The boys even got to rock-nerd it up (geologists). Was fairly well roasted and a little bit sunburnt on the neck by the time the day was done. Think future trips over the summer will be down south as far as can go.. The several kilometre hike in motorcycle leathers was interesting though.

shinya kimura @ chabott engineering from Henrik Hansen on Vimeo.

If anyone wants to buy one of his bikes for me.. Well, I’d be a happy chappy they look pretty unique.

Fenced off free (dodgy) parking

What does this mean?

• more pressure on other parking (which already fills up by about 8-8:10 am)
• unused dead space once again
• expense on the labour and fence which could have been used to take down the no parking signs

I suspect a bit later we’ll have a little ceremony and the Sydney city council will announce the creation of 50 new bike parking spaces in the CBD. The old “take it away, re-brand it and sell you what you already had before”.

It’s somewhere between annoying and insulting to hear people start on the age old “oh, be careful they’re dangerous” followed by some enlightened piece of incredibly obvious advice relating to an accident they heard talk of. I’ve actively sought out many bike crash videos over the years with the intent of learning from other people’s mistakes. Just like sports coaches watch other teams play: there’s value to be gained from watching others.

This article (with video) shows the sort of deadly behaviour on a motorbike that result in such a high accident rate amongst motorcyclists.

The video
Here’s the video, it shows the speeding and crash (note: it’s not particularly gory, but you know from the article the outcome):

Sure most people might zip around a little bit, open up the throttle on the freeway a bit, but are by and large, sensible enough to listen to the training they received. This video I think really gives you a bit of an idea of what motorcyclists have to look out for on their own:

On some rides I’ve come across pretty much all of the hazards in that video. The hugely variable part is what other drivers and riders might do. That’s why I watch videos of other motorcyclists getting into trouble to add their situation to my road knowledge. Just to be clear: I’m much happier when I see the rider get up and walk around at the end though, even the twits doing wheelies in singlets and no helmets: because maybe, just maybe they’ve learnt a lesson.

Anyhow: on to this video..

Analysis of this crash – causes

CAMERA or “THE YOUTUBE EFFECT”: I think the camera on was probably one of the first mistakes made in this unfortunate ride.

First time I stuck a camera to the side of my bike in the French alps I began to ride, well, like a moronic show-off. Not pulling wheelies and knee down on corners type moron, but riding faster than I had been minutes earlier and somewhat distracted. As it turned out the included batteries last all of 2 minutes in the cold (why even bother including them??!!) so all my fantastic cornering and exciting riding had been missed, instead showing the rather more tame view up the road while I put my gloves, earplugs and helmet on and cutting out just as I got through the second corner. Served me right. I did get some decent touring footage in the end, but without the urgency and stupidity on the road.

Don’t believe this is a cause: Youtube is littered with video of people showing off for the camera. That’s the prime reason I don’t have any desire to pull wheelies on my bike because the majority of wheelie videos seem to be about crashes.

SPEED: The speeds involved are somewhere beyond ridiculous.

It later emerged Bowden was clocked at a top speed of 156mph, but his speedometer had reached speeds of 170mph, Truro Crown Court heard

That’s around 260 km/hour for the civilised metric world.
In more interesting forms:

• about the landing speed of a 747 jumbo jet
• double any speed limit on a freeway in Europe (Autobahns excepted of course). To look at it in relative terms: were you travelling on the freeway at the speed limit and this guy ran up the back of you: he’d hit with the same impact as if you just veered off the freeway into a brick wall.
• 71 metres per second or 233 feet per second
• A football or soccer field every one and a bit seconds
• fast enough to cross the Sydney harbour bridge in 16 seconds, the Golden Gate bridge in 38 seconds or Tower Bridge in a smidge over 3 seconds (those are including approaches)

In short: a ridiculous speed by any measure. Motorcycles do speed well, but don’t stop or steer so well (we can’t really brake hard and turn at the same time like a car with ABS and four fat tyres can).

