My First Bike

With snow on the ground, ice on the road and very cold temperatures that can freeze the balls of a brass monkey, there is no motorcycle riding at the moment. Every time I go in the garage and see the bikes, I long to be out on the road, but that will have wait, at least till the middle of March.

With that said, we decided we have to do something motorcycle related, even if it's not actual riding. The Toronto motorcycle show was on this weekend, so we decided to go have a look. You could see that all motorcyclists in Toronto are feeling the same as me and are suffering from the winter blues, since they were all at the show, and the place was packed. I must say it wasn't a great show but there were lots of bikes, and that is always good.

One of the exhibit areas was reserved for vintage and restored old motorcycles. And that's where I saw it. My first bike. You know that nostalgic moment when you realize that it was the best bike you ever had. You know you will never have a bike that can make you feel the same way, that bike did.

I got a similar 90cc Honda, shortly after my 16th birthday. It was sitting in somebody's garage, and was not used anymore. It was still in relative good shape, so I got it with some help from my dad. This bike spelled one thing, FREEDOM. You can go where you want, whenever you want.

This one at the show had some slight differences from mine. This one shows 90cc prominent on the side, but mine did not have that drawback. You must understand that being a 16 year old in South Africa, that was a big deal. You were allowed to get a 50cc motorcycle when you turn 16, but you were only allowed to ride anything bigger than 50cc after your 18th birthday. So by law I wasn't allowed to ride this bike, but the cops were never the wiser. It looked and sounded just like a 50. But it didn't go like a 50. It was a lot faster. Well in my mind it was. It had 3 gears, but no clutch, so shifting was faster that my friends bikes. I can still remember dicing home after school, and smoking all the 50s. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
The other difference was that mine had 2 separate seats for the driver and the passenger. You would lift up the driver seat, and the gas tank and filler cap was under the seat. It had no latch to keep the seat down. You just used your butt for that. However, when I took it off roading, and you stood up on the pegs, that seat would be bouncing up and down like a toddler on a trampoline. Fuck, that was a lot of fun.
When I turned 18 I bought a VW Beatle, and the bike was not that cool anymore. I always thought it was pretty cool, but maybe only for me. I could never get girls to go on the bike with me. It sat in my mother garage, and I think my brother sold it to buy a new bike for himself.

There was another bike, very similar to the one I had. This one had the leg guards removed. I guess to shave some weight off. This one was actually used to do a cross Canada trip. You can see that some modifications were made, but it shows you can do a long trip with any bike. If I may use the title of a Lance Armstrond book "It's not about the bike".
I think if you have the time and the right mind set, you can do any trip on any bike. I actually saw a tv show of 4 guys doing a trip in Mongolia on these kind of bikes.


The white PVC piping in the back, is actually an extra fuel tank. Not sure if the blue bottle is Nitrous oxide or not. But it would be very cool to have N2O on a bike like this.

I especially like the way he constructed a map holder with PVC piping that you then wrap the map around. Not as sophisticated as the map rollers they use in the Dakar, but it will pretty much do the same job. I just love this kind of stuff.

There were some pretty cool looking custom bikes at the show as well. Nothing as cool as my 90cc Honda, but not everybody will agree.

I did like the paint job on this bike. I liked the Canadian maple leave theme done in the Fall colours. I thought it was fitting for a Winter bike show.

The way the yellow transition into brown on the cylinder heads are done very well, and you can see this was done by a very good artist.

This bike was also pretty cool, but I'm not sure how much fun it will be to ride it.

The plan is to go to Wolf BMW in London Ontario on February 20 for the maintenance seminar for the BMW F650GS.

Cold Canada

Yes, it's that time of year again. Winter in Canada. Not really biking weather. So last weekend I winterized the bikes, and stored them in the garage. Hopefully they will come out again in March, if we're lucky. We can still get snow in March, but you have to stay positive. If not, winter depression and easily get hold of you.

The way I look at it, to get thru winter is as follows. Only 20 days to Xmas. Then you bite the bullet in January to make it to February the 1st. After that you only have 28 days before you can get your bike ready for riding again. In the mean time I ready other people's blogs, and see the world on my computer screen.
A great blog that I can recommend is http://globegallivanting.blogspot.com/ by Nicky Vaux & Adam Taylor. They are the clever ones that are currently in Laos, and enjoying nice hot and humid weather. A great blog. Very entertaining and informative.

Next weekend Dec 11-13 is the Toronto motorcycle show. We are planning to go on the Sunday and check out the new bikes. I hope to see the new 2010 BMW R1200GS. I can not buy it, but I am allowed to dream and drool.

In February Wolf BMW is having a Service Seminar for the F800 and F650 Twin (Denise's bike). We are planning to attend, and hopefully learn something about the working of her bike. I've done some work on the KLR and it a very simple bike to work on. The BMW is a different beast, and I don't have confidence yet to do any work on it. Hopefully this seminar will change it.

