More information emerges as SIU clears officer in passenger fatality

A few (very few) more details have been released by police about the Aug. 27 death of 40-year-old Ioana Bocunescu, the passenger who fell from a motorcycle as the rider fled police on the 401 in Whitby. In saying the officer who tried to pull the rider over has been cleared of any wrongdoing, police investigators said that when a marked cruiser tried to pull the rider over, the rider instead "entered the westbound paved centre median, and accelerated out of sight." If you look at a Google satellite view, the only thing that could be a "paved centre median" would be the left-side shoulder next to the cement highway divider. Here's an aerial view from Google and here's an eye-level view.

So, police are saying the rider evaded being pulled over by police by riding around traffic on the left shoulder? And then made several lane changes, which is when Bocunescu fell and was run over by traffic. Rashid Soujah, 37, has been charged with manslaughter. No word yet on a trial date.

Manslaughter charges in death of passenger

A North York man has been charged with manslaughter in the death of his motorcycle passenger after he fled police three weeks ago on the 401 in Whitby. Rashid Soujah, 37, is in custody. Ioana Bocunescu, 40, was the victim. You can leave condolences for her family on an online guest book.

Gnashing of teeth into the dark of the night

The past few days have been rough on riders of motorcycles in the greater Toronto area.

It started in the wee hours of Saturday morning, with a shocking report about a rider who ran from police in Whitby. The rider wasn't alone; there was a passenger on the back of the bike. When the rider cranked the throttle to escape police, the passenger fell off. And was immediately hit by more than one car; Whitby's only 10 minutes east of Toronto and the 401 is busy, even at that time of night. One witness's account of seeing body parts strewn across the 401 in the aftermath was so horrible I won't dare repeat any of it. Death must have come quickly, but before shock set in the pain would have been unimaginable.

Horribly, that's not the most shocking part: THE RIDER KEPT GOING. Left the passenger to be crushed and dismembered in traffic, without a look back. As did the cars who ran over her. No one stopped.

Let me repeat that: NO ONE STOPPED.

This is reminiscent of the murder of Kitty Genovese, who was stabbed to death near her home in the Kew Gardens section of Queens, New York on March 13, 1964, in full view of dozens of her neighbours. Some reportedly called police, but her attacker had time to leave and come back to finish the job. No one intervened.

How can that happen? There, then? Here, now?

Not many facts about Friday's gruesome event have been made public. Why didn't motorists stop? Did those who ran over the passenger's body think that they'd hit a deer? How could the rider - regardless of WHY he (or she - police haven't released the gender) was running from police - leave a passenger to die, alone?

These are troubling questions, and unlikely to be answered until the police find the rider and charge him or her, since it's clear they're holding their cards close to their collective chest until their investigation is ready to close in.

But this sordid tale has caused many a GTA motorcyclist several sleepless nights. There were 30 pages of posts in a discussion of the event on GTAMotorcycle.com by Saturday night. Almost everyone expressed shock and disbelief at the rider's unconscionably cavalier disregard for his passenger's life. A few implied that the guilty party was a member of the board well-known for speeding irresponsibly, often with passengers riding without protective gear. A small but vocal group was throwing out accusations that the draconian Ontario highway code that convicts speeders on the spot by confiscating vehicles was responsible for the rider running. That forums where riders discuss why they might run because of the new law might have influenced the rider.

That's ludicrous. Let me make this clear: why the rider ran is irrelevant. I, and the majority of riders -- THE MAJORITY OF HUMAN BEINGS -- don't care a whit WHY he or she ran. We want to know HOW anyone could do such a thing. Leave another human being to that passenger's fate. Fail to stop once it was evident the passenger was gone.

How motorists, subsequently, could fail to stop.

How have we come to live in a society where any of these things are even possible?

Riders are a group hardened by the harsh reality of the danger of the sport. The passenger's death isn't the only one being discussed this week.

A funeral will be held Wednesday for a rider well-loved by many on the board after his bike piled into a car stalled at Eglington and Albina last Thursday. Another rider I know and respect is recovering from multiple broken ribs and internal injuries sustained when a moose jumped out in front of his bike three weeks ago on Highway 11 near Thunder Bay. Another friend may never be able to use one of his arms again after a horrible crash in North Carolina last summer.

An 18-year-old novice died earlier this month when she lost control of her motorcycle in Clarington. Another rider lost her life on Highway 507 near Gooderham yesterday, mere minutes from where a good friend of mine was hit by a pickup truck last October, shattering both her wrists, an eye socket, a knee, and inflicting many other excruciatingly serious injuries, some of which she may never completely recover from.

The "Rider Down" thread on GTAMotorcycle.com gets far too many posts each season, and each year as I meet more riders I personally know more of the riders who go down. As riders, we know the risks. Most of us wear as much protective gear as we can, knowing that it can happen to anyone, at any time, even when we're vigilant, alert, and road conditions are perfect.

Motorists who have never ridden on two wheels are oblivious to how vulnerable riders are out there. This is evidenced by how closely they tailgate motorcycles in stop and go traffic. Tapping the bumper of a car scratches the paint. Tapping a motorcycle with your bumper puts that motorcycle down and INJURES the motorcyclist. Cutting off another car in traffic results in a fender bender. Cutting off a motorcycle in traffic can kill or permanently maim the motorcyclist. I really wish everyone had to ride a motorcycle in Toronto traffic, just for a day, before being issued a driver's licence. Maybe they'd drive a bit more carefully.

But it's clear that some motorists consider all motorcyclists a menace. I was stunned by the vitriolic comments some readers made on news sites where the story was posted, passing judgment on everyone who uses two wheels for transportation, based on this one rider's actions. It's disheartening to read that someone can hate you, without knowing anything about you, based on your mode of transportation.

But the hardest of all this week's bad news was hearing that 13-year-old Peter Lenz was killed on Sunday after getting run over by another motorcycle at Indianapolis Motor Speedway during warm-up laps before his race.

Track is the safest place you can ride: the skills and focus of those on the track are light-years ahead of those of the average commuter. Although racing pushes the limits, track fatalities occur so rarely that any death on a track is shocking. But when the victim is only 13 years old and someone with such amazing talent that we were all watching, waiting, and hoping he would be the next Valentino Rossi... it doesn't get much worse than that.

All these deaths make my heart ache. Peter's broke it.

Please ride carefully, my friends. I'm not sure I can take much more of this kind of news.

