Captain’s Blog

Yes, yes, I did just get back from vacation last week. But I still took last Friday off to head out to Kashaga Lodge with BJ and Wayne… to ride the great trails around Gooderham! I was itching to get out again, after fixing the blowout of the cam cover gasket (puking oil all over itself and my leg)…

…and putting on the replacement rear rotor…

…and switching to a nice new clean NoToil air filter:

The ride up was long, mostly because of traffic trying to get out of Toronto on a Friday afternoon, but we had BJ’s collection of Ricky Gervais podcasts to keep us occupied, and 2 GPS’s to steer us in the right direction. Plus an energetic dog: Jasper: to keep us all awake:

Finally, we arrived!:

It was a nice little cabin! Propane for the hot water and a couple lights, and a generator to run the water pump, lights, TV, microwave, and anything else we needed to plug in. We didn’t use the TV or microwave at all, and the propane lights and oil lamps provided more than enough light in the evenings… meaning we hardly started the generator at all. Toilet was an outhouse out back, but that’s no big deal for a few guys. Lots of room: bunk beds in both bedrooms and a fold-out couch, plus a screened in porch, deck, and BBQ!

…and lots of wood for a fire if you want one:

The cabin had a direct connection to the local trails, so we didn’t need to take the roads to get to them. Threw our gear inside, and went for a quick exploration ride Friday evening… after putting some air in Waynes back tire

Saturday had us up bright and early: picked up some food at the local general store, and breakfast at the truck stop. Saw a flash of 3 deer crossing the road, but didn’t get the camera out soon enough to snap all of them:

Finally we filled up our tanks and headed out. Here Wayne is about to down a shot of premix (he lost a bet ):

Trails were wide but rocky, and you couldn’t go more than 30 seconds without plowing through some sort of puddle. Though “puddles” in Gooderham are perhaps larger than us folk from the GTA are used to (but I only got stuck once, hooray!):

Wayne’s bike was built back in 1974 (it’s older then I am!) and had less clearance than the rides BJ and I were on… and the rocks took their toll. Mostly on the pegs, shifter, and rear brake. If they were slight bent they were kicked back into place. If they were more bent they we got out the wrenches….

…but if they were really bent, we got out the axe!

(we actually didn’t chop any wood with the axe, it was strictly for percussive maintenance)

Wayne also had a problem with his throttle. And by “problem” I mean “it was an on/off switch” (that seemed to prefer the “on” position). After a couple near-misses with him hurtling down the trail WFO we worked on the throttle:

…until it at least looked OK again:

But during the ride after lunch…

…riding through more water and sand, it finally gave up. We tore it down on the trail and found it infused with mud:

We got it fixed, but if we hadn’t had the tools we still would have been OK, as a couple of quads came by while we were playing mechanic (I think we only saw 3 quads all weekend?)

Evenings found us sampling beverages, reviewing our rides from the GPS and helmetcam files, and even watching some Russel Peters on BJs laptop. Oh, and playing with toys you can buy at the gas station for a couple bucks . Sunday we packed up early: which worked up well, because after breakfast and a trip to the general store for a clamp to reattach Waynes air filter:

…the heavens opened up and poured for the next couple hours: it was raining all the way back to Toronto. We had time to visit Ken Hoeverman (OFTR President) to say hi, chat about the area, and oogle his tire tree and spare bike collection…

…before making our way home. I had a great time! Cabin was comfortable, BJ and Wayne were excellent, funny riding partners, and there were more trails than we had time to ride.

Special thanks to Ken McPhail and his staff at Kashaga Lodge for making us feel at home, and helping make sure we got settled in!

Finally, moving pictures! In colour! With sound!

Hooray! I managed to get in on the ATV tour I was hoping for. I was worried about them not having room, but it turns out that since it was the day before the July 4 holiday, and the off-season… there were only 4 of us on the ride, including the leader.

Woke up early Saturday, got some gas, and set the cruise control… almost 2 hours later I pulled into the parking lot where the team was already offloading the quads.

