The SV died again in between the time I got to work and decided to leave. This indicates something seriously wrong with the battery. Either something is draining it or it is unable to hold a charge. I haven’t changed very much on it outside of fitting a new cable for my Gerbing heated vest. I’m loathe to shell out $100 for a new battery before I know for sure what’s causing it though.
A friend linked me to this ride report of a couple riding through Namibia with their young daughter who looks to be less than 10 years old. While the pictures of Namibia looked fantastic, I cannot get over the fact that they took a young kid with them, in an age where people overwhelmingly go out of their way to protect their children. Maybe it comes from having had a smotheringly sheltered childhood myself, but I have nothing but admiration for people who expose their children to a rugged, difficult life on the road. On the one hand, you see people moaning about how their lives had to be put on hold after they had kids. And then you have others who bring their kids right along for the ride! Some might call it irresponsible no doubt (she *is* kitted out in full protective gear and helmet), but the things that child will see and learn!
1. I just got a huge box of parts from Bike Bandit, so I guess I will be busy installing/upgrading stuff on the bike soon. My Yoshimura exhaust isn’t here yet, so I might hold off until I get it and dedicate one day to be Bike Fixerupper day.
2. I placed wanted ads on Craigslist, ADVRider and the F650 forums for a used seat for a 2005 F650CS, the bike that I will ride in Europe this summer. No responses yet, which isn’t entirely surprising.
3. I have a dream route in place for the Europe ride. As with all motorcycle routes, it’s pretty optimistic for a 30 day ride.
4. The SV’s battery died last night and I needed a jump this morning to get her on the road. This is getting to be irksome.
5. I give up on the Corbin seat I got for the SV a couple of weeks ago. It is lower and harder than the stock seat and makes the bike extremely uncomfortable to ride. It’s harder to touch the ground and to reach the handlebars. So I’m back with my stock seat. It’s starting to rip, but I reckon I can probably get it recovered and call it good.
6. I am plagued with Zumo charging issues and am trying to figure out if it’s the unit or the mount. Most likely both, with my luck.
I just placed an order for the City Navigator Europe NT Maps for my Garmin Zumo. They appear to have pretty good coverage for the countries I will be riding through. Yay, this is suddenly getting more real! I also got a cable for the mount. I was originally going to purchase a mount, but rather than spend $85+ on a new one, I’ll probably take one off of one of my bikes and re-use it.
My friends John and Bernhard are riding up through the Yukon this week. John’s just posted an OK signal from his SPOT messenger from Hyder. No doubt they are getting Hyderized this very minute. He promised to have one on me while over there.
Looking at their track and the route they took - the same one Sarah and I did two years ago – makes me wistful and nostalgic. I remember that morning when we rode over from Hazelton and those last fantastic 40 miles between the Cassiar Highway junction and Hyder. It was the twistiest ride I did on that trip and the most gorgeous. I look back at the pictures and it’s difficult for me to believe that that was me out there. I miss it but all I can do is live vicariously through them and be happy that they are out experiencing the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.
Vagabiker and I decided to take off towards the Cascade mountains for the long weekend after our initial plans to go dual-sporting in the Peninsula were ruined because of rain. The Cascades go from north to south through the center of Washington state and the weather to the east of the mountain range is usually warmer and drier because the mountains block the rain.
We were intending to leave around 10:00AM but we over-estimated and ended up leaving at a shocking 2:00PM. We both had issues on our bikes that we had to fix before we hit the road. Bad bikers fixing stuff right before a long ride! It’s a good thing nobody else was waiting on us. My Gerbing electric vest wasn’t getting charged from the XT. I couldn’t take the fuse out to see if it had blown, so I swapped it with the one on the SV and it worked. And Sterling’s GPS wasn’t getting charged from his mount anymore. He was unable to fix this and gave up and decided to reply on my GPS and mount. Fortunately we both use Zumos, so we decided to swap after one of them lost charge. It wasn’t ideal but it was the best we could do at such short notice.