Bikes tested at Canada's 1st International Women Riders Congress and Festival

It took some doing, given the workload I'm juggling right now, but I managed to get to Canada's 1st International Women Riders Congress and Festival in Huntsville Thursday, a day after it started. After getting there I ended up spending all day Friday writing a Chick Cars Every Guy Should Try feature for Sympatico's Autos channel, a follow-up to Chick Cars Ain't What They Used to Be that I wrote last week.

Made up for missing Friday by spending all day Saturday doing test rides of bikes at the Huntsville air strip. Kawasaki, Yamaha and Suzuki were conspicuously absent and I missed Harley, which had been there Friday but had another demo ride to run elsewhere on Saturday. But Honda, BMW, the CanAm folks and Ducati were there.

Apologies that I don't have photos of any of these bikes. Typically I take a lot of photos every time I go to a bike event, but because I was feeling overextended with work I decided against trying to document the weekend, as I'd normally do - just didn't have the energy to spare.

This is the first demo ride I've attended where litre bikes were available. I was quite eager to take advantage of that, as dealers don't usually like letting customers test ride the litre bikes. I was dumbfounded that there weren't lineups for the Ducati demo rides. Harley dealers and dealers of most of the Japanese bikes regularly hold demo rides, but Ducati demo days are less frequent. Consequently, this was the first opportunity I'd had to test ride a Ducati. I'd sat on them at bike shows, but never ridden one.

Ducati Monster 796

I knew from the bike shows that I could flat-foot a Monster 796, so that's the first one I tried. I've never ridden a sport twin before and had been told to expect the throttle to be on or off without much gradation between. They weren't kidding. The 796 throttle was very twitchy and she wasn't happy if you weren't revving high. That would be OK for city riding and, in fairness, with no fairing that's what the original naked sport bike is for. I didn't really care for the twitchiness and asked if the Monster 1100 was any smoother; the answer was a qualified 'yes,' but I decided to try a supersport next.

Ducati 848 supersport

The 848 was MUCH smoother, and an easy ride all round. The ergonomics weren't as aggressive as on my ZX7-R, which may have the lowest bars of all the supersports. My Ninja snaps nicely into corners but you definitely have to push or tug her bars; the 848 didn't really require much pressure or pull to lean into the corners. It was a demo ride so I never got past 3rd gear, and didn't get to see how she'd react to a real boot. But with 140hp and 72.3lb-ft of torque at 9,750rpm, she certainly felt like she had a lot more to offer, given the opportunity. The main surprise was the racket produced by that liquid cooled L-Twin engine. I'm used to inline fours and these twins are incredibly *busy* compared to inline fours. Loudly so. You definitely need ear plugs if you want to ride one of these and keep your hearing. The the 32.6-inch seat height was a bit of a challenge for my 27-inch inseam - kept me en pointe. But on a bike that weighs only 370 pounds (dry) it wasn't too bad - the only time I was worried about tipping was when there was a lot of gravel or sand under foot.

Ducati 1198 supersport

Next, I tried the 1198 supersport. Handling and ergonomics were quite similar to the 848 and the throttle was smoother yet. She was only seven pounds heavier than her smaller cousin and the seat height was half an inch shorter than the 848 - but that didn't make much difference. She was even noisier, too, which I wouldn't have thought possible. But I have to say that this is the first time in a long time a bike surprised me: with 170hp and 97lb-ft torque at 8000rpm, the bottom torque is *SOMETHING ELSE* and that rear tire had major authority. I felt like asking if they could clear the airstrip so I could see how fast she could go! Not sure I'd want to tour on her, but she'd be awesome on the track.

I wanted to try the hypermotard too, but had time to test only three other bikes that day so I moved on to see what BMW and Honda had to offer.

A note about Ducati mirrors: even the best of them suck at letting you see what's behind you. The short, low-profile ones they had on the Monster - I think they're called performance mirrors (less to break if the bike falls, I guess) were entirely useless. The stock ones on the supersport were a bit better, but not even as good as the ones on my ZX7-R, which are pretty bad.

BMW K13000S supersport

Over at BMW I hopped on the K1300S supersport, which, as I expected, was as well-behaved as her baby sister, the K1200S, which I'd tested for the first time four years ago. BMW may have taken its time moving away from the boxer engines (which are reliable as hell but entirely uninspiring) but its foray into inline fours is damn near perfect. The engine puts out 175 hp with 103 lb-ft of torque at 8,250 rpm and, given the opportunity, she would certainly haul ass. Yet at sedate speeds she purred like a kitten and was almost impossible to accidentally over-throttle. And, even though at 503 pounds she's almost 80 pounds heavier than my ZX7-R, she feels lighter because of the ingenious way they've canted the engine forward in the frame, lowering the centre of gravity.

Any track junkie would love her yet she's still suitable for lackadaisical Sunday rides for riders less performance conscious. And you have to love a bike with electronic suspension control - there's a toggle that lets you choose a suspension setting for one rider, a rider plus passenger, in sport, normal or "comfort" mode. Her mirrors gave the best rear view of any of the bikes I tried Saturday, too.

Anticipating short inseams at the women's congress she was fitted with the low seat (BMW offers thin seats for most of its bikes for the height challenged), giving her a seat height of 31.1, which allowed me to plant the balls of my feet pretty sturdily on both sides. But she felt so light I would have still been OK with the stock seat.

I lusted after the S1000RR, which was initially made to compete in the 2009 Superbike World Championship, but since it's unlikely I'd be able to afford it (or the K13000S, for that matter) in the near future, I moved on to Honda, which had a CBR1000 I might be able to afford somewhat sooner, and I will have to consider replacing my Ninja eventually. She had 6,300 kilometers on her when I bought her used in a private sale in the spring of 2007 and she started this season with 60,000 kilometres on her odometer. I don't really know how much longer she's going to last, although I've heard of ZX7 engines lasting well past the 100,000 kilometer mark. And I'm religious about maintenance, particularly frequent oil changes. But I know I'm going to have to replace her within the next three years. So, since Kawasaki wasn't there, I made a beeline for Honda.

Honda CBF1000

I've tried recent iterations of Suzuki's 600 GXS-R, Yamaha's R6 and Kawasaki's ZX6-R at dealer demo days in the last three years, but you don't typically get to try out litre bikes at dealer demo days. So when I saw Honda had a CBR1000 there, I headed straight for it. It was already booked for that session, unfortunately, so they suggested I try the CBF1000, which was the same engine but with more relaxed gearing and more upright seating ergonomics. I was disappointed, but the CBR was available for the next ride, so I figured this was an opportunity to check out this engine in its two configurations. I actually like the aggressive ergononmics on my Ninja, the bars are so low and my torso and arms are so short that I'm almost in tuck by default. I've gotten so used to it that a more upright, relaxed riding position usually feels really weird to me.

