Hot Ride

It’s been a hot week—daily temperatures averaging 93. Our only break was the humidity wasn’t up in the 90s as well. Saturday, ride day, was no different. Our “early” start of 9:30 still had us riding at 90. I found myself relishing my acceleration and shifting drills so I could enjoy the breeze as I rode.

Of course my main work is at a slow pace and out in the sun for the most part. I did manage to find enough shade while I practiced two parking spot U-turns. I managed to successfully turn three times in a row moving the bike to the left. The right side was more of a struggle; I even almost dropped the bike after stalling it as I tried the right side U-turns. I did manage two successful ones, but I found myself having to cross the line more on the right side. Later that afternoon, I was watching a YouTube video that showed me I need to shift my butt before starting the turn, and I will try that during next week’s practice.

Bill set up the off-set slalom for me, and I ran through it more successfully than not. That is until I tried to move through it standing up. Once I stood up, I felt the greater challenge of feathering the clutch, the rear brake, and the throttle all while staying balanced. So I mistakenly relied on steering the bike and was unsuccessful. Bill pointed out I wasn’t using my body lean to turn the bike instead of the steering. He reset the slalom to a straight line, and I worked on moving my body side to side while pushing the bike the other way. I will be working on this for a while.

The best part of the morning is when we headed back to my parents’ garage and Bill got out the R NineT. We did a short cruise through half of the neighborhood as there was a lot of traffic. I stalled on the take off because the road is heavily canted, so I was trying to hold the front brake to prevent back roll while releasing the clutch and turning the bike. As I told Bill later, there is so much good practice for me cruising the neighborhood. For one thing I never go above 16 mph in the parking lot, barely going into third gear. So I realized the neighborhood ride is good practice just in accelerating up to traffic speed. I did better at the stops, no stalls. And I managed not to run into Bill’s bike when he stopped suddenly for a squirrel that was chilling in the middle of the road.

The best part of the day was getting Bill out on his bike to ride too. I always feel a little guilty that I get to ride while he sits in the shade watching or reading. He’s the one with over 50 years of motorcycle experience, and he’s the one who paid for both bikes. So I was happy when we both went riding through the neighborhood.

We went over Wednesday and, after some struggle, got the crash bars onto the R NineT. The struggle was because the bolt was not installed on the same side as seen in the video. So when he pushed the retaining bolt through, the engine slipped slightly, enough to make it impossible to thread the new bolt through. To his credit Bill did not scream obscenities for 10 minutes. He did vent his frustration and then had the idea to use the jack from my car to lift the engine. After a voyage of discovery to locate the jack (you have to remove the spare tire to get to it), the engine was jacked up, lifted enough to let the bolt through, and the crash bar installation could proceed.

When Bill went to the clutch side of the bike to install the second crash bar, it took 5 minutes. There wasn’t any lack of ability on his part. Luckily he’s a brilliant problem solver. And I was sure that riding the bike after that miserable task was what he needed. So as I said, I was thrilled when we went on our cruise through the neighborhood. And I was made even happier when later that afternoon, he talked about practicing on his bike. One of the reasons I got into biking was to have riding adventures with Bill. The more he’s on his bike, the more he’ll want to ride—at least he will if he responds the way I have. I find it more and more difficult having to wait until Saturday morning to ride. And I am super hopeful that in the fall, we’ll be able go off for a weekend ride together. I really love riding my bike and I want more opportunities to ride.

Of course I have to figure out my hand numbing problem.

Butterflies and Bikes

Do you ever watch the flight of a butterfly? How it seems to bounce along in the air in seeming randomness? Yet it flits between flowers and moves purposefully along the blossoms as it feeds. I have always enjoyed watching a butterfly bounce along especially from the car as the winds buffet it about. On my motorcycle the flight of the butterfly is magnified because on a motorcycle, you are out in the air with the butterfly. A part of me imagines a collision with the helmet, but the larger part of me enjoys the feeling of freedom I’m sharing with the butterfly, out moving in the wind.