We hit the road and headed north. We had plotted our route the previous night, which would roughly take us towards Sultan, then the Ben Howard Road towards Skykomish, on to Steven’s Pass, then off-road on a forest service road towards Lake Wenatchee, and finally another trail towards Lake Chelan, where we would stop for the night.
Unfortunately we had such a late start that we made it to Skykomish at 4:30PM. By the time we went over the pass and reached the first forest service road, we found that it was completely blocked by snow. Bummer! It had also been steadily raining and we were cold from going over the pass and reaching 4000+ feet elevation. We decided to continue riding US-2 to Lake Wenatchee and find a campground so that we could set up camp and relax and eat a good meal while it was still light out.
This turned out to be a good plan. We found a really good campsite at Nason Creek campground – the first place we looked. Being back in nature with the familiar camping smells was so fantastic. :) We set up camp and Sterling went out to gather wood while I started fixing our dinner of shrimp pasta. We ate by the fire and then went for a long walk. We didn’t find Lake Wenatchee but we did end up in this woody forested area mottled with pretty flowers. As the light started to fail, we returned to camp and hung out around the fire, sipping wine and scotch.
Day 2, we set out on the trail to Lake Chelan. We started on Chumstick Highway before getting on to the first FS road. It was a smooth, easy ride, even for a n00b like me, with lots of pretty views. There were a few spots that made me go *gulp* because of the height and drop-off, but I made it through them. Sterling was a fantastic guide and he kept a good pace that I could keep up with. At times he would take off into the distance, but I knew he would wait for me at the intersections so I kept my pace and went slow. I was probably excruciatingly slow but I wanted to finish the ride more than I wanted to go fast, and riding on dirt is still so unusual for me that I have to completely focus on it and take my time getting used to the feel of the bike on gravel, rocks and mud.
I’m posting this for my friend Oleg who unfortunately has to deal with a nasty issue of a leak in his gas tank. Worse still, Aprilia USA refuses to acknowledge his complaint and take responsibility for it, even though it is a known issue. Personally I wouldn’t be too crazy about shelling out something to the tune of $1000 for a new tank just because the manufacturer decided to go with a shoddily constructed part.
“From the very first time I rode an Aprilia V2 I was in love. Soon after I purchased a 2002 RSV Mille that was sitting at the local dealer, bike came with 2 year warranty and 96 miles on odometer. Since 2005 RSV had two mechanical issues; faulty starter relay, and leaking gas tank. Relay was replaced under warranty by the local Aprilia dealer, gas tank is another story.
Apartment manager called me at 8pm to tell me there was a strong smell of petrol in the underground garage and my bike was leaking fuel. Upon further investigation I found that it was leaking pretty badly, and had to park it on the street overnight since it was already pretty late to troubleshoot. I time off work and pulled the bike apart the next day, turned out that plastic tank had warped around the fuel pump mounting area and wasn’t holding fuel. Fuel pump mounts to a flat surface using metal nuts embedded in polymer gas tank. When I pulled the fuel pump off I discovered that flat surface wasn’t flat any more, it had arched between bolt holes so rubber gasket could not make good contact.
A quick call to the local Aprilia dealer revealed this as a known issue. They said it was due to US fuel containing ethanol which tank isn’t designer for. Ethanol makes plastic soft and it deforms. Dealer suggested shaving off material to make the surface flat again, however it could only be done one time. Tank would leak again and I would need to get a new one, which in case of Italian bike will not be cheap or speedy.
I left a number of messages and emails with Aprilia USA; they requested VIN number and in an email informed me that someone will get back to me “in the near future” which is rather vague. I also filled a case with NHTSA since I consider fuel leak a safety problem. Fuel pump sits right over the rear cylinder and could potentially cause Colin Edwards / Aprilia CUBE incident. Last thing I want is to jump off at freeway speed.
