A Week After New Years

Norman makes the PCH look pretty magical.
At nearly a thousand bucks a day for this Canadian,
it would have to be.

Strange timing means I've got the week off after New Year's Day this year.  That means flying is a less expensive possibility, so what motorcycling trip might I do with that time?  Norman Reedus did the PCH last year, that'd be nice.  If my son and I were to go, what would that cost?

1)  Drive to Detroit would be a bit of gas, border & hotel money, pack only bike gear and a single change of clothes.  Parking in Detroit would cost about $170 for the week including a night in a hotel (the flight leaves at 6am).

$250 for the first day and night (trip, hotel & parking).  And that's just to stay in Detroit!

2) Flights from Detroit to LAX are going for about $675.  Throw in another $50 to eat bad airport food.

Land in LAX, cab over to EagleRider (10 miles) $30.  EagleRider renting a BMW sport tourer for a week costs over $1400US ($1900 Canadian) if you want decent insurance coverage in the liability driven US.

Figure $300US a day in food, gas and hotels (travelling fairly minimally), and our eight days and nine nights on ground should run us about $2400US ($3250 Canadian).

The flight back is another $574 plus expenses...

Once back it's another four hour slog over the bridge and back into Ontario through potentially lousy winter weather.  Figure in an extra $100 for gas, tolls and eating to get home.

A thousand miles up and down the Pacific Coast Highway
would be a nice way to end the holiday break, but
at seven grand it's a salty trip.

I might have the time free, but this cheap-as-I'll-go trip to California for just seven days (plus one in Detroit) would run to almost seven grand.  It's a nice bike, but the price difference between that and a smaller, less able bike to carry us and our stuff around isn't that much (maybe thirty bucks a day less).  This is assuming $100 a night-ish hotels, so nothing special and nothing near anything good.  Other than the riding there isn't much left to visit anything with either.

Renting a bike is expensive.  Flying is expensive even if it isn't a peak times and even if you drive to Detroit first.  Hotels aren't cheap, and the whole thing jumps up by 32% when I pay for it with the Canadian money I earn.

I guess I won't be doing that the week after New Years.

Stop and take in the moment...

Last year I was stuck behind a large group of cruisers and wondered out loud on the Concours Owners Group what the etiquette is for passing them.  It's hard to pass a big group because of their shear size, and breaking up their formation by having to pull back in during a pass seems rude.  In addition to upsetting several bikers (a word I don't use to describe myself), I got some good advice from motorcyclists who have been doing it for a long time.  The best advice came from a fellow who said that if he comes across a mobile chicane like that he just pulls over has a smoke and ponders things.  He then gets back onto an empty road in a contemplative state of mind.  Why so be in such a rush?

I liked his Zen approach though it isn't in my nature to do it.  The other day on my short commute into work I was riding behind an ancient Muppet in an SUV who was barely doing 40 in a 60 zone.  He wasn't going to work, but he'd elected to hop into his mobile castle and putter down the road in front of as many people as he could.  With a bike your power to weight ratio is stratospheric.  It's (very) easy to make a pass, but rather than feed the speed monster I tried pulling over.  It helped that it was an absolutely stunning October morning with golden sun streaming through ground fog...

I stopped, turned off the bike, and sat on the side of the road for a few minutes soaking it up.  Once you drop the gotta-pass thing the urge quickly fades away.  In the stillness of that sunrise I became aware of what was pushing me.  Part of me was already thinking through all the things I had to do when I got to work and anxiety to get it all done was taking root without me noticing it, hence the urge to blow off traffic.  Your subconscious can be a pain in the ass that way, infecting what was otherwise a beautiful morning ride in to work with an unnecessary sense of urgency.  It's nothing that a moment of reflection can't beat back though.  How often have you reacted to stress or pressure by passing it on to something else?  I transfer moods like this all the time.

I took a couple of more minutes and photographed the sunrise...

Back on the bike I continued in to work, getting there five minutes later than I otherwise would have but in a mellow state of mind.  I actually caught up with the Muppet and his train of frustrated commuters in the next town over, so my five minute sojourn with the rising sun didn't make me any later than I would have been anyway.

This Zen break was easy because nature was putting on a show, but it's a habit I'd like to try and get into.  Nurturing a calmer mindset results in deeper thoughts, and time to ruminate is one of the reasons I love riding a motorcycle so much.  The time to reflect doesn't hurt either.  If I can sense when worldly pressures are infecting my mindset on the bike I'll become a better rider.

ZG1K: Customization, Inspiration & Aesthetics

Graphical thoughts on the ZG1K customization...