LACK OF BUFFER ZONE: People don’t watch out for motorcycles. They can be on their phone, drunk, stupid or just bad drivers. That’s why you need a buffer zone to give you room to make up for their lack of awareness of where you are on the road.

The UK has a long running series of ads about “think bike” while I was there, here’s one that shows why you need a buffer zone:

Hasn’t changed too much really:

Australia does it a different way (we reserve our nasty ads for smoking and HIV/AIDS ads):

PEER PRESSURE: The guy in front probably didn’t want to be the slow guy, the one that crashed overtook and had to continue upping the speed. Thing is that perhaps neither of them wanted to be speeding that day but they might have thought they had to to not be slowing the other one down.

• Front guy: “man this is a bit fast, but he’s still on my tail, better give it a bit more throttle”
• Back guy: “jesus he’s off quick.. Don’t want to lose him, better give it a bit more throttle”
• Front guy: “he’s still there, better go faster..!”

You can see how that just keeps spiralling up until someone comes unstuck.

HIGH TO LOW SPEED PERCEPTION LAG: Best term I can come up with to describe it. So when you go from high to low speeds your brain stays in high speed mode for a while.

The rider that crashed did a bit of a hasty zip around his friend (who had been leading). Maybe he was still in “high speed mode” and misjudged the braking of his friend a bit. I had that happen after a long freeway blast in Europe, took the exit and thought I’d slowed down enough. Got up to the sharp exit corner and a glance at the speedo/gear indicator showed I was still going too fast and in 3rd gear, even though it felt like I had (the human brain is amazingly good at adjusting). Luckily I had a good line, cornering braking/downshifting habits and time to contemplate a safe run off area, but it was a good lesson in not trusting your perception of speed. He probably had a bit of a scare and extra adrenalin probably contributed to the later mistake (high as a kite: gunning it harder).

Analysis of the crash – stuff that usually matters but didn’t here

ROAD SURFACE: As anyone who has ridden in the UK will tell you: those stripey bike overtaking sections of the road are a shitty shitty surface to depend on. For one they’re always littered with rocks, glass, bits of truck tyre. For another: they’re where the two sides of laid tar join (poorly).  That’s without the fact that the painted surface is not great for grip on top of that. But for this case the quality of the road surface made no difference but it should have been another reason to slow down.

GEAR: This guy was wearing decent gear, but at those speeds and in that mess of cars on both sides of the road it wouldn’t matter what you wore.

TARGET FIXATION: This guy was throttle fixated, not target fixated. He probably didn’t even notice the car until the very last minute, so it wasn’t like he had a chance to lay eyes on it long enough to steer towards it. So I don’t think that was the issue.

Analysis of the crash – How the rider could have avoided it

Less speed and ensuring proper buffer zone are where I’d put my money on avoiding this outcome.
Maintaining buffer zones is the primary reason some riders are safe and others are not safe. I keep a buffer zone pushing out ahead and to the sides of me. 3 seconds is the goal (or more if possible or at speed). It’s a habit I continue when I get in a car which is a nice thing.

Easiest way is to have a habit of picking a stationary spot that the vehicle in front passes (e.g. reflector pole, mark on the road etc) and count back until it passes your front wheel. Three thousand, two thousand, one thousand.. check. If you cut yourself off talking then that’s probably the point you’d impact. Roll off the throttle a bit and drop back or else (check blind spots), indicate and change lanes to give yourself more room. If someone’s doing something stupid start braking and/or cover the brakes to reduce your reaction time.

You’ve generally got a bit of time to think on the bike and nothing else to focus on except improving your riding craft, so any boring time: just practice spacing.

The guy in the video had no buffer zone in front or to the side (the downside of filtering through gaps with oncoming vehicles), he’d be lucky if he had 1 second between the car in front doing something stupid (as they do) and hitting it. It takes probably that long to start braking (reaction time). That and 160km/h (100 miles per hour) impact velocity meant with any sort of buffer zone he’d be hard pressed to keep it together while yanking on the brakes.. Accelerating through that sort of congestion coming up is an easily avoidable issue with a bit of scanning up the road and less urgency to get up to top speed ASAP to show off to your mate with the video camera.

