A better semi-retirement – with a motorcycle

Posted On July 27, 2010

I’ve been saying for a few years that I’m semi-retired – although I have to work, I can pretty much do what I want, when I want to do it. I’ve just discovered, though, that to be truly semi-retired, a guy needs a toy or two. The motorcycle is the first toy I’ve had since selling the airplane 25 years ago, and I love it!

On the first day (Friday), all I did was ride it from the dealer’s to my garage. Day 2, my friend Amanda, who just bought a new Kawasaki Versys, invited me to go riding, and we went out to Marsh Lake and back – 125km. Day 3 was the first major road trip for both of us – to Skagway and back – and we had a ball. Here we are in my driveway Sunday morning.

Leaving on our little adventure…

A brief stop at Emerald Lake.

We had lunch at Glacier Smoothies in Skagway, and a look at the Seven Seas Navigator, a small ultra-luxury ship that I’d love to see the inside of for a week or so 🙂

I’ve decided that on sunny weekdays I need to work in the morning and then reward myself with a ride in the afternoon. Yesterday, it was time to get my portable garage set up properly. It’s not level, it’s not anchored properly, and it’s a mess.

The first step was the anchor it properly, with a 4×4 at the bottom corners.

I built an overhead tire/wheel rack in the barn, but it requires carrying the wheels up a ladder – it seemed like a good idea at the time but didn’t work out that way. A chest-height one over the snowplow storage spot will be much better. It just took a few minutes to figure out the right measurements for it.

Much better – I have to add a shelf for the tarps and finish levelling the garage today, but the job is largely done.

The Whitehorse-Tagish-Carcross loop is very bike-friendly, so that was my reward. This is looking east on the Alaska Highway at Jake’s Corner, where you turn right onto the Tagish Road.

The eastern end of the Tagish Road – sunshine, lots of curves and virtually no traffic!

I stopped in to see a cousin and her family at Tagish – it was good to see how the bike handles on a mile or so of gravel.

Passing Crag Lake, near Carcross at the west end of the Tagish Road.

My initial summary of the bike is that it fits me like a glove, but does have some issues that have solutions except for one. That one is the range – with a 4.5-gallon tank and getting 44 miles per gallon, you can’t get very far without a fill-up. I used the reserve tank yesterday to complete the 225km loop – the reserve is 1.2 gallons.