15000 Kilometer Perspective

I got my BMW F700GS last year and have accumulated 15,000 km so far. If I still like my bike after these kilometres, I suppose I can say that the motorcycle I got is the one I need. Of course, it goes for any motorcycle owner who still loves his bike after riding such distance.

There are many different motorcycle types: cruiser, bagger, street, naked, touring, adventure touring, dirt, scooter, chopper, and probably more. Unlike cars, motorcycles are very personal since both rider and motorcycle are visible to anyone. A big motorcycle will not suit a short-stature person, and vice versa. A street bike doesn't work for someone who wants to ride mainly on gravel roads, and so on. What I want to do therefore is to outline advantages I feel when owning my motorcycle. It's therefore not a comparison to other motorcycle types and brand names.

1. Versatility. I can ride at 140 km/h two-up on a highway with little difficulty since it has a maximum of 75 hp with a rated top speed of 192 km/h. I haven't come across a situation in which I needed to ride above 150 km/h. I ride everyday to work and it's agile enough in city traffic. I can ride two-up confidently in gravel roads with its not-so-aggresive tire treads and comfortably in highways covering 700+ km per day in rainy or windy days. Suspension travel and ground clearance are at their optimum level between the extremes of dirt bike and bagger.

2. Ride Tech Features. I find three tech features extremely useful: tire pressure monitor, gear indicator, and electronic fuel gauge. I had one flat tire experience on a highway and the tire pressure monitor quickly alerted me that the rear tire was losing pressure. The alert helped me decide a quick u-turn and reach a nearby town before a complete pressure collapse in the middle of nowhere. Gear indicator is absolutely necessary to reduce worry level during riding. Gear indicator is great for city commuting with all those traffic light stops. Electronic fuel gauge helps plan a long touring day and often gives assurance when I have to eat up more kilometres to find a place to sleep.

3. Fuel Economy. I am very happy with its 60 mpg fuel economy. Motorcycling is more risky and less comfortable than driving a car, so it doesn't make sense to me if I pay the same gasoline price for either. Instead of paying $80 to cover 1000 km distance when driving, F700GS allows me to pay $40 even with a passenger.

I used to wanting to get other motorcycles for their looks, sounds, or horsepowers. But I have learned that I am quite happy with what I got. Although I admit the one motorcycle I really want to test ride is Honda Africa Twin.

Calgary-Elko Motorcycling

One great overnight riding trip from Calgary is to ride to any point between Fernie and Cranbrook and to stay overnight there. Fernie, BC is 300 km from Calgary, and Cranbrook is another 100 km to the west.

I usually ride to the Rockies via Banff and Lake Louise, but after I rode on Highway 3 in June I felt I haven't spent enough time exploring Alberta and BC along the Crowsnest Pass and Highway. One advantage of camping along the Highway 3 corridor is the warmer weather compared to Banff and surrounding areas. There is about 10 C difference, so the evening becomes perfect and warm to gaze at sunset in a lake.

My wife and I left Calgary at 4:30 pm right after work two weeks ago and we arrived in Fernie at 8:30 PM after stopping for break in Chain Lakes Provincial Park. I stopped at Mount Fernie Provincial Park to find a campsite with no luck. We then continued west until Elko, where Highway 93 South junction is located, to check Kikomun Creek Provincial Park which has 110+ campsites. To our disappointment all were occupied.

I glanced quickly at my watch. It's 9 PM, and we had nowhere to camp. The Kikomun Creek PP staff suggested me to check private campgrounds along Jaffray Baynes Lake Road that runs along the northern shore of Koocanusa Lake. She also suggested Norbury Lake Provincial Park – some 40 km toward Cranbrook – but I wasn't keen on reaching another Provincial Park at sunset time without camp site guarantee.

So, I decided to try the private campgrounds option. It's always safer to book campsite in advance, but I often feel it is more adventurous to eat and sleep wherever the motorcycle takes me. Part of continuous adventure riding training is train my brain to dealing with uncertainties. We always bring two sleeping bags and a two-person tent in our side bags whenever we ride for this situation. We bring food and stove as well so we can purchase food at local grocery stores. We ask people we meet in towns we stop. I review campgrounds and motels around estimated stop locations using Google Maps before we go since I don't have a GPS unit in my motorcycle.

The adventure option gave us a new experience. And that's what we got in a good way. I saw a campground sign when we rode along the Jaffray Baynes Lake Road. There is about 1 km of gravel road to ride before we arrived at Ayes Ranch Campground. Its staff were generous to us –free pops for us when they saw how little we carried – and we were happy to stay there, as it faces Koocanusa Lake so we enjoyed fantastic sunset views. There is no running water near our campsite nor lake water is recommended for drinking, so I got ample chances to ride my motorcycle on bumpy gravel road to fill up my water bottles.

