Welcome to my insanity!

I'm back in the classroom again and teaching English for the first time in more than a year.  I took a senior essentials English class mainly because few people want to teach it (teachers like to teach people like themselves), and it fit my schedule.  Essentials English is just as it sounds.  These are weak English students who are getting what they need to graduate and get out into the workplace, they aren't post-secondary bound and tend to find school pointless.

The trick with students this bullied and indifferent to the school system is getting them to read and write at all.  Rather than drag them into a text book or make them watch the department copy of Dead Poets Society in order to prompt some writing, I thought I'd introduce them to my insanity.  In a week where we're all getting to know each other it helps if students see what you're into.  Showing your hobbies and interests is a good way to have them get to know you.  If they get excited about the idea of planning a trip and it prompts them to write, it's a many birds with one stone situation.

With some support, students quickly
got into planning a trip.  28 days,
unlimited budget!

The plan was pretty straightforward: you've got four weeks (28 days) starting next Monday.  Assume you've got an unlimited budget for a road trip (gotta travel on the ground).  Where would you go?  What would you do?  On the second day I gave them some pointers on Google Maps and some planning tools like a calendar and how to make notes online and they were off.  At the moment it looks like I've got pages of writing from students who generally don't.  The research they've been doing also lets me diagnose their reading level.

Needless to say, I bravely volunteered to present first.  It doesn't feel like homework when you enjoy doing it, and mine was obviously going to be a motorcycle trip.  I probably could have gone more bonkers on bike choice, but I have a sentimental attachment and some practical necessities that prompted my choice.  Rather than go for the South American adventure, I decided to focus on The States, which has tons to offer, especially if you aren't sweating the budget.

Norman Reedus' RIDE gave me an idea of where I'd like to go, the question was, could I get to the locations in the show and back home in 28 days?

Here's what I'm presenting:

I presented this to the class two days before it was due.  Seeing an example helps and gave me a chance to explain my own process in putting together the trip (deciding on a vehicle, breaking the trip into sections, etc).

That photo I doctored of a VFR800 a
couple of years ago came in handy!

Another side benefit of something like this rather than a boiler plate reading and writing diagnostic is that is gives students a lot of control over the direction of their writing, which means I get to learn what they're into, which helps me remember who each person is as well as offering me relevant subjects I can insert into future projects.

I'm hoping they surprise themselves with the results.  If I catch some of them in the future staring wistfully at Google Maps instead of playing pointless FLASH games I'll know that they've been bitten by the travel bug too!

It's a lot to try and pull off in 28 days, but when the budget is unlimited, I want more miles!

Into the Rockies ASAP, then down the coast, across the mountains again, and then up the Appalachians home.

Yellowstone!  Riding over a mega-volcano.

Death Valley and across the South West to the Twisted Sisters on the way to the Big Easy.

Back north in the Smokey Mountains and Appalachians.

I was thinking maybe an H2R or RC213 in a trailer, but then that meant driving a truck and trailer all over the place.
Better to be on two wheels all the time, and on the descendant of my first bike crush.

Saturday Morning

I've been fighting a cold all week and haven't been out on two wheels since the rally.  On top of that and with the build up to school I've been putting together a computer lab all day every day.  Teaching is a good gig, but there are no down days once it starts and the change in pace from summer to fall is a big step.  Going from off to 100% all the time takes a good clutch.

I woke up Saturday morning to crisp 10°C air and a flawless blue sky.  For the first time in days I hadn't woken up with a crushing sinus headache so I did the one thing that always makes me happy even when not feeling that well and stressing over work (teaching anxiety dreams are always a good time), I went for a ride.

The hills of Erin, just outside of Hillsburgh

Max wasn't up yet or I would have asked my trusty pillion to come along.  I threw a single pannier on the Tiger and disappeared into the morning mist.  The temperature was cool, but I like it like that.  No wind, empty roads and a happy Tiger.

