Balancing Personal Responsibility with Sainthood

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."

Related Thoughts:

Training Ignorance & Fear Out of Your Bikecraft:
https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2014/02/training-ignorance-fear-out-of-your.html

Parent, Child or Zen Master:
https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2014/05/child-parent-or-zen-master.html

Do Bikers Ignore Reality?
https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2013/10/do-bikers-ignore-reality.html

What else are you going to do at a cabin in the woods but pen and ink?

Fear and Arrogance

The other day I did a ride that isn't typical of my time on two wheels - I aimed for the middle of a city, during rush hour.  The siren call for this insanity was strong.  The Toronto Motorcycle Film Festival was having a best-of showing at the beautifully restored Playhouse Theatre in Hamilton.

From TMD you'll know I'm a big fan of motorcycle media and the TMFF's push to encourage Canadian films is something I'd like to both support and participate in.  Riding down to Hamilton on a beautiful summer's day was the perfect entry point and has me thinking of ways to get to their main show in Toronto in early October.  I'm secretly hoping I can find a project that needs a drone pilot aerial camera operator and likes weird camera angles.

But first, the peril.  Driving in rush hour isn't like driving at other times.  The people doing it are miserable, embroiled in the last part of their forced servitude for the day, the part where they get to spend a sizable portion of their time and income in a vehicle that has become an expensive appliance whose only function is to move them to and from the job it demands.  The aimless frustration and misery oozes out of them at every turn, sometimes expressing itself in sudden bursts of anger and aggression before settling back into a miasmic death stare of indifference.

So that was making me anxious.  Looking at Google Maps red roads of the GTA at rush hour on a warm, sunny day wasn't thrilling either.  Sitting in traffic on a motorcycle in moribund no-filtering Ontario sucks.  It sucks on the fumes of the massive SUVs all around you, their contents breathing filtered, air conditioned air while you choke on their output.  Edging toward a green light inches at a time on hot tarmac surrounded by this excess and misery is about as much fun as a deep periodontal cleaning, without the benefits, and with the destruction of nature as the result of this pointlessness.

I haven't had much time on the bike this summer.  My wife's surprise cancer diagnosis and surgery has meant other priorities take hold.  Finally back from weeks in a car, I was facing my first long ride in over two months, and it wasn't for the ride, it was for the destination.  Alanna wanted to ride pillion down, though she's still recovering.  I was worried about her, feeling very over protective and also dealing with my son's anxiety in us going after being away at camp for the first time this summer (don't worry, we're coming back!).

That's a lot of emotional luggage to take on a ride.  Even leaving our subdivision I was second guessing traffic and riding awkwardly, and getting frustrated with myself for it.  I'm usually loose and light on the controls and not stuck in a conscious state while riding - which makes me smooth and fluid, even in traffic.  We worked our way down to the dreaded Hanlon bypass in Guelph (which isn't because it's covered in traffic lights)  and sat in row after row of the damned things every few hundred metres.  I was constantly placing us on the road where I could squirt out of the way of someone not paying attention.  We passed two collisions, rear enders caused by the epidemic around us.  Sitting up high on the bike has its disadvantages, like seeing down into the vehicles around us and watching over half of the drivers working their phones on their laps.  I guess that's the new normal in a 2019 commute.

Down by Stone Road the guy behind us wasn't going to stop in time (he had a nice iPhoneX on his lap), but I squirted out onto the shoulder instead of letting him end our ride and took the next exit where we worked down country side roads instead, but not before being choked to death by a diesel black smoke belching dump truck that jumped out right in front of us causing me to brake so hard we bumped into each other.  I finally got past him after riding in his bleching, black haze for several kilometres, but by this point I was fried, and we'd only ridden through Guelph, the small city before the big one.

I was going to pull off at the lovely old church in Kirkwall and have a stretch and get my head on straight, but the F150 dualie behind me was about six inches off my rear tire even though I was going over the limit and I was afraid to hit the brake, so pressed on.  He blew past us coming out of Kirkwall only to pull up behind the car 150 metres ahead of us and stay there until he eventually pulled off some time later.  You gotta make time on your commute I guess.