Filled out some paperwork, grabbed helmet/gloves and some water and snacks, then we were led through a brief exercise to make sure we knew how to get around

Then we were off! Crawling down the sand tracks and through the forest:

About 10 miles later we stopped for a quick drink, then headed out again.

We only found one fallen tree too large to pull out of the way, and few puddles. The entire trail was pure sand the entire trip: not a root or rock in site:

A few times we came across other quads (most utility, and a couple sport), but no dirtbikes. We could always see them coming well in advance and everyone was keeping to safe speeds:

Then another quick break in a campsite (that’s apparently packed in the regular season) then we headed back to the lot, stopping for some group photos…

…and “action shots” through the largest puddle we could find

I had a great time, and it was nice to be back out on some sort of ORV… since my dirtbike has been parked for a month now. Hopefully I’ll get to go out again this weekend: weather looks hot!

Ok, not quite Tinkertown, but close. If reading Tinkertown didn’t make you excited… then you’re not from Kenora

I was sent to Orlando for 3 days of work. Since that only covered Mon-Wed… and Thursday is Canada Day… that meant I could squeeze in a few days vacation in sunny Florida and only burn a single vacation day before coming back!

First thing’s first: if I’m paying for this… it’s gonna be cheap: I’ll stay in a cardboard box to save a few bucks (as long as it has WiFi ). Goodbye nice hotel paid for by work… hello $40/night motel! Surprisingly it’s clean, has a full kitchenette, and the staff have been super friendly (and it has a convenience store on the first floor… and is next door to a KFC, wooo!)

With 3 days to play with, I decided on one day of rides, one of getting wet, and one in the dirt (if I can find a dirtbike/ATV place).

Day 1

Turns out my hotel is only about a 15min drive from Islands of Adventure:

The had opened a new Harry Potter ride a short while ago, which apparently had a 4-hour lineup the first couple days. Today it was still 70+ minutes… so I skipped it. Too many people: I would have liked to try something new… but when I can read one of the books while waiting my turn, that’s a bit much.

Lots of other rides to go on: saw the Sinbad show…

…and got soaked on a couple of rides. This one was the worst: between splashing through waves and the water jets aimed at you I stepped off completely drenched…

…which worked out well, since at about 4:15pm the heavens opened up, and because I was already wet I could still walk between rides while other guests ducked for cover.

But then it _really_ started to rain, with some thunder and lightning, and all the coasters had to shut down. But I don’t think Universal made any less money, since they charged $8 for a plastic poncho!

I took in a couple indoor events (3D Spider-Man was cool), but after trying to wait out the rain for an hour I had to go…

…because I got one of the last tickets to the Blue Man Group! Great show! But it was raining hard when I had to walk over there (parts of the park didn’t have good drainage: the sidewalks had 3″ of water on them). And it was still raining lightly when I left. That turned out alright in the end… since I could still re-enter the park with my day pass, and between 8pm and 9pm I managed to knock off the coasters with the long lines I had skipped earlier. The Incredible Hulk coaster had a 45min wait all day, but I rode it twice in 20 minutes!

Then I explored City Walk a bit on the way back to the car: lots of restaurants and clubs open after you’re done with Universal.

Day 2

Lots of water parks to choose from: I decided on Blizzard Beach. But first I needed some watersocks and breakfast. Where to go? There’s a Walmart on the way, with McDonalds inside

It was only about a 25-minute drive from the hotel, I was there in no time! (lots of cops w/radar on those roads!)

Not too many pictures from today, since I couldn’t really do waterslides or the wave pool with a digital camera in my shorts. But I did grab the camera while having lunch: their big thing is a chairlift to get up to the largest slides.

There was a bit of a drizzle in the morning which kept people away so I got to try the most popular slides several times before lines really started to form. It was a bit couldy all day, but plenty warm, and I was out of there by around 2:30: totally waterlogged. (probably because their lazy river takes 20-30 minutes to make a loop and I went around a few times )

Tomorrow I’m trying to see if there’s room for me on an ATV tour in a park North of Orlando. I’m crossing my fingers!

…ah, dodgy Li-ion batteries, strapped to my head… what could go wrong?