The ride over to Belfountain took me through Erin and Cataract and onto the Niagara Escarpment, where the roads get bendy.  It isn't much, but it got me loosened up for the post-coffee ride.

I pulled in to Higher Ground Coffee Co on a Saturday of the Labour Day long weekend at about 8:30 in the morning.  In a couple of hours this place would be a hive of activity, but now it had a couple of early risers drinking a hot beverage and quietly reading; it was mercifully empty of loud talking spandexies going on about how hard what they just did was.

After a hot cup of very well made coffee that warmed me up and getting the Holtom's bakery order from the family just waking up back in Elora, I got back on the Tiger and went for a philosophical ride up and down The Forks of the Credit.  It's only 7kms of bendy elevation changes, but beggars can't be choosy in Southern Ontario.

Sometimes I feel like really attacking the corners, but this quiet Saturday morning I was in a contemplative mood and was going for smoothness.  Strangely, this made me faster than when attacking.  There is a real sense of Zen when you sort out corners properly on a motorbike.

Back in Belfountain I turned off the video on the phone and headed over to Erin.  Holtom's was in full swing, having opened half an hour before.  The lone pannier was filled with fresh bread and bakery treats and I rode back to Elora, feeling at one with the world.

I didn't have any fancy media devices with me, only my phone, so I hung it over the windshield and got this!

Lobo Loco: The Birds & The Bees Rally

You couldn't possibly hit them all,
so route selection is key.

It's a sleepy, summer, Saturday morning in Elmira.  The few locals that are already up are walking dogs and taking it slow, but the clock has just ticked over to 8am and we've begun our first long distance motorcycle rally.  We fill up, get a receipt showing our start time and place and text to the rally lead that we've started.  We rode over to Elmira to start because this is a target rich environment with over 1500 points on tap.

How did we get here?  My buddy Jeff met Wolfe Bonham, the creator of this rally, at Lawrence Hacking's Overland Adventure and they became friends on Facebook.  When Wolfe announced the rally on there Jeff asked if I wanted to give it a go and a rally team was born!  A week before the event you get a rally book pdf emailed to you with various locations in it.  You've only got eight hours to connect as many dots as you can and it would be impossible to hit all of them, so you've got to be crafty and find the best route from where you are to where the rally ends in Brantford.

The theme of this rally was birds and bees, so locations had some kind of connection to that idea and included everything from apiaries to bird statues.  Since neither of us enjoy urban riding on hot summer days, we plotted a route that would take us cross country and out to the shores of Huron before looping back around to Brantford.  Being new, we were afraid we'd bite off more than we could chew; we did anyway despite reducing our route goals half a dozen times.

The morning clipped along as we knocked out 1600 points in Elmira before 8:30am and were in Lucan by mid-morning.  Things started to go sideways when we had to navigate miles of sandy cottage roads before eventually getting to Kettle Point on Lake Huron.  Turning around from there at noon we were getting tired and the sun was relentless.  One of our key goals was to try and get to a bee beard happening at Clovermead Adventure Farm near Aylmer.  This only had a twenty minute window and was worth big bonus points.  We caught a few more locations before hopping on the 401 and pushing to Clovermead, making it (thanks to a very helpful gate keeper) in the nick of time.  Our cunning plan was to use the 401 as a pressure valve if we ran out of time, and it was already doing the job.

The bee beard was brilliant, as was Clovermead in general.  A rally like this shows you all sorts of local spots you’d otherwise have no idea about.  I was thinking about this as we got out to the bikes only to be told by Google maps that we were an hour away from the finish line with an hour to go!  Perhaps the bee beard was a trap!  We’d been tired but adrenaline kicked in again, the race to the finish was on!  We got back to the 401 and flew on down the 403 elated that we'd made the bee beard bonus but anxious about getting to the finish.  The traffic light coming off the highway felt like it was red for an hour!  We pulled into King's Buffet parking lot, already full of motorcycles of all shapes and sizes, at 3:56pm; that's tight!

