One Week in May

By the time I’m able to slide backwards down the drive on the Boulevard its noon and the Sunday action has got going in earnest around here. The good folks of Newmarket are walking dogs, cycling, driving and the occasional dulcet tones of Vans & Hines pipes on V-twins rents the air…lovely. The gardeners are also out, that season has started albeit with caution, mid-May frost is not unheard of.  A smell of cow shit pervades the area, someone has ordered a load of manure.  Indeed it is that time of year when this part of the world goes BOING, it will happen this week, all the signs are there. I too have been busy gardening in my own way, background stuff, like emptying and sieving the composters, a big job by any standard, and yesterday I laid a 170 square foot concrete slab (with assistance from the eldest of the offspring). As the cliché goes, I ache in places I didn’t know I have. Still, sprits are high, the weather is great and the road calls me by name.

I’m still just revisiting the good rides of the area, easing into the season. It’s all a little familiar, except that in so many ways it isn’t. The scenery changes all the time here and some of the spots I’m visiting I last saw in the dying days of last fall, it’s like different places all together. I realize that I can’t always ride new routes every time I get on the motorcycle, there are just not that many different routes to follow for a ride after work or even for a Sunday outing. That’s ok, it’s not necessarily about the destinations. So bear with me if I write about places I’ve taken you before – there will be plenty of rides to the as yet unvisited before the season is through. Today I’m heading to The Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park area, I want to ride the Kawartha regional roads 503 and 507, two really fabulous roads for motorcycling. Gorgeous scenery, decent pavement and lots of curves, some of them heart-stoppingly tight.

                                           Still grey, but promise of spring

Getting to the 503 is a couple of hours ride. I’m in the mood to take it relatively easy, so I take the country roads through farmlands punctuated by forests. It’s still mostly grey and brown, but there is a sheen of light green on the trees in the forests. It’s the buds, everything is in bud, the darling buds of May, darling because I have had about enough of grey and brown, spring has been too long in coming, and it is all scheduled to burst forth this week. The ride though the farmlands is also great, all the spring activities are on the go, animals in the fields instead of in barns, tractors plowing and fields with rows and rows of green dots as crops start to push through the soil. I know that what I am looking at is not nature at her best, but something of an industrial process, mainly to produce inputs to other industrial processes that produce the semi-poisons (like high fructose corn syrup) that here in North America we call food. Still there is a nice rural feel to it, that re-assuring cycle of seasons is… well re-assuring.   

From the road to Kawartha Highlands

I’ve been looking forward to this ride as the Boulevard was serviced this past week and it’s always nice to ride just after a service to feel the added smoothness and how everything jells just a little better. But it isn’t working out that way, the bike feels ‘out of tune’, and performance is not there, it has been declining over the last few hundred kilometres and the service hasn’t improved matters. I know why and I am annoyed and to some extent it is spoiling the ride. I am annoyed with the dealer and annoyed with myself, perhaps more with myself. I have so far treated the maintenance and service of the Boulevard much as I have treated that of my car…more or less when a service is due I take it to the dealer and I assume that the mechanics do their bit and let me know when the next service is due. When I booked this service the person taking the booking asked me what service I wanted, I gave them the mileage and asked what service was required. This seemed to throw him a bit, but after consulting something on his side, he advised that the ‘spring special’ will be fine. When I took the motorcycle in for the service I was told that actually the ‘spring special’ does not quite cover what I need, the spark plugs need changing. So I accepted the additional quote of about $200, but when I came to collect the motorcycle I was advised that they don’t have the spark plugs in stock and would need to order in. So now I’m riding and the engine is as ropey as all hell and I’m annoyed.

Lake Simcoe, Ice has melted

It’s been awhile since I wrote a Chautauqua, a la Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance and actually what I have to say is very much what Persig wrote about, until now I have just never thought  quite how much it applied to me. Persig weaves a theme of quality throughout the book, and what it means to different people. There are the ‘romantics’ that view quality from the perspective of the exterior, whereas Persig views quality from the ‘classical’ perspective, he needs to how the parts fit together and work in order to assess quality. I have been adopting the romantic approach, having a wonderful time riding the Boulevard, but expecting that others will take care of maintenance. Now in the complex technological world we live in there are definitely many areas that even the most devoted classical thinker has no choice, but to revert to the romantic approach. I believe that on the whole I am more classical then romantic, but I have been wrong with the motorcycle, mechanical failure can have dangerous results, much worse that a ropey engine on a Sunday ride. I decide that this is about to change.