I wanted to get another battery for my ContourHD helmetcam… but for such a small battery they aren’t cheap! So I dug around the VholdR forums and Ebay… and found that I could get 2 aftermarket batteries shipped to my door for less than the price of a single OEM (even before tax+shipping!). So I send $28.53 US to Lion Battery and a week later they arrived in a small padded envelope.

The packaging said they were made in China by Cameron Sino. Some of the OEM battery ads made a point of saying that some aftermarket batteries had a poor fit… but at first glance the Cameron Sino copies appeared to be the same size (aftermarket on left, OEM on right):

…but when you put them in the camera you can see that they’re a bit thinner: if you wrapped a piece of paper around them (or a thicker sticker) they would be a perfect fit (aftermarket on top, OEM on bottom)

I charged and discharged all of my batteries a few times and recorded run times (2 used OEM, 2 new aftermarket). It was easy enough to do: just turn on the camera… come back when it’s dead… and then look at the length of the video files it recorded. The averaged results:

OEM runtime: 2h38min
Aftermarket runtime: 1h50min

…in other words the Cameron Sino batteries only had about 70% of the capacity of the OEMs… though the advertising/packaging claims the same 1050mAh capacity of the originals. This wasn’t a huge surprise: I’m well aware of what I’m getting when I buy cheap batteries from Ebay. In this case it turned out to be a deal. Why? If I ordered 2 batteries from the site I linked above (that says they’re on sale) it costs $65.98 for the batteries, $3.30 for tax, and $5.70 for the cheapest shipping (= $74.98). The 28.53US I paid is $30.06 Canadian… 40% of the OEM price.

So, 70% of the runtime, for 40% of the price. And they still last over 1h45m before I have to swap them out. That’s a deal!

I’ve been too lazy to edit the videos of our ride in Barrie last Saturday… but that can be a job for later this week . Yesterday my friend BJ gave me a spot on his trailer, and we headed out with 3 other guys (Dan, Jeff, and Rob) to Ganaraska Forest again.

I tried to bake my pictures into the YouTube video this time… but I still had few other shots to post. The first being something you don’t see every day: an elderly man that rode his electric scooter to the gas station… to fill up a Jerry Can?!?

The ride started out well enough: we tried some new trail South of Wilcox road, until Dans bike lost power and we couldn’t restart it (even after trying new plugs)

While BJ and Rob looked at the bike… I looked at Robs nice Suzuki… to discover BP doesn’t have the market cornered in environmental disasters

Eventually we had to tow Dans bike back to the parking lot…but not before I kinda sorta mangled a couple of Robs tiedowns in my rear sprocket, oops (sorry Rob!):

Jeff had had enough for the day, and Dan had to put his bike back on his trialer, so Rob, BJ and I headed back out. Visited a couple of the hills and The Lookout, then had some lunch. While picking up some food we met a real friendly guy who asked about our helmetcams (hi Richard!) so I gave him a link to this site and BJs YouTube page (Xhumeka). After a quick bite to eat we got back on the bikes and made our way to the Forest Center… just as the Trail Tours team pulled in as well:

The rest of the trip was uneventful: though we seemed to find a lot more whooped-out trails heading back to the parking lot that we found leaving it. I managed to retain my spark arrestor (the screw that holds it in fell out someplace):

…but I still haven’t figured out how I bent my license plate back almost under my fender. It was OK after I wrapped the tiedowns in my chain… and after I fell over at the top of sand hill… I can’t think of what else I hit? I bent it most of the way back… but it shattered the metal plate mount around it so I must have whacked something pretty hard? Strange:

Other than Dans problems, it was a great day! Forecast was for rain or thundershowers… but the rain held off all day: can’t wait to go again!

Now… on to the moving pictures…

This past Sunday I was out in Ganaraska forest again… but not for a regular ride: this time it was a club event: the Mini Pine 2010!

Getting out of bed before 6 and on the road by 6:30 had me rolling in to Sandraska Park at around 8:15am:

I thought I was a bit early… but the lot was already over half full, and filling up fast!

