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.
The in-law's cottage happens to be about 20 kms away from the bottom of the 507. I like the 507. It twists and turns through the Canadian Shield offering you bend after bend without the usual tedium of Southern Ontario roads. I lost myself riding down it the other day. Last week I was pondering how fear can creep in to your riding in extreme circumstances, like trying to ride through a GTA rush hour commute. This week I'm struggling with how the Canada Moto-Guide and Cycle Canada are portraying deaths on the 507, which is evidently a magnet for sportbike riders who have confused public roads with private race tracks. On the motorcyclists spectrum I tend toward the sportier end of things. I've owned Ninjas, sports-tourers, adventure and off-road bikes. The only thing that chased me away from sportbikes early in my riding career were the insane insurance rates and the fact that any modern motorcycle is already light years beyond most sports cars in terms of performance. My old Tiger goes 0-60 in under four seconds, or about as fast as many current top-end muscle and sports cars. To spend thousands more on insurance for a bike designed for a race-track just doesn't make a lot of sense, especially when you factor in the condition of Ontario roads.
If you missed the British MotoGP race at Silverstone last
weekend, do yourself a favour and look it up. From start
to finish it was spectacular.
Having said that, I've been a diehard MotoGP fan for the past six years. Watching riders develop and express their genius at the pinnacle of motorcycle racing is not only glorious to watch, but it has taught me a lot about riding dynamics, and I think it has improved my bike-craft. I totally get speed. Riding a bike always feels like a bit of a tight-rope walk, and being able to do it quickly and smoothly is a skill-set I highly value. Like so many things in motorcycling, balance seems to be key. Last week, among the idiotic commuters of the GTA, a frustrating number of whom were texting in their laps and half paying attention, I was unable to manage that danger and it led to a great deal of anxiety. Rather than give in to that fear or throw a blanket of bravado over it, I looked right at it and found a way to overcome it. Honesty with yourself is vital if you're actually interested in mastering your bikecraft. I came to the conclusion that you need to approach two wheels with a touch of swagger and arrogance when that fear rises up. This is done to moderate fear and give you back some rational control, especially when circumstances conspire against you. The problem with swagger and arrogance... and fear for that matter, is that it's easy to go too far, and so many people seem to. Emotionality seems to dictate so many aspects of motorcycling culture. From the arrogance of the ding-dongs in shorts and flip flops who tend to the extremes of the motorcycling spectrum (cruisers and sportbikes), to the ex-motorcyclists and haters who can only speak from fear, it's these extremes who seem to speak for the sport. I struggle with those emotionally driven extremes, but recently CMG seems intent on writing odes to them.
The CMG editorial news-letter this week makes much of not knowing why this rider died: “He knew the dangers, and he admitted to going fast,” says his partner, Lisa Downer. “He knew when, where, how – it was just one of those things. A lot of people think the way the curve was, there was a car (approaching him) that was just a little too far over the line and David had to compensate. By the time that car went around the bend, they wouldn’t even have known that David went off, because the sightline’s gone. Or it could have been an animal, or a bit of gravel. You just don’t know.”
There were no skid marks on the road. Like so many of our lost, no one will ever know why. Our lost? Here's a video by that same rider from the year before:
"...the helmet cam shows his speedometer. “A decent pace on the 507 in central Ontario, Canada,” he wrote in the description. “Typical Ontario roads, bumpy, keeping me in check.” His average speed on the near-deserted road was above 160 km/h, more than double the speed limit, and at one point it shows an indicated 199, where the digital display tops out. At such speeds on a public road, there’s little room for error." - little room for error?
With that on the internet, one wonders how he had his license the following year. You can come at this from 'it might have been an animal, or a car, or gravel', but I think I'm going to come at it from here: "David was an experienced rider who’d got back into motorcycling just three years ago; he was 52, but had put bikes on hold since his 30s when he went out west..."
That'll be over 170 kms/hr on rough pavement around blind corners next to a massive provincial park full of large mammals...