Doubt isn't something that creeps into my riding, but it was starting to here.  The lack of control and extremely defensive mindset was exhausting me.  Alanna was suffering hot flashes on the back mainly due to Guelph's atrocious traffic and lights and was feeling wobbly, and I was starting to question everything I was doing.  We are coming home Max.  This isn't going to end badly!

We were both on the lookout for a place to stop when the Rockton Berry Farm appeared as if an oasis in the desert.  I pulled in and we dragged our sweaty, tense bodies off the Tiger.  Alanna went in and found some sustenance and I did some yoga.  After stretching and some Gatorade and trail mix I felt human again.  Talking to Alanna I mentioned how I was battling some demons on this ride and reminded myself that the best kind of rider is the Zen rider.  Matt Crawford describes motorcycling as a beautiful war, but this one was more like a pitched battle.  It's amazing what a stop can do for your mental state though.

After a fifteen minute break we saddled up again ready to face the horror of Hamilton's rush hour, but something had changed.  Instead of holding on too tight, I was letting go.  My riding was more fluid, we flowed with the chaos and when we got down to the mean streets of downtown Hamilton, they were a delight.  Unlike Guelph, who seem determined to stop you at every intersection, Hamilton actually times its lights so you can cut through the heart of the city with barely a stop.  Past the beautiful old houses and industrial buildings we flew, down to the up and coming area where that beautifully restored Playhouse Theatre sat.

As we pulled into the parking lot that was already filling with all manner of motorcycles, I thought over that ride down. I'd actually suggested that maybe we should take the car, but that would have sucked just as much and had no sense of adventure and accomplishment in it, though it would have been easier and safer - the motto of modern day life.
 

If you're in a situation where you're riding and finding it overwhelming, take a break and give yourself a chance to get your head back on straight. You'd be amazed what a ten minute stretch and reset can do for your mindset, and that mindset is your greatest tool when riding.  In spite of her cancer recovery, Alanna had pushed to ride because she wanted us to 'immerse ourselves in that biking culture' in going to this event.  Standing in the parking lot chatting with other riders, we were doing just that.

I'll cover the film night in another post, but the ride down was a reflective opportunity I couldn't pass up.  In Bull Durham, Crash Davis talks about how you go about the difficult job of being a professional athlete.  You've gotta have swagger, even when things are going against you, and that's equally true in motorbiking.  After this ride, I can see why many people who otherwise enjoyed it gave it up.  That fear, once it worms its way inside you, will talk you out of risk no matter what the reward.

Of course, the point isn't to not feel fear, but to feel it and work through it anyway.  That's bravery.  Not feeling fear at all is psychosis.  Baz Luhrman has a good take on this with his motto:  a life lived in fear is a life lived.  Letting fear dictate your life is no way to live.  We are already dead when we always play safe and stop taking risks.

What made it especially challenging this time was that I couldn't moderate many of those risks by riding away from the faceless hordes of commuters.  Spending a day with them in their pointless battle to destroy the planet was exhausting and terrifying, no wonder they box themselves up in the largest container they can afford, planet be damned.

The motorcycle films shown by the TMFF were great and completely new to me (and I'm a guy with Austin Vince's entire DVD collection - I know moto-films).  One of my favourite parts of this kind of documentary film making is showing what is possible, and I was briming over with it when we left.  I couldn't have been in a better mood to ride.

We exited into the dark for the long ride home.  It was cool and the streets were flowing and half empty as we worked our way back to the highway and shot up into the dark of the Niagara Escarpment.  Even the guy driving 10 under the limit who suddenly stood on the brakes for no reason (he had evidently received an exciting text message - he was two handing a response as we passed him on the inside lane of Highway 6) didn't phase me.  I was back on my game, staring into the dark out of my third eye.  When that eye gazes into the abyss, the abyss is the one that gets nervous.

Now I'm thinking about a third eye graphic for the helmet...

We got all the way up to Guelph, sane now that traffic had died down and all the sad people were in their row houses waiting for tomorrow to do it again.  If we're so smart, you'd have to think we could find a better way.

