Snow fun at all …..

The first storm hit sometime during the Thursday night, the 2nd of February. We woke to the usual picturesque scene, the one that makes you go ‘ahhhh’, then run for the warmth of the kitchen and a hot mug of tea. All day it swirled and battered home and countryside, nothing flew, trotted, hopped or drove that we saw.

At approx. 17:30 our ethereal internet and phone connection to the world outside was unceremoniously cut. Nothing but a deep unwelcoming silence, while the storm raged a little harder just to emphasise our isolation a little more. Over the next 11 days we were to be subject to more snow and blizzards, periodical broken by a splash of sunshine. The first break in the weather gave me a chance to try for the main road ….. two days and three sessions of digging saw the Rangey finally hit tarmac. On Wednesday the 8th, I pulled a sled with Jan’s suitcases up to the old house and the waiting car. We had an uneventful trip to the airport, where I sadly waved Jan off to the UK. Now it was just me and a bunch of hungry animals, time to do some shopping on the way home. Stocked up I drove back to the house and parked the Rangey up in the driveway thinking the worst was now over.

The blizzard that started the following night was as unexpected as it was intense. 36Hrs of  battering  by raging turbulent wind and unrelenting snow … the road disappeared completely under undulating drifts over two meters deep in places, while upstairs windows vanished as the snow clung onto the strained roof below.  Once again, the Rangey had to be helped out on a couple of occasions, but I can’t complain when it only gets stuck in snow that’s deeper than the bonnet!

On the afternoon of the 11th day, the phone and internet came back, our little slice of Italy was neatly plugged back into the daily routine of planet Earth.

What’s the old saying ….‘stop the world I want to get off’? We did for a while, but it sure is nice to get back on again!

So a couple of quick phone calls to let people know I’m doing fine and catch-up on current events. Seems the whole region went dark that Friday night when a tree down by the river, unable to cope under the weight of snow took out the main phone line.

Oh, and one last thing ……. ever heard thunder during a blizzard? I hadn’t until now, seems the snow attenuates the sound so you only hear it when its less than a mile or two away. And its official name – thundersnow!

 

Welcome to Wiki-school …. day1

Well as part of the 2012 overhaul …. I’ve gone Wiki! Yes, Moto-Abruzzo is moving any Capo related technical info and how-to articles over to a Wiki. A platform better suited to cross-referencing data and being co-written by other like-minded owners.

I think it’s a good move, although a rather tough learning curve. Of course, life with my Rally-Raid will still be a staple part of Moto-Abruzzo, I’m just clearing a little room! So click on the ‘Capo-Wiki’ link on the menu or go to http://etv1000.co.uk to see how we’re getting on – and maybe give us a hand?

Time to let go ……

Well it’s been almost three weeks now and with each passing day, we have to face the inevitable – Kelly, our faithful stray dog isn’t coming back.

On the evening of the 4th January, Kelly had played enthusiastically along with the other dogs and threw down his evening meal with gusto. Later he’d returned to his bed by the front door – and that was the last we saw of him. Thursday morning he was nowhere to be seen, we thought he’d be somewhere down the woods or in a nice little sun-trap warming himself, no big deal. But when we came back from shopping later that afternoon, he wasn’t there, in the middle of the gateway doing his usual hoppy-wiggly dance, proud as punch that we’d bought him some new stuff to eat, nor was he merrily snoring away in his bed. As the penny dropped, we had a search round the buildings – nothing. It was going dark now, so we could do nothing more until morning. And so the concern set in.

Over the following days, we searched fields, hedgerows and woodlands. We phoned neighbours and talked to a shepherd tending his flock a few fields away. Nothing, he’d simply vanished. During this time, the ‘what-if’ questions begin to make an appearance.

“He was about 15 years old the vet guessed, what if he’s had a heart attack or something.”

“That shepherd has some BIG dogs, what if he got too close in the night, could they have got him?”

“Has he strayed all the way over to the main road? What if he got hit, could he be lying on the verge somewhere?”

And so it goes on, an ever decreasing circle of fruitless thoughts that inevitably won’t bring him back or give us any piece of mind. A wholly depressing cycle to break out of and something we had to tell ourselves when we spotted each other inevitably starting down this dark and destructive path.

Over those three weeks we’ve watched the temperature plummet and the snow fall and each and every day we’ve missed him. At first, his bowl was filled each evening and each morning the contents remained, a dull and listless reflection of its former freshness, a reflection of our feelings and like a child restless for Santa’s visit on Christmas night, so we too sleep fitfully wondering if he’ll visit us under the veil of darkness.