A monarch butterfly breezed past me on my very first ride on my G310 GS. Today it was a swallowtail butterfly. I love seeing the butterflies flitting about as I circle around my parking lot. They’ve made such an impression on me, that I thought of naming this Butterflies and Bikes. They are a fitting symbol for how I picture my riding—a carefree adventure out in nature.

I’m not there yet, but today I felt a confidence on the bike greater than any I had felt before. I breezed through my “box turns” and my “S turns,” not once feeling a near loss of control of the bike. It was rather warm out especially with me wearing my jeans and Klim jacket, so I was cruising up to third gear and hitting 20 mph to stay cool. My boyfriend set out the slalom for me and I had near perfect runs sitting and standing. So we upped the ante and did the offset slalom.

This week we’ve been watching videos of the BMW GS trophy qualifying rounds, amazed at the challenges the bikers face and get through. Their balance and control of the bike is amazing. And watching them turn on the offset slaloms inspired me to give it a try this week. I started off OK turning through the first 3 cones well. But my downfall was the last 3 cones; I couldn’t set up my entry well. So I drove by them and circled back around to try again.

About my fifth attempt, I realized that I was not using my body in the turns and that I was using too much front brake. I told myself to relax, focus on using my body, and let the friction zone help. I made it through all 6 cones, set up again, did it again, and went for the third time which was the charm and I was successful. Bill even commented on how I shouldn’t use the front brake, just the clutch and rear brake.

What I especially enjoyed realizing was that even as I fought the bike to get through the offset, I did not have any fear of falling. As I moved through the offset, I was moving freely, just as the butterfly moves freely in the wind.

I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?
Zhuangzi
“Zhuangzi Quotes.” BrainyQuote, Xplore, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/zhuangzi_393083.

All Geared Out

Featured

July 4^th weekend and we had a day that started in the 60s! For those of you who know coastal Virginia summers, July is known for hazy, hot, and humid, not beautiful, spring-like weather. But thanks to a lovely cold front, we had a gorgeous day for riding. Which was a good thing as it was my first ride wearing our new Klim gear.

I say “our” gear as opposed to mine as we weren’t sure of the sizing, so my boyfriend ordered for himself with me being the back up if the sizes ran small. He got the Klim K Fifty 1 jeans, the Klim Induction gloves, the Gaerne SG12 Enduro boots, and the Klim Induction Pro jacket. He liked the jeans, gloves, and boots which all fit well. And the jacket was nice but a little snug. So I tried on the jacket which just happens to match my bike (the jacket is the Cool Gray color). Because of the cool front, there was some wind creating my coolest ride yet. I actually needed the jacket for some warmth. The air was so cool I rode with my helmet visor down for the first time as well.

As far as the ride itself, it was a little on the short side as we needed to get the bike back and parked by 11:00. I worked on cruising, slaloming, quick stopping, straightening up from a curve, and stopping in a curve. We used the KamelKones again for some slow speed slaloming most of which I stayed in second gear for. One new thing I worked on was a tip I heard in one of Fortnine’s videos we watched this week. The tip was when stopping, in order to help ensure the left leg goes down first, tilt your head to the left.

I worked with this strategy on several sections of the parking lot that slope down to the right and where I have found myself at best putting both feet down simultaneously, but more often setting my right foot down first. I was successful 5 out of 6 tries, and the one unsuccessful try was both feet going down. It amazes me how a seemingly innocuous movement of the head can help with correct body position. But that is one of the fascinating aspects of training on a motorcycle—learning how subtle body movements influence your movement, control, and balance on the motorcycle. It makes me appreciate what a skill riding a motorcycle is, and it helps me understand why my boyfriend is so insistent on my practicing. Today, I realized how much more comfortable I am on my bike, how tight turning is a skill to continue improving, not the nightmare of the MSF test that I thought could fail me. So I realize I need to be careful of hubris, of feeling overly confident on the bike. I have not fallen yet, and I hope I don’t until I’m off-roading (and even then, I really don’t want to fall; I just accept it as an inevitability).