But the CBF1000 ergonomics were entirely comfortable, even though the seat was wider than the CBR1000 and splayed my legs out more, so that the 31.3-inch seat height put me on my toes. That did feel a bit challenging because at 502.7 pounds dry weight, she felt much heavier than the K1300S. For touring, I like a bit of extra weight, though - it makes passing transport trucks less scary. I had to be very careful about smooth braking and stops because any jerk at all would tip us over; on the tips of my toes I'd not have enough leverage to keep almost 503 pounds from going down. There was no lack of power with 96.55hp and 71.5 ft.lbs of torque at 6500rpm. She felt very smooth and very well-behaved - was so easy to ride she damn near drove herself. This is a great introduction to a sportbike engine for someone who'd like to try a sportbike but is weirded out by the supersport seating. The pegs are still rear-set so you can shift weight onto them in the turns, and you still lean forward but not aggressively so. I wouldn't mind touring on her, although I'd shave some of the foam off the seat to get more of my feet down at stops. I almost regretted relinquishing her at the end of the ride to try the CBR1000.


Honda CBR1000RR supersport

The CBR1000 was pretty much what I'd expected. At 461.0 pounds dry weight she was considerably lighter - and even more spry than the CBF1000. The 32.3-inch seat height was higher, but felt lower because the seat profile has been shaved so your legs don't lose as much height to splaying. Ergonomics are quite aggressive, I wasn't in tuck by default but it certainly felt more natural to lean over the tank than sit upright. She handled beautifully. Power galore, natch, with 178hp (that difference in gearing is critical to how much power gets delivered to the wheel) and the 82.6 lb-ft torque at 8500rpm was spread out quite nicely throughout the range.

I'd prefer her for a long day ride over the 1198, I think.

But the big surprise of the day was that I found myself thinking that of all the bikes I tried the CBF1000 would be my choice for a ride that lasted more than a day. Sure, the gearing makes her a less than ideal bike for racing, but, damn, she was comfortable. And had more power than you'd ever likely need on the street, for quite sporty touring.

Why Internet users should ride motorcycles

When an article in the June issue of Wired based on a book by Nicholas Carr first started me thinking about this topic, I intended to post my thoughts on my Media Gleaner blog. Adapted from Carr's book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, which was released this month, at first blush, the article appeared to belong in the category of media.

By the time I finished thinking about it and started to write about it, I realized it also belonged here on my Moto-Mojo blog, because my conclusions apply to both topics. And the process of thinking about it and coming to that conclusion also proved Carr's thesis.

That probably sounds crazy, so, please allow me a digression.

I read a novel in 1984 by William Gibson that introduced the word cyberspace for the first time. Neuromancer instilled in me such a longing for the universe it described that I couldn't believe my luck when in 1989 I became one of the first editors in Canada to work in online media. A scant few years later, the Internet boom was upon us. It may not have provided the neural interface in the same way that Gibson's characters "jacked in" to cyberspace, but for all practical intents and purposes that universe was now ours. I became an evangelist for it, spent two decades working in it, and looked upon it as the promise of Neuromancer delivered.

A long-time fan of speculative fiction, I am used to thinking of new technology with skepticism, because advantages are often accompanied by disadvantages. Nuclear power is a good example. It provides clean energy without polluting, unlike coal, fossil fuel, or even hydro power, which results in diverting waterways and drowning vast numbers of acres of vegetation. Yet it also provides the ticklish problem of what to do with all those spent radioactive rods. It takes millennia for them to cease to be a danger to biological life forms, including us.

In retrospect, it's curious that I didn't apply that skepticism to the technology underlying the Internet. After reading this article on Wired by Nicholas Carr, I may now have a clue why. Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian pioneer who introduced the concept of how the nature of a medium changes how we perceive it, would have delighted to observe the way the Internet had rewired my brain.

Carr has pulled together a fascinating collection of research on how using the Internet affects our brains, and even causes us to want and need it.

Here's the part I found shocking: According to one well-documented study, it takes only five hours of Web use to rewire a human brain to read faster and solve problems faster. The Internet teaches us to pick up on patterns in data to allow that to happen.

Access to so much information can make us feel smarter. That doesn't mean it's making us smarter. It just means we're using our brains differently. Studies show that when we read online, we also read less thoroughly because the number of links distracts us and breaks our focus. Even deciding not to click on a link is a distraction that disrupts the cognitive process we use to transfer information from short term to long term memory. Research has now shown that heavy multitaskers are more easily distracted, have less control over working memory, and are less able to concentrate on a task than those who habitually concentrate on a single task. Multitasking is no longer considered the most efficient way to accomplish things.

So the Web may be altering our ability to think deeply and with complexity. This is not good news. Yet it has become so integral to keeping us informed that we willingly accept this loss of focus. We don't want to feel out of touch or socially isolated, Carr points out.

What to do? Well, for one, we can ride motorcycles. Allow me to explain.

I've long noticed that when I'm concentrating, really concentrating, on a single task, whether it's reading a book, writing, editing, drawing, painting, or making music, my brain enters a state that I really like. It's almost like an inebriation of sorts, minus the negatives such as loss of coordination and verbal slurring.

According to this research, that state is exactly the opposite of the state my brain is in when I'm surfing the Web. Concentrating on a single task makes me notice details only insofar as they apply to how they can be used on the task at hand, while multi-tasking has me juggling the details without applying them to any deeper thought process.

The state my brain enters when I'm creating, focusing and concentrating also happens when I'm riding a motorcycle. When I'm riding, my eyes have to collect a massive amount of data that my brain then has to sort into information that is immediately relevant and that which isn't. It's exhilarating. It also inexplicably relaxes me, even though I'm hurtling down the road on a machine that can reach a speed approaching 300 kph. But the important thing is that, every time I get on a bike, within a few minutes it has cleared out the cobwebs in my brain. And allows me to take walks inside my head that the fast pace of modern society doesn't often provide time for. I do some of my best thinking while riding.

The remedy, clearly, is to continue to read things off line and to indulge in activities that require us to focus -- such as art, music, or making or building something. And ride motorcycles. These are the things that will allow us to benefit from what the Internet offers, while maintaining the wiring that allows us to focus, and analyze complex issues.