An 'experienced rider' who had been riding for three years, after a twenty year gap? And his first bike in twenty years was a World Super-bike winning Honda super sport? Whatever he was riding in the mid-eighties and early nineties certainly wasn't anything like that RC51. What his actual riding experience was is in question here, but rather than assign any responsibility to an inexperienced rider, we are speculating about animals, cars and gravel? I generally disagree with the speed kills angle that law enforcement likes to push. If that were the case all our astronauts would be dead. So would everyone who has ever ridden the Isle of Man TT. Speed doesn't kill, but how you manage it is vital. There is a time and a place. If you're intent on riding so beyond the realm of common sense on a public road, then I think you should take the next step and sort yourself out for track days, and then find an opportunity to race. In Ontario you have all sorts of options from Racer5's track day training to the Vintage Road Racing Association, where you can ride it hard and put it away wet in a place where you're not putting people's children playing in their front yard in mortal peril. If you've actually got some talent, you could find yourself considering CSBK. Surely there is a moral imperative involved in how and where you choose to ride? Surely we are ultimately responsible for our riding? Strangely, Mark's article, The Quick and the Dead, from 2017 has a much clearer idea of time and place when it comes to riding at these kinds of speeds. In this most recent news-letter we're at "it would be easy to dismiss David Rusk as just another speed freak, killed by his own excess". In 2017 he was quite reasonably stating: "If you’re going to speed, don’t ride faster than you can see and dress properly. And if you’re going to speed, do it on a track". I guess the new blameless recklessness sells better? There is a romantic fatalism implicit in how both CMG and Cycle Canada have framed these deaths that willfully ignores much of what caused this misery in the first place. Motorcycling is a dangerous activity. Doing it recklessly is neither brave, nor noble. Trying to dress it up in sainthood, or imaging blame when the cause if repeatedly slapping you in the face is neither productive nor beneficial to our sport. Up both ends of the motorcycling spectrum are riders who are all about the swagger. For those dick swingers this kind of it's-never-your-fault writing is like going to church. I get it. Writing for your audience is the key to enlarging it.
Last Sunday I did a few hundred kilometres picking up bodies of water for the Water is Life GT rally, with the 507 being the final run south to the cottage. The roads weren't exceptionally busy and I was able to fall into a rhythm on the 507 that reminded me of what a great road it is. As it unfolds in front of you, you can't guess where it's going to go next. Surrounded by the trees, rocks and lakes of the Shield, it's a gloriously Canadian landscape. I'm not dawdling when I ride. I prefer to not have traffic creeping up on me, I'm usually the one doing the passing (easy on a bike). The big Tiger fits me and the long suspension can handle the rough pavement, but I'm never over riding the limits of the bike where gravel on the road, an animal or other drivers dictate how my ride is going to end. The agility and size of a bike offer me opportunities that driving a car doesn't, but it doesn't mean I open the taps just because I can. Balance is key. There are times when a rider (or any road user) can be in the wrong place at the wrong time and no amount of skill will save you. For the riders (and anyone) who perishes like that, I have nothing but sympathy. They are the ones we should be reserving sainthood for. Not doing the things that you love, like being out in the wind on a bike, because of that possibility of being in the wrong place at the wrong time will neuter your quality of life, there are some things you can't control. I'm well aware of the dangers of riding, but I'm not going to throw a blanket of arrogance over them, and I'm certainly not going to describe recklessness as a virtue while hiding in delusions of blame. Doing a dangerous thing well has been a repeated theme on TMD, as has media's portrayal of riding. Having our own media trying to dress up poor decision making as victimization isn't flattering to motorcycling. If you can't be honest about your responsibilities when riding perhaps it's time to hang up your boots. If you don't, reality might do it for you.
As Vale says, "it's dangerous, not only for you, but for all the facking idiots in cars."
The garage is looking pretty spacious this weekend. The Concours sold yesterday so the Tiger is alone in the bike-cave for the first time. I ended up selling it on if I could sell it for what I bought it for, which I did. I owned it for five years, rescued it from retirement, doubled the mileage on it, had some great adventures riding around Georgian Bay and down to the last MotoGP event at Indianapolis in 2015. I was ready to go in 2016 when the Concours wouldn't start. With the Canadian motorcycling season agonizingly short I lost my patience, but then a Tiger appeared as if by magic and suddenly the Concours wasn't a necessity. It's hard to believe I've had the Tiger for three years already; it isn't going anywhere. With the money from the Concours set aside, I'm already considering my next project. I'm aiming for a bike that is significantly different from the Tiger, which is a great all purpose machine, but it's heavy; a lighter specialist is the goal. The guy I sold the Concours to already has one and half a dozen other bikes. Having that many bikes would be a handful, I've always been about a functional garage. Jeff, the motorcycle Jedi, has three very different bikes, that's the direction I'd like to go in. In a perfect world I'd have the Tiger, a sports bike and a light dual sport. A generalist, a tarmac specialist and an off-road specialist. Time to peruse the Ontario used bike market.
