Around the Bay: Part 4, the kit

900 kms in a day and a half led me to some consideration of the kit involved in this trip:

THE BIKE

First up would be the bike, in this case a Connie I picked up in a field late last summer for eight hundred bucks.

After a winter of repairs, it safetied in April and I've since put on almost two thousand miles with nary a complaint.  It starts at the touch of a button and feels much more substantial than the 650 Ninja I had before.  It also continues to surprise me with its athleticism.


As a long distance bike its comfortable seat and upright riding position (greatly aided by risers on the handle bars installed by the previous owner) make long rides very doable.  It'll manage about 40mpg in regular use and gets up into the mid-forties on the highway at a brisk pace, giving you well over 200 miles to a tank.

I miss the lightness of the Ninja (the Conours weighs over two hundred pounds more than the Ninja did), especially when I do something stupid like ride the Concours into deep sand, but it handles two up riding with ease and still wants to play on winding roads.  As a compromise it's a great piece of engineering that still has soul.  

RIDING GEAR

The Helmet

I picked up a Bell Revolver Evo Warp (!) helmet during the winter.  I tried it on my first trip of the year and it was AGONIZINGLY PAINFUL!  Since then I've had at the inside of it, removing the snap buttons from the padding around the temples.  Without the hard buttons pressing through the padding into the sides of my head like a torture device this helmet has suddenly become very wearable for long trips.  It managed the Georgian Bay run with no pain, though it is heavy and noisy wind-wise.  It looks a treat though.

The perfect helmet? Full face when
you need it, open when you don't.

I'm still looking for the perfect lid.  I enjoy the view and lack of claustrophobia in an open faced helmet, and the better ones seem to offer good wind protection too.  Weather-wise, a full face lid is usually quieter and keeps you warmer when needed.  What would be ideal is a helmet that converts from one to the other.

Jo Sinnott wears just such a helmet in Wild Camping, but those Roof Helmets are impossible to find on this side of the world.

The Jacket

I picked up a Teknic Motorcycle jacket at the North American Motorcycle Show in January from Two Wheel Motorsport.  My first jacket was a discount deal, the first thing that looked like it would do the job.

This Teknic jacket is next level in every way.  It breaths well in warm weather and keeps me remarkably warm when it isn't.  It was able to handle the twenty degree swing in temperatures on this trip with ease.  It's a bit disco, but I like it, and with my initials on it, I couldn't say no.

Too bad Teknic seems to have gone under.

The Gloves

I brought a long a pair of colder weather gloves but never used them.  Between the Concours' wind protection and the multiple talents of the gloves I brought, I never used them.

These leather mits from Leatherup.ca have far exceded any expectations.  They breath well, are warm in the cold and feel both sturdy and protective.  Other than some tired velcro on the wrists that still work, these gloves have been flawless.  I need a red pair to go with the new colour scheme.

The Boots

Another second generation purchase, these Alpinestars MX-1 boots were a second season buy to replace the discount boots I purchased to attend riding school.  Like the gloves, they manage a wide range of temperatures, especially on the well equipped Concours.

Unlike the cheap boots, I sometimes forget to change out of these when I get to work, they're that comfortable.  They did the whole Georgian Bay trip flawlessly.  The only time I'd worry about them is in rain, which I didn't face - they are vented.

The Pants

I brought along a pair of motorbike-specific jeans, but never used them (I intend to pack much lighter next time around).  The Macna pants I got last year but got too fat to fit into fit much better now, and I never took them off.

They look a bit spacey, but I like that.  They breath like shorts and still manage to provide excellent wind protection and remarkable warmth behind the Concours' fairing.  Best pants ever?  Maybe!  The armoured jeans stayed in the panier all weekend wasting space.  These Macna pants are one of the few pieces of kit I can offer no improvements on, they are ace!

The Luggage

The Concours comes equipped with a pair of panniers from the factory which I used for tools and tech on one side and rain gear and clothes on the other.  I generally never had to go into either.

When I first got the bike I got a Givi Blade B47 tail box.  In general use it stays on the back and is used to hold helmets and bits and pieces when I commute to work.  Like my previous Givi it has performed flawlessly.

New for this trip I picked up an Oxford X30 magnetic tank bag for less than half price thanks to Royal Distributing's tent sale in the spring.  What a fine piece of luggage this bag is!  On the ferry to Manitoulin I consolidated the book and camera bags I brought along into it and put them away in the panniers never to appear again (I plan to pack much more lightly next time around).