I had never seen so many bikes in one place before!

And trailers kept rolling in with more: from golden oldies to bikes that looked like they were fresh out of the crate:

In addition to the OFTR trailer there were some vendors present as well: KTM, Yamaha, Husaberg and Gas Gas… some with bikes for sale…

… as well as some private owners with sale signs on their bikes, big and small:

I saw some people I knew…

…and met others while chatting in line… which didn’t start to shorten until close to 10am:

Finally everyone mobbed together for the kickoff meeting: to learn how the enduro guys would launch, how the trails were flagged, safety stuff etc…

…then everyone headed back to their bikes to suit up.

There were 44 groups of enduro riders (up to 4 in a group), all launched one minute apart from each other (so that’s at least 150+ bikes right there) before the trail riders could head out. Soon the low numbered bikes started to line up for the 10:15 start:

The trickle of bikes lining up soon turned to a flood…

…with the most popular brand being KTM by a wide margin. I’d guess the second most popular brand I saw was Yamaha… but maybe that’s just what I wanted to see (because I ride one )

Finally the launches started… taking 45 minutes to get all the enduro guys out into the field.

Most of the trail riders just watched, though a few were queued up at the start area to get a jump on things. Lots of kids on smaller bikes with their parents!

Half way through was a gas stop. Anyone who couldn’t make the whole loop in one tank put their jerry cans on a large trailer… and while the riders were making their way through the first section the trailer was towed to the gas stop for them. I should have been able to ride the whole day on one tank but:

a) the gas station I normally use didn’t open until 10 on Sundays… so I was still riding on the same tank that brought me from Toronto

b) I had also sprung a leak: one of my 2 fuel lines was dripping gas fairly quickly. Every time I pulled over I fiddled with it to make it stop… but as soon as I started the bike up again the vibration would cause the leak to come back.

But, since I’m street-legal… I just rode to the gas station while the others used their jerry cans

Then we were off again:

I think I only fell off once in the first loop… but 3 more times in the second stage (I was getting tired)… but finally bikes started to cross the finish line:

…the same time as the local fire department fired up their grills and started to offer burgers and hot dogs!

Not long after I parked some strangers popped out of the forest as well: a group of horse riders must have been dodging bikes all day.. and ended up coming out at the finish line. After thinking about it for a sec they crossed under the same canopy where the enduro riders checked in… to great applause from the huge lineup at the BBQ

Finally, here’s some YouTube footage of the event from my camera and helmetcam:

I had a great time… though I was tired and sore by the time I rolled back into Toronto around 5pm. I can’t wait until next year! Since the enduro portion is nothing too serious… maybe I’ll give it a go!

…but I’m not hunting wabbit

Another club event is coming up, the Mini Pine… and as it’s a club event that means there will be a sound test before you can begin. They take the “Less Sound = More Ground” message seriously, as should anyone who wants to continue to ride a dirtbike/ATV anywhere near civilization.

Last year at the Northumberland event I clocked in a little high, I think 95 or 96db (and they’re looking for 94 or lower) but they let me ride anyways. This year to see if I can hit 94 I repacked my muffler before the event. It’s also good to know if new packing will actually help or not… or if the exhaust I bought is destined to be 95+.

I forgot I ordered a repack kit last fall, and ended up ordering a second one with some other parts a couple weeks ago. They’re both “generic 4-stroke” repack kits… but the White Bros kit (middle) is significantly smaller than Lexx kit (bottom) and from what I can remember it’s more expensive too. You can see the dirty exhaust I just took off up top:

5 allen screws and a little percussive persuasion later… voila! (used packing up top, core and spark arrester in the middle, and cannister on the bottom)

Trimmed the Lexx kit down a little with scissors (it was about 6″ too long) and wound it up snug around the core, held in place with masking tape.

Then slide it back together with a little high-temp silicone between the end can and canister… done!

It’s just under a 100km ride to get to the Mini Pine next Sunday… so I should get my sound check as close to “new” as possible. It better be lower than last year!