We stayed overnight and the next morning we headed back to Calgary on Saturday July 11. We were greeted by a severe thunderstorm that blew my motorcycle sideways and drenched our jackets. We had to wait at Braeside Tim Hortons for an hour until the rainstorm disappeared.

Homogeneous & Particular Solutions of Second Order Equation

The easiest way to remember that homogeneous equation is one of two solutions to a second order ordinary differential equation is that even if the right hand side is zero:

y'' + b(x) y' + c(x) = 0,

this equation will still yield a solution y(x). The second solution appears, in addition to the homogeneous, if the right hand side is not zero:

y'' + b(x) y' + c(x) = r(x).

Physically, the homogeneous solution represents the internal response of a mechanical system, while r(x) represents an external force that drives the system. The driving force r(x) will produce a particular solution of the system in response to the external driving force. This is - in my opinion - a more practical way to think about homogeneous and particular solutions.

It is also important to point out that the initial conditions only influence the homogeneous solution. This feature helps to tell apart the homogeneous and the particular in a first order equation when we use an integration factor to solve it. The homogeneous solution is simply one that has the integration constant. This aspect is important to remember since we often think that homogeneous and particular solutions appear only in second and higher order equations.

There is a theorem in differential equation that describes the above more succinctly. I could not recall it today in lectures, and it motivated me to find an alternative way to describe homogeneous and particular solutions of second order equation.

Why Motorcycling

This blog is a reflection of evolution of outdoor activities I have done over the past 15 years. I started it all with motorcycling when I was in grade 5. I grew up in Indonesia, where almost everyone learned to ride motorcycle at around that age. One group in Indonesia, who does not have this early learning privilege, is girls since their parents often forbid them out of fear of accidents. Some parents, however, allow their daughters to learn riding.  I did running and swimming also when I was in high school but I was never an athletic type, so they were not competitive.

I had several motorcycle accidents when I was in high school. Two accidents in particular I remember. One involved a family of four who all rode one motorcycle – this is still a common sight in Indonesia – that I hit at an intersection. Another involved my brand-new Honda motorcycle on the way to check my high school entrance result. Both were at about 40 km/h speed so they were not serious. These didn't dampen my motorcycling enthusiasm mainly due to a combination of high speed thrill and free-wheeling motorcycling nature.

When I went to university in Canada, I stopped riding because I couldn't afford buying a motorcycle. I then forgot about it and literally buried my riding passion for 25 years. That's what family responsibility and work-study life gave me. 

But I continued running and I got better at it. I always dream of going long and far. And I did run half-marathon length many times even in winter although I never participated in a running competition (it's too expensive for me to pay for running.) I carried a Camelbak and had granola bars in my pocket, and off I went. I have developed a layered clothing system to handle temperature change from 10 C to -40 C. I admire long-distance runners who can run hundreds of kilometers and always wish to have time to train for that ability. But I never did.

Although running is a great activity and meditative as well, I picked up cycling after running seriously for about 5 years. The main reason is that running limits me to about 40 km a day distance. I wanted to extend the distance per day target. Cycling is great and is as effective as running in keeping me fit. I often cycled to Bragg Creek from Calgary and back, which is about 100 km total distance, in the weekend. I cycled to Highwood Pass from Calgary and back, which is about 350 km in 3 days. And I have done Bandung-Jakarta cycling trip (200 km) in 2 days. The point I'm trying to make here is that cycling allows me to reach about 120 km a day distance. One student told me he did Calgary-Lake Louise (175 km one-way) in a day, so with consistent training I might hope to cover 150 km distance a day by cycling.

I outfitted my touring bike with panniers, pocket-size sleeping bag, small stove, bivy sack to go the distance. And a good distance challenge for someone living in Calgary is to cycle all the way to Vancouver. That's 1000 km distance, and I reckon I could do it in 9-10 days one way. That was precisely what I planned to do last year. It would take me 2 weeks to do a Calgary-Vancouver loop by not cycling back to Calgary. My wife would pick me up in Vancouver and we would drive back to Calgary. Or I would take a bus back to Calgary. The 2-week window to cover 1000 km distance in the end proved too long for me. There was really no other way to shorten the time while maintaining the adventure nature of a trip. This was when I decided to pick up motorcycling again.

So after 25-year hiatus I picked up motorcycling last year. It allows me to cover 800 km a day distance, a 6-fold increase over cycling, and effectively infinity-fold over running when the target is distance per day. Instead of 2 weeks or more to get to Vancouver and back, I only need 4 days.

