Am I a real motorcyclist now?

I was on my bicycle, coming to a stop as I usually do everyday at this point in my 8-minute trip into work.  Bicycling has been great I thought, ever since I broke my laziness because of the Suzuki.  It gets me back into shape.  It's faster than any car or motorcycle in the city on some days.  It's a great way to get around.  Anyways, as I came to a full stop, I used my left thumb extending out to the right slightly below the handlebar, to trigger a left turn signal.

Is 500cc enough?

When I first started looking for a motorcycle, I was eying the Honda Rebel.  I liked the look of it.  Simple motorcycle, nothing fancy.  I was then thinking about what kind of helmet I should buy with it.  You know, look matters does it not?  A full helmet just didn't fit the image of a Honda Rebel for some reason, and I wanted a full helmet, so I eventually looked for a different bike.  At the same time though, friends were telling me the 250cc is boring, that I will outgrow it within months or a year.  Maybe there were right.  I might.  So, I purchased a 500cc bike.

What do I think of the 500cc?  My friends were telling me I will give it up after a year or so too.  I don't know.  It's not a year yet but I still love my 500cc.  It's more than fast enough on the highway with enough torque to pass other vehicles safely.  You have to respect the bike.  It can kill you if you are not careful.  My Suzuki GS500F has a lot of power.  It is fairly easy to maintain so far.  I've had to change the oil once, cleaned and lubed my chain, and readjust tension on the chain.  You just need the right tools, but otherwise, fairly easy to maintain.  I'm not planning to upgrade anything.  The bike is good as it is.

My only two beefs about my GS500F--and I don't know if it's the same for all GS500F--is that one, it coughs and hesitates quite a bit for the first minute of slow riding, and two, I find it difficult sometimes to find Neutral.  For the coughing and hesitation, I guess you have to let the engine warm up and allow the pipes to clean of any gunk stuck inside, so just wait a bit before heading out.  Neutral is a bit difficult to find sometimes when I come to a stop.  Maybe it's the same for other bikes too, but sometimes, the gears would shift from 2 to 1 past neutral and vice versa.

I think I will keep the Suzuki until it fails completely on me, like a blown engine or something that will cost me a fortune to repair.

Safe riding!

Getting back on foot

So I took my bike out for a ride to do grocery shopping an hour ago.  The air was cool.  Very nice feeling I hadn't felt in a long time.  The breeze cooling you down as you try going faster than the couple of bikes in front of you, feeling just nice all around. Leg muscles heating up as you push against the pedals. Docking away from the potholes and manholes and the pits and cracks of the pavement.  That sudden left or right lean of the bike, that light push on the handle one way or the other. No need for lane splitting, as the road was pretty empty tonight, but I wouldn't have needed it anyways. That was super cool, a feeling I've had only twice over the last two months.  I think I will make a commitment to use my pedal-bike when grocery shopping, rain or shine, and my Suzuki for everything else.  At least this summer.

Second ride after a short hiatus

This weekend, I managed to squeeze in two rides.  Not long rides by any measure, but nonetheless, it felt good to be able to get back on the road on two wheels.  I felt at ease as soon as I get back on the bike.  It has its usual sputtering moments at the start but I know how to smooth it out before taking on the ramps in my building.  Yesterday was cloudy but today, the weather was absolutely gorgeous.  I was hovering around 2C or somewhere there but with my winter mitts, it felt absolutely warm.  There is still one thing I am not fully comfortable with still, and it's when I got on the highway, it felt like the wind will blow me away.  I wonder if that's how everyone feels and just gets used to it.

Spring is in the air

We are days away from spring!  My bike has been sitting in the garage for 1.5 months now ever since the big snow of February.  On my way to work, I noticed that most of the snow has already melted away.  It's time for my bike to see some sun rays this weekend.  So, where am I going to go?  Grocery shopping with it?  Hmm.. a little pathetic.  I gotta find some place to ride to and inhale the fresh clean air of winter-still.

Winter riding

I took a chance today.  I decided that my grocery shopping will be done with my Suzi.  I could have used my bicycle but I've gotten lazy.  The Suzi is really making me gain weight I think.  Maybe I should give it up.  Anyways, I took a chance out there.  I knew the temperature was still sub-zero today and we had snow earlier in the week.  That means there is a good chance I will run into snow or worse, ice, on the road.  I did check the road around my building first and things looked dry so I went out with the Suzi.  Everything went fine to my relief, except for one short stretch of road on Queens Quay.

Before heading back home, I decided to ride down to Queens Quay and see if there was anything interesting going on and to free my mind of stuff.  Well, there was really nothing in the white winter and my mind was still full of the "stuff", although I did take a couple of pictures with my phone camera.  On the way back home, I was riding on Queens Quay and there was a part of it was still under construction.  I was going through it fairly slowly, at normally traffic speed, when I realized at the last millisecond the dark patches of road in the middle of the road was actually ice and snow.  I almost steered my Suzi into it.  That would have been a bad accident to occur.  I'm sure I would have wiped out.  Lucky me, I gained control of the bike and steered back onto the dry part of the road.  That's one part of Toronto I'm not riding again any time soon.

Panoramic shot of the cold winter in Toronto:

Battery discharging, part 2

So, it appears the discharge is slowing down.  I'm going to take the battery down to the bike to try to start it up.  I'm not sure I should be heading out there today.  There was a slot of snow dumped onto our streets a couple of days ago.  Most of it should have been cleared but there might still be some lying around, still dangerous for a motorcycle.

Update:  I haven't tried connecting the battery back to the motorcycle yet but I suspect it's not going to work.  According to the following webpage, this battery is no good:

http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/maintenance/battery.htm

It appears that on day 1 (when I brought the battery into my apartment), it was down to 70% capacity already.  It nosedived to 12.3V then slowing down to 12.2V (or 50% capacity) over a few days.  With only 12.16V today, it's essentially dead.

Battery discharging

I've been having problems with the battery lately.  The cold weather sucks the juice out of the battery faster than anything I've seen before.  Nowadays, even in the underground garage, I would have problem starting the bike and often than not, the battery would die in the process.  I've taken the bike out to Mississauga (30km away) over last weekend, and left the bike in the cold at -10C for about 5 hours, and it barely had any juice left to start the bike.

So, after I got home this past weekend, I took the battery out and thought I'd hook it up to the battery tender to trickle charge it.  Then, I thought maybe I'd capture the discharge rate of the battery first.

At the beginning, when I first brought the battery to my apartment, the battery was still cold from the ride.  The voltage dropped by 0.1V in about 3 hours.  Then, the discharge quickly settled down to 0.05V per day.  I'm not sure what this means yet.  Does the battery need to be replaced?  Well, before I connect the battery tender up, I'll take the battery back down to the bike and see if I could start the bike up.  I'll do a test with the cold as well, leaving the battery out in the cold and see how fast the discharge is.

Mitts, cold weather riding, snow

The temperature hovered around -10C with windchill today.  I was running out of food at home so decided to take advantage of the clean streets to go do some grocery shopping at Walmart's.  I wasn't planning to do grocery shopping there but I wanted to buy some mouthwash from Walmart's and while I was there, I felt too lazy to walk over to No Frills in the same plaza to buy food.  So, I spent $67 at Walmart's today.  I wonder how much I would have saved had to gone over to No Frills.  Bananas go over $0.57 a pound at both Walmart's and No Frills.  But then, there are other stuff I bought which I could probably get cheaper at No Frills.

Anyways, today was my first time out since new year, I believe.  I was afraid of the snow so I used my bicycle last weekend to go grocery shopping.  Tonight, the snow will come back so I decided to head out with my bike before the dump starts.  At -10C, I was super warm.  My fingers felt cozily warm.  It felt a bit strange at first because of the bulkiness but the handlebar mitts worked beautifully.  I don't think anything out there works as well as these mitts.  I think the handlebar heated grips warm up the palm side of your hands and fingers, but there is still the back side that is exposed to the wind.  With the mitts though, your hands are fully protected.  Super warm.  That was a nice ride I had today.

I hope the snow will be kept at bay once a week.  Let the streets stay clean and dry.  I'll be out there!

Stolen bike, update

So, as it turns out, security in my building moved my bike to a secure room!  What?!?!!  They didn't tell me they did that.  They left me a voice mail on my phone this morning though.  Strange, I did not hear the phone ring.  So, all is well.

Stolen bike

My bike got stolen yesterday, sometime between 11:30am and 2pm.  I got a call from the concierge desk, indicating that my bike is not chained to something solid.  There had been some theft recently the lady over the phone said.  Well, I saw my bike just the day before and it was still there, so I didn't pay much attention to it.  Besides, why would anyone want my 15 year-old bike?  Having said that though, I always wonder whenever I go down to the garage whether my bike will still be there.  At 2pm yesterday, I took the elevator down to the parking garage.  It looked like most people have left for the holidays.  The garage was largely empty.  I could see my parking spot and my neighbours have left already.  Something looked amiss.  Where was my bike?  I got closer to look.  I got in front of the parking spot.  Gone.  An angry feeling came over me.  That wasn't good I thought.  I shouldn't be mad while riding my motorbike but I couldn't help feeling vulnerable because someone had stolen something from you.  It's some black guy on security tape that apparently got into the garage and took the bike up outside the building to load them into a truck/van.  I sure hope that guy gets caught!  My bike is not worth much.  I bought it for less than $200 in 1999 or 2000.  It's about 15 years old and it's about time I upgrade to a lighter bike.  Nevertheless, it's been a good bike I've taken to everywhere I could take it to.  It's a bike I'd use for going shopping and to visit my parents in the summer.  It was a sad loss to say the least.

Yes, we're talking about my bicycle, not my motorcycle.  They stole my blue, Hard Drive mountain bike.

Freezing, carburetor

Yesterday, I decided to take my Suzi out to go Walmart to purchase a few things.  One of the things I was conscious about was the possibility of the bike not starting when I'm out there, so I was going to buy a battery booster cable and leave it under the seat of the bike.

The problem I had the week earlier was not a battery problem.  The battery is just fine.  It holds a good charge and in my building garage, I was able to start the bike right away.  There was no hesitation.  I still feared it would crap out on me out there when it's cold.  And it was cold!

I thought it'd be maybe -10C with windchill but according to the Weather Network, the dewpoint was -15C or -16C around the time when I went out.  Now, I'm not sure what dewpoint translates to in the temperature you feel but I must say it was darn cold.  I was barely five minutes out there and my fingers were starting to freeze already!  That was with my leather gloves.  I can't wait for the muffs to arrive.  It's been over five weeks since I ordered a pair from eBay.  They haven't arrived yet.  Grr...  I was so glad I got to Walmart and spent an hour or so walking about and warming my digits up.

I went to buy some groceries--I normally go to No Frills for that--and some toiletries.  I got back home, then realized I forgot to buy the battery booster cable!  Grr ... it must be the cold numbing my brain too.

I went out again shortly after getting back home.  This time, I went to the Harbourfront Centre where there are 72 large photos in an exhibition of "No Flat" in Ontario Square.  I liked it that my helmet kept my head really warm.  The wind was brutal and my feet started to get a bit cold.  Anyways, as part of my New Year's Eve celebration, I wanted to visit all 72 photos and decided to head back home after 1.5-2 hours.  I was a little worried at this point.  Will the bike start up?

Well, yup, it did.  Not a problem.  However, it had a problem with idling.  It tended to die if I didn't give it some gas, or didn't keep the choke open.  When I decided to ride out, it was definitely hesitating.  It doesn't look like my carburetor likes the cold too much.

I will order the booster cable from Walmart and have it delivered.