A few quick facts. Bike in question is a US market Aprilia RSV Mille #255 made in 2002. Gas tank is made by Acerbis for Aprilia in Italy. Searching AF1 Racing sponsored online forum I found that my case isn’t isolated and that this is a pretty common failure for plastic tank Aprilias.
NHTSA case number is 10329969. http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/complaints/results.cfm?odi_ids=10329969&SearchType=QuickSearch&summary=true.
It also looks like Aprilia USA isn’t doing a whole lot to ether post a recall or come up with a fix for this problem. I know that for most of these cases warranty is out but should a gas tank fail this way after 5 years of normal use?
Thanks to the intrepid bike geek Bluepoof, here’s a hack I’d like to work on for the XT at some point. I used to have one of these tool tubes on the ex-Beemer and would be nice to have a bit more storage space on the XT.
http://www.bluepoof.com/motorcycles/howto/xt225_tool_tube/
Tool tube on Bluepoof's XT225
Vagabiker and I are trying to figure out what we’re going to do for the Memorial Day weekend. We’ve been riding down to Eugene, OR for the past two years for the unofficial BMW “Spring Forward” party (incidentally, that’s where we first met). This year we can either continue the tradition (which would be nice as we’ll get to see many familiar faces whom we haven’t seen in a while) or we can try something totally different.
We are toying with the idea of going dual-sporting on the Peninsula and try out a few rides from the Sound Rider Guide to Dual Sport Rides in Western Washington. This time we have the GPS files, so that we don’t get hopelessly lost and turned around. Motorcycling and camping – can’t believe it’s only a week away!
I finally got around to ordering a new front tire for the SV – a Michelin Pilot Power Road 170/60 to match the rear that I put on in Cody, WY last August. I assumed that the tire was okay and just a bit squared off because I could see tread, but it miserably failed the Lincoln head penny test, so I’m glad I got it done sooner rather than later. I was a little amazed to find that Eastside Motorsports had the tire for a paltry $95 – the same price as MotorcycleSuperstore.com. Good job on them to match online competition! Saves me the time of ordering online and they get my business.
I’m taking the bike to Fluid Suspension Science this weekend to have Dave Alexander take a look at why it’s riding so rough. The front end is really “bouncy” so that if you push down on it, it comes back up and bounces, rather than staying up. This is greatly amplified when I ride on rough roads like oh say anywhere on Seattle backroads. Hopefully Dave can nail down what’s wrong and we can fix it soon.
A couple of friends at work are riding up to Alaska in two weeks – one of them to the Yukon and the other up to Prudhoe Bay. They pinged me to ask if I wanted to go (yay short notice!) and I had to decline for the obvious reasons – I don’t own a big dual-sport anymore and I don’t have enough vacation to do a ride like that if I want to ride for a month in Europe this summer. Part of me can dream though… I so miss Alaska…
Checklist of the things I need to do on the bikes somewhat in order of priority:
SV
– Fix suspension problems ($150)
– Replace front tire ($150)
– Check brake fluids (replace stripped out screw on reservoir)
– Find nuts and bolts for Givi windscreen ($10?)
– Fix Garmin mount
– Fix ignition key issue (takes several tries to turn the key)
– Do inventory of rusting/stripped bolts and replace :(
– Fix right mirror
– Get new slip-on exhaust ($200-?)
– Fix dent in gas tank or get custom painted tank ($200-?)
– Replace rear seat with cowl ($306!)
– Fix tear in front seat (new Corbin?)
– Remove handguards and see how that feels
– Replace brake/clutch levers with ASV shorties ($250)
– Add knee grip pads to tank ($35)
– Replace headlamp glass ($100)
XT
– Fix vibrate-y handebar with lead shot
– Fix tweaked rear left turn indicator
– Figure out side luggage options – soft/hard panniers?
– Add heated grips?
– Get centerstand?
– Find bigger tank?
I’m beginning to see why I’ve been putting this off all winter.