There's a dual sport in need of some mechanical sympathy. These typically go for twice what he's asking. Parts are accessible and not particularly expensive. There is a complete, virtually new head on ebay for about $760CAD. If I could get the purchasing price down to $2200, I could have a virtually new Honda dualsport for three grand that would be worth twice that. The worrying bit is this guy managed to blow a Honda engine, which are famous for being bulletproof. If it has been abused (the dent in the tank suggests it's been dropped, though it's a dualsport that goes off road, so I shouldn't read too much into that) then the engine could have more major damage and require big end cranks and such, which could make this a money hole. The fact that it runs is promising and it does sound like a top end issue - but I'm guessing it's a head replacement or major remachining situation. It's an air cooled single cylinder, so after the complexity of the water cooled, four cylinder Concours, this'd be lawn mower simple. I'm tempted.
I've always had a soft spot for VFR Interceptors, and this lovely example is up for sale at a pretty reasonable price considering how much work has gone into it. Hugo, the editor of BIKE Magazine recently got one of these and went on and on about how bullet proof they were, so even an older machine like this would be readily usable. With this RC-36-2, last gen version you get a VFR at the pinnacle of its Honda evolution. It's technically considered a sport-touring bike, so you don't get caned in Ontario's ridiculous insurance system, and it weighs less than 200 kilos, which would make it the lightest road bike (ignoring the KLX250, which wasn't really a road bike) I've ever owned. If I could get it for $3500, I'd be able to ride it for years. Rather than depend singularly on the now 16 year old Tiger, I could split duties between a generalist and a road specialist. This too is tempting. It'd be nice to have both, the XR as a project and the VFR as an immediate gratification machine; they would make for a very diverse garage. I think I could have both on the road for just over six grand CAD.
A few years ago we rode down to the last Indianapolis MotoGP. It was a great few days in Indiana and it was pretty close to us. At a push the ride there could be done in a day (we took two because I had my ten year old son with me). This year's only North American MotoGP is in Texas and happens the weekend before Easter. How few days could I do it in? It just happens that Austin is a Bun Burner Gold away, just over 1500 miles south west of here. I watched a couple of fellow motorcyclists from the Lobo Loco long distance rallies pull a Bun Burner Gold off in the fall. If I could get to COTA in 24 hours I'd be a rockstar! If I left on Thursday evening I'd be down there Friday evening or a bit later if I missed it (BBGs depend a lot on construction and delays to pull off). Either way I'd be up Saturday morning with some kind of Iron Butt ride (if I missed the BBG there are half a dozen other, easier ones that I could still aim for) under my belt to catch qualifying. Early to bed Saturday night and then another day at the Circuit of the Americas on Sunday for the races. After a good dinner I'd be back on the road again making tracks north to home. If I missed the Bun Burner Gold on the way down, I could attempt it again on the way back! Either doing a Sunday night to Monday night blitz to get the gold, or breaking it into two long days and going for a plain old Bun Burner 1500 (1500 miles over 36 hours). In a perfect world I'd do the BBG on the way down, enjoy the weekend and rest up again before getting a Bun Burner 1500 on the way back, riding Sunday night after the race as far as I can, having a sleep and then getting up and finishing the ride within 36 hours. If I'm back Monday night I would have only missed two days of work while getting to watch a MotoGP live and picking up multiple iron butts! That'd shake the rust off after a long, cold, Canadian winter. Does two Iron Butt rides around a weekend of MotoGP sound extreme? From the dark depths of February after weeks and weeks out of the saddle, it sounds like a brilliant idea! When you're trapped under a polar vortex and some truly grim, neverending Canadian winter, the thought of trying to cross much of North America twice in five days on two wheels scratches an itch.
Slow motion through the esses at Indianapolis...
COTA has all sorts of pretty views for video and photography...
