some interesting insights, especially in a world where branding is everything (such as in motorcycling).

Wombo (https://www.wombo.art/) is easy to play with - just throw some key words in and pick a style and you get an original piece of abstract art.  If you run the same information it comes out different each time too.

So, what to throw in first?  Valentino Rossi, of course - he's front and centre in many motorcyclist's minds this fall.  

The machine intelligence putting this together has scanned every image it could find of The Doctor.  It creates its own contextual understanding from that massive dataset.  It doesn't understand who Valentino is (though it might have scanned articles about him for keywords and have used that too).  These randomized but thematic pieces makes some interesting inferences.  Firstly, Valentino means high-vis yellow... and Yamaha blue.  This begs the question: "what were Yamaha thinking sending Valentino off to retire in teal and black?

Perhaps my favourite part of this piece is the obvious Doctor's Dangle happening.  The dangle was started by Valentino around 2005.  It's still a bit of a mystery how it makes you go faster, but I suspect it offers a bit of fine tuning on your balance under heavy breaking while also offering a bit more wind resistance to slow you down.  Wombo's algorithm won't know any of that, but it knows to associate the dangle with the man who invented it.  At least it did this time, every other time I tried a Rossi image it wasn't there.

The Rossi implications got me thinking about how a machine intelligence sees a brand... and what interesting conclusions you might draw from it.  Ducati got the first swing at it since they're such an iconic brand:

The colours certainly shout Ducati, and while the motorcycle isn't obvious, there is something about the lean that suggests two wheels.  If someone who'd never heard of Ducati were shown this, I suspect they'd consider it a sporting brand rather than something else like a heritage focused company.  I think they'd be happy with that.

I then threw Triumph into the mix:

Not sure what to make of that one!  Triumph's long history before its resurrection must make for interesting texture in the data.  This looks very art deco and feels like 50s and 60s advertising might have inspired it.  Once again, the idea that Triumph is tied to motorcycles is evident in the edges, especially the one middle right.

Just now I did two more "Triumph Motorcycle" renditions:

I still see bikes (but then I tend to see bikes).  There is a sense of speed in how the designs depict the abstract objects.  I can't help but wonder if the colour choices aren't from actual bikes.

Here's one for MotoGP:

I can almost see Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi in that.  It certainly contains a feeling of competition and speed.  Does the machine intelligence know who Marc and Valentino are?  Is this an echo from Sepang in 2015?  I wonder if that'd make anyone wince in MotoGP's marketing office.

Wombo's AI art generator is easy to get lost in.  The images seem to speak in surprising ways.  If you've got a minute, go play with it.

3d Scanning a Motorcycle

 Using a Structure Sensor I 3d scanned a 2010 Kawasaki Concours14 and cleaned it up in Meshmixer:

Kawasaki Concours14 3d Scan by timking17 on Sketchfab

The Structure Sensor is an old generation 1 device and isn't as high resolution as I'd like, but it gives you a general sense of shape and proportions.  Meshmixer is free from Autodesk and does a good job of fixing up voids and missing bits in the scan.

This is the model in case you'd like to mess around with it.

Structure.io came out with a higher resolution second generation model that they offer a discount on if you send in your old one.  It might be time to trade up.  My dream is eventually to get a 3d scanner that is accurate enough to scan and reproduce old motorcycle fairings that are out of production in order to produce millimetre accurate OEM replicas to keep old bikes on the road with new plastics via 3d printing accurate reproductions.

The next step would be to scan a customer's fairings and offer customized options based on 3d modelling.  It would be relatively easy to reproduce high quality copies of fairings with some interesting variations in design.  Alternate cooling, MotoGP style wings and even craziness like a motorcycle fairing redesigned with dragon scales of made out of feathers are well within the realm of 3d modelling/3dprinting.

The customized fairing/3d printing direction hasn't been explored yet.  Accurate 3d modelling would also allow a micro-manufacturing concern to reproduce the old plastic bits that are wearing out on bikes from holders and brackets to dash pieces.  Because they're 3d modelled, this would eventually build a library of out-of-production parts that could keep a wide variety of bikes on the road.

I've been dreaming about this kind of digital forge/micromanufacturing company since 2015:  http://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2015/11/iihtm-digital-workshop.html

Disney's Big Hero Six garage is part of the inspiration:

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.

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.

Motorcycle Diaries: Win Your 2020 Dream Ride

Motorcycle Diaries is a website that shares rides from people from around the world.  I've posted a number of Ontario specific rides on there.  They currently have a 2020 Dream Ride contest going on until April 30th, so here's my pitch.