I'm still working through the proportions of a naked Concours.  It isn't a delicate device...

In spite of the colourful nature of the bike, it's a muscular heavyweight.

Inspirations for this build revolve around 80's sport bikes and naked streetfighters.  I grew up in the '80s and have a thing for fully faired race bikes with blocky rear ends.  The big, bulky Concours' tank lends itself to a strong, balanced back end.

A box shaped rear fairing working off and 80's race bike vibe combined with a minimalist cafe racer look

The paint's already coming off the tank.  I need to figure out how to make a rough 3d outline of the rear body work (cardboard, wood, thin metal?) in order to begin getting an accurate sense of how the back end will look.  If I can get handier with 3d editing software I'll 3d print a few various prototypes first (maybe scan it with cardboard panels in place).

The front fairing will be a minimal street-fighter type of thing.  I wanted to go with a bikini fairing, but it's a bit too delicate for the big shoulders of the Concours.  Monkeying around in Photoshop has gotten me this far:

But this is more of a sculpting thing than a pen and paper thing.  I need to make some cardboard outlines and see what feels right in 3d (Close Encounters style).

The Mike Tyson/heavyweight feel of the Concours means I'm thinking more melee fighter than I am lightweight and delicate.

ZG1K: A Customized Kawasaki Concours

I've stripped down the Concours to the bare bones.  From there I intend to build it back out into a cafe-racer/naked streetfighter.  A barebones ZG1000 Concours looks pretty butch:

A high intensity LED headlight
with built in indicators.

ZG1K Stipped Model  -  Click on it and drag to change views
by timking17
on Sketchfab

The brown seat will sync with
a crimson stripe.  Were money
less of an issue I'd get it custom
upholstered to run the stripe all
the way through.

The back end is going to get tidied up and topped with a cafe style brown leather seat.  I'm also researching LED light systems that will be all but invisible under the seat until they light up.

The front end is going to get a basic/minimalist light cover and a light that has indicators built in for a clean look our front (no indicator storks poking out).  The front fairing and light will be mounted to the forks.

Stripping on the Ducati Monster is
a thing of beauty.

As for paint colours, I'd like to try and take the tank back to metal and then have a crimson stripe running over the minimal front fairing, along the tank and across the minimal rear body work.  An asymmetrical design with a thick centre strip and a thinner stripe off to the right is what I'm currently thinking, though I'll see what works as the bike comes back together.  If the tank is too rough I'll redo it red with a gold stripe that matches the wheels.  Now that I say that, it might be what happens anyway.

I'm going to use the Structure Sensor scans to map out body work in 3d.  I'm also going to make use of a Dremel 3d printer to print out scale replicas of different body configurations.  These are some screen grabs of the 3d scan (which you can see at the top).

The massive twin exhausts might get modified, but right now I'm enjoying the big-guns look they have, so I'll probably be keeping it.  They help visually balance a bike that looks otherwise top heavy with that massive gas tank.

First go at a logo - I think I'm going to have to find the Kawasaki Heavy Industries
logo for this heavyweight streetfighter.

All Else Is Washed Away

I'm feeling listless and under
the weather, I know what'll
cheer me up...

A rough week at work discovering just how untrustworthy people can be had gotten me down.  On top of that (or perhaps because of it), I was fighting an imminent cold.  If you're reading this then you probably already know it's better in the wind, so I went looking for some.

I was originally thinking of pushing up to Beaver Valley, but it's a long slog across tedious Southwestern Ontario to get to any good bits, I wanted to get to twisty roads sooner.  The most direct route to the Niagara escarpment, one of the few places not tediously flat around here, is through Orangeville.

I fired the Tiger up and aimed it north east.  The air was cool, in the high teens Celsius, and the traffic light.  I dispatched appliance coloured (and shaped) minivans as I came upon them and quickly made my way over to The Escarpment.

Bypassing Orangeville, I rode past what must have been a forty pound beaver lying in the middle of the road.  This thing was big enough to knock someone off a bike or damage the underside of a car, but the Orangeville police officer fifty yards up the road running a a radar trap was more interested in revenue streams than road safety.  Stay classy Orangeville popo.

The only way to make a sign like that better is to
make the number on it bigger!

Hockley Road seldom has you up on the crown of your tire.  I was alone going east but was passed by several groups of bikes coming the other way from the GTA.  After the never ending flatness it was nice to drop down into the valley and lean.  Leaning on a motorbike is as close as you'll ever come to flying.  It feels more like flying than flying does.