Anyhow, my condolences to the family/friends left behind and I hope it makes some people think a bit and focus on good riding habits.

MotoCzysz E1pc - Electric just got sexy!

Their petrol burning version is pretty sexy also:

The petrol burning cousin the C1

I mean there’s so much good stuff about this thing it’s hard to know where to start:

• aesthetics are beautiful (see here for the full sized glory)
• it’s electric
• it has easily swapped out battery packs
• it’s beautiful from any angle I’ve found a picture of

Dash of the MotoCzysz E1pc, is that an iPhone for the console?

Technicals

Bit hard to find out much, but here’s what I’ve found or guessing on:

• lightweight carbon fibre and aluminium construction to free as much weight for batteries as possible
• 125kg of “hot swap” lithium ion battery packs (according to ecofriend and ashphaltandrubber). There are 10 (6 visible, 4 hidden under the faring).
• Three electric motors for drive
• Suspension adjustment is different (MotoCzysz fork/suspension assembly has some magic from their C1 bike)
• crank appears to go through the pivot point to the right side for final drive to the rear sprocket (see picture below and see whether you agree with me)

The swingarm, but pay attention to the pivot point - some magic for drive transmission to the other side of the bike?

• I think the chain goes something like:

My guess as to how they have the 3 motors rigged

• This appears to be the “frame” of the bike:

The frame I presume. Certainly a bit different.

• No gears (pretty standard for electric vehicles)
• 0 to 120mph (193km/h) in less than 11seconds (this was an “easy” test with less than 100% capacity)
• probably has some storage capacity in the “fuel” tank

History and Early Concept Pictures

The earlier pictures are a bit different, but pretty close really:

Early sketch

Earlier concept shot

There’s a video of the MotoCzysz E1pc to show it’s not just fluff.

Triumph Daytona 675 in the snow.. The fun of touring Europe heading into winter.

A few times in my travels I got some surprise snowfall (one of the problems of touring Europe towards the end of the year).

Keeping warm in the snow

It’s one of those bits of adversity which really make the journey memorable (so long as you don’t get hurt too badly of course). If you get stuck in snow there’s really not much you can do except wait it out, failing that slowing down (first gear isn’t low enough!), never using the front brakes, holding on tight and struggle through it.

But there are options (if you have the option to prepare properly)!

The following creative types deserve points for coming up with something functional that lets them take a bike at reasonable (or in some cases-crazy) speeds.

Sports bikes on ice

Insane is about all I can say for these guys, I pity the poor sod who had to painstakingly put the bolts/spikes etc through the tyres, but the results speak for themselves.

Here’s one by a guy named Sjaak Lucassen, a crazy “ride everywhere in the world on an R1″ guy (I’m not kidding when I say “everywhere”). He took a bunch of tek screws to a motorcycle tyre. Also interesting is his technique for changing a sportsbike wheel via leaning against something without a centre stand.

Anyhow, it’s a pretty standard practice for the strange class of nutcases who race motorcycles on ice. See Dieseljo.com’s guide to ice racing.

Home made ice tyres

This looks like it seems to work ok too:

Husqvarna military Motorbike

Moving on to options that can work with normal tyres: From ADVRider‘s forum there’s these beasties:

Allgo’s custom motorcycle snow chains. He was talking of making a bunch of them (check the thread) but the parts he made them from seemed to be a bit scarce.

More homemade stuff: chains

Allgo's custom motorcycle snow chains

Here’s the creator fitting them on a pretty snowy trail.

Chris/Allgo's motorbike snow chains

If you want something you can buy (albeit quite expensively), then perhaps these are the go: MV snow claws.

Snow claws for motorcycle

Perhaps a bit better suited to road tyres for motorcycles.

So a tank and a motorcycle have a roll in the hay..

And to end on something completely different: if you aren’t particularly attached to having wheels on your motorcycle, the boffins at AD Boivin have come up with this type of creation:

The Explorer Smart All Terrain Systemwhich allows you to turn your motorcross bike into a snow bike.