My Moto-Bio:

I didn't come to motorcycling until later in life. When I was very young, maybe six years old?  I was at my grandparent's house in Sheringham, Norfolk in England one spring Saturday morning in 1975 when a group of vintage vehicles passed by on what was probably a rally.  I was the little blond kid standing on the railings by the side of the road waving at them as they thundered by, and many of them made a point of smiling and waving back, including a guy on a Triumph Speed Twin.  It was one of those flashbulb moments you never forget.  Nothing looked cooler than that bike and rider thrumming through the receding sea mist in the cool morning air.

Years later after immigrating to Canada, I was finally old enough to start considering driving and I immediately gravitated towards motorcycles, but my mother was strangely insistent that I not do that.   Even though we weren't well off my parents dug deep to help get me a car instead.  I got deep into cars owning a wide variety of vehicles, learning how to repair them and even pursuing performance driving courses and cart racing while living in Japan, but that bike itch was always there.

After my mum's suicide I discovered that my great aunt, with whom she shared a name, was an avid rider who was killed in a motorcycle accident a few years before I was born.  I also discovered that my mum's dad, who I was very close with growing up in Norfolk, was also an avid motorcyclist up until the death of his sister, which must have rocked the family since no one had even mentioned her to me.  I've never understood how an accident like that (an army truck accidentally pulled out into her, killing her instantly) warranted this kind of silence, but my mum's side of the family has always been... interesting.

Despite being a major part of the previous generation's lives, motorcycling had evidently became a taboo subject that left me ignorant to a deleted great aunt who I now feel a great affinity for and a love of my granddad's, who I thought I knew well.

I've been riding now since 2014 and I'm on my seventh bike.  I've taken multiple advanced off road training courses and done some long, international trips, including a trip to the last MotoGP race at Indianapolis that had us ripping down the back straight of the historic Brick Yard on our own bikes - mine being an $800 field find I'd restored in my garage.

I've made a point of expanding my familiarity with different bikes by renting them and riding in places ranging from Pacific tsunami zones to the Superstition Mountains in Arizona, usually with my son on the back.  We've had some great adventures.  I've also made a point of becoming mechanically proficient with motorcycles, having just finished my latest restoration.

That's my bio.  Here's the dream ride:

In discovering my family history around motorcycling I also connected my grandfather's rather incredible Second World War tour of duty to riding where, among other things, he served in the RAF's motorbike stunt team.

Bill served as an MP in the RAF and travelled with the British Expeditionary Force to France in 1939 in order to repel the oncoming Nazi war machine.  When it all went wrong, Bill ended up trapped in occupied France for a number of weeks after Dunkirk before eventually finding his way back to the UK just in time to catch planes that fell out of the sky during the Battle of Britain.  He then went on to fight in Africa for several years, but it's his time in France during the 'Phoney War' and once the disastrous Battle of France began with the allied retreat that is the basis for my dream ride.

After some exhaustive research I discovered Bill's path through France from the autumn of 1939 to the spring of 1940.  My dream ride would be to follow in my granddad's footsteps on a period motorcycle through Northern France in the springtime, just as Bill did.




From letters to my grandmother and military records, I discovered that Bill was attached to RAF Squadron 73 who operated across Normandy and up to near the Belgian border over the winter of the Phoney War before being chased south under fire around Paris and through Ruaudin and Saint Nazaire before he finally found a boat back to Plymouth out of Brest, nearly two months after Dunkirk.  In the process he failed to get to the Lancastria with the rest of his squadron, the majority of whom died on it as it was sunk by dive bombers in Saint-Nazaire.

Being able to follow Bill's chaotic retreat with his squadron through France while finding evidence of the great conflict and seeing things he saw between moments of terror and heartache, and doing it on an RAF Norton H16 or a period Triumph Speed Twin would be a heart wrenching and mind blowing experience that would connect me back to a forgotten piece of family history on a number of levels.

What a dream ride that would be.

MotoGP Technology and Motorcycle Dynamics

Neil Spalding's MotoGP Technology is a dense read.  I got it in September and I'm still only two thirds of the way through.  I read a bit, then chase down details so I make sure I've got the concepts understood.  This approach isn't very efficient, but it is thorough, and I've got bugger all else to do motorcycle wise over this long, cold, Canadian winter.

I've been an avid watcher of MotoGP for seven years now, including riding down to the last Indianapolis MotoGP race in 2015, but this book has made me literate in the mechanics of Grand Prix bike racing in a way that I never was before.

I've also spent a fair amount of time coming to terms with motorcycle dynamics and especially how these bizarre machines move around corners.  From watching Keith Code and reading Twist of the Wrist 2, I've tried to understand the inputs I need to make to control a bike effectively.  Spalding speaks with great intensity about how the technical side of MotoGP serves that sense of feel when building a prototype for a specific rider.