The Oxford worked as a backpack, camera bag and laptop case.  Fully expanded it carried all of those things and more with room to spare.  It was also nice to lay on when bombing down the highway when I wanted to get a couple of minutes out of the wind.  I'd highly recommend it.

***

Good kit can make all the difference, and what I had for this trip did the job so well I didn't need any of the backup I'd brought along.  After you've done a few trips I imagine you refine the kit until you've narrowed it down to just what you need and nothing more.

I'm still looking for the helmet I fall in love with.  I must have an oddly shaped head, but I live in hope.  I'm going to have to commit to a top tier helmet, but not until I'm sure it fits, and it can do everything I need it to.

Around The Bay: Part 3, highway riding

Espanola to Waubaushene, the long way around Georgian
Bay is just over 300kms of highway focus.

Circumnavigating Georgian Bay for the first time made me aware that I've never done this kind of mileage before.  I was wondering how I'd hold up on such a long ride.

Up on the Bruce Peninsula I faced strong headwinds that constantly knocked me about, and throughout the ride I faced temperatures from under ten to over thirty degrees Celsius.  None of that stressed me as much as the highway stint I did out of Espanola around Georgian Bay to Waubaushene.

Parked by French River, I prepare for the second leg of the long
highway ride south.

Just over three hundred kilometres of highway got started at about 9:30am.  Being on divided multi-lane highway on this bike for the first time was a novelty that wore off by Sudbury.  What faced me then was a long ride south with more traffic than I usually go looking for.

When I drive on the highway I strive for lane discipline.  I keep right except to pass and chastise myself if I fail to indicate a lane change, which almost never happens.  I'd consider myself a disciplined car driver and I prefer to make time and leave most of the confused/distracted types behind me.

In my first year of riding I had a moment when I was following a beige mini-van and realized I'm on a machine that could pass much more safely than I can in a heavier/slower/less manoeuvrable car (short of extremely exotic cars, any motorcycle is better at braking, accelerating and turning, and exotic motorcycles are better at that than exotic cars).  I passed the mini-van and put myself in empty road where I wasn't depending on the attention of button mashing smartphone zombies in cages.  The extremely defensive mindset of a competent motorbike rider who exploits the abilities of their vehicle to emphasize their own safety really appeals to me.  I've ridden that way since.

Out on the highway I was moving at speed, dealing with blustery winds and sore muscles from hundreds of miles travelled.  The gyroscopic nature of a bike's wheels means you don't have to worry about tipping over, but a bike still changes directions in a heartbeat.  At one point I stretched my neck by looking down at the tank and when I looked up I'd changed lanes, that'll get the adrenaline flowing.  Riding at highway speeds on a motorcycle demands constant vigilance.  You need to be looking far down the road and taking your eyes off the pavement for even a moment can produce some nasty surprises.  You're covering more than ninety feet per second at highway speeds.

It's taxing to be that focused for hours at a time on a machine that longs to change

direction.  When I pulled off the 400 in Waubaushene I was relieved to be off the highway but immediately got rewarded  by seeing my first Ninja H2 on the road at the intersection.  It's amazing how good something like highway riding feels when you stop doing it, but the moment you stop you immediately begin recharging your battery for the next time you're out there.  Doing difficult things well is one of the key rewards in riding, and getting myself from Espanola down to Midland by lunch time meant I could spend an easy afternoon tootling about along the white sand shores of Georgian Bay.

An added bonus from my highway stint?  The Concours typically gets about 38-40mpg in commuting/start stop riding, but that highway stint (which wasn't slow) got me my best ever mileage, 43mpg!  At that rate a fill-up gets you north of 230 miles if you're in top gear making progress.  And I don't think I've ever heard the big one litre four cylinder purr like it did as I punched a bug shaped hole through the air around Georgian Bay.

Around The Bay: Part 2, an Informed ride

Putting on the miles and building muscle memory.

A couple of recent articles informed my circumnavigation of Georgian Bay.

Bike magazine's resident lawyer had a great piece on the dangers of the over educated novice rider.  He made the poignant observation that people who haven't had a lot of seat time but have over-thought riding to the nth degree often have much nastier crashes than less trained but more experienced riders.  Sometimes the best thing to do is instinctively grab as much brake as you can instead of overthinking an impending disaster.  Perhaps riding is more of an art than a science, informed by experience, not training.