Ever since I started riding four years ago, I’ve wanted some nice photos of me with my bikes, but never actually got around to getting them taken. You know how it is – you go out on solo rides and ask random people to take your picture and after you’ve thanked them and they walked away and you actually look at the picture they took, all you can do is sigh and hope you have better luck the next time. I’ve often thought of scheduling a photoshoot with one of my photographer friends and have them take some good pictures, but every weekend that the weather seemed nice enough to do this, I decided go riding instead of standing around the bike and looking pretty. :P
So I guess I was a little pleased that the AMA scheduled a real photoshoot with an excellent local photographer, Cory Parris, so they could get a picture to go with the article I wrote. (Well okay, I was a bit peeved that none of the pictures I took on my ride weren’t good enough. :P). Cory was fantastic to work with and he took some really outstanding photos. The light wasn’t very good on the day that we picked, but he worked around it and got some really good images.
I posted some of the ones I liked in this post. I wish these had been in the magazine instead of the one they went with because you can actually see my bike in them. Oh well, at least I have these to look back at and send home to mum. :)
“Someone’s got a case of the Mondays!” You’ve heard that before and it usually isn’t me. I like Monday mornings because unlike most people I like getting up and going to work and having a week of work to look forward to. Some Mondays are exempt though. Like today.
I’ve vowed to wake up early and go to work every day this week. This usually means getting out there before 7:45AM when traffic turns to shit on WA-520. I cut it too close, got geared up, got on the SV and turned on the ignition and… nothing. It wouldn’t turn over, meaning battery issues out of the blue again. This is the second time in as many months that the battery has died for no apparent reason. I last rode it on Saturday, so it really has no reason to be doing this. F***ing electrical gremlins.
This meant walking back up and getting the key to the XT and riding that to work instead. By now I had missed the window of opportunity and looked forward to getting stuck in bad Monday morning traffic. The XT started up grudgingly and I rode it out. Switching bikes that are so different is always tricky and my muscles take a little adjusting – my steel-plated arm is always the first to protest for the first ten minutes. My muscles were the least of my worries today though when I realized that the brakes on the XT are way less reponsive than the ones on the SV. I found this out when a moron car just *stopped* in front of me at a “yield” sign. Wasn’t quite expecting that and stopped with only about an inch to spare between us. Ugh… my fault though. I should have been looking ahead instead of off to the side to yeild to traffic.
The second time was worse. As I droned through stop-go traffic on 520, an asshole Subaru driver unexpectedly swerved from a gridlocked left lane into my lane with no warning and I had to stomp on the brakes again. This time the bike went all wobbly and I’m surprised that my knobby tires had enough grip to come to a stop. I’m also grateful that the driver behind me wasn’t tailgating me and didn’t collide into me. I recovered and retaliated by honking at the Subaru driver and flipping him off for the next five minutes. I’m sure he genuinely hadn’t seen me at all and he kept trying to wave an apologetic hand. I passed him in a little bit and glared through his window while he still looked apologetic. I’m not quite sure how menacing a tiny motorcyclist on a 250cc bike looks, but I put everything I had into it. :P I wasn’t really mad seeing as I had recovered and no damage done, but it was more to shame him into realizing that making lane changes without looking is Not. Cool. and maybe him and the drivers around him would remember that in the future. Really I did it all for him. :P
I made it to work unscathed. The XT is such a fantastic bike to ride, in spite of its limitations. Maybe I’ll ride it through the rest of the week.
On the miscellaneous bike news front:
1. I did an oil change on the SV on Saturday. Fresh oil, whee! I noticed that my drain plug bolt was missing a crush washer and the oil filter didn’t come with one. I need to remember to get one the next time I change the oil. And umm.. also hope that the bolt stays in place without one. It did for the last 3000 miles, so why not 3000 more?