A video of it in action here:

Looks like fun.

And for the pedal version there’s the Ktrak Snow cycle:

Update: Just came across this very old school idea:

This is how we do it OLDSCHOOL!

A true hard working bike

What would have been interesting was if the creator of this beast had installed a centre stand and some sort of hookup with the wheel that allowed the bike engine to drive the grinding wheels too.

Does the helmet double as eye protection?

Still: I like the idea of a trade that comes to you, with minimal vehicle footprint and then putts off to the next job.

I’m clear to point out several things (to be fair):

• they’ve gone into some much MUCH crazier terrain and parts of the world (e.g. mongolia, russia etc)
• but they have backup 4WDs, celebrity status and the resources of the BBC to get them through whatever happens
• but I pay for all my shit out of my own pocket

The real long way round

I think they had a great trip and I think the cringe motorcyclists have with a series like the long way round is that they’re firstly a bit jealous that Ewan and Charley got paid to do the trip, got free gear, bikes etc and have backup/organising team. The series shows the complaining/troubles they have along the way, which to people who have done some big trips on motorcycle: those bits are the memorable ones. I might have to hold this off to another time to rant about arm chair motorcyclists, so I’ll get back to the videos I want to show you.

Anyhow, this series called “Ewan and Thingy – the wrong way round” might get a chuckle out of anyone who knows about “The long way round”.

Ewan and Thingy

The final episode is up so must be time to blog about it.

Ewan and Thingy

For a playlist on youtube with all of them go to the Ewan and thingy playlist. Or for the hyperlink click challenged: here’s the lot of ‘em. Thanks to bigface.tv for making this!

Episode 1 – Preparations

Episode 2 – Shoes

Episode 3 – Indigenous species

Episode 4 – Bitten

Episode 5 – Pulling out

Episode 6 – Love and hate it

Episode 7 – Under par

Episode 8 – On the fence

Episode 9 – A whiff of friendship

That’s all folks.. Hope you enjoyed it.

The bike is the same as my old bike actually, just a more up to date version. New brakes, better suspension, improved engine, bit more of a “glaring” look in its headlights.

New Triumph daytona 675 2009

triumph daytona 675 2009 (bum shot)

It had a whole 2 kilometres on the clock. Will have to do something about that soon!

Need to fix the odometer reading though..

So I’m officially a collector with my trusty old Daytona 675 awaiting my return to Europe for some more touring.

Not sure whether I’ll keep it black however, black’s a near impossible colour to keep clean or scratch free.

The story so far.. (an introduction to “normal” motorcycle brakes)

For car or scooter riders (which sometimes only have one brake lever) here’s how proper motorcycle brakes work. Motorcycle brakes are operated by two levers: one on the right hand for the front brake, right foot for the back brake.

Motorcycle brakes explained

The right hand/front brake is just like bicycle brakes if you’re from Australia, UK, South africa, NZ. but the opposite to bicycles in Europe, USA. Ask me how I know they’re different and I’ll show you the scar on my arm from trying to ride a mountain bike with a USA setup.

It’s easy to remember: all brake levers are on the right, all gear stuff (clutch lever and gear pedal) are on the left. Brain is hopefully in the middle coordinating things.

What’s good and bad about motorbike brakes?

Before I tell you about the pros/cons of having front and back brake separate I need to tell you about motorcycling’s dirty little secret: we can’t really properly use our brakes while cornering. This is because, just like cars, most braking is done with the front wheel(s) and because it will either stand the bike upright in a hurry or else slip out from under you: you can’t use your front brake while going around corners. Yep, that’s right: 60-90%  of the braking power of a motorcycle is completely unusable whenever they’re going around a corner. Keep that in mind when you next have to yank on your car brakes while hammering around a corner at speed.

So the advantage to separating out the front brake from the rear brake is that you can apply the rear brake without having to use the front brake. How is that useful? Well another name for the rear brake is the “steering brake”, that should give some hints. If we have to brake while going around a corner a bit of rear braking is possible. Too much though and you’re stuffed, but a bit is certainly possible. For slow speed maneuvering the back brake is quite handy for giving you more control by using it to hold the engine back and thus having more “drive” available for the wheels at slower speeds.