It's another reason to ride my Ninja. I love it.

When the shiny side doesn't stay up

Most motorcycle accidents are single-vehicle accidents. It's the nature of the beast: when you're rolling on only two wheels, things happen and you sometimes fall over. Those who haven't learned the ins and outs of push steering for cornering, particularly, often end up in ditches or worse.

But in accidents between a motorcycle and a car, statistically it was the car driver's error the majority of the time. We know we put ourselves in harm's way every time we suit up. Smart riders work on their skills and emergency maneuvers.

Yet that isn't always enough. Cagers (those who drive cars) can be oblivious to anything smaller than their cars. Every motorist who hits a motorcyclist says: "I didn't see him."

They don't see us because they're not looking for us, in part because there aren't as many motorcycles as there are cars. In Europe, where the ratio of motorcycles to cars is much higher, motorcycle fatalities and accidents are lower.

And I have to say from my personal experience, when I was hit, the drivers were not only oblivious to my motorcycle but to traffic in general. And both had callous disregard for the fact they almost ended another human's life. The guy in the Pathfinder who sideswiped me looked at the side of his van before he checked to find out if I was still alive. Then yelled at me for not getting out of his way. He failed to show up for his court date and still got fined only $200.

The woman who hit me and ran felt pretty entitled to leave. Her fine, $400, pretty much validated her opinion. Not much happens to you when you hit and run in Ontario.

It's easy to get angry about the low fines, especially when our system provides no legal recourse for pain and suffering. I was told by a lawyer that if you weren't injured badly enough to keep you from working, there's no point in suing in civil court in Canada. Every day of the four weeks it takes for a broken rib to stop hurting every time you breathe in and out you get a sharp reminder of your powerlessness. As I said, it's easy to get angry about that.

But I'm more interested in the attitudes. And I don't think higher fines would be much more effective at deterring hit and runs or improving driver behaviour.

That would benefit more from better driver education, with dramatic reminders that we're driving 2,000 pound weapons down the road. Driving is a privilege, not a right. Yet the way we train drivers doesn't pound that home. And what we focus on in our laws doesn't either.

The law adopted in Ontario prohibiting the use of cellphones behind the wheel went into force last January. But it has not resulted in people putting down their cell phones. Just this week alone, I narrowly avoided being hit three times by drivers with phones glued to their ears.

And that will continue as long as people remain convinced they're the exception to the rule. According to a study done by the University of Utah, only 2.5 percent of the population are good enough at multi-tasking to drive and talk on the phone at the same time. And the ones who say they can do it are precisely the ones who can't. Those who don't think they can do it are more likely to be able to do it.

I participated in a distracted driving test last January that was organized by Shuan de Jager, founder of Roadawareness.ca, with the help of Scott Marshall, director of training for Young Drivers of Canada. They had us drive go-carts around a track while trying to talk and text on our phones: I drove into a wall trying to text a four-word message.

The National Safety Council in the United States says that drivers are four times more likely to be in a crash if they use cell phones behind the wheel, while drivers who text increase their risk 8 to 23 times.

The source of most of the English public service videos I've found on YouTube that dramatize the repercussions of killing or maiming someone on a motorcycle, whether because of cellphone use or excess speeed, seems to be Australia and the U.K. Both spend money on educating people about the dangers of distracted driving and both have taken what some consider to be shocking approaches. One video that went viral showed ghostly figures watching grieving parents in very graphic accident scene recreations. One of the most popular shows motorcyclists riding their bikes in the buff, with the caption: "Do you see me now?"

Canada doesn't spend federal money on those kinds of ads and I don't recall seeing any produced by a province. Down south, a few states have bankrolled a few.

And 25 out of 50 states have banned using cell phones behind the wheel without the aid of a hands-free device. A few, including Vermont and Illinois, have been cited for launching innovative education programs that teach young drivers, who are particularly at risk because of less experience behind the wheel, of the real dangers of texting while driving. The Associated Press reported that Vermont and Illinois have launched programs that put teens in golf carts and ask them to text while driving the carts. Their experience is very similar to mine.

Such driver awareness exercises really drive home the fallacy of "it can't happen to me" thinking.

2010 International Female Ride Day

Blustery wind, bouts of torrential rain, thunder and a lightning show didn't keep women from showing up for the Toronto Rally for the Ride Home for the 2010 International Female Ride Day tonight.

The rally was organized and hosted by International Female Ride Day founder, Vicki Gray, aka Motoress, at the Keating Channel Pub on Villiers St. in Toronto. A former racer, instructor, coach, and writer, the Ontario native was sponsored by the likes of World Championship team Ten Kate Honda and Ducati during her racing years.

Gray’s now teaching at Canadian National Superbike Champion Michel Mercier’s FAST Riding School in Shannonville and has been tirelessly promoting the sport to women, working with local dealers to host women's bike nights and other events.

Since inaugurating International Female Ride Day in 2007, Gray has been encouraging women to ride their motorcycles to work on this day. Here in Toronto, the skies have poured on us three out of those four years but women keep showing up on two wheels.

I've braved the rain on my bike every year until this one, when I (and a few others) wussed out and caged it to the celebration of the day.

But Vicki rode in, as did many other women, including one who rode all the way from Hamilton Ontario, which is almost an hour and a half away.

In previous years, women met in front of Princes Gates downtown before work, which made it difficult for some people to make it.

Because the celebration was after work today instead, this year probably would have been a huge gathering, had it not been for the weather.

Before drawing tickets for prizes being raffled off, Gray read us messages from women around the world who are now using this day every year to promote solidarity among other women who ride.

When I bought my first bike (a 1977 Honda CB125) in Montreal in 1979, I knew only one other woman in the city who rode: the wife of a British bike repair shop who happily rode a Triumph around town.

People kept telling me about another woman, who was (they said at the time) in her fifties and had been riding most of her life, but I never met her and always wondered if she was an urban legend.

So it's been pretty amazing to witness the number of women who have joined the sport in recent years.

A women's rider social group that started off with 20 members on GTAMotorcycle.com, Toronto's largest chat board for motorcyclists, at the end of the last riding season grew to 80 strong over the winter.

We may still be only 13 percent of riders on two wheels, but we're making inroads and are forming a community both locally in the GTA and online. I've been invited to join no fewer than 20 Facebook groups of women riders in the last year alone.