Now, the bowl has been washed and put to one side, just in case. Somehow putting it away is like admitting defeat, that he won’t be back, that we’ve given up on him. So it sits on the drainer, ready.

______________________________________________

Kelly came to us out of nowhere, a bag of bones wobbling unsteadily in the garden. I don’t think he had the energy to move on – it was us or nothing. His left eye resembled a bleached Ping-Pong ball and the injury to his neck looked severe and  old, he’d experienced something awful, survived and made it here.

Over the three and a half years he was here, he suffered twice more with the remnants of those injuries and in 2010 suffered the further indignity of losing one of his back feet to a farmer’s unshielded mower blade. For six weeks I tended to him, four times a day. Of course he pulled through and seemed to blossom all the more! Even on three legs he could out-run the other dogs appearing like a canine ‘where’s Wally’ everywhere you looked, hill-top or valley floor. He always seemed to be there looking back at you, waiting for his photograph.

His temperament was the best I’ve seen in a dog, ever-alert and quick to raise the alarm of approaching strangers,  yet inquisitive and gentle with everyone – person or animal. When he needed treatment, although the pain must have been unbearable, he never cried or lashed out …… something the vet was amazed at. He wasn’t always on his best behaviour though, he had a sneaky habit of trying to commando-crawl through the hatch into the chicken pen to nick eggs and his periodic 4 a.m. barking marathons from the valley below were a particular turn-off!

But ultimately we had the most fantastic time together and we can only hope that the end – if there was an end, came quickly and painlessly. If not, we wish him well wherever he is.

He came out of nowhere, I guess it’s fitting he went back that way.

G’night Kelly-boy wherever you are.

A mouse in the works

What with the mild winter and the vastly improved road surface, I’ve been lucky enoughAprilia Caponord ETV1000 Rally-Raid good times! to use the Capo far more than previous winters. That has meant the Range Rover languishing in the corner. And that has been the cause of yet more trouble.

One man’s car is another mouse’s home, especially when it sits day-after-day slowly dropping to its bump-stops and enticing grass and weeds to grow through the wheels. So muncher-mouse duly set up home under the battery compartment lid and made a comfy nest – from the bonnet liner, cable insulation and some hoses!

The car still started and ran, but what a mess! So I served the little darling an eviction notice (waved a big fluffy chicken!) and took stock of the damage. All this meant a trip to town for spares, so on an obscenely sunny afternoon, I took the Capo for a whiz around Pescara.

Long-story-short, I got the bits I needed AND luck would have it, I got the last bit of aluminium chequer-plate (on sale!!) to finish off the capo pannier lid modifications I started a couple of years ago. I already had the marine grade stainless steel tie-down points and hardware on the shelf, but the plate just seemed to get forgotten each time we’d been in-store.

So the Range Rover got shiny new cables and pipes and the Capo got the topbox make-over I’d waited aeons to get around too. All-in-all, a tidy result.

Oh and the mouse? Last I heard it was doing impressions of a dog whistle at Mouseville!

Bye bye Shorai

Aprilia Caponord ETV1000 Rally-Raid - Shorai and Yuasa batteriesLet me start by saying that the Shorai is NOT a bad battery, it’s just not the right battery it seems for a large capacity V-twin. Yesterday, after persisting with it for several months, I finally admitted defeat – one last baulked start tipped me over the edge. I wanted, no, yearned for the comfort of the old and heavy lead-acid battery and its reliable starts-every-time performance.

So is it a faulty battery then?

The simple answer is no, but it is a battery that seems to be very temperature sensitive. With ambient temperatures over 15c I had no problems, but now with the temperatures waving between 3 and 15c it’s a different story. Stalled starter, slow starts and engine stalling several times before it runs reliably – all after a 5 minute wait while endeavoring to ‘wake’ the battery by burning off some current with the lights on (Shorai recommendation).

The battery was only ever charged on the bike or with the Shorai BMS-01 charger and over the last week or so I conducted a few tests on it. In a nutshell, this is a 6AHr battery that performs like an 18AHr – when warm. In truth it seems to perform more and more like the 6AHr battery it is as the temperature drops, the bottom line is that its internal resistance is very variable and removes any advantage the battery has at low temperatures.

