When I was younger I fell victim to the BMW marketing machine. BMW created a series of short films called the Hire starring Clive Owen that showcased the capabilities of their beautiful vehicles. The series convinced me that I needed to own a BMW 750Li–the flagship BMW sedan–primarily because it was so luxurious, and so expensive.
Some time passed and I started to believe the 7-er was too big. I revised my goal to own a 540i, manual transmission. As I matured more I came to the realization that these vehicles aren’t cheap, and I probably wouldn’t be able to afford a 5-er. So I revised my goal and made it to own a BMW 3-er, of no specific engine size.
Originally my goal was to buy a BMW when I turned 25. I did not forget that goal. When I turned 25 I was still living in an apartment, did not own a car, and had no dependants. Financially, owning a BMW, possibly used, was possible but I went a different route: I bought a motorcycle.
I have been riding the 2007 Honda Shadow Spirit since 2008–four riding seasons (well, I did miss one due to living on another continent). I’ve done some things to the bike to make it a little more capable of long-distance rides: added a GPS, quick-release saddle bags, changed the rear sprocket, and added a quick-release windshield. Honestly, with all of these things the bike feels like it’s bigger and heavier than it is and removing them makes it feel light and nimble. But the bike remains heavy, slow, and loud. These are great things for cruising around town, but work against it on the longer rides.
I want a motorcycle that I can ride to Toronto without wearing ear plugs; a motorcycle that has a luggage piece that can hold a second helmet; a motorcycle that doesn’t leave me searching for a missing gear when riding on the highway; a motorcycle that can keep up to the 130 km/h traffic on Toronto’s 401 express lanes; a motorcycle is comfortable for 2-3 hour riding stretches; and a motorcycle that has the power to get me out of a situation at the flick of a wrist.
Some bonus features? How about ABS brakes; an on-board computer; a centre stand; and maybe heated grips. How about a maintenance-free belt-driven final drive, a 0-60 time of 3.6 seconds, and a convenient 12V power outlet? World-recognized reliability and experience in creating performance vehicles.
How about a BMW F800ST? Six gears, a top-speed of 225 km/h, fairings, windshield, luggage, quiet exhaust, designed for light touring with a sporty-twist. Not too much power, but more than enough for public roads. I think this is the bike for me.
Jack Layton is a politician and a Canadian who I respect. Layton’s passing was a surprise to us all, and I think it is fair to say that Canada is sad to have lost him. He was part of my perfect politician example, but truth is always better than fiction so I leave you with one of my favourite Layton clips. My prayers are with his loved ones tonight.
I was in the US last weekend for the NASCAR race and brought my trusty PlayBook with me. When I visit the US I use an AT&T GoPhone sim card to avoid the ridiculous roaming charges that the national carriers charge. I added 100 Mb of data to my pre-paid plan and used data on my BlackBerry Bold and my BlackBerry PlayBook. But native BlackBerry services weren’t available–I had to setup the GoPhone APN on the BlackBerry and could only use TCP services.
To tether I had to create a custom tethering profile on the PlayBook. When I tried to create a profile with the APN “wap.cingular” (the APN for AT&T GoPhone’s MediaNet) I got an error. At first I thought it was the “.” character, but other tethering profiles had the character. I gave up at first but later had the idea of just adding a space to the end of the profile.
That worked. Connecting to the APN “wap.cingular ” was successful. I didn’t bother to try to determine if spaces were ignored, or if the carrier simply compared only the first 12 bytes–I was just happy it worked. So I had tethered access to the Internet on PlayBook giving me blissful updates to the world outside of the track. Too bad the race was rained out.
Yesterday Chris and I went downtown to the German Deli for lunch. I had two sandwiches and a large chocolate milk. After work I saw Katy and we went to Domus Cafe. We split the Stacked Suntech Tomato Salad, she had the fresh fish selection which was a Nova Scotian haddock wrapped in prosciutto and pan seared Digby scallops, I had the foie gras, and we split the vanilla bean creme brulee. It was a fantastic meal, and to top it off we were both dressed in t-shirt and jeans. Compliment of the night: “you look like someone who rides a motorcycle”.
My notes on the recipes: the salsa is awesome; I had doubled the salad recipe and it ended up being not quite double so some proportions were off (I am not good at salad); the chicken was great, and would probably be quite tasty baked; the orzo was a huge hit; the asparagus was good but a little over cooked following the recipe’s directions; the truffles were excellent–very rich.
I had a great time playing host, but felt bad that I couldn’t spend a lot of time with everyone. It’s definitely very different when children are around–not in a bad way, but a different way. Hopefully everyone will return.
I spent my day bicycling and cooking. I’d like to tell you about both.
This morning Adam and I bicycled from my house to Carleton Place. This was almost 80 km round-trip. We took the Ottawa-Carleton Trailway, best described on this page about cycling from Ottawa to Carleton Place. We stopped at Gourmet Restaurant for breakfast and then headed back to Ottawa, actually to the Sippy Cup Cafe before returning to my house. We recovered a bit, cleaned up, and met up with Kyla to start the work on dinner.
Dinner was awesome and I have a few recipes to share. First, appetizers. Eric was kind enough to prepare an awesome appetizer that included shrimp, cheese, cucumbers, and crackers. It was delicious but I have no idea what all was involved so I can not share the details with you. I was able to prepare a tasty salsa, which I have made once before, and I do have the recipe for that. It is based on D’s Famous Salsa Recipe. Modifications are: fresh (obviously) vine tomatoes, and fresh, jalapeno pepper instead of that canned business. I might change the proportions slightly and scale the recipe as appropriate, but this is all done to taste. Both Eric’s shrimp and my salsa were fully consumed, which I believe is a sign of approval.
