Riding in Style Out of the Rust Belt

How best to drive south out of the snow and salt?  A limo styled Benz!  They're asking about forty-seven grand for it out of a place in Toronto, and it has almost no miles on it.  The Metris gets the highest reviews in terms of work vans, and this one has been blinged up to make it a comfortable mile muncher.

How disco is it?  Built in TV, tall roof and power everything.  It'll easily swallow the Tiger along with the family and then make for a comfortable and pretty thrifty ride.

A good first escape out of the snow would be Louisiana over the new years.  It's two thousand kilometres and twenty hours south.  With a stop between Louisville and Nashville, we'd be in the Mississippi Delta in two days, then the bike can come out the back and I'd have a couple of days discovering the roads of the lowlands at a time of year when I'm as far from two wheels as I ever get.

Mississippi Loop: From the Gulfport coast up the shores of the Mississippi before looping back around.  355 miles all in:

Louisiana South: Through New Orleans and to the ends of the Delta.  436 miles:

How I found those routes:  http://www.motorcycleroads.com/Routes/Louisiana_94.html

Two days down, two days on the bike, two days hanging out in New Orleans and then a couple of days back means we could squeeze this all in before going back to work.

Leave Friday, Dec 28th and get back home Saturday, Jan 5th.

Lean Angle and Capturing the Dynamics of Riding a Motorcycle

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.

Sabbatical Rides: Riding the Americas

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:

North America to Prudhoe Bay:  https://goo.gl/maps/RWn36jct6LT2
19,571kms July-August to Prudhoe Bay, August-November to Colon:

South America South:  https://goo.gl/maps/nx4i6MwUqYz
11,106kms  Nov-Jan to Peru for Dakar, Jan to Mar to Ushuai

South America North:  https://goo.gl/maps/P5wQzEND7US2
11,057kms  Via Circuit De Rio Hondo MotoGP race in March.

North America North:  https://goo.gl/maps/4ZAC686McuC2
6,989kms

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.

Idiots In Cages Day

It was sunny this morning, so Max and I thought we'd try and squeeze in a ride over to The Fork of the Credit and back.  Once we got going it was cloudy and 5°C instead of the 7-8 partially sunny degrees we were promised.

So, with a windchill of -3 we got there shivering only to discover it was idiot-in-a-car day on The Forks.  They've removed the speed bumps so every bosozoku dingdong from the GTA rushed up in his Fast & Furious car to make a traffic jam.

Many of them seemed particularly confused by the hairpin, especially the mouth breathing fuckwit in the Ford Focus who came around the corner half in our lane.  Once again my assumption that anyone in a hopped up turd-mobile is next to useless saved us.  I wasn't riding the hairpin so much as sticking to the outside of my lane - as far from the Eminem clones who can't drive in their own lane as I could get.  Even on this cold day, driving a car still feels like a poor alternative to riding a motorcycle.

Just in case the twisty road wasn't difficult enough, there was also a car parked at the top of the switchback with a drone hovering right over the road.  As a qualified drone operator, it's this kind of stupidity that gives the hobby a bad reputation.  He could have easily set up and flown so he wasn't a potential hazard, but he didn't.  It's a shame.  Getting some aerial media of the road is a great idea, just do it with some sense.

We got back to Belfountain and ended up turning around and going the long way around back to Erin and Holtom's Bakery.  The big row of traffic blocking up the only road through the tiny village is yet another win for the the four wheeled crowd.  Between being unable to drive in their lanes, blocking up villages and otherwise being pests, our cold trip out to The Forks underlined car culture in all its glory.

Escaping up the back way on Mississauga Road away from Belfountain.

That might have been our last ride of 2018.  Since then winter has descended:

Sabbatical Rides: Following Grandad On The British Expeditionary Force

I've previously written about and done a fair bit of digging into my Grandad Bill Morris's World War 2 service in the RAF.  His time spent in France with the British Expeditionary Force before the Nazis invaded in 1940 highlights a forgotten piece of history.  Weeks after Dunkirk had pulled most of the troops out, Bill's RAF squadron was still flying a fighting retreat against overwhelming odds.