Frankly it’s all too fiddly and unreliable. Of course I can only comment on one battery on one large CC Aprilia, it may be far more successful running  smaller or 3/4 cylinder motors. My guess is that this battery will find its niche in the enduro/track-day sector and not necessarily be suitable in its current form for four-season street riders.

I’m really disappointed this didn’t work out but pleased that Jim at AMI has taken everything I’ve said on board and is even now in constant communication with Shorai to try to improve the product. Let’s hope a Mk3 version is just around the corner.

Hyperpro ho ho!

Aprilia Caponord ETV1000 Rally-Raid - Hyperpro rear springIf you do nothing else to your Capo this year, do this. Fit a Hyperpro spring, you won’t be sorry! The RR got this upgrade back in September and frankly it’s been smiles ever since. To top it off, Jan and I recently took the RR shopping … not in itself the most interesting of pastimes, but it’s how the Capo fared that was the real eye opener.

This was the first time I’d run two-up and with full luggage, 52Kg of luggage to be exact – and I didn’t have to adjust the pre-load. The bike took everything in its stride, including the obscene gale force winds that brewed up in the afternoon. It was also a real pleasure that the side stand could still be extended and retracted while fully loaded something that was impossible with the old spring, while using the center-stand doesn’t induce a popped hernia anymore. Absolutely fantastic! Excellent, balanced suspension with good ground clearance maintained …. can’t be bad for £80!

Hyperpro spring fitted – typical side stand clearance with the bike upright

Unloaded: 70mm    Rider only: 50mm    Rider+pillion+50Kg luggage: 20mm

Time for a change – 2012

It’s that time for reflection as one year fades into another, time to take stock of Moto-Abruzzo and in what direction I want to push it in 2012. Well to start with, I guess I have to think back to exactly what got me motivated enough to start the blog in the first place. It was (and still is) my Caponord Rally-Raid of course. I had this idea to write-up my own experiences, nothing anecdotal from others, only what I knew and experienced first hand. To that end it’s been quite successful – but limited, if nothing needs tinkering with, or breaks … what do I write? And that’s the Achilles heel of the blog.

So for 2012 I need to expand, to keep the blog fresh, to introduce a little pace …. but I don’t want to lose the essence of what I started. After plenty of dog walking and time to reflect, these are the meager ideas that popped into a tired mind.

  • Abruzzo: More content, but from the perspective of a bikers eye. Abruzzo websites/blogs abound with more general info than I could, or want to accumulate …. but none are from a bikers viewpoint as far as I can see.
  • Caponord: I’ll stop taking the mundane jobs for granted, everything is questionable to someone. So I’ll cover the basics with text/photos/video/3D to add more depth to the Capo content. Simply put … more detail.
  • Blog layout: Devote a little more time and effort to increasing the blog look and speed for mobile/smartphone use. The technical content may be useful when you’re stranded by the side of the road! Mobile content is where it’s all heading I guess.
  • Mystery project: Yep, the one and only. The dusty canvas draped over the mysterious artifact that gently pulses and hums hypnotically in the shadowy corner of the barn may well be pulled back to reveal ………… all in good time!

So I hope dear reader, you’ll still pop by now and again and see what’s new, maybe drop me a line – good or bad. Constructive feedback can only help move the blog and it’s content forward. Layout or display issues would be very useful …. I’m no internet wiz-kid. I’ve an ageing laptop running Vista and access to a couple of old clunkers with Windows XP. Combined they let me see the site in Firefox, Explorer and Opera but I’ve no idea what it looks like on Windows 7 or any other browser. Time to upgrade? Yeah, you may well be right…….

A warm, windy and atmospheric December day, that was ideal for a nice ride out and few moody pics dropped to black and white. Picture 2, looking over the saddle …. I can see my house from here!

 

The good, the sad and the rather wintery!

A week of highs, lows and extremes I guess. You may remember the post  ‘Strada Brutale!’  – the tale of our woes trying to get our road resurfaced. Well after a three month rest, the Comune has got the ball rolling again, or more correctly, the man in a digger. A subsurface layer and a nice white topping of Breccia ( white stone) make our road positively glisten in the sunshine ….. the calming crunch of gravel under tyres replaces the squelch and dribble of liquid mud, how delightful. Note to self: Stone = fit Capo radiator guard!!

Have a look at the nifty before/after picture below … click on the vertical bar and then swipe it left or right to see the two-photograph overlay. If you only see the text … hit ‘refresh’, the pics should magically appear!