Shakespeare Arms by the university we met at over twenty years ago provided us with a late night dinner before we pressed on home, passing a skunk (the Canadian night is filled with them) galloping across the road into the graveyard ahead of us.  The last light (of course) caught us, then we were away into the night, the Milky Way glittering above us and the night smells all around.  We were home seemingly seconds later, our creaking, cold joints groaning as we finally seperated ourselves from our trusty Tiger.

***



We rode right into south central Hamilton at rush hour and out after 9pm, about 12 kilometres of dense, urban riding with more traffic lights than I could count, but we got stopped at three of them both coming and going.  I commented to Alanna about how Hamilton has its shit together in a way that Guelph seems oblivious to.

Passing back through Guelph past 10pm at night and covering about a kilometre less in a city with less than a quarter the population, we got stopped at nine traffic lights.  On our way south earlier in the day during rush hour, Guelph was a traffic light bonanza (even on the 'bypass') getting stopped at no less than six lights before we could escape the madness.  Guelph should rename itself the city of lights, just not in a Parisian sense.

Perhaps the moral of this story is really just don't go anywhere near Guelph if you can help it.  It's time they started urban planning like the city they have quickly grown into.  It'd make the chaos that much less overwhelming (not to mention, ya know, stopping the iminent demise of the human race).  There's this thing called IoT and smart cities?  Guelph should look into it - I'd be happy to help.

Saints & Sinners Long Distance Motorcycle Rally

Here's an upcoming Lobo Loco long distance rally. If you're iron butty you could do the 3 day event.  I'm in for the one day on Sunday:
https://wolfe35.wixsite.com/lobolocorallies/saintssinnerssunday2019

Lobo Loco Rallies are based out of South/Central Ontario, but if you're anywhere in the mid-west or on the eastern side of North America it's easy to get to.

It's a great excuse to find weird things and pile up alotta miles on your bike, and it's based out of Peterborough in the middle of some beautiful Canadian shield riding.  You'll have hundreds of miles of rocky shield, winding road and beautiful lakes to roam through:

 https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2017/05/any-day-on-two-wheels-is-good-day.html

https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2018/07/kawartha-highlands-circumnavigation.html

Cape Breton's Cabot Trail: an ultimate ride?

 I'm currently crossing the Canadian Maritime provinces with my wife.  She's recovering from cancer so a bike trip wasn't in the cards, but I'm using the trip as reconnaisance for future rides.

On our way back to our hotel after a day on the Cabot Trail in northern Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island, a guy on a Honda Repsol race replica blitzed through a row of traffic five cars at a time and disappeared down the road.  The Cabot Trail attracts that kind of rider with its hundreds of kilometres of twists and turns over the Cape Breton Highlands in the north west corner of the province.

Coincidently, while I was out here, Canada Moto Guide did a primer on how to ride the Cabot Trail.  That and the steady stream of bikes making their way up to the remote, north-west corner of Nova Scotia cemented the trail as a Canadian riding icon in my mind.

We were up in Neil's Harbour when a bunch of guys in full leathers wandered in to the Chowder House up by the lighthouse (you can write sentences like that when you're on the Cabot Trail).  The bravest of them was on a Ducati.  I say brave because the road itself is indeed a roller coaster, but it's also pretty rough in places.  I asked them if they could put a knee down or would they knock their teeth out first.  They laughed and said they pick their moments.  The Nova Scotia government does seem to be taking more interest in fixing up the Trail though.

The Cabot Trail traces most of the coast of the north-west side of Cape Breton Island.  This 300km loop takes you up and over the Cape Breton Highlands and through a national park; it's stunnlingly beautiful and it'd be a shame to rush it.  Actually, what would be a shame would be only doing it once while focusing on the road.  The ideal way to tackle the Trail would be to get yourself into one of the many lodging opportunties on the south end of it and then do a day focusing on the road followed by a day focusing on the many stops available.  If you came all the way to the end of the world in Cape Breton and didn't bother taking side roads to things like Meat Cove and Neil's Harbour, you'd be missing some wonderful opportunities.