But even knowing there’s an inevitable fall in my future does nothing to diminish the exuberant joy riding brings me. And as I gather more safety equipment for riding, my concern in that looming fall becomes more and more about possible damage to the bike and less and less about possible damage to me.

Author wearing motorcycle helmet and gray Klim jacket. — Wearing my new Klim jacket.

And Then There Were Two

(This week’s entry is a combination of two writes ups. You have probably figured out by now that my entries are based on rides from earlier in the year. I am trying to get to where I publish two blog posts a week instead of one, and I’m getting close.)

Please don’t think I’m in a riding rut. I learn something new every week in my parking lot. For example, I relearned entering and exiting the curve. I worked on swerving to avoid a collision with the speed bump. And I’ve learned that I can do the U-turn in the box. I am still working on making an “s” in the box. I also learned I could “recover” the bike as I almost lost it—still no drops after 9 rides.

Tomorrow we will set up cones and camelbacks and work some drills. I say “we” because we now have two bikes. Welcome the 2021 BMW 1200 Urban GS, 719 edition! Yes, a lot has happened over the past three weeks.

So I will backtrack a little. On Saturday, June 12, after our morning ride on the 310, we went to the local Triumph dealer to check out the Scramblers in stock. There were three—one in the khaki green (XC), one white and green (XE), and one blue and black in the XE Showcase edition (2019). It is a beautiful bike and, despite being three years old, only has six miles on it. One concern with it was that I was on the balls of my feet, not flat (I’m 5’11” with a 32” inseam). But there is a low seat option, so we didn’t knock it for its height.

Now this second motorcycle is for my boyfriend to ride and for me to work my way up to. Once I am ready for the larger bike, Bill will get the BMW 1250 GS which I will then work towards being able to ride. We had narrowed our choices to the Triumph Scrambler or the BMW Scrambler/Urban GS (different versions of the same basic bike). Our primary goal is off-roading, but off-roading on dirt roads, gravel, and grass. No serious trails as yet.

Less than a week after we had looked at the Triumph Showcase edition, the dealership got one of the Steve McQueen limited edition motorcycles (#0189 of 1000). It is a beautiful bike—green is my favorite color. But it lacked several of the features available on the Showcase edition including the heated grips. So if you are a collector, it’s a beautiful bike to have in your collection. But if you are a serious rider, you want as much functionality and usefulness, as well as good looks, in your bike. The Showcase edition was in the lead.

That Saturday after our rides, we headed back to the same BMW dealership where we had purchased the 310. Bill wanted a test ride; we were told test rides were not allowed at the Triumph dealership (due in large part to the much younger, large sailor customer base from the nearby Naval base, I assume). Whatever the reason for no test rides, Bill would not buy a bike he hadn’t ridden. The Urban GS was test rideable. He took it out on a 90 degree day, driving it around an empty parking lot. After what seemed a long time—in reality maybe 10 minutes, I went looking for him. He was having a blast zooming around the parking lot, his overshirt blowing back behind him, and the bike was beautiful. I didn’t need him to tell me he was going to buy it. The sales manager did, though. When Bill finished giving his impressions from the ride, Rick asked flat out if he thought he would buy it.

“Of course I’m buying it,” was the calm response. My boyfriend keeps things pretty close to his chest.

So several hours later, we became the owners of a second BMW motorcycle. This was on Saturday with the pick-up scheduled for Thursday. The delay was due to me having my DMV appointment on Tuesday where my new certificate processed with no problem, and I was told my new license would be in the mail.

