Monthly Archives: August 2011

Canada Moto – Day 1

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Day One

Day One - Bozeman to Salmon Lake

I get pretty excited before big trips.  Excited enough that I have a hard time sleeping, and my paranoia gets the better of me.  The night before we we’re set to leave, I spent an hour carefully selecting tools to bring along, noting which ones could double as levers and drifts in the event that I needed to change a wheel bearing or rebuild a transmission on the side of the road.  Of course, you never end up needing the tools you bring.

Our original plan was to leave early Saturday morning.  I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to sleep much Friday night, and it would probably be best to just get going after work on Friday and sleep off the excitement in a tent.  I “pulled the plug” on work around 3:00, and when Kait came back from work around 4:30, the BMW was packed and ready to roll.  A few quick checks and some high-fives, and we rolled out of our driveway.

A quick 150 miles later and we found ourselves at the Salmon Creek campground just south of Seely Lake.  Unfortunately all the regular campsites we’re taken, and all the bigger RV spots we’re reserved.  I don’t believe in “reserving” campsites.  The concept of camping to me is ease and simplicity.  Making reservations seems like it defeats the purpose.  I suppose if your looking for a place to park your 50 foot land yacht, it probably makes sense.

We asked the park ranger about just pitching our small camp on some flat patch somewhere and he kindly found us a reserved spot that would be open until 1:00pm the next day.  Jackpot.

Some boil-in-a-bag Pad Thai and hostess pies and we crashed rather quickly in our tent and slept like logs.  This was our last night in the United States for some time.  Tomorrow we’d be sleeping in Alberta.

Friday Night Camp

 

Bars Mounted

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Finally got the bars mounted on the V11 Sport.  As it turns out, the part that I was most worried about (drilling the top triple-clamp) was the easiest part of the whole operation.

The biggest part of the job, was finding creative ways to route the throttle cable, clutch cable and the front brake cables for adequate clearance.  I essentially had to disassemble the entire headlight/gauge cluster housing.  I had to remove the top triple clamp at least 4 times to re-route cables.  Trial-and-error took place for about 2 hours until I finally found the best way.  I also found that the stock bar-ends and napolean bar-end mirrors would not fit into the new handlebars.  I could make it fit by machining out the ID of the new bars;  maybe some other time.  I’m ready to ride now.

The Test Ride

Things are immediately better.  Its still a fairly sporty “attack” position, however I no longer feel it in my wrists, and my back doesn’t feel like I just lifted a refrigerator up a flight of stairs.  I think the biggest single gain in this modification has to be turning.  Before I really had to fight with the bike to turn in, whereas the wide leverage the handlebars now mean effortless turning;  it almost turns itself.

In one simple modification, I was able to combine everything I loved about my old Ducati M900 and everything I love about my V11 Sport into one nice package.  Money well spent. For those law-abiding citizens out there who might notice my lack of mirrors, don’t fret.  Nate at the Bike Shack put in a order for a set of CRG “Lane-split” mirrors, and even let me borrow one of his personal bike to keep me semi-legal until they came in.