There are many sections with good pavement and astonishing curves, but there are others where the road hasn't had any attention in some time and Canadian weather has had its way with it.  I was told there were some switchbacks where riders had a hand down on the ground as they came around, but trying to do that in other places would have had you bouncing out of your seat and kissing a guard rail.  Rough or not, if you're used to living on a tiny island with sixty million people on it, you'll find the Cabot Trail frighteningly empty, even in mid-summer.

Having done a lot of miles on Canadian roads now I'd approach it as I do them all: enjoy them while you can but expect them to go to shit at any second.  Something with supension travel and some athletic intention would be a good place to start, it made me miss my Tiger sitting in the garage over two thousand kilometres away in Ontario.  A psychotic mix of power and suspension flexibility like the BMW S 1000 XR adventure sport would be good.  Another angle would be to take one of the newest intelligently suspended sports bikes and see what their CPUs make of it.

This ain't no butter smooth Spanish road, but it's a fearsome thing.  A couple of years ago Performance Bikes put their man John McAvoy on a sportsbike and pointed him at Spain, in the winter.  It was a riot to read him navigating snow storms through France before finding the sweet never-ending summer of Spanish roads at a time when everyone else is huddled in their houses waiting for the snow to end.  Reading Johnny in questionable riding circumstances is never dull.  PB (now a part of Practical Sportsbikes) should send him out to Cape Breton for a tour of the Cabot Trial in the fall.  It'd deliver demanding and stunning riding and photo opportunities that no one in mainstream motorcycle media seems to be aware of.  It'd also give Johnny a chance to practice his Gaelic.

Instead of riding the same old Spanish roads over and over, motorcycle manufacturers should be bringing journalists out to Cape Breton.  A 300km loop on varying road surfaces through stunning, Jurrasic Park quality scenery and some incredibly acrobatic roads would let them assess a bike's real-world prowess without cheating on roads that have never felt the terrifying touch of a Canadian winter!

A Summer Jaunt into the Adirondacks

I'm getting a bit stir crazy riding to the same places over and over.  Reading about Wolfe's run at the Iron Butt Rally this year makes me want to raise my own long distance game with an eye to eventually taking a run at that event.  Who wouldn't want to pass out in a graveyard for half an hour before hitting the never ending road again?

The Water is Life rally helps provide some alternatives, but what I really want to do is an overnight trip to roads both interesting and new.  The Adirondacks are the nearest thing I have to mountain roads anywhere near me beyond Southern Ontario's flat, industrial farming desert.

Operating out of the Hotel Crittenden, I'd be able to leave luggage behind and travel light on the two loop days designed to explore the twisting roads of the Adirondack Mountains.  Hotel prices tend to spike on peak times like weekends, so a mid-week trip should keep costs minimal.  It's a couple of hundred miles south and east, over the US border into New York State and south through the old mountains of eastern North America to Coudersport on the Allegheny River.


Day 1:  Ride to Coudersport:  352kms
https://goo.gl/maps/pGs8DgPVezkTCF6U7

Hotel Crittenden:  https://hotelcrittenden.com/

Interesting Adirondacks roads:  http://www.motorcycleroads.com/Routes/New-York_108.html




Day 2:  Snow Shoe Haneyville Loop:  352kms
https://goo.gl/maps/ixVjPmw6jBJzcHGg8





Day 3:  Hollerback Loop:  384kms
https://goo.gl/maps/13odCYiY5RNSJHAE8





Day 4:  Ride Home:  409kms
https://goo.gl/maps/RbVZd5wx9HQWbqoi7

1497kms (930 miles) in 4 days / 3 nights.
Monday - Thursday (cheapest hotel room rates)
Hotel nights:  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
August 19-22:  USD $238.50 / CAD $313 Single King Room /3 nights

Our King suite is large, nearly 450 square feet. Each of our rooms is uniquely decorated and appointed with a classic theme. Relax on our premium quality king sized mattress and enjoy the historic surroundings. All rooms include a flat screen television, Coffee maker, and free WI-FI. The Bathroom features a Stand up shower with complimentary toiletries and a hair dryer.

Amenities on site (restaurant, bar) and a great downtown location near many other eating options means no need to ride at the end of a long day exploring twisty mountain roads.

The same area is great for autumn colours: 
https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2018/09/pennsylvanian-autumn-colours.html