Staggering into the dimness of the restaurant I felt sun-blind.  We drank lots of water while we wrote out a clean copy of our rally sheet that had to show times and odometer readings for each stop along with a photograph showing us and our rally flags in each location.  A rally volunteer then checked off each photo making sure that it fulfilled the criteria.  Most people hadn't eaten during the day so the all you can eat buffet went down well while we handed in scores and had our photos checked.

Our goal was to not embarrass ourselves at our first rally so we were hoping for a mid-pack result.  When the numbers finally came in we were 17th & 18th out of 34 finishers.  To top it off Jeff won most miles covered and I won the most bee related points trophy (thanks bee beard!).

The camaraderie of the riders is infectious at the end of an event like this.  There are no class distinctions between types of bikes and this rally had everything from big Harleys and the latest BMW adventure bikes to a 200cc Yamaha TW200 (which he took over the Burlington Skyway!).  Tales of daring do were shared and the overall feel was one of a celebration. Everyone there felt like they'd achieved something difficult and there was a real glow to the competitors, though that might have been sunburn.  

Everyone cheered and clapped as trophies went out for everything from the person who got most lost to the top scorers.  Riders were awarded for smallest bike, 2-up and most efficient route as well as a raft of other prizes.  The top riders scored almost double the points we did, showing real navigation and riding mojo.  Afterwards lots of handshakes and names were exchanged and a lot of new friends were made.  Revitalized after a big buffet dinner and all that good cheer, Jeff and I saddled up and waved to everyone as we  rode into a welcome evening rain.  I was only an hour away from home, but Jeff, after already riding almost 600kms, was going to put another 200kms on going to his cottage in Kincardine; that guy’s a machine!

Wolfe Bonham, the creator of this rally, is keen to put on more.  As he said in the introduction to the inaugural Birds & Bees Rally, if you're interested in doing more than just riding to a coffee shop and would like to discover new and interesting locations, long distance rallying might be just what you're looking for. I, for one, prefer to ride with purpose, and this certainly gives you one.  You can make this as hard or as easy as you'd like and the sense of satisfaction you get at the end is infectious.  We're already aiming for a possible October Hallowe'en themed ride that's in the works, maybe with a slightly shorter route this time.  Hope to see you there!

Think this sounds like a good time? Keep October 15th open, there is another!

The rally website: http://lobolocorallies.ca

Want to sign up for October?  It's HERE!

Photos From the Rally (anything with a rally flag in it was actually used for the rally)...

Our first stop 500 feet down the road from the gas station we filled up at.
By 4pm we were over 500kms covered, but we also went further than anyone else.

I had no idea this was on the way to Stratford.  I intend to go back and have lunch!

Ya gotta hit a lotta apiaries to win top bee keeper!

How to hold a rally flag down at a windy big bird on the Avon in Stratford - no swans out yet though, so no swan bonus :(

A welcome sign to a town starting with B!  100 points!  The grass was all trampled down around the sign, we weren't the first.

The closest I got to a bee beard.

Another spot I'd like to return to.  Some prime objects d'art for the garage in there!

The last stop before our final highway bombing run to the Brantford finish line.

One of only a couple of stops that were biological rather than rally targets.  Jeff's Super10 and my Tiger were flawless.

The difference between these patches and others you might see is that these patches denote
hardcore motorcycling skills over astonishing distances and times.

The good cheer was infectious after the rally.  It didn't matter what you rode, only that you rode it.

Wolfe Bonham, the author of the inaugural Lobo Loco Birds & Bees Long Distance Rally.

Jeff never says no to free gas!  We plotted the longest route, but we spent very little time looking at traffic lights.

Iron horses of many colours - you'll find everything from the RTW adventure bike to big cruisers and tiny nakeds on a long distance rally.

He's been everywhere man, he's been everywhere.