When I'm riding all of the negative things my mind impulsively chews away on are washed away in the wind.  It's partly to do with the complexity of piloting a motorcycle.  You're deeply involved in the progress of the machine; hands, feet and whole body balance, so your mind is focused away from those nagging thoughts.  It's also partly to do with the sensory flow you experience.  The wind, the smell, the temperature, the sound and sights are powerful as they accelerate around you.  You are busy, involved, and the world demands to be experienced when you ride a motorbike.

Home made turkey pot pie
warmed me up.

After sixty plus kilometres of twisty roads I was ready for a break.  My hands were actually getting cold since I'd been spending my time weaving through shady, leafy green valleys.  Coming back down River Road, I stopped at the Terra Nova Public House for lunch.  It isn't cheap, but the food is locally sourced and well prepared.  Sitting in the sun on the patio watching the bikes go by is a nice way to spend an hour on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

With some hot food inside me, I was ready to leave these lovely roads and begin the long ride back into the agricultural desert in which I live.  I took my time heading toward Horning's Mills (where I once thought of buying a house), getting the corners right that I hadn't on the way in.  There is one particularly twisty section that has a decreasing radius corner that catches you out if you come in too hot.  On the way in I'd overcooked it and had to brake, on the way out it was a smooth, throttle only proposition.

There are a couple of more big sweepers passing north over Shelbourne on 17 through the wind mill fields, but after that things get pretty straight.  By this point I was loose and feelin' good.  On the straights I found curves in the form of mobile chicanes, and passed them.  It felt like I was in a time machine, I was home almost before I left.  Motorcycles can make even straight roads exciting if you approach them with gusto.

Once back the cold closed in and the nagging doubts returned.  If I could ride a bike forever, I'd always get to sit in that meditative saddle.  When I watch around the world trips on the TV I think the best part would be getting to be out in the wind every day, always seeing something different, having the world wash over you.  No wonder Ted Simon and others come back from their trips hearing the sound of one hand clapping.



Some spontaneous art from the ride...

Motorcycle Media: short films, documentaries & time travel on a Friday night

Friday night had me home alone in the first time in forever.  After a rough week at work I was wiped and on the verge of a cold, so it was a low impact night.  I went looking for some escapist media and stumbled upon EXIF's Top 6 Best Motorcycle Films.  I'd seen Shinya Kimura in The Greasy Hands Preachers, but I'd never seen the film that set him out as a motorcycle media icon, it's just shy of three minutes of perfection:

Shinya Kimura: Chabott Engineering


Another one I hadn't seen before that does a great job of capturing a northern motorcyclist's winter dilemma is Waiting out the Winter.  It's a short video, but it sets the mood of tinkering while we wait for the snow to recede in the frozen north wonderfully:

Waiting Out The Winter

WAITING OUT WINTER from Andrew David Watson on Vimeo.

Those short films made a great appetizer, but I was looking for something a bit more long form.  If you're ever looking to pass a lazy hour or two in another time and place, Cycles South will take you to the early 1970s.  Like the '70s themselves, Cycles South looses the plot half way through, but discovers itself again before the end.  If you're delicate and can't handle the very non-politically correct sensibilities of the early 1970s, don't watch this, but if you can let it all go and are willing to exist in another time, Cycles South makes for a psychedelic road trip (man).  The whole thing is on Youtube in 15 minute segments, they connected together automatically with a few seconds of delay between, mercifully commercial free.

Google/Youtube lost its mind after I watched the series in order and started shooting motorcycle themed video at me from all directions.  Next up was Fifty Years of Kicks, a twenty minute documentary about two off road motorcyclists well into their seventies.  I wasn't initially hooked, but the quality of filming and the narrative they were building had me after a few minutes.  There is something about watching old guys fight the clock that is heroic.  It makes me want to celebrate any small victories they have before the inevitable happens.

Looking for something on the history of motorcycles I came across The History Channel's documentary on Youtube.  It's a bit wiz-bang flashy and over edited, but you get some Jay Leno, and the jet powered Y2K.  When they went from that to some Dodge Viper powered thing I began to think this was less about motorcycles and more about bored rich people.  I didn't get to the end of this one.

Have you ever wished you had an old, British uncle with an encyclopedic knowledge of motorbikes who would natter on about them indefinitely?  I was afraid Classic British Motorbikes: 100 Years of Motorcycling was going to be an advertisement for a dealership in England, but the big green Triumph Tiger in the opening moments kept me playing it.  This video takes place sometime in the early two thousands (hence my model of Tiger sitting in front of the dealership).  The idea was to invite in classic bikes and celebrate 100 years of motorbiking in Britain.  The camera work is amateur, as is the interviewing, but you'll still pick up a lot of history from the owners and the knowledgeable interviewer.