As a teacher I found this critical assessment of instruction over experience to be both interesting and probably accurate.  There is a lot of anxiety over motorcycle riding from the general public  I was determined to get some saddle time and learn the hard way rather than in theory.  The over-focus on training and gear tries to mitigate this fear, and it helps to a degree, but if fear is what drives you, I'd suggest that motorcycling isn't what you should be doing.

The second piece was Neil Graham's editorial in this month's Cycle Canada.  Neil is getting back to form after an agonizing winter back injury.  After everyone else had moved on Neil stayed out on track until it became kind of boring and he relaxed into the ride.  In his case it was track riding on the edge, but it still spoke to the teaching of muscle memory, something that became evident in the previous Bike piece as well.

On my way out of Southern Ontario I was intentionally trying to untense muscles, especially the ones I subconsciously tense when I'm riding.  Yoga probably helps with this, but I was able to sense and untense muscles in my legs and backside while riding.  Being loose and heavy on the bike allowed me to ride further without fatigue.  It also allowed me to respond to issues quickly and lightly.  Being able to free your mind from the demands of your body and put yourself into a state of relaxation also opens up a state of heightened awareness.

Riding into my driveway on Sunday afternoon I was exhausted but elated and felt like I was coming out of some deep meditation.  My mind was full of the 900 kms I'd seen, smelled and felt, and the soreness became something that I'd worked through; the second wind was a real endorphin rush.  After the three hundred plus kilometre stretch down the backside of Georgian Bay I suddenly found myself operating beyond the soreness of the long ride.  Coming off the very demanding highway ride to quiet back roads probably helped too.

If you're able to find a state of intense focus while performing a strenuous mental and physical activity like riding a motorcycle, you tend to be able to find that state much more easily when you're not on the bike and things are easier.  Being able to focus and perform while under duress makes entering that state of intense awareness in other circumstances that much easier.

I guess I found that moment beyond the thinking and training where I relaxed into the saddle and became the ride.  If long distance riding can do that, I suspect I'm eventually going to want to do the deed and get my iron butt.

Links

People who think they are invincible, then suddenly realize they aren't and quit
Is the person who ignores danger with delusions of invincibility brave, or stupid?
The kind of intelligent insight you expect from Quora
An insightful examination of what motorcycling is.
An idiotic infographic that focuses on the people who choose to ride more than riding
See the top link - deluded thrill seekers are a part of the motorcycle community, the stupid part.
Another idiotic infographic that focuses on obvious truth (doing dangerous things is dangerous!), but so is obesity, smoking and getting older
The safest thing to do is exercise in a rubber box, never take any risks in anything and kill yourself before you get old (getting old is going to kill you!)

Around The Bay: Part 1, to the north

Around the Bay in a day and a bit
860kms plus another 50 across the bay

I'm back after a day and a half marathon around Georgian Bay.  Just over 900kms including 50 on a ferry, and I'm beat!

I left at about 8am on Saturday morning and struck north west toward the Bruce Peninsula.  The farms were pretty in the morning sun but soon got pretty repetitive.  I find Southern Ontario quite tedious with few curves through never ending farm deserts, I was looking forward to getting up onto The Bruce and feeling like I wasn't local any more.

It was a cool, sunny morning and I stopped for coffee and a fill up at the Shell in Hanover.  Putting on a sweater I continued north when suddenly my otherwise rock-solid 21 year old Kawasaki Concours started hesitating at part throttle.  It was annoying but not trip destroying.  I immediately began to suspect that Hanover gasoline.

Soon enough I pulled into Wiarton, the gateway to the Bruce, and got myself a warm sausage roll and a very nice (not gas station) coffee at Luscious Bakery & Cafe on the main street; it's a great place to stop before riding onto the windy Bruce Peninsula.

Parked in Wiarton, the Luscious Cafe & Bakery is worth a stop!

I like 'em rough and ready

The Concours, not nearly so precious
with its kintsugi gold filled cracks...

Another idyllic night ride home this evening.  On the way in I saw an older Honda on the side of the road with a for-sale sign on it, so I made a point of stopping on the way home in the dark to have a look.