2. I noticed that 5 out of 6 bolts on the Givi windscreen were missing. They were either taken out by the douchebag who stole more bike two weeks ago (likely) or vibrated off in one night (doubtful). This calls for a trip down to the hardware store to find substitutes. I should probably also get some OEM nuts and bolts to replace some of the more rusty ones on the SV.
3. I washed the bike! After about 6 months. This is pretty good going by my track record.
Last night I got my copy of American Motorcyclist – the official AMA magazine - in the mail and was delighted to see that they had published the article I wrote about my x-country ride last summer. :) They did a few minor editing changes, all of them pretty good, cutting down my long sentences to short, choppy ones. The only edit that made me chuckle was the one where they changed my sentence about chatting with other bikers over cups of gas station coffee and cigarettes to just coffee. The only thing that I’m not too pleased about is the generic, vanilla photo. I also had a drivers’s license photo moment where I did a doubletake and went – “Holy crap, is that really what I look like?” :P. I did a photo shoot with them for almost an hour and I’m a little disappointed that you can barely even see my gorgeous bike in the photo that ended up with the article.
Ah well, minor points those. I mean hey something I wrote got published in only one of the biggest motorcycling publications in the United States! Not to brag or anything, but a new writer coudn’t ask for more! :) *pumps fist* :D
Click the image for a larger version of the article, or here for a .pdf version. Unfortunately the magazine isn’t available for purchase at a newsstand. You need to be an AMA member to get a monthly subscription.
I just got home from watching One Crazy Ride, a movie made by Gaurav Jani, an Indian documentary filmmaker who makes motorcycling adventure movies. I was first introduced to his work by Vagabiker, who lent me Riding Solo to the Top of the World when we first met and I was recuperating from my crash in the Yukon. If his intention was to hasten my recovery by showing me motorcycling movies that made me chomp at the bit to get out and ride again, it worked like a charm.
Riding Solo was remarkable in so many ways. Filmmaking is a profession that is almost unheard of in India for the average person, in spite of the fact that it hosts the biggest film industry in the world. Rarer still is the use of motorcycles for touring as opposed to commuting in busy cities. The idea of combining the two on a barebones budget makes this man and his work truly unique. The movie followed his solo ride from Bombay to Ladakh in northern India on excruciatingly difficult roads unveiling region that most of the world barely knew exist. For someone like me, having led a fairly insular life in Bombay and rarely having the opportunity to travel within India, it was an eye-opener and a delightful insight into the unparalleled beauty of this country.
In One Crazy Ride, Gaurav Jani takes on a similar challenge, this time along with four friends, all part of a group called 60kph. The aim of this intrepid group of adventurers is to navigate through the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, making their way to the easternmost point without going over paved roads that went through Assam, the state bordering it on the south. Arunachal Pradesh is a state that even most Indians aren’t very familiar with, it being mostly skimmed over in geography books when we were little. This is demonstrated eloquently as they rode through tiny villages and tribal settlements and encounter local people who had no idea what lay even a few miles outside their village.
Most of the route is by necessity off-road on roads washed out by mudslides, some littered with rocks and boulders, some slick and muddy from the rains, and occasional river crossings. On the way they encounter villages and tribespeople living traditional lives that haven’t changed in hundreds of years. What makes their achievement truly commendable is the fact that they all rode heavily loaded Royal Enfields, bikes and equipment that make the average off-road bike on roads in the western world look like rocket science. It lays to waste the belief in most people’s minds that they need the latest, most expensive bikes in order to go “adventure riding” a marketing term if ever there was one, because when was riding a motorcycle ever not an adventure?
The movie is replete with unforgettable sights and gasp-inducing moments. One that stands out is of the group standing at the top of a mountain range and looking down at clouds floating beneath them like ocean waves. One of the stellar scenes of the movie showed Gaurav walking along a long, narrow, rickety bridge high over a river with flimsy woven rails flanking each side. This brief reconnoiter is followed by him riding his motorcycle slowly and excruciatingly over the bridge. The stress and strain of the five long minutes it took him to cross the bridge was so palpable that when he was done, there was a unanimous burst of applause in the audience.