Look out for reports on the Toronto Bike show and the BMW service seminar. Since we are not riding now, I hope to keep on blogging on anything motorcycle related.

Friday the 13th

November the 13th, and the bikes are still out. Usually this time of the year the bikes are put away and winterized for the long, cold whiteout in the north.

This past Friday the temperature went up to 12C, so we desided to use the opportunity to go ride.

In Port Dover they have a biker get together every Friday the 13th. This has been a tradition for the last 15 years, so we desided to go see what all the fuss is about.

We left at 10am in the morning, and arrived in Port Dover 90 minutes later, and only sligtly chilled. Needless to say, if you had a bike and it's was not in storage yet, you did the run to Dover. I have never seen this many bikes together before.

We spent about 25 minutes riding round town looking for parking. Eventually we found parking in one of the side streets. After moving the bikes around to fit into the limited space, locking up our helmits and grabbing the camera, we were of to look at the spectacle.

One of the nicest tank paint jobs was one of the Joker. The owner of the bike was also around for some pictures, and one of the younger onlookers could be heard saying: This is treally bad-ass."

There was a Santa with a thong on a bike, who later was seen walking down main street with red leather chaps.

Our son didn't join us on this ride, but there were many amazing sport bikes that he would have enjoyed.

A big part of the whole thing is to be seen. Some people show up and just cruise around to be seen by all the onlookers. As you can see by these two, I dont know who took the longest blowdrying their hair.

It was a good thing to see some other dual purpose bikes as well. I guess this is what all adventure riders do when they don't have money yet to go on more interesting trips.

It was a bit of a chaotic scene, and not realy well organized. Getting anything to eat or drink was virtually impossible. I guess if you were prepared to stand in a lineup for two hours, you woud be able to still your hunger or thirst.

Round 2pm we left and rode to a Tim Horton's out of town to get some coffee, and made our way home.

In the end I must say that it's not realy my scene. But I think now we can say "been there, done that, and didn't get the T-shirt".

We did however have a good time, and it beats going to work anytime.

I think the best part of all is the fact that the weather allowed us to get another ride in.

At this moment it looks like I will be able to commute to work on the bike for another week, but then the bikes will be winterized till April next year.

Size does matter

There is a saying amongst motorcyclists: "there are two kinds of riders, those who have fallen, and those that are going to fall". Well I have finally graduated to the group that has fallen. I have been riding motorcycles on and of since I was 16 years old, and this is my first accident. I guess nobody is immune to the dangers of motorcycling.

It happened yesterday when I went home for lunch, and to let the dogs out for a pee. I stopped at an intersection very close to home. The traffic light was red, and I was in the Right Turn Only lane, waiting for an opportunity to do a right on red. In the lane to my left, for traffic continuing straight ahead, was a big dump truck.

All of a sudden, the idiot in the truck decides that he wants to make a right turn as well. He cranks her steering hard to the right, and just go. Needless to say, stationary motorcycle is no contest for a moving dump truck. His bumper hits me in the ribs, and I fall over. Luckily other motorists behind me start honking their horns, and the idiot stop.

Other people come help me to pick up the bike, and move it off the road. His excuse is the same standard one that all motorcyclist have heard before: "I did not see you".

There is hardly any damage to my bike. A small scratch on the end of the handlebar, and the road scraper on the right foot peg broke of. I don't corner that hard, so I have no need for the scraper anyway. I have a few bruises on my right knee, and my right ankle is sprained badly.

All in all I was very lucky. I wore all my riding gear, and that protected me. Without the proper riding boots, my ankle would have been seriously damaged.

Note to other motorcyclist. Always, and I mean always, wear your protective gear. The next thing is the shoulder check. We all know how to do it. You had to, to get your licence. But then we stop doing it. If I did my shoulder check, and continuously scanned my surroundings, I might have been able to get out the way.

Winter is fast approaching. So, lets ride while the weather still permits us.

Fall Colours

On Sunday morning we woke up late. Konstanz slept in till past 9:30am. Maybe we enjoyed the party too much.

Most of the adventure riders were getting ready to return home. They come up on the Friday and returned on Sunday to be back at work on Monday. Since we came up on the Saturday we had another day left to enjoy the trails and scenery.

We said bye to our new found friends and saw them off one by one. We had breakfast and started getting ready for a day of trail riding. This time we got dressed in full rain gear before we set off.


We started off taking the Trout Spawn Lake road to Dorset. This was a 2 hour ride thru the most amazing scenery you can imagine. The trail was not as challenging as we remembered from previous rides here. Maybe we are are just getting better at riding off road. It was still the most fun you can have on two wheels. Slipping and sliding, and rocks and dirt flying everywhere. I think that is why off road riding is so appealing to me. You get to play around in the mud like a kid, and the people that might frown on your immature behavior is not here to see you.


When we got to Dorset, we stopped for a bio break and had a snack, sat next to the river and enjoyed the scenery. We could not stop talking about what a great ride it was.