By comparing various historical documents I've managed to cobble together the strange course Bill's squadron took during this desperate retreat.  Spending a year following in his footsteps would be a pretty magical experience and a brilliant way to spend a sabbatical away from work.

Conveniently, from a sabbatical time-off scheduling point of view, Bill landed in France in September, 1939 in Octeville and proceeded north to set up an air base in Norrent-Fontes near the Belgian border.  They then wintered in Rouvres and as battle commenced were fighting out of Reims before retreating south and then west around Paris, quickly setting up  aerodromes for his squadron's Hurricanes and then breaking them down and moving on while under constant fire.  They were supposed to get out on the Lancastria in Saint-Nazaire (another forgotten piece of World War 2 history), but Bill was late getting there (operating heavy equipment means you're not at the front of the line).  He saw the ship get dive bombed and sunk - the biggest maritime disaster in British history, with most of his squadron on it.  He spent the next two weeks working his way up the coast before getting out on a small fishing vessel and back to the UK at the end of June, just in time to get seconded to another unit for the Battle of Britain.  Being able to trace Bill's steps would be a powerful journey.

Bill was an RAF military policeman who worked in base security, but his handiest skill was his ability to drive anything from a motorbike to a fuel bowser.  It'd be cool to use the period technology Bill used to retrace his steps through France.

This sabbatical ride would have to happen between July of one year and the August of the next.  Following Bill's time in France I would be landing in Octeville from the UK in September, hopefully on a period bike.  My preferred ride would be a 1939 Triumph Speed Twin, though an RAF standard Norton 16H would be equally cool.

If I couldn't find a period bike I'd try and source a modern descendent of the Triumph or Norton.  Triumph is actually coming out with a new Speed Twin shortly, so that's an option.  Meanwhile, Norton is coming out with the Atlas, which would be a modern take on the do everything 16H.

I'd arrange to stay in the places Bill did at the same times he did over the winter and spring.  With many days at various locations in rural France, I'd have a chance to find the old aerodromes and make drone aerial imagery of each location, hopefully finding evidence of this war history hidden in the landscape.  I wonder if I'd be able to see evidence of the Lancastria's resting place from the air.  With time to get a feel for the place, I'd write and record the experience as I moved slowly at first and then with greater urgency in the spring around Paris, through Ruaudin, Nantes and Saint-Nazaire before ending the trip in Brest at the end of June when Bill left, almost three weeks after Dunkirk.

The research so far on Bill's World War 2 service in France, the Battle of Britain in the UK and then into Africa!

Living in France for most of a year would offer a cornucopia of travel writing opportunities and the historical narrative I'm following would let me experience a lot of local colour in order to research a fictional novel I've been thinking about writing based on Bill's World War 2 experience.

To get ready for this I'd get Bill's full service record and research the whens and wheres of his experience on the continent during the Phoney War and through the Fall of France.  

When all was said and done I'd pack up the bike and ship it back home to Canada where it would always be a reminder of the year I walked in my Grandad's footsteps.

Research Links to date:

Bill's service record research:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PiN1LBIt0sBOa3uYNF6R7WI-5TP-jgOSPu9lrJlzVuU/edit?usp=sharing
Map of Bill's Squadron movements in France: https://goo.gl/maps/hRr3aRAUFTM2
RAF squadron research: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-XGAS0ajnEVGmJ_8-aATYDJrPWUHoWri8AILsNd1pN8/edit?usp=sharing

We could totally blend.  All of Bill's grandkids in period
kit and riding period vehicles...

Follow Up:  What would be even cooler would be to have my brothers and cousins come along for part or all of the trip.  For the non-motorcyclists the option to drive period trucks and military vehicles would be on hand - though a surprising number of Bill's grandkids ride.

There is an annual D-Day Festival in Normandy in May and June that celebrates period vehicles and dress.  Even if I could get Bill's grand-kids together just for that it would be a memorable event.