The quality experience I have had with the dealer, and this isn’t the first hiccup, makes me concerned about the quality of the work that is going down on my motorcycle when services are done. Do the mechanics have the same sloppy attitude to my machine as the person that looks after inventory? After all the showroom has several brand new motorcycles just like mine, so the call for this specific part must be a regular occurrence. I wonder if the mechanics attitude to short-cuts is like the guy that took the booking and didn’t actually bother to look up the service record, and if their dedication to quality is like the service manager that promised me the spark plugs are on order and I’ll be contacted before the end of the week… that didn’t happen. In my day job I implement ERP/financial systems, over the years I have been doing this I have been exposed at very close quarters to many organizations. I’ve found that if careless attitudes are tolerated in one part of the organization, you will find it all over, and where a culture of pride in the job exists, it generally will be pervasive.

Quality is not an easy concept to define and Persig spends many pages exploring the concept in Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance, so for this short blog, I’m going to go with, “you know quality when you see or feel it”. It’s the difference between a factory made chest of drawers and a hand crafted one from the Mennonite furniture store. I know the quality of care the Boulevard and I are getting, and it is not anywhere close to Mennonite furniture quality, not even IKEA, it is Walmart pressed wood chips and it’s not good enough. I resolve to take the maintenance manual and work my way through it and see what I can do, and what I can at least check on if I have to pass it over to the tender mercies of the ‘professional’ mechanics. Starting with spark plugs.

                                                  Burnt River near Kinmount 

I have brought a tin of sugar free ginger ale and a snack of cheese and walnuts with me, I’m stopped at Kinmount, the starting point of the 503, to eat and drink and enjoy the warm weather. There is no shortage of motorcycles out and about, as well as hobby cars (I think I am coining a phrase here, cars that people own for weekend drives, like restored Mustangs, 1950’s pick-up trucks and so on). Kinmount is a nice little village, quite picturesque, but to my dismay I discover that it does not have a gas station. I am running rather low so I hope I’ll make to the next hamlet, Irondale, which apparently

has one. The ride up to Irondale on the 503 is as good as I imagined it would be. Well into the Canadian Shield, I have left farming land behind, hill and forests, lakes and ponds, thankfully none still ice bound, line the route. Eeverywhere the deciduous trees are in bud and that lovely light green sheen promises good things are coming.

There is indeed a gas station at Irondale, but they have run out of premium grade, so I am forced to put in regular as there is just no way I’ll make it to the next gas station, damn. I put in just enough to
get me half way home. Now the motor really feels rough, but perhaps it’s just my imagination. A little way further on the 503 and I take the 507 south. This is the real McCoy, it’s a great experience to weave through the hills. I have one bad moment, one of the curves has another road joining it in a T-junction and there is a nasty patch of gravel just where I should be leaning my way through the corner. Happily I spot the gravel and turn tight to miss it. From then on I keep an extra beady eye out for gravel. The regional road 507 ends, far too soon, at a junction with regional road 36, which I follow west to Bobcaygeon, then to Fenlon Falls where I stop for gas. Fill up with premium grade so hopefully the octane in the tank is acceptable. I’m home before dinner. The ride was good, but I decide not to ride again until the spark plus have been changed.

It’s Saturday and a week has flown past, busy as all hell at work, hardly had the time for a ride, but I have acquired the requisite spark plugs and an appropriate socket to do the job, total outlay including socket $45. A two minuet call to the local NAPA outlet and they ordered the plugs and got them in within four hours of my call. I’m still waiting for the Suzuki dealer to contract me. I’ve read the manual, at least on the section on how to change the plugs and feel ready to go. I’m not entirely sure if I needed to remove the seat and gas tank, but with that out the way I have a bit more room to work. The part that stumps me for a bit is removing the cover on top of the cylinders, they are chromed pieces of plastic and the manual says “unhook the clips and remove the cover”.  Clips? Unhook? For the life of me I see and feel no clips to unhook. But I am a resourceful fellow and figure out that what they should have written in the manual is “grasp the cover, wiggle and pull a little more than gently”. It’s an easy job and I have it all wrapped up in less than an hour. Flipping the ignition switch I’m rewarded by an engine that sounds the way it should, appreciate the advice Mr. Persig.

Blossoms - crab apple in our front yard 

It’s a warm afternoon, little windy and maybe a few rain drops in the offing, but otherwise a perfect day to ride. I head up to Barrie, to meet Helena at the Harley dealership to get her 883 Sportster out from winter storage. What a nice ride, as predicted spring has sprung. It is hard to describe quite what happens in just one week here every year in the early part of May. The light green sheen on the trees I spoke about is now full blown leaves, the grass in the meadows seems to have turned from brown to green and there are blossoms everywhere. In our own garden ferns have erupted like fountains, and the hostas are coming out all over. The gardeners’ curse, dandelions are in yellow bloom, lovely to behold, but nasty to control. I once heard someone say that this makes up for the winter, it doesn’t, but it is a wonderful thing to experience every year, and perhaps the true start to the riding season.  

Grey no more - in just one week in May