We picked up the bike using a U-Haul truck as we are adamant we are not riding on major roadways. Now Bill had told me he would just ride the bike out of the truck provided we could turn it around. At first I thought he was joking and, when he said he didn’t need the ramp, he actually was. But just as with the 310, my brother was out mowing the lawn and came over to help. Between him and Bill, the bike was turned around, and my brother made the same suggestion about just riding the bike down the ramp. Bill gave him the honors as he had helped us twice now without needing to be asked and he really seemed to want to. His verdict? “Smooth.”

As for my riding, once my license arrives in the mail, then I will follow Bill through the neighborhood to get to our practice parking lot. And we will both get to practice our stopping, swerving, slaloming, and standing drills. My bike is a few inches shorter, though much taller. I think I will have the advantage inside the box.

My license arrived yesterday with the official “M2” designation smack in the center. This meant that now I could ride my bike over to the elementary school through the neighborhood making me an official motorcycle rider. You know how when you can’t fall asleep, every nighttime noise is magnified tenfold? Imagine that feeling but with the everyday objects on the road—stop signs, parked cars, bicyclists, oncoming traffic, following traffic, turning traffic, sewer covers, bumps, intersections, curbs, etc. I felt an awareness of every driveway we passed, the potential for a car to back out at any moment.

I realize this sounds a bit paranoid, so please don’t think I was miserably nervous as we cruised through the neighborhood. I had more the sensation of an awakening. My boyfriend Bill has been stressing the need for a hyper-awareness necessary on the motorcycle on things we take for granted driving in a car. As we rode through the neighborhood streets, I experienced that hyper-awareness without a lessening of the fun of riding.

For many riders cruising the neighborhood at or under 25 mph may not constitute a ride. But I marveled at the buffeting of the wind even at such a slow speed, and I wondered what it will feel like at 35 or 45 mph (no highway riding, so no need to go as high as 55). Bill insisted I wear a leather jacket for the neighborhood ride and came to the realization that we would indeed need summer riding jackets.

I have no idea what I looked like, but I felt great. We passed a couple pruning tree branches, and I realized that for them, Bill and I were two experienced riders cruising around. The only people who might have realized what a newbie I really was, would have been anyone behind me at two different intersections where I stalled out of the stop—3 stall-outs in total today. Luckily, no one was behind me.

We rode the bikes over to the school parking lot where I practiced accelerating out of the curve, coming to a quick stop, U-turns, and slow slaloming. Our Kamelkones and small traffic cones had arrived, so we put them to use. At first, Bill set 6 of them up about 7 feet apart. After my first attempt, he spread them out another foot and took away a cone. After my second and third attempts, he took away yet another cone and spread them even farther apart, around 9 feet and only 4. The challenge was a slow slalom, so I was in first gear and stayed seated. I could get through 3 of the cones, but I was definitely oversteering.

I wanted to compare the seated slalom to the standing slalom, so I made a run up and a run down standing on the bike—that was a revelation. In standing I naturally used more of my body to steer, just as we do on our bicycles once we gain confidence to accelerate. So I realized that I needed to rely on my body more in the slaloming when seated. By utilizing the shifting weight of my body, I had better control, I leaned more rather than turning the handlebars, and I was more successful.

The one point I was not successful on was getting Bill to ride the slalom as well. So my goal is to get him up practicing along with me. He doesn’t need the practice like I do, but I know riding around on the bike would be so much better than sitting and watching.

The new BMW R Nine T Urban GS sitting beside my G310 GS.

My Onancock Adventure

We woke up Saturday to grey skies. In fact there was a quick shower that I let dash my hopes of riding that day. But as my boyfriend pointed out, the forecast was for scattered showers, that was a scatter, and we could still hope to ride before the needed rain arrived. I texted my mom in Virginia Beach to be sure it hadn’t started raining over there. We were all clear.

Today’s ride was about swerving—both the quick swerve to avoid a crash and the gentle swaying swerves. I didn’t have any safety cones, so I imagined the ends of the parking spot lines as my cones and swerved between those. I had a blast doing that as I learned to moderate my speed with my steering to time the swerve correctly. I hope that translates into a much smoother performance when we do get out the cones.