…to steal the phrase from the 3WheelerWorld forum. May 1st was the first 2010 meetup of the Southern Ontario Trikers (SOT) at Ganaraska forest… organized by my friend BJ (Xhumeka).

Got over to BJ’s early in the morning to help get the trailer sorted. Normally he could take up to 3 bikes…

…but fitting an ATC in there too required a bit of out-of-the-box thinking… and a slab of dead tree:

BJ’s friend Paul soon arrived and we were on our way. Although Paul rode street, it was his first time on a dirtbike: way to get thrown in the deep end!

Soon enough we were out at the Ganny, greeted by an assortment of trikes, quads and bikes:

…and here’s Paul all ready to go!:

Due to a couple of errors on my part, first taking the “back road” to our first destination… and secondly mishearing BJ’s next destination after he found us… I was in “group 2″ for the day. 3 quads and 2 bikes meandering the forest and never quite meeting up with the main group until lunch. Which is too bad, because it would have been nice for everyone to make it to the Forest Center and stream at some point… but we still put on some miles… and taught Paul how to kickstart a dirtbike:

Or after it wore it him out… how I could kick it.

And how when I got tired some of the quad guys could kick it (thanks to everyone on their quads who kept us dirtbikers moving!) Note to self: never buy anything that doesn’t come with working electric start!

We did make it to The Lookout first thing, before we kinda lost track of each other for awhile

We made it back to the parking lot about 20 minutes ahead of the main team, just before lunch, … and just as it started to rain. Paul was just happy to be off the bike for awhile:

I had only brought a couple snack bars for the day, so I borrowed Pauls backpack and burned down the road to the nearest burger shack (hooray blue plate!), and returned with a bag full of fries and bacon-cheesburgers. And one of the SOT guys had a big box of chocolate-chip cookies for desert: sweet!

The rest of the day went off without a hitch: giving my group a chance to see some of the local hillclimbs that we missed in the morning. Then it was time to pack up. A little bit of excitement as we had a why-is-the-trailer-moving-oh-shit-it’s-not-attached! moment…

..but other than that it was just getting the bikes all lined up to fit the trike back on BJ’s trailer:

…and a quick stop at Tim Hortons on the way home.

Thanks to everyone who helped make 2010’s first SOT meetup a success, and special thanks to BJ for organizing it. Congrats to Paul for sticking with it the entire day… right to the final fall in the parking lot just as we returned from the last run

Now for the YouTube: several hours of boring helmetcam footage trimmed down to just the interesting bits:

First, a little background…

I fed a couple aftermarket and OEM batteries to my dirtbike before clueing in that it wasn’t the batteries that were the problem… it was the charging system cooking them (oh, and now it makes sense why new headlights would burn out 5 minutes after installing them ). But happily a new regulator got that sorted, and I rode all last season with the cheapest battery Ebay would send me. Hooray!

But, although I dutifully kept that cheap battery topped off all winter… when it came time to inflate my new tires this spring I took the easy way out… and instead of inflating them with my manual air pump… I just clipped my 12v air compressor to the battery and had both tires full in minutes. Which ran down the battery.

But I didn’t charge it up again.

And 2 months later when I actually wanted to start the bike… it would no longer take a charge. And the top 2 rules for lead-acid tech batteries seem to be 1) don’t discharge them too deeply, and 2) don’t let them sit around discharged. Crap.

OEM Yuasa batteries may be what the bike came with, but they’re stupid expensive (I swear, every time I check the prices seems to have magically gone up $10). And these days lead-acid (or AGM) isn’t the only game in town: lithium-ion batteries have pretty much taken over the consumer electronics market. So I decided to go double-or-nothing… and get an even more expensive lithium battery: sold by TurnTech and E-Batt.

Which one to buy? Well E-Batt was cheaper on their web site, but wanted way too much for shipping to Canada (more than making up the price difference) and TurnTech came in a sturdy looking plastic case with nice thick metal tabs to connect the power wires to. Sold! I ordered it April 11th and it was at my door on the 27th. Sent one email to the owner to make sure my PayPal went through and he responded the same day saying it had, and giving me the USPS tracking number.