Since starting the 360° camera-on-a-motorcycle experiment last year I've tried dozens of different locations and angles. My favourite shots to date are ones that emphasize the speed and feeling of exhilaration I get while riding. A bike in a straight line is a lovely thing with the wind and feeling of openness all around you, but when you lean into a corner the magic is suddenly amplified. That thrill of leaning into a corner is something most people never get to experience.
The first weekend I ever rode a bike on tarmac (at the training course at Conestoga College in Kitchener) way back in 2013 I discovered this magic while working through a beginner's gymkhana style obstacle course. After shooting through the cones a few times at faster and faster speeds I said to the instructor, "I could do that all day!" He just laughed. I wasn't kidding, I could happily spend all day leaning a motorbike into corners. Each time I do it the complexity of what's going on is fascinating as hundreds of pounds of machine and me lean out into space, all suspended on two tiny tire contact patches. It's when I'm most likely to forget where I end and the bike begins. Lean angle in corners is an artform that many motorcyclists (but not bikers so much) practice. Being able to use your tire effectively means you aren't the proud owner of chicken strips. Underused tires tend to show a lack of experience and an unwillingness to explore lean. There are exceptions (knobblies on off road focused tires, anything made in North America) that aren't about lean angle on tarmac, but it is a way to analyze your cornering comfort level.
Mounting the 360° camera on the bike is one of the only ways I've been able to catch the feeling of this complex dynamic in an intimate way. MotoGP makes extensive use of 360 camera technology for on-bike photography and video, but they tend to be rear mounted. Using a front mount means you get to see the rider's face in the shot. It would be fascinating to watch the rider/machine interface from a 360 camera mounted out front of the bike while various riders do their thing on track.
I've got good road tires (Michelin Pilots) and a tall adventure bike, so it's not exactly ideal for exploring lean, though I think I do OK considering the weight and shape of the bike - the Tiger is surprisingly frisky in the corners. But I'd love to get my hands on a sports bike and see just how more dynamic and exciting the on-bike 360° photography could be on a machine built solely for tarmac.
Previously I've thought about various ways I could do a four years pay over five years and then take a sabbatical year off work and still get paid. From circumnavigating North America to tracing my grandfather's route through occupied France in 1940 during World War Two, there are a lot of interesting ways I could take a year off with an epic motorcycle ride included.
One of the first motorcycle travel ideas I had was to do the Pan-American trip from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina, from the top to the bottom of the Americas. This ride is an even more extreme version of the North American circumnavigation as the mileage is mega; over 56,000kms! At a 400km a day average that works out to 141 days or over 20 weeks making miles every day. With a day off every week that adds another 3 weeks to the trip. Fitting it into 24 weeks would mean some rest days and some extra time to cover the border crossings and rougher sections of the trip. Another way to look at this might be from a Nick Sanders angle. He did Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia and back again in an astonishing 46 days. That's 23,464kms x 2, so 46,928kms in 46 days, or an astonishing 1020kms average per day, including stops for flights over the Darien Gap between Columbia and Panama two times. That approach (I imagine) gets pretty psychedelic and I might not really get the sense that I'm anywhere doing it that way, but there are certainly ways to tighten up the schedule and move with more purpose if needed. The actual number of days needed if I ran it over 24 weeks would be 168. The best time to hit Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean coast of Alaska is obviously during the long days of the northern summer. If I left home mid-July I'd be up Prudhoe way eighteen days later at 400kms/day. If I push on tarmac I should be able to get up there by the beginning of August and then begin the long ride south.
A good tie-up in South America would be to follow a bit of the Dakar Rally - this year running in Peru from January 6th to 17th. After that it would be down south to the tip of South America in their late summer before heading back north. The 2019 MotoGP season lands in Texas the weekend of April 12-14, making a nice stop before the final leg home in the spring. Two weeks before that they are in Argentina. Trying to connect the two races overland would be an interesting challenge. It's just over six thousand kilometres north to Cartegena, Columbia and the boat around the Darien Gap, or just over seven thousand heading through the Amazon. Then another forty-five hundred kilometres through Central America to Texas for the next race. In a straight run that'd be almost eleven thousand kilometres across thirteen countries in eleven days if I managed to get to Texas for the pre-qualifying. That'd be a Nick Sanders worthy feat.