After riding hundreds of kilometres during the rally, everyone saddled up for the last ride home (or to a hotel - a number of riders travelled up from The States to participate, including one who did an 800 mile ride the day before to get there!).

From tiny Yamaha WT200s and KTM 390s to 1600+cc cruisers... there is no 'right bike' for a long distance rally.

We all rode off into the twilight as rain started to fall lightly between lightning strikes.  A suitably dramatic finish to an epic day.

We bit off more than we can chew, but still made it in with four whole minutes to spare!

It now has pride of place next to the wine rack, and has left me looking forward to future rallies.

The Inaugural Lobo Loco Birds & Bees Summer Rally Final Results

Jeff does more burn outs than me, so he got longest route.

We were aiming for mid-pack.  It doesn't get more mid-pack than 17/18 out of 34 finishers.

https://goo.gl/maps/b2y9jWfa3oN2
https://goo.gl/photos/zYV2dJz5aViRUK298
https://rides.jasonjonas.com/riderList.php?rcid=0&id=438
http://wolfe35.wixsite.com/lobolocorallies/results

Whimsical Tigers

On our recent cross-Ontario ride we were stopped a number of times by people who were curious about the Tiger.  This is an eye catching, obviously modern looking bike with a Triumph logo, it prompted questions.  If they see a new 'classic' Triumph, most of the general public think it's actually a classic.  They wouldn't recognize the difference between fuel injection and carburetors even if it's advertised on the bike, they just see an old machine.

Colourful Triumphs of yore.
The Naughties were neon!

The confusion of a new-looking Triumph (even though it's 13 years old), and what they thought a Triumph should be isn't too surprising, and I'm happy to fill them in on the triumphant return of the brand (it's a good story), but it makes me question the modern bike colours and styles.

When we went to get the Tiger, 11 year old Max's eyes bulged out of his head and I knew we had a winner.  Who makes a Lucifer orange tiger with stripes?  Triumph in 2003, that's who.  When they weren't churning out violently orange Tigers, they were putting out a wild assortment of colours.  Of course, this was before Ewan & Charlie jumped on their austere Bayerische Motoren Werkes R1200s and reset the aesthetic paradigm for adventure motorcycles.

Why so serious?
That muted blue is as close as you get
to colour on a new Tiger.  Other choices
include military green or grey.  A purposeful
look is what sells  adventure bikes  nowadays...
and don't forget to dress like a starship trooper!

Nowadays everything has to appear relentlessly purposeful and ridden by people who look like they've just landed on an alien planet.  Whimsy and fun are replaced by bikes that look like they come from Army surplus, and riders who just got decommissioned from the special forces.  No wonder people were eager to walk up and start a conversation with the guy and his son on their brilliantly orange Tiger that looks like it just popped out of Winnie the Pooh.  The public wants to be curious about motorcycles, but a lot of motorcyclists seem determined to make themselves as unapproachable as possible, and manufacturers have to cater to that attitude in order to sell.

Besides paint options there is also the issue of styling.  I find the compound curves and organic look of our 955i Tiger very engaging.  Whomever was designing Triumphs in the early Naughties did it pretty much exactly the same way I would have.  Since then Triumph, along with most other brands, have been chasing a more chiselled, hard edged look.  Lamborghini did a stealth fighter aesthetic after the Diablo with crisp, folded edges and it seems to have spread.  Between the muted colours, sharp edged styling and attitude driven rider styles, it's little wonder that our whimsical Tiger had people approaching us.

I realize manufacturers have got to build to the tastes of the day, but I'm hoping there are a group of motorcyclists out there who aren't so serious and miss those fantastic styles and colours.  If there are, there is hope that my whimsical Tiger won't be so exceptional in the future.