The old battery was easy to get at: the WR has an allen bolt at the back of both sides of the seat, in my case it’s also the front mount for the rack:

30 seconds later and I had the top off…

…and 30 seconds later the paperweight had been removed.

Here’s the old battery on the left, and the TurnTech on the right. It’s around 3cm shorter than the original, and a bit lighter:

Lets put it in! Should be a no brainer… I was wondering how I’d have to pad the battery to keep it from moving around under the seat with all that extra space! Wait! What the…???

Dammit! The TurnTech is wider than the original: actually it seems to have a slight taper so it’s wider at the top… and it won’t fit between the frame rails! Here it is again beside the original:

Lovely. Yes, the plastic case on the TurnTech may make it a bit sturdier… but I bet the heatshrink cover on the E-Batt doesn’t have clearance issues. Do I have to return this thing? Well, no, first I had a “Oh… duh.” moment and realized I can drop the batttery through the rails sideways (never had to do it with the original battery)…

…but then the battery was still too wide to fit in the plastic tray. But if I pull out the foam guides from both side of the tray…

… and push down ever so gently: Success!

And after that the bike spun over quickly and started with the first stab at the magic button! That’s going to be nice to have for this weekend! And since it’s a dualsport bike… it’s also nice to not have to kickstart it when it occasionally stalls at stoplights. I need to turn up the idle just a little bit…

Haven’t used the battery for more than a couple minutes so far, but:

Pros:
– lighter than stock (but I don’t really care)
– will hopefully survive charge/discharge abuse better than my last victims
– started the bike

Cons:
– 50%-100% more than an OEM battery
– wide top made it hard to fit
– terminals you screw the wires to stick up from the battery (not recessed like OEM) meaning the wires stick up about 1cm higher than stock. It barely clears the bottom of my seat (E-Batt only provides wires out of their battery, so it may not have this problem)
– unproven durability: a dirtbike is basically a paintshaker on wheels: if it’s sensitive to long-term vibration there’s gonna be problems…

Oh, I forgot to weigh the TurnTech before installation, but the old battery weighed 1957 grams…

…which compared to the web site weight from TurnTech (1.9lbs) saves you just over a kilogram (1095 grams by my scale).

Hopefully this TurnTech will last a few years (comes with a 6-month warranty, which will get me through this season). If anything goes wrong I’ll be sure to post about it!

Yesterday I attended my first club ride of the season: the Bethany 2010! Fortunately I did a lot better than last year: in that I didn’t spend all day mudwrestling.

I arrived at BJ’s place around 7am, and we loaded up the bikes…

…then it was off for breakfast with the gang at Haugens… and ride the bikes to the launch point. Most of my group is in this shot (except BJ): from left-to-right: Derek, Rob, and Ken. And the bikes from front-to-back: Ken’s WR400, BJs TE450, Robs DRZ400SM, my WR450, and Dereks brand-new DRZ400S

There were many other bikes as well: I didn’t get a count… but at least as many (or more) than last year:

And David Vans bike (the organizer) where we all signed up and slipped him some cash

Then a short safety briefing, and we were off!

We went out in groups of 3-5 staggered a few minutes apart. Most of my pictures are in the helmetcam coverage (I chopped out all the highway/gravel-road footage to fit into YouTubes 10-minute limit)… but I did get some at the main obsticle of the day. Surprisingly it wasn’t a mudhole or water crossing… but trees that had been cut down intentionally to block a road:

After clearing a way to get the bikes around the trees, the next stop was for a quick break (and gas) at Heaven on Seven:

Then a few more roads and trails… and we were back at Haugens around 3pm. Load up the bikes… get a bite to eat… then haul back down the 401 to Toronto.

I had a blast this year, I can’t wait ’till the next event. Special thanks to David Van for organizing things, Haugens for putting up with our noise and muddy clothes, ODSC preriders and our sweep Daryl (sp?). And of course, my riding team: BJ, Rob, Ken and Derek!

Oh and an extra photo of BJ because he deserves it: not only did I get a ride on his trailer… but he was making the extra effort to see the cops had no reason to pull us over

Finally the video!