The setup cost for motorcycling is about four-times higher than cycling, as a good touring bicycle now costs about $3000 when you outfit it with panniers etc. This cost difference, however, is paid back by the cheaper operating cost of motorcycling when you want to cover 1000 km. Motorcycling costs about five times cheaper due to the shorter time to cover that distance. The setup cost difference is recovered when I make about 15 trips of 1000 km distance.

In my estimation, the accident risk of motorcycling is higher than touring cycling, but not ten times higher. So roughly their risks are similar. I have done both, so let me explain my basic reasoning. Most motorcycling risk comes from its speed and fragility when colliding with cars and trucks, but these two factors can be mostly controlled by a motorcyclist when he exercises a defensive riding strategy. Bicycling accident risk, however, is often beyond the control of its rider. A bicycle occupies a narrow shoulder of a highway and is completely at the mercy of passing trucks and cars. What these facts imply is that I can reduce my motorcycling accident risk but I cannot reduce my bicycling accident risk.

I still cycle to work and run during weekend to keep me fit, but I now ride when I want to cover a big distance. One more benefit of motorcycling is that now I can go with my wife. To keep cost down, I chose a motorcycle with a good fuel economy.

Calgary-Vancouver Riding with My 12-Year Old Son

My son in action in Kitsilano Beach, Vancouver.

I rode my BMW F700GS with my 12-year old son from Calgary to Vancouver on June 24. I took a two-days off from campus to clear my head. (It happens quite often when I miss my riding days.) I had promised my son that we would ride together to Vancouver about a month before. So we did.

Our first day ended in Kamloops RV Park in Kamloops, BC. It was a 600-km ride from Calgary. Other than rain between Roger's Pass and Revelstoke, the ride was great. The RV Park has about 10 tent sites and the camping rate is $26 per night including tax. The shower room and washroom are clean. There is no time-limit for shower, and it doesn't cost coins. My son and I enjoyed our stay, with the exception of loud traffic and train noises from Highway 1 and nearby rail tracks. We would recommend Kamloops RV Park despite the noise since Kamloops doesn't have many nearby campgrounds. Kamloops RV Park's location is extremely convenient. You simply take the Lafarge Road off-ramp when heading west on Highway 1, before you arrive in Kamloops.

On the next day we hit Highway 5 (Coquihalla Highway) to reach Vancouver from Kamloops. This highway is fast as most cars go at least 120 km/hour. I maintained my speed at 120 km/h and sometime had to increase it to 140 km/h when overtaking trailer trucks and cars. 

To stay affordably in Vancouver, we rested in Surrey, which is about 15 km east of Vancouver. It's only 30-minute ride from Surrey to get to Vancouver downtown. We stayed in Canadian Inn, Surrey. I highly recommend this hotel. It charges a motel rate for a single queen bed ($80 before tax) but our room feels like a hotel. Our room was clean and very comfortable. We stayed in this hotel for 2 nights.

Ramen! Banzai!

We rode around Vancouver beaches and visited Marutama Ramen for its exquisite chicken broth. It is just off Robson St. and is about 1km from Stanley Park, where my son took a morning nap before having lunch at Marutama Ramen. You can say we rode 1000 km from Calgary just to have a great ramen!

Before entering Creston.

Our ride back to Calgary from Surrey was scorching hot due to heat wave from Pacific Ocean. This time we took Highway 3. It's longer (1300 km compared to 1000 km on Highway 1) to reach Calgary, but it was a lot of fun. There are twisty sections - and switchbacks too - between EC Manning Provincial Park and Princeton, and also around Osoyoos. It was 35 C when we arrived in Hope, but the temperature went up to 41 C around Osoyoos and Christina Lake. We covered 740 km in 12 hours – including many drink breaks every hour to avoid dehydration – from Surrey to Creston. We stayed in City Centre Motel in Creston. I highly recommend this motel when you are staying in Creston: simple, clean, and quiet for $77 a night including tax.

We reached Calgary at 4:30 pm on Sunday after about 500 km ride from Creston. As usual, Highway 22 (Cowboy Trail) was windy and to compensate for the crosswind I had to go at around 120-130 km/h along the highway. It was one helluva trip that involved one flat tire near Christina Lake; one scorching heat riding day; an RCMP car with a blaring siren wanting to catch me crossing solid yellow lines before I even crossed them yet in Princeton; a near-miss of hitting a deer crossing Highway 3 before Cranbrook; and a fast riding day on Coquihalla Highway.

Port Mann Bridge, Surrey-Burnaby border.