We then took off to look for some more trails that the riders we met the previous night, told us about. We played around for another 2 hours trying to find some more trails with limited success.

We started to get tired by this time and the sky threatened to break open over us. So we took off back to the hostel. When we got there we were both pretty cold, so we spent the next 30 minutes in the sauna warming up. We both had a shower and went for a well deserved afternoon nap. Life is so hard.

That evening we had dinner (a lot of food left over from the previous night) and chatted with other guests at the hostel. This was more the Eco Touristy type, but we had a great time talking to them.

On Monday morning we got up, had breakfast, and got ready for a cold and wet ride home. We had rain on and off the whole day but still enjoyed it. A bad day's riding is always better than a good day at work.

Adventure Rider Pow Wow

We got up early on Saturday morning and with partly cloudy skies we decided that we are going to do the trip. With winter getting closer this might be the last trip this year. We still had to pack, but by 10am we were ready and took off.
We went thru Waterloo and stopped at the West Montrose covered bridge. In this area the bridge is known as the "kissing bridge". This is also the last remaining covered bridge in Ontario.
















We carried on, and after about another hour we realized that we need more layers of clothing. We stopped and dug in our bags to get some more clothes.
In this picture Konstanz just finished putting on tights. I could have taken a picture of him standing with his butt in the wind, but I thought some people might find it inappropriate to have nudity on this blog. I don't want to be flagged by the internet police.

We had an uneventful ride all the way to Huntsville where we stopped to buy some food and swing by the LCBO. At this point we were under a sunny sky, and it started to warm up a bit. We went in the local store, bought our stuff, and when we came outside, we saw the skies opened up and there was a huge thunderstorm on the go. Konstanz stayed with our groceries and I ran to the bikes to get our rain gear. We got dressed in our rain gear in the lobby of the grocery store. I think we were quite the spectacle and got some strange looks and some witty comments.

As we walked out the store in full monsoon rain attire, it stopped raining. No more rain and a beautiful rainbow stretching from horizon to horizon awaited us. This is the best picture I could get. I wasn't able to get the whole rainbow in one shot.

We only had about 35km to go to get to the hostel were we planned to stay the weekend. When we got there the sky was still threatening to lash out in a thunderstorm.

We also got a great surprise when showed up and saw that there was a group of adventure riders for the weekend. When I made our reservations earlier in the week I was told that there will be a group of adventure riders, but I was expecting to see about 6 to 10 bikes. Instead the group consisted of 40 riders. The great thing was that all the bikes were dual sport bikes and that they also liked to play on the logging trails in the area. There were KLRs, BMWs and KTMs everywhere. It was like being in motorcycle heaven. The interesting thing was that this group was not a motorcycle club, but just a group of adventure riders that met on the internet thru advrider, and decided to get away for the weekend and do some trail rides together. Check out www.advrider.com , it is a great site for motorcycle travelers.

This was an absolute great group of people. They welcomed Konstanz and me like we were old buddies. As we got off our bikes they were there to greet us. They had a pot luck dinner and invited us to partake. In the picture of the food table it only shows about a third of all the food that was there. Amongst the things that we ate were, venison slices on cocktail buns and moose curry. There was food for Africa.

The interesting thing was that all this food was brought there on motorcycles. There was even a chocolate cake. I wasn't able to find the person who brought the cake (I would have liked to know how they managed to bring it there on the back of a motorcycle). But as one person explained to me: "just pack less clothes and more food".
They also had two kegs of beer (these were brought on a pickup) for everyone to enjoy. And did we enjoy.



We met great, friendly and interesting people from all walks of life, and the thing that brought us together was our passion for motorcycles. GREAT TIMES.

Thanks to all the guys and gals from advrider. We had a great time, and you made us feel like we were old pals.

Just a few more party pictures.

Weekend trip or not.

Since we were back at work after our trip, there were not any real travel news to update. It is hard being back at work after such a great experience. but I guess that is life for you. You have to work to get the money to do the things that you really enjoy doing. Now if I can only come up with an idea to travel on my bike, and get paid for it, life will be perfect. So if you have any ideas, or wish to sponsor us, do not hesitate to contact me with your proposal.

About 2 weeks ago we went for a long ride on the Sunday to Port Dover. We went with our friends Debbie and Sjon, and we all had a great time. We had great sunny weather, and had a fantastic lunch at Willies on the beachfront. We all liked Port Dover and will definitely go there again, maybe for a Friday the 13th rally.

Konstanz and I are planning to do a trip this weekend to the Algonquin area again. From what I can see on the web, it seems like the Fall colours are at their peak right now, and it should last for about another 7 days. Since we live in the Great White North, it is starting to get cold, and the weather this weekend might be wet and cold. So we plan to look at the weather tomorrow morning, and then determine if the trip is going to happen or not. So hopefully the weather will play along, and tomorrow night there will be an update with some fall scenery pictures.