And I've met a growing number of women tearing up the track in the last few years, one of whom has started racing and another who's gotten good enough we're encouraging her to race. I used to celebrate the racing achievements of women I've never met and may never get to meet. Now I'm celebrating the racing achievements of women I run across in my own community.

Ride on, sisters!

'Supertaskers' who can drive and talk are rare

Think you can safely drive and talk on your cell phone at the same time? Then you probably can't. A new study shows that 'Supertaskers' who can drive and talk on phone are rare - only 2.5% of population can do it. Even more interesting, the people who *think* they can do it safely are usually the very ones who can't, the study says: http://bit.ly/cMR4sj

This supports the results of the Driving Distraction experiment that RoadAwareness.ca organized in January. Click here to read an article I wrote about that for Yahoo! Canada.

Driver behaviour and how we share the road

This poor blog has been neglected over the last year. Not because I've lost interest in the sport (far from it) but because I've been getting somewhat involved in covering our four-wheeled cousins. I spent nine months editing the Autos Channel at Yahoo! Canada, and was fascinated by the many ways the two interests intersect. Particularly when it comes to trying to predict and understand driver behaviour.

The latter, in particular, has become a keen area of study for me. After being hit twice two years ago, I was stunned at the attitudes of both motorists who hit me. The first, a man in a Pathfinder who sideswiped me in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic, got out and carefully examined the side of his van before yelling at me (while I was still lying in the road) for not getting out of his way. He had, after all, signalled. Even in my stunned state (came perilously close to fracturing my pelvis that time- the hip pads in my gear saved me), I almost laughed at his sense of entitledness. And wondered where it came from. The driver in the car behind me, who was alert enough not to run me over, stopped his car and made sure I was OK before starting to direct traffic around us until the EMTs could arrive.

The second time, a woman zoomed out of a parking lot in downtown Toronto to dart across three lanes to cut me off. She took off without stopping. Miraculously, the fellow in the pickup truck behind me not only didn't run over me when I went down, but chased after her and stopped her at the next red light to tell her she had to come back and give her insurance information. He said she told him "No I don't," before taking off again. He wrote down her plate number, came back to give it to me (along with his cell number) and asked if I wanted him to wait for police with me. I thought I was fine, so just thanked him (profusely!) and sent my white knight on his way. Found out later I'd broken a rib and a thumb.

Both times perfect strangers in cars behind me came to my rescue. And both times the person who'd hit me could have cared less that he or she (no gender divide, here) had almost ended another human being's life. I will be writing more about that, and the possible underlying causes, later. Will also be writing about Ontario's peculiar justice system, which seems to depend on insurance companies to penalize people for dangerous driving.

The penalties certainly aren't a deterrent. The man in the Pathfinder was fined $200 for an illegal lane change. The woman who hit me and ran was fined $500 for leaving the scene of an accident.

Think about that. $200 and $500. And compare it to fines for speeding that endanger other drivers but don't directly impact them.

Clearly, I have thoughts on that subject.

Stay tuned!

Lil Red Bird Ride Saturday May 30, 2009

I rolled into my driveway last night after 15 hours in the saddle, exhausted and excited. No -- make that exhilarated. Few things wind me up like Lil Red Bird ride and I'd just followed LRB (the charming fella in the red and black jacket in the right side of this first photo) on his circuit of 840 kilometres of northeast Ontario twisties, along with 22 other riders. Some riders broke off at the halfway point in Maynooth, but at least half completed the whole ride.


The ride was scheduled to leave at 8 a.m. Saturday, so I got up at 5 to get to the ride meet-up point at Haugens BBQ on Highway 12 north of Whitby by 7:30. Only two things will get me up that early: a track day or a Lil Red Bird ride.

Lil Red Bird organizes these rides for members of GTAMotorcycle.com several times a year. Lynn's his given name, but Lil Red Bird, or LRB for short, is his monniker on GTAM, a discussion board for bikers in the GTA area. During riding season there are dozens of rides posted each week on GTAM, but his rides are the stuff of legend because they cover so much territory -- and no one knows the roads of northeast Ontario like he does. Outside of organized riding groups, LRB has initiated more new riders into the wonders of Ontario twisties than anyone else.




GTAM is an incredible resource for local riders. I belong to more than one riding group, but GTAM provides most of the benefits of a regular riding group with none of the obligations. If you're up for a ride, and one's posted, you're usually welcome to join them. Some rides -- usually posted as "spirited" -- are best left to very experienced riders, because that means the pace will be quick. But lots of "noob-friendly" rides are posted and these rides give new riders a chance to meet other riders and get some experience riding in a group under their belt.

That's been the subject of a lot of debate on the board in the last year, because several rides ended with someone crashing. A lot of finger-pointing goes on when that happens, some got aimed at inexperienced noobs and others at hooligans. Circumstances varied, and I'll leave the discussion of hooliganism for another time. There are people I've met through GTAM with whom I will never ride again. But for the most part, I've met a good combination of eager newbies and careful, caring veteran riders. All noobs have to start somewhere. And GTAM is a good place for them to meet people who can informally mentor them.



Of all the GTAM rides I've been on, LRB's are always the best organized. He's been doing this for years and his safety record is amazing, considering how many new riders are being introduced to technically challenging roads for the first time. That's largely due to his insistence on everyone riding their own ride, at their own pace. The more experienced riders just wait at the turns until everyone gets there. Simple, but effective rule. This pic is the group waiting at the turn in Gooderham at the top of the 507, before we headed west on the Loop before looping back to Elephant Lake Road, which led to Maynooth.

LRB doesn't live in Toronto and rides an hour and a half west to the Haugens BBQ meet-up point, because that's more convenient for GTA riders. The riding community owes a lot to LRB.

Saturday's ride started out chilly; the bit from Haugens to the 507 and up around Elephant Lake was bracing, to say the least. But once we got to Maynooth, where we had lunch at a chip wagon at the gas station (the photo above and below), things warmed up and the rest of the ride was absolutely perfect: sunny, enough wind to keep the trees whispering their secrets to each other and just cool enough to keep us from getting too hot in our leathers. Baby's engine loves weather like that. Perfect riding weather.


The stretch after Maynooth over to Calabogie and the Ompah (the northern curve of the 509 east of Calabogie) was awesome. I lost track of where I saw them, but we rode through sections with jagged rock faces on one or both sides of the roads. LRB had warned us that there might be sand and gravel in unexpected places on the turns, because a big thunderstorm had dumped large quantities of water on the area in a very short time the night before. We were lucky and only a few turns had enough loose material under our wheels to worry about.

