But none of this has helped my passenger feel comfortable on the bike, which was a major reason I pitched the Fireblade for a sports tourer. WIth the panniers on the Connie leaves no room for passengers with big western feet. The passenger pegs are also set very high, so high you'd have to be seriously into yoga to look comfortable on them.
Thursday 19 August 2021
Kawasaki Concours14/GTR1400 Kawasaki Foot Peg Ergonomics
But none of this has helped my passenger feel comfortable on the bike, which was a major reason I pitched the Fireblade for a sports tourer. WIth the panniers on the Connie leaves no room for passengers with big western feet. The passenger pegs are also set very high, so high you'd have to be seriously into yoga to look comfortable on them.
Thursday 12 August 2021
An Ode to Sturgill Simpson's Sound & Fury
Just watched Sturgill Simpson's Sound & Fury anime on Netflix again the other day - it really is something else. If you're into anime, or smart music, or avenging motorcycle riding samurai with robot ghosts in machines (along with a wild mashup of other experimental anime storylines and styles), you'll dig this.
I'd done some digital art around samurai on motorbikes previously so I mashed up some of the samurai details from Sound & Fury with it and threw it together with the blog logo:
Disco!
Thrifty Motorcycle Gear
Think it's too hi-vis for riding in the rain? Really? You want hi-vis in the rain... and the hundred bucks you save! |
For the people who have to work all day in rain, you know the stuff they use will be tough and properly waterproofed, and it is! Instead of dropping hundreds on 'moto' rain pants I was happier with the $40 construction rain pants from the farm shop.
A construction rain jacket with a removable hood comes with fully seam sealed and very waterproof specs, even in the wind of riding it does the trick and compared to a $200+ moto-rain jacket, it's a fraction of the cost (<$50). Both the Forcefield pants and jacket have lasted for years and are still super-waterproof. The bib on the pants also stops water ingress at the waist while riding in the wind and does a good job of keeping me dry even in torrential rain.
I still depend on moto-specific gear for certain things, like boots which have ergonomic design features specific to riding or jackets and trousers that are properly armoured for riding, but there are a lot of thrifty and effective alternatives for the peripherals if you're not a brand model who wants to look like they fell out of a dealership catalogue.
Tuesday 3 August 2021
Off-Roading Dreaming
NEW STATE OF THE ART OFF ROAD KIT
Jeep Gladiator Overland: $65,000
A capable off-roader that can get us to the trail head while carrying the bikes. It'd make a great base from which to ride from and then would be able to get us out of the bush at the end of a long day of riding. There are a lot of camping options that let you leverage the vehicle to make camping a bit less mucky including truck bed mounted tent systems and proper bedding.2021 CRF250F: $5649 x2
I took one of these out for the day at SMART Adventures and really got along with it. I'd buy an Ontario used dirt bike but the prices are absurd. Broken 20 year old bikes are asking ridiculous money! New dirt bikes aren't madly expensive and this one, being a Honda, would last as long as I'd ever need it to. I'd get two of the same thing to make maintenance more straightforward and then my son and I could ride together.Total (the camping gear is another grand): $77k
LIGHTLY USED OFF-ROAD KIT
2015 Used Jeep Wrangler: $36,000
It's got 90k on it, a 5 speed stick and a V6. It looks in good shape and comes with the towing cubbins I'd need to tow bikes to where we could use them. The Wrangler has a pile of camping related gear for it that isn't crazy expensive. The tent off the back is three hundred bucks and the rear air mattress less than a hundred. The whole shebang would come in under $37,000 and would be good to go pretty much anywhere while still doing Jeepy things like taking roofs and doors off.
Used Dirt Bike: ridiculous prices
SSR SR300S dirt bike: $5000 x 2
Vipermax 250cc Apollo: $2899 x 2
Monday 26 July 2021
Long Distance Rallying: Lobo Loco's Comical Rally
For us we were looking at a warm (28°C), sunny day in Southern Ontario. Our plan was to create a 'skeleton' map of where we wanted to go and then research locations on the route that would get us points. Because this rally was a human-focused one, it made sense to head into population to find locations, so I elected to make a route that would lead us to Niagara Falls eventually. This would mean riding in the dreaded "Golden Horseshoe" - the most populated area in Canada and usually a sure way for me to lose all hope in humanity.