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Pictures taken in July and December 2011

Then the low …. I recently posted about the virtues of Altberg boots and their refurbishment service. Well as of the 7th December 2011, the service has stopped. I got an email on the 10th … now I’ve got a pair of boots sat in a box fit for nothing but door-stops. I do think a heads-up in advance would have been nice, I could have got them in the system before it closed down. Sad to say, minus-one for customer service on this one Altberg. UPDATE 14/12/11:  Just had a reply to my email to Alberg. An in-depth explanation regarding the withdrawal of the service…. in a nutshell, a service run at a loss and sadly abused by a minority with unrealistic expectations about what a refurbished boot should be. A very sad choice to make, but understandable in the circumstances. Bullying isn’t only rife in the playground it seems – and the new weapon of choice is vilification by social media when their unreasonable demands are challenged. I think the email I’ve just received is the one that should have been sent initially …. a clear concise explanation that as disappointing as it is, I understand. I for one will still be 100% behind Altberg when it comes to the next pair of boots!

Extremes? Well it’s been bloody windy! Yesterday was a taste of weather to come I fear, while today is blissfully sunny and calm. Next week looks like we’re set for a liberal coating of the ex-UK weather currently rumbling across Europe – snow, high wind and plummeting temperatures! What fun. So woolly hats and snow shoes all round … and a nice warm blanket for the Capo!

Well I guess that’s almost the end of 2011, I trust it was a good year, taking your Caponord to some seriously far away places. Winter is traditionally the tinkering-time, so have fun on the spanners and I hope Santa brings you just the right shiny/twiddly bit you need to set your Capo up for 2012.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

Red Dog has his day

Some songs, films or books can touch you deep where no other can, why – I’ve no idea, they just do. A book that did that for me was a Christmas present many years ago. A small unassuming book, the sort you’d read in an afternoon. The title – ‘Red Dog’. Written by Louis de Bernières after a trip to Australia where he came across the statue of a dog outside Dampier mining town in North West Australia. Like so many others he became enthralled with the story and what it meant to have known Red Dog between 1971 and 79.

Now adapted for film the story of Red Dog will spread further still and hopefully enthrall a new generation about friendship, travel, love and grief. Usually I’m disappointed with film versions of books, but they did a fantastic job here … all the humour of the anecdotes shine through and make Red Dog as vibrant as the characters and background around him. We even get to see a tidy Honda 750K thrown in – so in a small way it’s a biker movie as well!

Ok, it has to be said the film is a version of the story – with characters added or removed to make it movie entertainment. But Red Dog was real and his travels well-known … as to his international travels, hmmm, maybe just spinning out a good Aussi yarn – who knows!

One day, if I do the big trip I promise myself, I’d like to see that statue and raise a cold beer to a most amazing dog.

‘ …… he’s been everywhere mate’

Moto-logger update

Scroll down for the video!

It’s been a couple of months since I posted an update on the ‘Moto-logger’, mainly because other than using it, I didn’t update it! During that time notes and thoughts of improvements to the layout, function or stability were scribbled on bits of paper and sprinkled around the PC, waiting for a rainy day.

Last week it rained.

So here’s a screen shot of V1.7, now with a left-hand side bar and two selectable displays. One for the raw GPS data being received and the other ( a bit of a gimmick admittedly) is a ‘fuel calculator’. The Capo doesn’t register road speed in the ECU unlike the Triumph’s … so it made me wonder if it were possible to calculate fuel usage and tank contents from GPS data and the pulse width of the injectors – the duration the injector is open and passing fuel to the engine.

So here it is .. and it works. Well the needles move, the numbers jump around and the LED blinks with 5 litres remaining, so hey, it’s a runner! Clicking either gauge resets the calculators and ‘fills’ the tank to 25 litres. Turning off the bike/software doesn’t lose the calculations either, so taking a quick road-side slurp of coffee doesn’t mess up the figures. Happy days indeed!

V1.7 Improvements

  • Calculate MPG and tank volume remaining
  • Calculate Air Density
  • Calculate corrected EC80/1269 power output based on barometric pressure and air temperature.
  • Display received GPS sentences 
  • Display and log GPS time
  • Cleaned up the code (ish!)
  • Took out some bugs and improved stability.

Still to do …

  • Learn more and improve the code efficiency!
  • Add better file handling to prevent overwrites and crashes when calling a missing data file
  • Add a ‘Range’ …. miles to go, to the calculator (yes another gimmick!) – Done!
  • Temporarily log pulse width. I want to see a snapshot of what its range is. – Done!
  • Real-time plot display? – And done!!

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