As for the swerve to avoid an obstacle, I imagined half of the parking lot speed bumps to be the offending obstacle, and swerved to avoid those. I was doing the swerve wrong. I thought the MSF instructors had said to push down on the handlebar on the side you want to swerve, but it is supposed to be push forward and pull back on the handlebars. So I will need much more practice on that one. We did see a cool example of how to do the swerve, and practice it, from Motojitsu on Youtube, as well as some excellent turning drills from ADV Motorskillz.

I found myself fully enjoying my ride as I worked on maintaining my throttle for speed and then swerving in the parking lot lines. For the first time, I understood how Zen went along with motorcycles, and I can’t wait to be out on an open country lane.

My boyfriend is a constant mantra of safety. Even my practice look-arounds in the parking lot have to be with purpose and with focus. But since there is nothing between me and the elements if I tumble (which I haven’t yet, knock wood), and since I can see for myself how tailgaiting and cutoffs are the new driving norms, I appreciate him helping me to understand how much awareness is needed to be safe on a motorcycle.

A few days later, I took the morning off work to drive out to the Onancock DMV to add the Motorcycle designation to my driver’s license. Now if you’ve tried to do anything with the DMV since Covid-19, you aren’t wondering why I drove 75 miles for a DMV appointment when I live under 3 miles from the one on Widgeon Rd. It was a beautiful drive because Onancock is on Virginia’s Eastern Shore which means crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. As I looked out over the sun bejeweling the bay waters, I imagined the ride on a motorcycle. Up to Cape Charles was actually a beautiful ride, with the Fisherman Island Wildlife Reserve and Kipotoke State Park scenery as well as plenty of farmland and woods. And it isn’t that Cape Charles is not pleasant, but that is where the traffic picked up and the imagined ride became much less pleasant.

But then I turned off into Onancock, a town oozing charm. The DMV is across from the Town Hall building which is exactly how you would imagine a small town’s Town Hall to look. I had arrived 15 minutes early for my 9:30 appointment, which translated into me getting seen at only a few minutes past 9:30. Everything was going too smoothly, of course, so one of life’s gremlins had to get involved. My certificate number on my provisional permit granted by the MSF was deemed invalid by the DMV computers. We wiped the slate clean and started all over again but to no avail. Even as I watched several of the DMV ladies confer as to the certificate number issue, I knew what must have happened.

One of the MSF instructors was a newbie. I had noticed him visibly shaking with nerves as he spoke to the class. I also noticed that he was much less nervous outside on the bikes. But he was not comfortable speaking in front of a group of strangers. And as all you MSF veterans know, you don’t receive your DMV certificate until the completion of the course and passing the skills test. That translates into your instructor, who has put in many hours more than you did over the two days, was outside in the heat with you, is now carefully writing out the MSF completion card and the DMV certificate card for every member of the class, transposing some numbers somewhere, so the DMV does not have your certificate number.

Now the DMV ladies were sending the question of why the certificate wasn’t accepted to SSG. The earliest response from them would be half an hour. Perhaps you didn’t realize that I was at the DMV the day after Memorial Day. And remember, I work for a public school. Public schools do not like for teachers to take extra time off right before or right after a holiday. In fact public schools can insist on a doctor’s note for any leave taken right before or right after a holiday. So I had gambled on it being OK for me to take half a day and for my DMV appointment to not run much past 30 minutes. No I do not believe in unicorns and faeries, but I do believe in miracles and, had my certificate number been recognized, I would have been in and out of the DMV in 30 minutes. What this meant was either I take a day of leave with no pay (ouch) or I leave with the “M” added to my license. The joy of the latter decision is that I get to make another appointment with the DMV and go through the process again. But before I do, I will contact the local MSF folks and see if they can give me any insight on what is up with my invalid certificate number. As for school, the earliest appointment I can get is after school lets out for summer, so I will be able to spend the day in Onancock if needed.