One pleasant surprise that was unveiled during the beginning of the movie was that one of the riders, Nicky, was a woman, something that the movie didn’t make a big deal out of, in itself making it unique. Women riders are so rarely featured or represented in a positive way in the average motorcycling movie that her presence is one to make every woman in the audience who has ever donned a helmet silently cheer. (When quizzed on this by someone in the audience, the director responded that rural India has such an enduring culture of women doing the majority of the work that seeing a woman amongst the group passed without comment, as compared to reactions in more urban, westernized areas.)
To summarize, One Crazy Ride serves up everything that a truly good movie of the adventure motorcycling genre has to offer good riding, challenging roads, quiet, cheerful camaraderie between the riders, tension and uncertainty brought on by mechanical breakdowns, interactions with people in lost, remote villages and unique insights into their lives and culture. Almost every motorcycle rider who has gone off the beaten track will feel a kinship with our heroes along with many moments of “I know exactly what they mean!”
One Crazy Ride: http://dirttrackproductions.com/ocr.html
Dirt Track Productions: http://dirttrackproductions.com/ocr.html
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkb4558ym5w
I have added a new page that shares the highlights of my cross-country ride from this summer here: http://www.adventuresinfinite.com/rides/across-the-united-states/.
Route: Vermont – New York – Montreal – Vermont – New Hampshire – Maine – Massachusetts – Connecticut – New Jersey – Pennsylvania – West Virginia – Ohio – Michigan – Wisconsin – Minnesota – South Dakota – Wyoming – Montana – Idaho – Washington (18 states, 2 countries). I shipped the bike to New Hampshire, flew there, and rode it back.
Total Miles: ~5800 miles. I averaged about 300 miles per day.
Bike: My 2001 naked SV650. Why this bike? Because it was either this one or my XT225 and I wanted the power of a 650. I also wanted to ride what I already owned rather than going through the expense and effort of getting a new bike and setting it up for touring. I had already toured on the SV and while it wasn’t perfect, it had adequate power, was relatively comfortable, and had a hacky touring setup that would do. Not to mention, there aren’t very many touring bikes out there for a person my size, so it was up to me to rig out a bike that worked for touring. I comforted myself with the fact that compared to women who rode cross country a hundred years ago, this bike was still close to rocket science.
Time Taken: 1 month (mid-July to mid-August). I didn’t ride all day every day. I took a few days off to hang out with friends and see the sights.
Highlights:
Lowlights:
Beautiful, green Vermont
Montpelier, VT
Burlington, VT
Ferry to New York State
Camping at Cumberland State Park in NY
Lake Champlain Scenic Highway
Ausuble Chasm, NY
Auberge Jeunesse Youth Hostel, Montreal, Quebec
Downtown Montreal
Vieux Montreal
Crossing back into the United States
Portland, Maine
At the Atlantic Ocean with Bill Garcelon
Along the Coast of Maine
The site of the Boston Tea Party
An iconic moment
New York City across the water from Ellis Island
In the eye of a thunderstorm
A New Jersey diner
New York City
The Liberty Bell, PH
Cumberland, MD
At the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in Pickerington, OH
On Will Smith’s MV Augusta from “I, Robot”
The backroads of rural Wisconsin
Cherry and Spoon in Minneapolis
Mt. Rushmore
Crazy Horse Memorial
Camping at Custer State Park
A curious tower in the distance.