Generally speaking: the way you most effectively use motorcycle brakes is to apply the front and back together smoothly avoiding skidding. If you try to use just the back you’ll find it locks and/or takes a long time to stop (when you finally do you’ll smell burning rubber that you’ve left for the last 50 metres or so).  If you just use the front: it’s likely you could brake better by having the back brake involved to “bed the bike down a bit” and spread the gripping effort across two wheels rather than just one (which is safer if you hit a patch of oil/gravel/sand etc with one wheel).

In terms of technology motorcycles (because of lack of electronic systems) have some areas where we have far superior brakes to cars (motorcycle brake pads/calipers are pretty high tech), but that isn’t enough.

The big issue with having control over both brakes is that it takes a lot more skill to coordinate the balance between front and back to get effective braking.

So what’s the problem with riders and current brakes?

Everyone tends to think they’re Valentino “prancing motorcycle superstar monkey” Rossi or Casey “pretty fast for that drug related last name” Stoner and can brake perfectly. They can’t, not even close. The deaths from motorcycling statistics show this.

Riders are also often caught out because their stopping distance is inferior to cars (who have 4 big fat grippy tyres and anti-lock braking that they can apply at any time without too much stress versus two skinny coin sized contact points).

We motorcyclists ride machines that can drag off a jet, but we get out-braked by anything from rusty decades old VW beatles to milk trucks.

Motorcycle riders also tend to be complete and utter Luddites when it comes to new technologies. Some examples over the decades:

• proper suspension – “Oh we’ll lose all feel of the road”,
• disc brakes -  “I like drum brakes because they are much simpler”,
• steering dampers – “but it’ll screw up the steering”
• hydraulic brakes – “what if they spring a leak?”, “I won’t be able to feel the brakes”,
• electronic fuel injection – “but I understand carburettor design” etc etc.

The complaints against ABS on sports bikes today:

• It’s heavier (so is a wheelchair lift on your car or that 15 kilos of beer belly you’re carrying. Really, a few extra kilos on 180 kilos of bike are worth it for safety, just like leathers weighing 10-15kg versus shorts and t shirt weighing few hundred grams)
• it’s expensive (so is intensive care but wait: didn’t you just spend 500bucks on wavy brake discs, 200 bucks on pimped out shorty levers and a 150 dollar tail tidy?)
• I want more control (sorry Mr Rossi or Mr Stoner, I didn’t know you read my blog..)
• I know how to brake effectively (statistically you most likely don’t, if you’re claiming you do then that’s a worry to start with)

Of course if you want to buy a new bike from a company that continually shuns any real technological advances: go buy a Harley.

Keep in mind the same people that poo hoo ABS (despite all evidence of improving braking performance) are the ones who will recommend spending thousands of dollars on uprated suspension to dive less during braking, different brake pads and braded brake lines to reduce fade and so on. Or spend several thousand dollars making the bike more noisy and more polluting by changing the exhaust just to get a few more horsepower. So go figure.

What is Honda’s “Combined ABS”?

In a (long run-on) sentence:

When you hit the brakes hard the electronic magic in the bike uses a bit of both front and back brakes (the “combined” bit) to achieve maximum stable braking while preventing the wheels from skidding (that’s the “anti-lock braking” bit) which it works out via sensors on the wheels.

Here’s the satisfaction results and stopping distances from Honda on earlier attempts at ABS/Combined ABS.

So it’s the combination of ABS with combined braking tweaked to be as non-intrusive for sports bikes as possible. Combined braking is found in scooters all over the place, ABS is in any new car/van and has been available as an option on touring/enduro bikes for decades.

In a picture it is this:

Honda Combined ABS diagram. (Image courtesy of Honda's info)

In video it’s this:

And some more video resources explaining more:

Talking about the test launch where they put down sand to test it.