The plan was to take the new Concours 14 on the trip but after a pre-rally ride on it we got home and looked at the Corbin seat on the Tiger and decided to take the older, less dependable and less long-distance touring ready bike simply for a saddle that doesn't feel like a sadist's dream. The Tiger also has nicer foot pegs for pillion and wasn't giving me any reason to doubt it so I spend the day before making sure everything was tight and ready to go.
Monday 19 July 2021
Eye Of The Storm
good at finding a seat in a restaurant) got us just that on a covered patio at the Old Mill House Pub and we enjoyed our first meal out since the pandemic started while watching the rain fall.
A deke onto County Road 9 and we were passing through county side washed clean by the passing storms. We caught another followup cell past Dundalk but it was nothing compared to the submersion we'd experienced coming out of Creemore. What's the best way to ride through a tornado? Don't, ride away from it!
On Friday we're taking a run at Lobo Loco's Comical Long Distance Rally. We've got the right bike for the job.
Some Kawasaki Concours fan-art... |
Sunday 11 July 2021
Ergo-cycling: Concours 14 vs Tiger 955i for 6'3" Me
Cycle-Ergo, the motorcycle ergonomics simulator, is a great online resource for getting a sense of what you'll look like and how you'll fit on a bike. Unlike cars, your options with bikes aren't as easy as sliding your seat back or adjusting the steering wheel. To make ergonomic changes on a motorbike you need to change hardware and mechanically adjust it to make it fit.
The other day I was out on my trusty 2003 Triumph Tiger 955i. I came off a Kawasaki Concours 10 to the Tiger and while the Connie was comfortable, it made my knees ache on long rides. The first time I sat on the Tiger it felt like a bike built by people the same shape and size as me because it is. I can go for hours without putting a foot down without a cramp on the Triumph. This got me thinking about the differences between the big Kawasaki that sits next to the Tiger in the garage these days.
Cycle-Ergo gives me a quick way to check out the differences. Forward lean is much more pronounced on the Concours 14 (12° vs an almost vertical 4° on the Tiger). Knee angle is the same and my knees aren't bothering me on the Connie but hip angle is 6° tighter on the Kawasaki which explains the cramps I was feeling after today.
I sold a Honda Fireblade to bring the 1400GTR in and that bike had an extreme 'sports' riding position which was basically like doing a push-up on the bike (you lay on it) - it ain't easy on the wrists. There are advantages to this aggressive riding position. When you want to get down to business in corners a forward lean gives you a more intimate relationship with the front end, which is why sports focused bikes tend to sit a rider the way they do. If I lived somewhere where roads were dancing with the landscape instead of cutting straight lines across it I'd have happily kept the Fireblade, but in tedious Southwestern Ontario it didn't make much sense.
Today I did a 200km loop on the Kawasaki and the constant lean does make it tiresome on the arrow straight roads around here (I have to ride 40 minutes to find 10 minutes of curves). In the twisties the Concours is much more composed than the taller, bigger wheeled Tiger. The Concours is a 50+ kg heavier bike but you can see in the animation that it holds its weight much lower than the Tiger. In the bends today the Connie was fine but the SW Ontario-tedium I have to deal with most of the time has me thinking about ways to ease that lean.
There are solutions to this in the form of 'bar risers' which are blocks of machined metal that you slip in under the handlebars to bring them taller and closer to you so you're not stooped. For me the lean also means I'm putting a lot of weight on my, um, man-parts, which end up pressed against the tank due to the lean.Here's the difference between a stock Concours 14 and the Murph's Kit bar riser modification. |
The biggest ergo-thing I did on the otherwise well-fitting Tiger was getting a Corbin seat for it which makes it a long distance weapon. I'll eventually do the same thing for the Connie but I think I can make do with the stock seat this year and then do the Corbin over the winter. That doesn't stop me from mucking around with the Corbin seat simulator though: