The Quiet Picture

The Tricker is gone, found a new home in the southern Sweden. I have to be honest and say I that I won’t be missing the bike a lot, maybe occasionally when I drive a particular road I wish I could experience it with a motorbike. But on the whole, when I’m sitting in my new cabin and planning tomorrow’s treks, the Tricker will be a but a distant memory. Or maybe a bit more than that – the furniture I will be sitting on while doing my planning will be bought with the money I got from the bike…

I haven’t ridden the motorbike since my accident. At first of course I had to recover from it, then the weather took a turn to the worse (I’m a nice weather biker) and then I had holidays… and before you know, the summer is winding down and the bike is standing abandoned in the garage. And to be honest, I haven’t really been itching to ride either. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, so had I really wanted to ride the motorbike I would’ve found the time for it for sure.

Today my motorbike buddy asked me if we could go on a ride. I didn’t want to be a quitter so I mustered up some sisu and got on the bike again! We did a short trip, half of it on tarmac and half on gravel road, and I must say that the tarmac feels good. Speed is not an issue (certainly not when the Tricker only has a top speed of 110 kph), but gravel is. So when we were on the gravel road, I took it much more carefully than I used to, even on this road that I am familiar with.

But the important thing is that I didn’t give up on the bike. I still have a scar on my chin to remind me that things can go bad, but right now it feels like I just need to get some practice to build up the confidence to take on the dirt roads and it will be all good again!

Angelina Jolie move over. My lower lip is a plastic surgeon’s dream right now, except for the cuts and bruises on both sides of it… The inside of the lip is looking particularly gross.

Since my chin was still oozing nasty this morning, I decided that it’s best I go to the ER and have them clean the deep cut that I failed with last night. Only problem was that by now the cut had dried shut and there’s no point to force it open, so I got a tetanus booster shot instead. Luckily they gave it to me to the left arm which was already stiff from yesterday’s crash, I still have reduced functionality in it. But it’ll go over. And scars heal. And ever my Tricker is looking just beautiful after my motorbike buddy not only fixed the fender but also gave it a 1st class wash and oiled the chain.

I had a chat with him to find out exactly how I crashed, it wasn’t quite clear to me yesterday. So my good luck started when I was thrown off the bike, I didn’t as much somersault as just simply fly forward head first. The bike on the hand did a full flip and ended up facing the opposite direction! So that’s another thing I was lucky with, that I flew to the left and the bike to the right so it didn’t come down on me. I remember lying there next to the bike and realised that the engine was still running and turned it off. And that I wasn’t in any pain, just shaken.

I know I’ll be telling this story over and over for anyone who’ll listen (even if they don’t want to hear it), because this is the only time I’ve crashed with anything. Maybe one day I’ll have another crash and break some bones or even worse and will be looking at this day with disdain… but until then, my fat lip earns me my bragging rights!

They say that you’re not a real biker until you’ve crashed. If that is so, then I must be a real biker now!

Me and motorbike buddy set out for a nice evening ride in the warm sunshine. We came to a small forest road that I haven’t driven before, it was partly soft sand so I tried to take it carefully. Just when I thought that it got better, the road curved left. I decelarated to the curve like I always do, but unfortunately the curve was sharper than I anticipated, it was downhill and it was soft sand again. I was not going too fast, but I didn’t have the skill and the guts to turn sharp enough so I only had time to think oh shit and the next thing I know is that I’m spitting sand and blood.

My motorbike buddy said that I somersaulted from the bike and landed on my head, face first. I can’t remember the flight through the air, but I do remember hitting my head. I wasn’t in any pain though, all my limbs were working fine, I don’t think I even have any bruises. It’s just my face that’s the problem. When I hit my head, it pushed down the helmet and the edge of the visor hit me in the chin just below the lower lip. But since I wasn’t otherwise hurting, I just washed out the worst of the blood and sand and my motorbike buddy rescued the Tricker from the ditch and apart from a dislocated fender it was just fine. We pushed the fender back in place and continued the trip!

At home I had a closer look at the cut in my chin. It was still oozing blood and puss and I found out why – it’s really deep. And it’s not just the cut on the outside, but the inside of the lip looks even worse with two long and deep cuts which are now turning blue. If I lived in Ljusdal, I’d go to the ER but now I just have to hope that I did a good enough job with the the disinfectant. I’m a bit worried that there’s still dirt in the deep cut though.

But regardless, thank you helmet. Even if the visor gave me a split lip, without the helmet I’d suffering from a split skull!

What can I say, how lucky am I to be writing this? How lucky am I that there were no rocks on the side of the road, just sand? How lucky am I that I crashed where I did, and not two metres further where there’s a small creek running under the road? How lucky am I that I wasn’t travelling any faster than I did?

Why am I always so lucky? Why does it feel like I have a guardian angel looking after me, because I’ve had enough close calls but never anything serious?

It was a glorious day yesterday and seems to be almost as good today, so the motorbike season is well and firmly open now. The amazing thing was that when I uncovered the Tricker and fired it up for the first time, it started without a single hiccup – just like the winter break never happened. Almost as amazing was that I hadn’t forgotten how to ride the bike, so it was a wonderful first trip of the spring.