There was a big lineup at the next fuel stop -- I think it was after Calabogie on the way to Ompah -- with a group of about 30 cruisers waiting at the pumps ahead of us. That turned into a long break. After we left that stop there was a bit of a wait on the road, while emergency crews directed us past an accident. Couldn't tell exactly what happened but the road was filled with what looked like the group of all the cruiser riders who had left the fuel stop ahead of us. Wondered if one of the bikes had gone into a ditch - but we weren't there long enough to get the story.

And we were the only ones on the road for miles after we headed toward the Ompah. It's been two years since I've done that stretch, the last time I made it to one of the rides organized by LRB.

That's two years too long. We covered 840km from Haugens to where the main part of the ride ended at the Marmoraton Mine Reservoir, all of it through gorgeous countryside on winding, twisty roads. That is some of the best food for the soul imaginable.


And the Marmoraton Mine Reservoir, the last stop on the route, was stunningly beautiful. It was hard to pick which of the dozens of photos I took there -- the rest on this page are all from that last stop. Vlad (on the far right of this next photo), who along with El Zilcho (both screen names - I'll let them identify their real ones themselves in the comments, if they wish) met me downtown to head to the main meetup spot, said people swim there when it gets warm. Like The Gut, the remains of a logging operation south of Bancroft, the Marmoraton Mine Reservoir is one of Ontario's best-kept secrets. Much easier to get to than The Gut, too - because the last 10 kilometres to The Gut is sandy dirt, boulders and rocks - not easy to transverse without knobby tires.


Vlad volunteered to show a particularly nice stretch of Lakeshore to those of us heading back to Toronto after that. I was keen, but cars kept breaking up our group on the 401 and I missed the exit he took. The skies to the west -- the direction of Toronto -- were starting to darken, so I took that as a sign I should head home. The Weather Channel had forecast thunderstorms to hit Toronto around 8 pm that day, and it was now 8.


As I rode west on the 401, the skies were increasingly menacing. I didn't have enough gas left to get to Toronto, so I pulled off the highway at the Nickelby's rest stop about an hour out of town and topped up the tank while I put on my rain gear.

Got back on the highway and booted it, hoping to make good distance and time before the rain hit. Ten minutes later it was pouring buckets; cracks of lightning lit up the sky as I watched jagged fingers of electricity repeatedly snake down to earth, followed by the deafening boom of thunderclaps.


And wind. In spades. The wind had picked up so much that it could have blown me into the next lane, had I been riding any supersport but Baby. The ZX7's 515 pounds comes in handy in high winds. The new generation of supersports weigh less than 400 pounds for the most part, and even a passing transport truck can generate enough of a gust to blow them sideways. But Baby hugs the road like ... what was it that reviewer once said? Like a well-behaved bull rhino.

Even so, the gusts were strong enough to force me to grip the bars much more firmly than usually necesssary. I was no longer having fun.

Then the rain REALLY started coming down. Could barely see 20 feet in front of me.

I was now about 30 minutes outside of Toronto. The sky was a fantastic show, the air smelled fresh and electric, and the booms of thunder were boosting my adrenalin levels to new heights. I love storms like that -- when I'm not on a bike. But yesterday, I couldn't really appreciate it because I was too busy trying to see tailights in front of me through the sheets of water.


Visibility was so bad that I was afraid to try to take an exit because I couldn't see much in my mirrors. Even a shoulder check to see if someone was coming up beside me in the right-hand lane wasn't a guarantee in those conditions. I couldn't see the vehicle in front of me -- just his tail lights -- never mind one behind me. There are still older cars on the road where lights don't come on automatically -- and I don't trust motorists to remember to turn them on.

After a number of shoulder checks *seemed* to indicate the coast was clear, I was thinking maybe I should risk changing lanes so I could pull over or take an exit ... when suddenly the rain slowed down enough that I could see more of the car in front of me than just his tail lights. Almost simultaneously, the sun broke through below the clouds in a glorious burst of red.



Sunset was upon us. It was an incredible feeling: riding through pouring rain toward one of the most beautiful sunsets I'd ever seen, a big red ball taking up the stage between the earth and the clouds. Heaven. That's what heaven looks like, I thought.

I was almost at the Toronto city limit now, and the rain had slowed enough that I was longer worried I'd miss my exit for the DVP because I couldn't see the sign.

My almost perfect record of timing a ride around rainclouds is now tarnished a bit. But better at the end of a ride than the beginning or the middle. And the sky at the end was breath-taking. I really wish I had a picture of that.

It was an interesting -- and dramatic -- end to a wonderful day.

It was 70 kilometres to the ride meet-up point from my house in East York, so Baby logged just under 1,000 kilometres for the day. I'm surprised I wasn't sore this morning. I needed a new pair of wrists at the end of my first LRB ride three years ago. More surprising: I didn't get that fire burning between my shoulder blades that I usually get by hour eight. I think my Pilates classes may have helped with that. I consciously kept relaxing my shoulders and arms and "pulled my ears away from my shoulders" just as the instructor kept reminding us. Seemed to do the trick.



I'm now ready for a longer road trip. Not sure how to fit one into this summer, because this year I'm working regular shifts at the Yahoo! Canada offices on Queen's Quay and am already scheduling time off for track days. The last three years I'd been freelancing from home, with a much more flexible schedule. It's easier to fit road trips in when you can do interviews during lunch and write at night.

For now, I'll feast on the memory of this perfect ride, perfect day. Thanks, Lil Red Bird!

Route note: For those who'd like to duplicate this ride, LRB and Vlad have put route coordinates with GPS data you can download online. And here's a link to a Googlemap with the gas stops (very important if your tank has a range in the neighbourhood of 200 kilometres).

Gear note: Got to try out my new Joe Rocket "rainproof" gloves with the squeegee on the left thumb. They worked pretty well. The outside soaked through and still had to be dried out when I got home, but the inside stayed dry and the squeegee, although not as effective as I'd hoped it would be, was still a big improvement over not having one. Don't know how the inside dryness would hold up to several hours of rain, but they withstood a half an hour of downpour. My FroggToggs kept the rest of me dry. They don't last as long as most rain gear, but when rain protection weighs ounces instead of pounds, I'm willing to replace it every five years or so. I can keep FroggToggs tucked in Baby's tail with the toolkit without adding any weight or taking up room in my tank bag, they're always there when I need 'em.