Devil’s Tower, WY
Hundreds of miles of barrenness
Galladin National Forest – worth a journey by itself
The lovely mountain town of Missoula, MT
1920s mobster themed restaurant in Sandpoint, ID
Home again
Some last pre-journey words
Heading out to Lebanon, New Hampshire
Landed in Lebanon
Today in Hanover
Vermont and New Hampshire
Montpelier by Night
Nightfall at Cumberland
Philadelphia
Columbus, Ohio
Update from Lake Michigan
From Rhinelander, Wisconsin
Getting to Minneapolis
St. Ignace, Minneapolis
Riding through South Dakota
Custer State Park, Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse, South Dakota
Update from Ten Sleep, Wyoming
Day 2 in Missoula, Montana
Update from Sandpoint, Idaho
Home Again
I just got home from watching One Crazy Ride, a movie made by Gaurav Jani, an Indian documentary filmmaker who makes motorcycling adventure movies. I was first introduced to his work by Vagabiker, who lent me Riding Solo to the Top of the World when we first met and I was recuperating from my crash in the Yukon. If his intention was to hasten my recovery by showing me motorcycling movies that made me chomp at the bit to get out and ride again, it worked like a charm.
Riding Solo was remarkable in so many ways. Filmmaking is a profession that is almost unheard of in India for the average person, in spite of the fact that it hosts the biggest film industry in the world. Rarer still is the use of motorcycles for touring as opposed to commuting in busy cities. The idea of combining the two on a barebones budget makes this man and his work truly unique. The movie followed his solo ride from Bombay to Ladakh in northern India on excruciatingly difficult roads unveiling region that most of the world barely knew exist. For someone like me – having led a fairly insular life in Bombay – and rarely having the opportunity to travel within India, it was an eye-opener and a delightful insight into the unparalleled beauty of this country.
In One Crazy Ride, Gaurav Jani takes on a similar challenge, this time along with four friends, all part of a group called 60kph. The aim of this intrepid group of adventurers is to navigate through the north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, making their way to the easternmost point without going over paved roads that went through Assam, the state bordering it on the south. Arunachal Pradesh is a state that even most Indians aren’t very familiar with, it being mostly skimmed over in geography books when we were little. This is demonstrated eloquently as they rode through tiny villages and tribal settlements and encounter local people who had no idea what lay even a few miles outside their village.Â
Most of the route is by necessity off-road on roads washed out by mudslides, some littered with rocks and boulders, some slick and muddy from the rains, and occasional river crossings. On the way they encounter villages and tribespeople living traditional lives that haven’t changed in hundreds of years. What makes their achievement truly commendable is the fact that they all rode heavily loaded Royal Enfields, bikes and equipment that make the average off-road bike on roads in the western world look like rocket science. It lays to waste the belief in most people’s minds that they need the latest, most expensive bikes in order to go adventure riding – a marketing term if ever there was one, because when was riding a motorcycle ever not an adventure?
The movie is replete with unforgettable sights and gasp-inducing moments. One that stands out is of the group standing at the top of a mountain range and looking down at clouds floating beneath them like ocean waves. One of the stellar scenes of the movie showed Gaurav walking along a long, narrow, rickety bridge high over a river with flimsy woven rails flanking each side. This brief reconnoiter is followed by him riding his motorcycle slowly and excruciatingly over the bridge. The stress and strain of the five long minutes it took him to cross the bridge was so palpable that when he was done, there was a unanimous burst of applause in the audience.
One pleasant surprise that was unveiled during the beginning of the movie was that one of the riders, Nicky, was a woman, something that the movie didn’t make a big deal out of, in itself making it unique. Women riders are so rarely featured or represented in a positive way in the average motorcycling movie that her presence is one to make every woman in the audience who has ever donned a helmet silently cheer. (When quizzed on this by someone in the audience, the director responded that rural India has such an enduring culture of women doing the majority of the work that seeing a woman amongst the group passed without comment, as compared to reactions in more urban, westernized areas.)