I also mounted the new package rack. At first I thought I have to paint it black or it will stick out too much, but it actually fits in really nicely, which figures because it was made for the Tricker anyway. The rack is not made by Yamaha directly, but by a Japanese company called YS Gear. The product leaflet is here (in Japanese), I don’t know if it can be ordered online but your local Yamaha dealer can get it for you.

It was such a great weekend, you’d almost be fooled into thinking it’s summer (if it weren’t for the fact that the temperature stayed in the ‘teens). Perfect for motorbiking, in other words!

Despite the bike, I’m not really a motor enthusiast. Actually, I’m not even a motorbike enthusiast – I just have my Tricker and that’s perfectly enough for me. But this old tractor, it was just begging to be photographed so I parked my bike and obliged.

And then afterwards, I fiddled with just about every slider in Lightroom to edit the life out of it!

It’s been over two years since my last visit to the Gröntjärn lake, so I was really looking forward to today’s trip. Gröntjärn is one of my all time favourite (photo) locations, and I used to enjoy every visit there. And there were plenty of visits, during those five years I lived in Ljusdal.

The most interesting thing about this little lake is the water level. I’ve seen it at almost flood level, and I’ve seen it shrink into small pools. Today, it was something in between, and as beautiful as ever! Judging by the shoreline, it looks like the water level hasn’t been very high in the past years. Plant life is decorating the shores with its greens and even trees are starting to get a hold on the slopes. But, come next flood, and the shores will be stripped bare again.

What a great day, visiting an old favourite and finally doing that long motorcycle trip I’ve been talking about. Lovely!

As wonderful as my motorbike is, it has one big shortcoming – it can’t carry any gear. There’s no package rack, it’s not suitable for side bags, and the tank is too narrow for tank bags. Of course, this is a trail bike and it’s not meant for long trips and hauling gear, so I had to get creative to figure out how I can attach a tripod and some other gear on it, and also carry a couple of 1-liter fuel bottles in case I wanted to go for a longer ride (because that 6-liter tank puts a serious limit to the range).

In the end, I was able to solve all three. There’s now a rack in the rear, a tripod holder on the left and a tank bag which holds the fuel bottles. Since the weather has been what’s been this summer, I haven’t needed the extra fuel yet, but the rack and tripod holder are in use. Not pretty, but it works!

The tripod holder and tank bag are genuine leather articles that were made to my order. They cost quite a lot, actually, so it’s a bit shame that I haven’t needed them that much. Maybe I get lucky and we get an indian summer which would allow me to go on that long road trip…

* * *

[added 2009-04-01] I contacted my local Yamaha dealer to get the package rack. No problems with it at all, I got in within a week of ordering. The documentation is in Japanese though so I’m not sure what the part number is, but I’ll make a wild guess and say it’s YSK-038-E30 because that’s the filename of the PDF: Tricker package rack. Note that it’s not made by Yamaha directly, but by YS Gear – “Special gear & accessories”.

I can’t even remember the last time I rode my motorbike. First it was too hot, then it was too cold, then it was too rainy, then I didn’t have time, then I was too tired, then I wasn’t even at home… and before you know it, half the summer has gone by and the bike is stuck in the garage. But today I finally got on the road again, and to my surprise I hadn’t forgotten anything. On the contrary, it feels like riding the motorbike is now even easier than it was before. And more fun!

Yes, shocking, that’s actually me. The picture is taken by my MC-mentor (I cropped it to re-compose) and the camera is provided courtesy of my new toy – Nokia N95 8GB. Somehow I managed to resist the lure of the iPhone (what really killed it for me was the sub-par camera and Telia’s insane pricing) but since I had gotten used to the idea of having a smartphone, I got the N95 instead. Apparently it has one of the best mobile cameras, but coming from an SLR background I’m not really impressed. It’s almost good enough for these “on-the-road-and-resized-for-the-web” shots anyway and I wasn’t expecting it to do anything better either.

This was the warmest day of the year so far, and I wanted to make the most of it. The first task for today was to shoot some flowers before the winded picked up.

After that, time to start my cycling season. The first impression when I picked up the bike was that it was light – no trouble lifting this one off the ground… My thigh muscles were not quite happy about pedalling up the hills, but I wasn’t entirely dead beat when I finished my trip so it’s good news.

Later in the afternoon I swapped the bicycle for a motored version and took out the Tricker for a longer ride. I wasn’t sure how comfortable it would be to ride for 30+ km at one stretch, but it turned out to be just fine – I had mostly worried that my hands would go numb, but there were no such problems. In fact, the biggest worry turned out to be my cornering (no surprises there, really). When came into a sharp curve, I was horrified to notice that I was heading awfully straight in relation the curve in the road. Problem was of course that I wasn’t leaning enough, but I had enough presence of mind to release the gas so I managed to stay on the tarmac, if with the smallest of margins. The funny thing about this curve is that I always seem to misjudge it – winter and summer, I find myself breaking in the middle of the bend when I’ve once again driven too fast into it. And it’s not like I don’t know that the curve is there! Anyway, this one almost-mishap aside, the ride went smoothly and it feels like I’m getting more and more confident on the bike after every trip. At one point I even caught myself thinking about something completely else than the bike and the road!