LINKS

Even when they're blue, they're
mostly  black.

https://rideapart.com/articles/what-the-color-of-your-motorcycle-says-about-you
Black motorcycles are dead sexy. No, really. Researchers at the University of Kentucky (March, 2011) found that in 36% of crashes involving a driver’s failure to observe a motorcycle and then turning into its path involved black motorcycles.

Army green, ready to attack
those adventures!

Looks like whimsical colours can keep you alive!  It might be time to bring back peppermint green and neon puce!

http://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/new-bikes/2013/june/jun0413-triumph-releases-new-colours-and-a-sprint-gt-special-edition/
As the years go by, the colours get more and more muted.

I like my Tigers Tigger-like...

Triumph has a great sense of humour, just not with adventure bikes (those are very serious).

Emissions & Where We Hide Them

Ah, the wisdom of the internet...

This article on how motorcycles might be less green than you think was shared by Zero motorcycles online.  A number of people underneath the article posted responses that had little to do with the article and more to do with a general hatred of motorcycles.  The loud pipe crowd seems to raised the ire of the general public quiet effectively.  Thanks for that.

I'd heard about the Mythbuster motorcycle pollution test mentioned in the article previously, and had seen annoyed responses pointing out how unfair it was.  I felt obliged to put something up that wasn't just angry motorcycle ranting.

"The Mythbusters they refer to compared a 1990s family sedan to a 1990s Honda super bike. A fairer comparison would have been an 90's Corvette vs. the Honda super bike (vehicles with similar performance and intent), but then it wouldn't have been close. The other comparisons were equally unfair.  It seemed to be the result of what they had handy, and one of the mythbusters was a sports bike guy, so that's what they used.

If you think hybrids are the magic bullet you should look into how current battery technology is created and retired, it isn't pretty.  An accurate accounting of the e-waste from hybrid production and operation overshadows their minimal pollution output - you're basically showing a green face to what is a very polluting industrial process. That hybrid vehicles are utterly tedious and heavy because they carry redundant power trains is yet another problem; heavy things are never efficient.

The idea that some bike owners remove pollution gear for performance is no less true for four wheelers - except when the idiot on my street straight pipes his massive Dodge pickup you can actually see the hole he's making in the sky.  Meanwhile I'll keep getting 50+mpg out of my Triumph Tiger."

After that I started poking around to try and get a feel for just how magically ecological electric vehicles are.  It turns out lithium based batteries are nasty, both to create and to recycle:

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2012/03/30/why-hybrids-and-evs-dont-help-solve-the-energy-conundrum/
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/hold-smugness-tesla-might-just-worse-environment-know/
http://transweb.sjsu.edu/project/1137.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lithium-ion-batteries-hybrid-electric-vehicle-recycling/
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/10/what-happens-to-electric-car-batteries-when-the-car-is-retired/index.htm
https://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/graphics/2015-04-28-carbon-emissions-from-electricity-generation-for-the-top-ten-producer.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714000037
http://www.mai.org.my/ver1/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1934:recycling-the-hybrid-battery-packs&catid=42:global-auto-news&Itemid=165

"A Prius battery begins life in a dirty nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario. This mine has caused enough damage to the surrounding area to be called a “dead zone.” There is no natural life of any sort for miles around. NASA used that area to test its Moon rovers because the area resembles its craggy surface. Acid rain from the toxins of the mine killed all the plant life in the area and washed away the hillsides. All of this sounds positively wonderful, but don’t worry, it gets better. These battery components are then shipped to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. After that, they make their way to China to be turned into nickel foam of sorts. Finally, the batteries make their way to Japan to be put into the cars, which are then shipped all around the world to happy Prius buyers who are anxious to drive their new hybrid."

"EVs that depend on coal for their electricity are actually 17 percent to 27 percent worse than diesel or gas engines. That is especially bad for the United States, because we derive close to 45 percent of our electricity from coal. In states like Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, that number is much closer to 100 percent."

"The initial production of the vehicle and the batteries together make up something like 40 percent of the total carbon footprint of an EV – nearly double that of an equivalent gasoline-powered vehicle."