To summarize, One Crazy Ride serves up everything that a truly good movie of the adventure motorcycling genre has to offer – good riding, challenging roads, quiet, cheerful camaraderie between the riders, tension and uncertainty brought on by mechanical breakdowns, interactions with people in lost, remote villages and unique insights into their lives and culture. Almost every motorcycle rider who has gone off the beaten track will feel a kinship with our heroes along with many moments of – “I know exactly what they mean!â€
One Crazy Ride: http://dirttrackproductions.com/ocr.html
Dirt Track Productions: http://dirttrackproductions.com/ocr.html
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkb4558ym5w
This past weekend was lovely and quite unexpectedly so. I was planning on going up to Victoria, but changed my plans when I realized that I was riding up to Whistler the next weekend. I decided instead to go with Vagabiker to the “Fall Down” party in Poulsbo held every year by the sales manager of Southsound BMW. Since this meant going over to the Kitsap Peninsula, I figured I might as well make a day of it and bring the XT to go off-road.
Late Friday evening out meant waking up late Saturday morning and we still needed to get packed and ready for camping that night. We also tried to make a GPS route of the route we wanted to take between Lake Cushman and Quilcene. This meant getting a late start on our ride. One of the ferries to Bremerton wasn’t working so we were forced to take the ferry to Bainbridge Island and ride south towards Bremerton. For some reason this took forever. It was raining a lot at the start of the trip and I was a little wary about being rained on and miserable for the rest of the day. Once we got past Belfair though, the rain let up. The road between Belfair and Union was twisty and brilliant. We reached the start of the trail almost at 4PM. I guess we should have checked road conditions because quite a few roads dead ended and led to nowhere and we were unable to find a path that led north. Bummer!
It was brilliant getting to practice riding offroad though. After the initial few roads and hiccups, I even started standing on the footpegs and riding quite comfortably that way. My biggest fear was not being able to react or brake in time, but I think that that will come with practice.
After about an hour of trying to find the route and failing, we got back on 101 and decided to just follow it up north along the Hood Canal and then turn east at the tip across the Hood Canal Bridge to Poulsbo. It had started to get dark by then and the fog made everything look spooky and mysterious. I found myself wondering how it was that I was having way more fun throwing around my 250cc dirt bike around the corners compared to my 650cc sportsbike. :)
We reached Poulsbo at around 8PM and decided to stop at a grocery store to pick something up for the party. We had intended to just go eat dinner at the party, but by this time we were so tired and hungry that we made our way to the downtown area (which was very charming!) and went to a European restaurant that he had been to before. Tizzley’s was great if a bit expensive. He got Jaegershnitzel and I got Swedish meatballs, both of which were very good. Mmm… good food at the end of a good ride, and the night was just beginning.
By the time we got to the party, it was already underway. We set up camp in the dark and headed over to the main area. There were many new faces and a few old friends whom I was happy to see. Whiskey and beer seemed to be the order of the night, but the beer was all gone and we didn’t want to drink whiskey all night, so we ended up drinking the wine we had brought. :P After many good conversations and cuddling by the fire, the night ended with a block of an old Volkswagen engine case made of magnesium getting ignited in the fire. Amid shouts of – “Don’t look at it! Don’t breathe the fumes!”, we headed away from the fire and retired to the tent for a very sound night’s sleep.
The next morning I had a change to actually see where we were. Camping in a field full of motorcyclists is quite something and I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. We lingered over breakfast and coffee and more conversation before saying our goodbyes.
It was a brilliant day out and we decided to ride north to Port Townsend and catch the ferry to Langley and then to Mukilteo before heading back to Seattle. As it turns out, we weren’t able to do quite this because we didn’t plan enough with the ferry schedules, and ended up riding back to the Bainbridge Island ferry, but we did get some good riding in. And hanging around Port Townsend is always lovely. We rambled around Fort Warden a little bit, took a look at some of the old war bunkers and checked out the lighthouse before heading to the downtown area for a good meal at an underground Victorian cafe (antipasto salad, black bean soup and roast beef sandwiches).
The day ended with taking the ferry back to Seattle and home. I was way more tired than I had expected, but that’s the sign of a good weekend, isn’t it? :)
Â