Also: Last time I rode in the rain, my Alpinestar Goretex water-proof touring boots leaked. Which upset me no end, because it was the end of only the second season I'd worn them. For boots that cost in the neighbourhood of $260, I think you should get three seasons, minimum, out of them. It's not like you wear them all the time. The waterproofing should last at least as long as the tread on the soles will.

But they held up this time. My feet remained perfectly dry. Go figure!

The Ganny May 10, 2009

Have been up to the Ganaraska forest three times now this spring on my lil red zinger (CRF230). This has been a big gap in my biking education, and I'm finally filling it. The first two pics are of one of the entrances where you park to access the trails. Finally bought a season pass - a bargain: $130 for the whole summer. It's the most wonderful experience to be riding through the forest -- I love how beautiful it is. One of the single-track trails we rode was blanketed on both sides by a carpet of trilliums; a feast for the eyes.

I think I'm going to buy a winter pass, too - so I can go cross-country skiing there next winter.



The next two pic are of Ty with his KTM505. He LOOOVES that bike. I swear he'd marry it, if he could. I've never seen him grin as wide as when he's on it. And the smile stays for hours afterward.

I still want to try my YZ250F, even though my feet dangle nine inches off the ground on both sides. Moto Marta, who rode a KTM with racing tires on it on the track, assures me that I'll get used to that. But I'm increasingly convinced I'm going to prefer the CRF on the trails. Now that I'm used to an electric start, I sincerely doubt I'm going to want to work up a sweat kicking the YZ over, when I stall. And, given how awkward stops are going to be on the YZ, I think stalls are inevitable.

The CRF is more than enough bike for me and is giving me a lot of valuable experience throttling through loose materials with a squirrely rear wheel. The first time we went up was before the end of April -- we didn't know that you're not supposed to enter the forest on a motorized vehicle until after April 30. And there was still snow on the trails. I hate riding on snow, even with knobby tires. You can't get ANY traction, like you can in mud, and can't correct your direction, either, or you slide and go down. Even sand lets you steer. Snow is weird.

The Busa ride May 3 (well, it was a LOT of Busas!)

The pretense for this ride down to Buffalo was to munch on wings, which the rest of the riders dutifully chowed down on. Being (mostly) vegetarian, I opted for the portabello stuffed ravioli - a strange, but delicious, find at a wing place.



There were 20 bikes on this ride - a pretty large group. Suzuki predominated (lots, and lots of Busas - but gixxers, too) but we had a small complement representing Kawasaki. It was amazing to me that we rode together in one group that large. Most of the riders were fairly experienced, but it's novel to me that we all managed to stay together.


Even at the border, where it seemed to take forever. Bikes don't take up as much room as cars so our line, although it looked small, took quite a while to process.

I find it interesting that U.S. customs didn't ask me to take my helmet off, but Canadian customs did. That's the third time I've seen that now. I'm sure it's harder to see whether the person on the passport photo is the person on the bike when the helmet's on, but when you're juggling passports and driver's licences, it's an incredible juggling act to also have to remove gloves (so you can take the helmet off) and the helmet - all while you're handing them and they're handing back your papers.

International Female Ride Day May 1 2009

Last year Mother Nature rained on the International Female Ride Day kickoff in Toronto, so despite the fact it was still COLD ... we were pretty happy that this year the morning was dry. Race girl Vicki Gray (the blond in the first pic) launched this annual event three years ago, and it gets women out on their bikes to celebrate the fact there are more and more of us every year.





It gives me a real sense of pride to see so many women on two wheels in one spot. That's my friends Brandi Jacques (a Duc rider) and Lindsay Cai (another Ninja comrade) in the second pic with Vicki.

What a wonderful way to kick off the riding season!

First ride of 2009

It was COLD ... but went for my first ride of the season on April 5. My friend Wally, who'd joined my chapter of the Southern Cruisers for a brunch that morning, our friend Ann, and Goldie, who was still breaking in her engine, all went for a ride after the brunch up along Mississauga Road and around the Caledon area. That's the three of them in the first pic.



The second pic shows some of my SC chapter pals leaving after the brunch.

I stubbornly didn't even use my heated vest or gloves that day. It really feels like it took forever for spring to arrive this year. Here we are, almost June, and temps still aren't staying above 18C for more than an hour or two at a time.

Spring 2009 is finally here!

OK, you can stop emailing me now about how long it's been since I've updated this blog. Now that it's spring and I've been trail biking and on my first three rides of the season, I'm all out of excuses.



This year's spring was long coming, and I seem to have lost my tolerance for cold. Baby was stuck at TO Cycle for the winter after that woman hit us in November, and between forecasts of snow and ice and sand still on the street I didn't go pick her up until the end of March.




Meanwhile, the second weekend in March, my friend Goldie, who was a new rider last year, upgraded to a brand-new 2009 Ninja 250 and needed a lift to the dealer in Burlington to pick it up.



I drove her there in the car, since I hadn't picked Baby up yet from TO Cycle. It was REALLY windy that day and it was Goldie's first time on her new bike, so we went to the parking lot down the road from the dealer for her to put it through its paces and get used to how it felt.

She did great. It may be only her second year riding, but she has good form and is careful. Her friend Fiaz (see last pic of him on the gixxer) met us there to ride back with us. What a nice guy!



Meanwhile, my new YZ250 is still in my kitchen because I don't have a garage -- nowhere I can lock it up. I'm still a bit leery of it, to be honest -- my feet dangle nine inches off the ground on both sides when I sit on it. Marta (who's at least three inches shorter than I am) tells me I'll get used to that -- and to propping it up on chain link fences to kick it over, but I'm still somewhat dubious.



So I bought a CRF230. At least I can get a toe down on both sides. I'll get my trail legs on it, and THEN try the YZ250. I took it up to the Ganaraska two weeks ago with Ty, and really enjoyed zooming around in the forest. There were still patches of snow, though, and I hate trying to ride on snow, even on knobby tires. You can't get any traction on it, unlike mud, and can't change direction at all on it, or you'll go down.


Ty just bought a KTM505. He's wanted one forever, and finally found one in fantastic condition at a price he was willing to pay. We both had two dirt bikes this spring, he bought a CRF450 and rode it a couple of times before he sold it - see him below with it outside Chesterman's indoor MX track, where we went in March. The last pic is inside Chesterman's. It's a small track, but when there's still snow on the ground... you're happy just to be able to ride. Anywhere.