After all the team histories that kick off the book, Spalding goes after the various technical tricks that make a GP bike move like a jet plane, at least in the hands of the maestros.  The chapter I just read was on reverse rotating crankshafts, which led to a look at the complex gyroscopic effects happening on these extreme machines.  Spalding suggested looking up Eric Laithwaite and gyroscopic procession, which led me to this:

As Professor Laithwaite describes it, the spinning weight already has a path it wants to follow, he simple lets it follow it.  In doing so, what was suddenly a difficult to lift weight becomes effortless.  There are a lot of gyroscopic forces happening on a motorcycle in motion, especially at MotoGP speeds, and Spalding focuses on this in the later chapters of the book.

Curiously, considering it's 2020 and we have computer technology that can accurately model complex physics, it's apparent in the book that the physics happening on a motorcycle in extreme conditions are more a matter of educated conjecture than known fact.  Our best guesses are still what drives our understanding of the complexities of motorcycle dynamics, which is an incredible thing to realize.  How many people can say their favourite sport isn't fully understood by science?


Neil Spalding's MotoGP Technology is super current (it just got updated in the summer), written by an expert with decades of experience and insider knowledge, and delves deep not only into recent MotoGP technical history, but also into the physics that this technology is up against.  If you're interested in taking your understanding of one of the most extreme sports on earth to the next level, MotoGP Technology will help you get there.

With mysterious physics happening underneath them, what do MotoGP riders do?  They drift 250+ horsepower prototype racing machines... with their elbows AND knees on the deck!  MotoGP Technology will take you a step closer to wrapping your head around this genius, and the technology that enables it.

The Great Escape

This time of year always feels like Groundhog Day - go to  work, go to sleep, wake up, do it again.  It becomes so repetitive that it leaks into your mind, filling your thoughts so there is little room for anything else.  This year it's amplified by the negativity surrounding my work.  All that combined with no riding for dark months on end and it's hard not to get jammed.

If I time it right I can sneak out of Ontario on an above zero, dry road day.  You can still find double digital daily highs in Cincinatti and south.  A plugged in electric kit bonzai ride to Cinci and I'm out of the snowbelt.  From there it's a less ragged ride south to New Orleans.  From Cinci I'd angle over to Memphis and follow the Mississipi down to the Big Easy...

After reading books like Todd Blubaugh's Too Far Gone and watching Austin Vince Mondo Enduro the planet, I've often wondered what it would be like to get lost on the road.  Once out of the snowbelt, I'd be in no rush to be somewhere.  Without that very Western time fixation, I wouldn't have to get wound up over deadlines.

If I'm not fixated on a destination the daily goals might not be that linear.  With local knowledge I'd hope to find things off the beaten path as I meander...

Off the top of my head, I'd leave New Orleans along the Gulf, visit Austin and then ride the Twisted Sisters in Texas Hill Country.  Austin's also the home of the only North American MotoGP race, so if I timed my return with the race, I could be passing back through Austin on the way home in early April and catch Marc and the rest of the aliens doing their thing.  The goal on the way south would be to get familiar with Austin's weirdness for the return stop.

After wandering Texas I'd take a run up to the Very Large Array in New Mexico and do my best Jodi Foster immitation.  New Mexico and Arizona have a pile of strange sites to see, so the wandering would get intense.  Norman Reedus did a Ride episode in New Mexico that does a good job of showing what's on hand out there.

Even that far south the mountains can also catch you out with northern temperatures as we found out a couple of years ago in the Superstition Mountains just outside of Phoenix in early January, so not rushing and timing your rides is important when at altitude.  There are pile of old western towns and ruins in the US South West, along with some astonishing pieces of engineering.  Meandering from photo opportunity to photo opportunity would be a nice way to ease into this slow motion ride.

Tuscon is home of the Aeroplane Boneyard where thousands of retired air force planes sit in the desert.   A wander around there at sunset would be a glorious thing.  I've done the Phoenix area a couple of times and travelled from the north end of Arizona from Las Vegas, but haven't travelled as far south as Tuscon.  From there I'd head across to Yuma, another famous western US location, before diving south into the Baja Penninsula.  A desert riding tour would be a pretty cool way of seeing Baja.

Mexico is a whole other world.  Most riding-the-Americas types blitz through it looking for a fast route south,but Mexico (with a final lunge into Belize) is where I'd wrap up this great escape from the never ending Canadian winter.  Some crystal caves, Mesoamerican pyramids and Belize beaches during the deep freeze and then working my way back up to Austin for early April...

Seeing the Ozarks and the Tail of the Dragon during the weeks after the race would be a nice way to wind up this great escape, getting back to the frozen north just as it's not frozen anymore.