The entree was a Maple Peameal Roast. I didn’t do an adult and child variant so I doubled the glaze. Most importantly, I cooked the roast rotisserie style on the barbecue. It was perfect. I believe some of the guests may have had some uncertainty about eating bacon as an entree but this uncertainty was washed away in the first byte.
As a side to the bacon we had green beans and Smushed Apples and Sweet Potatoes. I would say that this recipe also rated well. It smelled amazing. I didn’t alter the recipe at all because I haven’t really worked with sweet potatoes in the past. I will say that the apple slices were, for the most part, present in the final output and I was quite happy with things that way.
Dessert featured chocolate chip cookies prepared by Kyla using my Grandma’s secret recipe. They were so tasty that nobody had just one, and most had more than two. The cookies were served with vanilla ice cream and fresh, cut strawberries. I served some of Sippy Cup’s “freakin’ good” coffee. It was satisfaction all around.
There wasn’t much leftover, but I am thankful for the few bytes leftover that I do have. And the cookies.
I may have posted already indicating what is upcoming for me with respect to sport, but I thought I’d go over for my own benefit.
On August 20th I will be in Toronto to support the runners in the Midsummer Night’s Run. I will not be running. Some family members are running the 15 km run and I just couldn’t bring myself to run this when there is a 30 km option. I will use this as an excuse to visit Toronto, keeping my quarterly visits up.
On September 18th I will be participating in the Army Run Half-Marathon here in Ottawa. I have entered a team, which is four people strong, and have no hopes of winning. None-the-less, it will be fun. There is some discussion by people around me to do the 5 km run, which I fully encourage.
On October 2nd I will be undertaking my third marathon, the County Marathon. I have heard great things about this marathon and look forward to seeing if it lives up to the hype. I have no specific goal for this marathon other than to have fun.
On October 22nd I’m taking Will and his girlfriend to participate in the CN Tower Climb. It has been a few years since I last participated in a climb, and I have never done the climb in the fall. It should be a fun time and I hope everyone in our group will be successful in completing the challenge.
That’s all that is on the docket as far as sport is concerned. It should lead will into the sloth period that is Winter.
I was in Kingston this long weekend for a family reunion. It was fun, and nice to see many family members I hadn’t seen in a while all in one place. It was organized by my aunt and she did a great job of keeping it entertaining. There were a few moments where I thought “can he/she say that?”, but in the end I figured it was all fine since we’re all family.
I organized a few of “my” generation to have breakfast one morning. It was nice. I hope we can do it again. I wanted something a step-up from greasy-spoon but not quite top-tier so I decided on Windmills, which fit the bill perfectly.
The ride to and from Kingston was the first long-distance ride with the windshield. It performed well. I removed the windshield for my time in Kingston but re-installed it for the ride home. On the ride home I decided to try 401+416. The windshield made the ride so comfortable that I rode at highway speeds and exhausted my primary fuel before I reached Ottawa. It wasn’t that much faster than if I had taken highway 10 or 15 but I did it not for time savings but rather so that I would be familiar with the windshield’s performance for the same ride that I would do in two weeks.
In two weeks (well, one week now) I will be riding down to Watkins Glen for the NASCAR race. AdamJ and I are going and I am pretty, pretty, pretty excited. I can’t help but think that Adam is more excited, though!
The week following will be a trip, hopefully by motorcycle, to Toronto. I can’t help but think it’s time for a new bike with a few of these longer rides. To be honest, when I took the windshield and bags off of my motorcycle on Wednesday morning my bike felt small. I have been on the lookout for what I might want next but haven’t come to any conclusions.
Yesterday morning Adam and I went for a bicycle ride. I was riding my mountain bike as we were intending to go through the Kanata Lakes area. We got 5 minutes in and turned around because the bugs were insane. We ended up bicycling to to Carp–specifically to the Diefenbunker. We turned around and stopped by the Sippy Cup Cafe (don’t worry Null, I still think we should go) in place of our usual after-squash Starbucks run. I had a cappuccino, which was huge, and bought some of their “Really Freakin’ Good” coffee beans.
Yesterday afternoon we did a routine check-up on Adam’s motorcycle. Neither of us are gear heads so its was a learning experience. We had moments of concern, and moments of triumph. We were specifically hoping to resolve some engine cut-out issues that he has been faced with; time will tell our level of success.
This morning I took my motorcycle with newly minted windshield onto a 400-series highway for the first time. Riding behind a windshield in this setting is noticeably different–as it should be. The biggest thing I noticed: my legs are right out there in the wind. This was always the case but it wasn’t as noticeable before. I am going to ride for a bit with the windshield on and take it off for the long weekend. Having said that, with the rain and some work obligations I don’t imagine I’ll get out on the bike all that much this week.
And finally, I decided to go for another leisurely bicycle ride this evening. I bicycled along the newly opened Terry Fox extension here in Kanata. It was nice. It would have been more nice if I ended the trip with another coffee stop but I do want to sleep tonight.
I went to Dream Cycles in Ottawa thinking that I would order a Memphis Shades Memphis Slim windshield. The lady at the shop was quite helpful and showed me what this windshield would look like on the bike. This would have involved relocating the turn signals, and doing something with my tool bag in front of the bike. So instead she showed me the Memphis Shades Speed Demon. It falls under their “sports shields” category, but is kind of a micro version of their Batwing Fairing. I liked the suggestion and went ahead and ordered the Speed Demon.
I should get my new windshield tomorrow and, if I’m lucky, I’ll install it this weekend. I’m anxious to see what effect this will have on my long distance rides.
And, yes, I ordered the quick-release mount so I can remove the screen when riding around town.