I don't mind how dirty I get on the CRF. It's part of the fun. But ... I gotta tell ya, having to wash her down every time I take her out is going to be a drag. I might wash my Ninja twice a season. Maybe. If she's lucky. So having to wash a bike down every time I ride her ... groan. And Ty tells me I need to rebuild her top end every season. Some people do it every time they RIDE.


Mind you, those are the folks who really push their bikes. MX people are the craziest riders of all.

Still. Kinda crazy!

More pix from my first rides later. It's bedtime, now.

Plea to Torontoids: Stop using me for target practice. Please?

Went down again on Nov. 2, after a woman zoomed out of a parking lot on Harbour Street to zip across three lanes to cut me off. That makes three crashes in one season after 20 years without a single crash. The difference? I'm riding in downtown Toronto a lot.



In June, when a Pathfinder sideswiped me up on Ellesmere, I got a bruise that ran across my pubic bone, a foot high around my hip, and across my spine. This time, in November, I cracked a rib and broke a thumb. It was four weeks before I could breathe in or out without excruciating pain. Talked the hand clinic into swapping my hand cast for a thumb splint after a week -- and got the splint off right before New year's, but it still hurts.



And I got off easy. I wasn't going fast enough to go down hard and was wearing fully armored leather. I'm still angry about it, which is why I haven't yet written about how this woman zoomed out of a parking lot across three lanes of traffic to cut me off on Nov. 2. I was already angry about the Pathfinder driver who sideswiped me the last Saturday in June: he looked at the side of his van before checking to see if I was still alive. And then yelled at me for not getting out of his way when he found out I wasn't dead.

I posted a long note on Facebook after the incident, but was too upset to write about this latest event, yet. Someone chased after the woman who cut me off and asked her to come back and give her insurance information. She refused to do that, saying that she didn't have to because she hadn't hit me, before taking off again. Police disagreed: she was later charged with leaving the scene of an accident.



Both displayed egregious disregard for human life and a callous attitude toward their victim. I have been thinking a lot about why that could be and will be writing more on that subject after I've processed it.

Sorry about the gap between my last post and this one; it's not just because of going down in November. The month of September crazy busy as I tried to cram as many track days and rides as I could before a) the snow hit and b) I started a full-time contract at Yahoo Canada at the end of October. A 9-5 schedule would start limiting my rides to weekends and commuting downtown.



As it turned out, the November crash eliminated the possibility of any more fall riding and the snow came early this year. My recuperation and the new contract took my undivided attention for quite a while, but here's a short recap of September and October:

Finally got to try the Long Track at Shannonville (see the two track photos above), and it was a humbling experience. The Long Track makes Shannonville's Nelson track look like a cakewalk: more than twice as many turns -- enough that you could spend an entire day and still not be sure of the order of the turns. It's a hard track to memorize and the mixed elevation makes knowing those turns pretty important -- you can't always see what's around the turn. That many turns means memorizing the good apexes gets tricky. I crashed almost at the end of my second full lap session.



The red "X" in the pic of of the Long Track on the right indicates where I went off the track.

Here's what I posted on Facebook:

Picked a too-late apex on the second to last turn before the main straight, went egregiously wide, tried to save it by leaning more, and lowsided into the grass.

Ralph (at TO Cycle) told me it's impossible to keep a bike up when you enter grass on a lean. I wonder if the result might have been different had I'd tried to stand her up and take her into the grass on purpose. Sigh. I guess this is how you learn?

Baby: broke her shifter link, so that was the end of that track day. We were out of commission before lunch. Got a CAA tow back to TO Cycle, where Junior replaced the shifter link and did some more plastic welds. So Baby's back.

Should have taken pix of the damage; don't know why I didn't think of it. Another sign my focus was off?

I realized, (not entirely unexpectedly) that if I'm going to continue to squeeze more track days into a short time frame I'm going to have to stop riding Baby to the track the morning of the track day. I need to get a trailer, arrive at the location the night before to get a good night's sleep. Before this crash, I was running a sleep deficit. And getting up at 5 a.m. to get to the track early enough to prep the bike for an 8 a.m. start time put a big dent in my ability to focus. I used up my one long-distance CAA tow getting Baby from Shannonville to Junior at TO Cycle in Etobicoke, to get her shifter link replaced. The next distance tow would cost a mint.



I finally got on my first dirt bike -- and fell in love. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, at least to learn the basics about throttling through loose material.

Hills -- heh. That was another story. Deep, muddy ruts? Bit me twice.Just what I needed: another transportation-based obsession.



Carolina, one of the gals I was fortunate enough to meet through the Chic Riders, set us up at Trail Tours and after a morning of learning how to get knobby wheels over lumpy objects like tree branches and boulders and how to change gears while wearing Frankenboots, spent an afternoon terrorizing the trees in the Kanaraska forest. Some of the best fun you can have with your clothes on!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=160123&l=dc3aa&id=713220000

You can click here for more pix from the Kanaraska Forest.



Also went on a ride with my friends Equus and Rose up to Fenelon Falls. The leaves were just starting to turn red. The ride was beautiful and we found a wonderful little restaurant that overlooked the falls when we stopped for lunch.

The next week, a fall colours ride up to Collingwood drew so many riders who wanted to get one last glorious run in before the snow fell that we had to break up in six or seven groups - it was the largest ride I was on all year, after the annual ride up to Aminal & Fozzy's.




This picture shows us in a parking lot, staging the different groups, with John Reed (who'd organized the ride) getting experienced volunteers to lead each group, followed by a volunteer "sweeper" who makes sure no one gets into trouble and falls behind.



Aminal & Fozzy really outdid themselves for their annual BBQ. They do every year, but this year we were only a handful short of 500 bikes riding in one group, in staggered formation, snaking about 10 kilometres from the Elmvale Zoo to Aminal & Fozzy's house.



You read that right: 500 bikes. Aminal and Fozzy invite the entire community of bikers in the GTA to this every year, and Aminal (who's a chef) cooks up a spread you wouldn't believe. That's Aminal in the vest with all the patches on it, in the parking lot of the zoo before we got into formation for the ride.

He carves his radishes to look like wee little mousies, complete with little radish tails. I kid you not. They are SOOOOOO cute.




I was happy to see a number of first-season riders (including my new friend Goldie from the Chic Riders) join that pilgrimage. This last photo shows all the bikes parked up and down Aminal & Fozzy's street: his neighbours move their cars to make room for us. Those are VERY nice neighbours.