It's a 1974 Honda XL175.  It looks like the owner is asking almost two thousand dollars for it, which seems a bit precious.  I suppose this is officially a classic now, and with nostalgic Boomers wrestling with Hipsters to snap them up, a couple of grand may very well be possible.  It has less than three thousand miles on it and looks like it's been well loved.  

I think I'll save my money for something a bit less 'just so'.  I'm not interested in getting a dual sport bike so I can rub it with a diaper.  Having said that, Mars Orange sure is a striking colour!

For a 1974 (41 year old!) motorbike, it's obviously led a charmed life.
If you're suddenly in love, you can find it here

Around Georgian Bay

Everyone's busy this weekend so, and to quote Freddie Mercury, I'm going to take a long ride on my motorbike.  Time for my first circumnavigation of a Great Lake, I'll start small with Georgian Bay.  From Elora I'll strike north to Tobermory.  There is a 1:30 ferry to Manitoulin Island, that's the only must get to (gotta get there an hour before departure, so 12:30pm in Tobermory).

I'm aiming for Little Current to overnight.  We stopped there last summer and it seems a lovely spot to spend the night, and The Hawberry Motel looks the part.   That'll put me 340kms and a two hour ferry ride into an 873km circumnavigation.

Sunday morning I'm on the winding road up to Espanola and then over to Sudbury before the long ride south.  It might seem like a stretch but the ride south includes some time on the 400, so I'll get to see how the Concours manages highway riding while making some time down the other side of the bay.  Once I get back south of the Bay I'll cut over to the coast and follow it around before heading south out of Wasaga Beach for the final push home.

This ride is the longest I've yet done, and it also includes a ferry ride.  I'm pretty revved up about it!  Friday night will be the pre-flight checks then on the road Saturday morning.  My buddy Jeff has said he'll do the first leg with me up to Tobermory, so I'll also get to do some miles in formation.  Another box checked.

Here are the posts from the trip:
Part 1: To the North
Part 2: An informed ride
Part 3: Highway Miles
Part 4: The Kit
Part 5: Media from the Trip

The Concours is sorted and doing regular duty commuting me to work, time to stretch her legs...

LINKS

The Ferry

The Hawberry Motel

The Map

The Trip Itself

Motorcycle Handling & Chassis Design

Tony Foale's brilliant engineering manual, Motorcycle Handling & Chassis Design, gives you an inside, technical look at how motorbikes operate.  It also gives you some idea of just how precarious the act of piloting a motorcycle is.  Much is said about how free people feel when riding and the physics behind flying on two wheels makes it that much more magical.

That first time you roll on the throttle and your feet leave the ground not to come back down again for miles, you get that sensation of flight.  Your senses are alive on a motorbike as the world makes itself felt in many different ways.

The naked exposure you feel when riding is obvious.  What is less obvious are the hidden forces at work that allow you to do crazy things like hang sideways while cornering.

Anyone who has seen a racing motorcycle suddenly hit the ground can speak to how suddenly these balancing forces can fall out of sync.  Foale's book is full of helpful diagrams that clarify some pretty arcane physics.

Cornering on a bike is one of the most complex and misunderstood aspects of riding.  Keith Code does a good job of explaining this in Twist of the Wrist.  Foale's approach is more interested in the mechanics of the machine and how it handles the forces working on it.

From a rider's perspective, corning is a balancing act, but from the suspension's perspective things get a lot heavier when you're bending into a corner.

Compared to a car, motorcycles have very different dynamics that often surprise riders when they are testing the extremes of two wheeled dynamics.  Reading Foale's book (though he pitches pretty hard) is worth it even if you're only getting a sense of just how differently the 'integrated system' that is a motorcycle works.

Foale also gets into the geometry of the motorcycle.  From wheelbase and centre of gravity to more complex issues like how suspension height changes those fundamental forces.  Of course, in a corner a the suspension is severely compressed, changing the bike's responses in dramatic ways.  You get a real sense of how connected and complicated the physics of riding is after reading this book.

The copy I read was the 2002 version, but he still managed to work some of the newer computer based analysis of motorcycle physics.  Static pressure and its role on aerodynamics is a relatively new aspect of motorcycle theory, but Foale covers it.

You can find the latest version of this technical manual online from Foale's website, but you can get a good idea of what it's all about from Google Books.  I'm curious enough about changes and updates that I think I'm going to spring for the new PDF ebook.