The PanAmerican Trip Tip to Toe and back again in sections:
56,357kms. @400kms/day average that's 141 days continuously on the road. Leave July, Prudhoe Bay by end of July, Dakar in January in Peru, Ushuaia in February, Circuit de Rio Hondo for the MotoGP race at the end of March then a hard 11 days north through the Amazon to Austin Texas for the next race in mid-April. Home by the end of April. And I'd still have May-August to write about what happened and publish.
After the first year on two wheels I began thinking about more challenging motorcycle projects that would diversify my experience. Starting in year two I did my first away motorcycle ride, renting scooters and then a BMW around the southern end of Vancouver Island - that led to my first article being published in Motorcycle Mojo and gave me a lot of insight into variations in motorcycling. In addition to pushing my riding experience in daring new directions (like riding two-up with my son on an unfamiliar bike on one of the most challenging roads in Canada), I also began looking for a bike that needed more than just regular maintenance to operate... a bike that needed me.
I discovered just such a thing toward the end of that riding season, a long dormant Kawasaki Concours that we had to cut out of the grass it was sitting in. Something that old (twenty plus years at the time) had a lot of perished rubber on it, and when I finally got it up to temperature it also had a sizable oil leak. The winter was spent getting a new oil cooler and lines, replacing a lot of rubber bits and otherwise getting this old warrior back on its feet again. The Concours not only got me moving mechanically, but it also offered a real blank slate, something I've since realized is only available on well used bikes (unless you're loaded and like to pull apart new things). I'd enjoyed the aesthetic restoration of the Ninja and was looking forward to doing the same thing on the Concours. Getting an old bike and making it not only usable but unique looking has been one of the highlights of my motorcycling career to date, and a trend I intend to continue. It's something that my current too-nice Tiger doesn't offer me. The Kintsugi Concours became my go-to ride and the Ninja became my first sold bike. It was difficult to part with something I'd developed such an emotional bond with. I can understand why the people with the space and means hang on to every bike they buy. Having beaten the selling a bike emotional roller coaster, I immediately went looking for another, but it took a while to finally find the right thing, and in the meantime the old Concours suddenly became less than dependable. A KLX250 that couldn't do 100km/hr with me on it made me feel like I was overly exposed and under-powered while riding on the road, though it was a deft hand off it and gave me my first real off road experiences. I held on to it over the winter and when there was finally a break in the never ending Canadian snow I thought this is the moment the KLX will shine, on dirty, just thawed roads - except it wouldn't start. It was a lot easier to sell because I'd never fallen in love with it. Getting $400 more than I bought it for didn't hurt either. Later that summer I made my next motorcycle buying error and stumbled into an old Yamaha XS1100 sitting on the side of the road. I ignored the three strikes against it (non-runner with no ownership being sold by a gormless kid) and purchased it anyway; I won't do that again. I got lucky on the ownership - it was within a whisker of being a write-off and had a long and difficult history (I was the thirteenth owner!), but I was able to sell it on after sorting the ownership and just broke even. In the process I stumbled onto a balancing act I hadn't considered before.
I love riding older bikes I wrench myself, but they aren't always ready to ride. When the otherwise dependable Concours wasn't and my only other choice was an ancient Yamaha I'd only just freed up the brakes and carbs on, I found myself with nothing to ride as the cruelly short Canadian motorcycling season began. I'd gambled too much on being able to keep the old bikes rolling. With riding days so valuable in the Great White North, that wasn't a viable approach. I still had most of the money from the Ninja sitting aside and my wise wife said to just focus on getting something newer and more dependable. Maintaining that balance means having a riding ready bike and a project bike, and not messing up that equation. To further complicate things, I'm a big guy so I needed a bike that fit, and my son was getting bigger every year and loved coming along, so I needed a bike that would fit us both. Being the onerous person I am, I didn't do the obvious thing and buy a late model Japanese touring bike that runs like clockwork. My daily rider suddenly popped up on Kijiji but it ended up being the most emotionally driven purchase yet. Instead of a sensible five year old, low mileage Kayamonduki, I got bitten by a thirteen year old Tiger. It was European, over budget, too old and with too many miles, but the owner was a young professional (nuclear operator!) and from the UK and we had a good, straight up chat about the bike. I was honest about my position (the Tiger was out of my league but I loved it and wanted it), and he was straight up with his position (he was about to take it in to trade for a new Triumph at the dealership and even my lower offer was much better than he would have gotten on trade in). I ended up feeling like I stole the bike for over a grand less than he was asking and he got more for it than he otherwise would have. It was an emotionally driven purchase with a lot of rational oversight. With all that good karma the Tiger has turned out to be a special thing. I was only the third owner. In thirteen years it had averaged less than 4000kms/year, and on two years the first owner had ridden it out to Calgary and back (seven thousand plus kilometres each time). It had been power commandered (that had never come up in the purchasing discussions), indicating that the original owner had really fawned over this bike. The guy I bought it off wasn't very mechanically minded and it hadn't had much in the way of regular maintenance, but then he hadn't used it much. Within a couple of weeks I'd gotten it safetied, done all the maintenance and given it a good tuning - it has run like a top ever since.