I watched until he interviewed the owner of the dealership who seemed entirely disinterested in the whole thing and was apparently running the family business because of his dad's love of bikes.  He made a stark contrast to the enthusiasm of every previous interview.  If you're interested in British bikes and especially their history, you'll enjoy this one (with a bit of fast forwarding).

It's amazing what motorcycle media you can dig up on the internet with a bit of luck.

Naked Connie

I put the Concours up for sale for a very reasonable $1200 and immediately got a bunch of low ball offers.  After a week of talking to cheap idiots I pulled it back off Kijiji, this bike deserves better than that.  I sympathize with people who can't afford the hobby, but I never agreed to support that charity.

Jeff's recent adventures with getting an old bike to modify into a cafe racer got me thinking about what a naked Concours might look like.  The ZG1000 is based on the Ninja sport bike (one of the reasons it's so agile), so as a donor bike it has a lot going for it.  I wasn't the first to wonder...

It shows how clean  you can make the engine and wiring without all the plastic covers, not radical enough though.

That's more like it!  The logo is a bit heavy handed though.  The rear seat frame is a bolt on piece.  Shortening the bike doesn't even require cutting.  The front end on this is also what I'm aiming for.

Love the paint on the gas tank.  It makes me look forward to stripping mine.  No airbox and exposed air filters are sweet.

Stripped down but looks half finished.

Front and rear fenders are sweet.  Suspended seat and tail look a bit awkward though.

I'm interested in a single seat saddle, not so much for a bobber look, but for a historical connection.

I stripped off the front fairings, mirrors and windshield.  That has to be about twenty pounds right there.  At the back I removed the pannier frames and the rear tail light assembly.  That'll be another easy ten pounds worth of odds and ends.  By the time I'm done, this bike will be an easy 100lbs lighter.

The entire rear frame that holds the panniers, seat and rear light assembly is bolted on under the seat.  Removing it seems pretty straightforward.  With the rear frame gone, the Concours starts to look more like a streetfighter than a sport tourer.  With the back end gone it was easy to remove the rear tire and get into the shaft drive which has been leaking.


While I was stripping things down I removed the bar risers, which lowered the controls a couple of inches and further lightened the bike.  With all the plastic and back end metal work off, the bike has already undergone a dramatic diet.  People tend to pick smaller, lighter bikes to cafe, but as I'm neither small nor light, the Concours makes for a big, muscly and quiet unique power cafe racer project.


With everything in the process of a strip down, I was easily able to get the back wheel off and uncover the shaft drive axle.  It's been leaking, but some research on CoG (the Concours Owners Group, which I just re-upped my membership on) suggested that a leaking shaft drive can be the result of over filling, which it was.  I'm going to clean it all up, fill it to spec and then keep an eye on it before I go all crazy tearing it down (which looks like a hassle because you've got to heat parts to get them apart).


I'm hanging on to the Concours because of some magic moments on it.  The sound of that engine at full song is exceptional.  The thought of giving it away after all the work done grates on my nerves as well, especially to some tool who is just looking for a handout (one guy, after trying to talk it down $500 then complained about the state of the fairing - screw him).  Had I sold the Connie I'd have gone looking for a bike I could strip down and customize.  Hanging on to the Concours means I'm doing that with a low mileage bike full of new parts.  One that I'm already really familiar with.

Since I'm not depending on the Concours to be my everything bike any more it can become a blank canvas, which is what I was looking for in the first place.  A stripped down, restyled Concours isn't going to be a Concours any more, but it is going to exploit that big Ninja engine and nimble handling it already had.  Best of all, I get to hang on to those fantastic gold rims, and build up a custom around them.  Much better that than my resurrected ZG1000 going to motorcycle welfare.

Even the instrument cowl is a big, heavy old thing.  I'm aiming for an analogue speedometer and then a
microprocessor controlled LCD screen.

Don't know if I'll keep the Ironman theme, but I might, it's eye catching.

Someone somewhere might be looking for just this thing!

All that weight hanging behind the rear wheel will be gone.  The Concours always felt frisky for a big
bike, I can't imagine what it'll feel like with all that weight gone.  A custom LED tail light in in the planning.

I'm going to take a note from Jeff and see if I can sell off parts others might need for their complete
Concours in order to help pay for the bits I need for mine.

Bar riser still on to the left, the one on the right is a couple of inches lower.

With the mystical, multi-talented Tiger on hand, the Concours can take its time becoming a specialist.
It seems happier with that prospect.  So am I.