Having ridden in sand: yanking on the brakes is not something you’d do, so that must have taken some balls to trust the technology. If I wasn’t in love with the triumph daytona 675 I’d probably buy one. If I can test ride one I might consider swapping because you never know what might run out into the road and need you to drop anchor in an emergency.

Conclusions

I love that Honda has taken the lead on this at long last.

I think it has been long overdue on sports bikes and have been a bit annoyed that such an option isn’t available because of the typical macho bullshit attitudes that drive much of motorcycling (particularly in sports bikes). So I’m making a bet that within 5 years Suzuki, yamaha and hopefully triumph will all be offering ABS of some sort on their sports bikes and hopefully across all of the range. BMW already offer it on their “almost sports bikes” I believe.

Weight, expense and “lack of control” are the arguments used since the year dot against anything new in motorcycling. Helmets for example are too expensive, weigh too much, impede rider vision, feedback and control: but they’re safer. I think this technology is in the same realm and probably adds about as much expense and weight as a helmet.

Too many lives are lost while we play pissing up a wall contests over how we can out perform technology and make excuse after excuse as to why it should stay forbidden or for touring bikes only. By all means put a switch on it that goes from “extra safety mode” (on) to “dickhead hero mode” (off) and see how we go.

I got back from my most recent touring and then had to sort out what to do with the bike. Tossing up whether to try and sell it in a short time was complicated by the need to get something fixed under warranty. The day I was due to drop it at the shop, London had some very heavy snow (reported as “The heaviest snow in 18 years” but actually wasn’t but still enough to grind everything to a halt).

Snow on the bins shows just how much fell.

So instead of riding in the snow Scott and I had a snowfight, built a Calvin and Hobbes inspired snowman and explored the surrounding snow covered countryside.

Scott next to my snow smiley on the Northwood golf course.

The fix and store bike plan got delayed a day or two and I ended up hiring a van on wednesday to get the bike up North to the warm, dry garage of my mate Chris (thanks again Chris!).

My Daytona 675 tucked in for a roadtrip.

Got back at 5 in the morning or there abouts and had to be awake waiting for my mountain bike bag to be delivered (another thing that had been delayed thanks to the snow). Luckily it turned up and I rushed to pack, sort and chuck out ready for my flight to Hong Kong.

After a stopover in HK to see friends, I am finally over the jetlag (flying against the sun is always harder).

HK skyline from Tunde's place.

It’s strange going from snow to summer, especially with the crazy bushfires in Victoria that have sadly killed so many people. I’ve been up close and personal with bushfires while growing up (have done a bit of burning off and fire fighting on occasion) and the footage of the massive fires in Victoria is quite scary.

Next up I’m looking at getting a bit settled back in the wonderful land of Oz.

Like any safe rider I decided I was spending too much time worrying about something and not enough about riding itself.

My solution (courtesy of my trusty roll of Gaffer tape):

Nathan’s motorbike lessons – Gear

Feel free to rate, comment etc. I shot this one day on the road on my most recent tour of Europe and Morocco. See my youtube video and text/picture post on the first bit of that tour.
Nathan

This is the video version of my earlier trip report: UK to Lisboa, Portugal and gives the visuals to the route I took and the joys of a puncture the night of departure, proving once again that Murphy’s law can find you anywhere, although I was obviously riding too fast for Murphy and his rocket sled disasters.

As it is my first attempt to coddle my range of videos I took along the way into some semblance of a structured, interesting journey (rather than a bunch of shakey, bumpy disjoint image soup) it took me quite a bit of time to figure out how to effectively use the tools and how not to “over cook” the result. I think it is like powerpoint in a lot of ways: sure, you could use the equivalent of the powerpoint typewriter transition every time you transition a video, but you’re a twit if you do.

I would also have liked to put a bit of music on the track, but am researching how best to source that stuff:  MusicLoops is one I found,  there are a few tunes on there I like, but really: they’re just slightly different copies of the “real” tunes by the artists I like. So you have to wonder what a heavy handed approach like say youtube has recently started doing (Youtube removes audio from copyrighted videos).

Anyhow, feedback welcome,
Enjoy, Nathan