It's an older, European bike, but fuel injection and a resurgent Triumph Motorcycles Co. using the latest manufacturing techniques means it's not a bonkers choice as a daily rider. On the second year of ownership it fired right up after hibernating under a blanket in the garage, and it did again this year. I've fixed some dodgy, plastic fuel connectors on the tank, changed the tires and done the fork oil and other fluids along with the chain, but other than the fuel fittings, it's all been regular maintenance. The Tiger has been such a treat and it's such a rare thing (I've only ever seen one other) that I can't see myself letting it go. Meanwhile the Concours became the project bike, but since I wasn't depending on it, the project took on new dimensions. I stripped the old fairing off and ended up with a muscle bike like no other. I've experienced some drift with this project and I think when I get it to a riding level I'll sell it with the aim to make my money back on it (shouldn't be too hard considering what I got it for). I think the drift comes from biting off more than I can chew as far as tools I have on hand and time and a comfortable place to work. If had welding gear handy and could do the fabrication I needed, I think I'd still be be pushing for an edgy completion to the project which has taken longer and has been more involved than I initially planned. The heart is willing but I'm too tight money and time-wise to chase this big of a thing. In the winter it hurts to go out in the garage and work on it and in the summer I'd rather be out riding. Future projects might be more of a Shed and Buried/SPQR approach where I can get a bike sorted and back on its feet again, have some fun with it aesthetically and then move it on without losing any money on it. Making enough on each one to keep me in tools and pay for the process would be the dream.
The sophomore years of motorcycling have been about pushing into more challenging riding opportunities. From riding Arizona (another one that got published), to going to the last MotoGP race at Indianapolis to circumnavigating Great Lakes and Georgian Bay, I've gotten more and more daring and gone further afield with each season. These years have also been about dusting off and expanding my technical skills and have seen me do everything from oil coolers to complete carburetor rebuilds. The garage has gotten better and better in the process, though it's still bloody cold in the winter. If I could find a solar powered heating system for the space I'd be a happy man. If I had a heated, insulated work space about twice the size, I'd be even happier. The other side of the coin is riding opportunities. Living somewhere where you can't ride for 3+ months of the year isn't conducive to building saddle experience. I'd be happier if I lived in an all year riding opportunity - or at least if I had access to such places over the winter here.
20 hours might have gotten me able to manage the basic operations of a motorcycle - the Conestoga course was a weekend with about 4 hours on bikes each day, then some very tentative rides in the neighborhood got me to 20 hours.
At five years I feel like I've put a lot of time into improving my rider's craft. I've also spent a lot of energy getting the rust off my mechanical skills. What I most wish for the next five years is to maintain my hunger for more motorcycle experiences. I'd like to try a wider range of different bikes and types of riding and find a way to dig even deeper into mechanics. This year I'm hoping to take an off-road training course. In the future I'd love to find the money and time to take track riding, if not to pursue racing then at least to explore riding dynamics at the extreme end in a controlled environment. If you put ten thousand hours into something you've developed a degree of expertise in it. In each season I've tried to beat ten thousand kilometres of riding (and succeeded) before the snows fall. Those fifty plus thousand kilometres have probably had me in the saddle for over a thousand hours and I've easily spent that again in the garage doing repairs and maintenance. If feel like my motorcycle apprenticeship is well underway, I just need to keep finding ways to feed that expertise.
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.
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.