We live in a time of compromise, but thinking that you've somehow solved the entire vehicular pollution thing by leaping into a hybrid or EV sourced from parts delivered by oil driven transport from all over the world and powered by whichever lowest hydro bidder your miserly government is supporting this week is a bit much.  The harder choice in the short term is to live with less, which no one is willing to do (that's probably what's driving hybrid/battery e-vehicle evangelism - a chance to bypass that choice).

I suspect that hydrogen fuel cells driving electrical motors are where we'll go next in personal transportation (though why that's only happening as a college project in motorcycling is a bit vexing).  Fortunately, Honda is doing something on the four wheeled front.  A super light weight hydrogen celled electrical vehicle bypasses the battery production nightmare, but then we aren't moving toward light weight, minimalist vehicles.  Would you want to drive a thousand pound hydrogen vehicle next to a massive SUV?  That would be as dangerous as riding a motorcycle!

While that's happening, advancements in nuclear engineering will hopefully drive us out into the solar system.  The outer planets are a virtually unlimited store of non carbon based fusion energy, we just have to get there and collect the fuel (which is rare on Earth).  If we took half of what we spend on military budgets world wide each year, we'd have an unlimited source of clean energy on tap within my lifetime.  Instead we just keep doing what we've always done, stumbling forward in ignorance driven by greed instead of driving for real global advances in sustainable energy production.

Of course, none of that matters to personal transportation if we can't find a better way to store electricity locally.  Chemical batteries are an eighteenth Century solution to a twenty-first century problem.  We really need to start advancing hydrogen fuel cells, kinetic storage and other non-chemical battery technologies.  A near perfect scenario would be using d-He3 fusion to produce hydrogen with no carbon footprint.  The hydrogen then works as an electrical generator in a fuel cell as it fuses with oxygen producing pure water.

A truly zero emissions vehicle with an abundant and
powerful fuel supply?  I'm dreaming of that future.

I have no doubt that the internal combustion engine's days are numbered and that the future is electrical.  Companies like Zero Motorcycles and even EVs like the Nissan Leaf are doing their part to improve electrical engine efficiency, but depending on globally sourced, polluting chemical battery technologies isn't the future.  One day I'll hop on my hydrogen fuel celled Zero Tsunami (because it produces only water, get it?) and zip off down the road knowing that I'm riding a vehicle that is truly sustainable.

Arguing between gasoline power and hybrid/EVs that depend on extremely polluting chemical battery technologies and fossil fuel driven electricity generation is like arguing whether your coal fed steam powered train is less polluting than my wood burning steam powered train - neither solve the problem, and one seems more about hiding it than fixing it.

***
Originally shared by Zero Motorcycles
Are motorcycles greener than cars? They are if you ride a Zero! Interesting discussion. Your thoughts?

Arguing on the internet, I should know better...
http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1105626_why-motorcycles-may-not-be-greener-than-cars-missing-emission-gear#comment-2845856393

I'm beginning to think that a few years ago a very smart MBA type walked into auto manufacturers and said the whole environmental thing can be resolved by moving the burning of fossil fuels out of sight of the general public.

The issue with climate change is that it's obvious to consumers that they are responsible! Every time they put gas in the car they're burning it. Simply move the carbon production out of sight and everything is good again, and you get a brave new legion of e-vehicle evangelists who will fight tooth and nail to ignore any evidence of this shift.

That your intermediate step is itself very environmentally damaging is easy to ignore. State that the batteries used in electric vehicles are very recyclable and everyone (especially your believers) will happily state that this is what is happening. Don't demand laws that require recycling, don't have any oversight over what happens to batteries when they're done.

With carbon emissions and the pollution from the new systems that hide it happily out of sight, the general public can get their pride on riding around in hybrid and electric vehicles and never once see the damage they are doing first hand. Problem solved!