Let’s just go for a Ride!

A long awaited post having been away in the Southern Hemisphere for most of March on an extended Holiday with the Mrs, and catching up with work activities on my return so It’s good to be out and about on the bike again with dry weather after all of that awful rain earlier in the year. It was my second year riding through the Winter months. I usually mothball the bike through each Winter but since being an active member of the local IAM group (KAB) I’ve found myself out most Sunday’s and my GS is holding up well. I do have to keep on top of the cleaning and check for road-salt corrosion though. I’m not a great fan of spending a fortune on cans of ACF and other wax treatments, I just don’t like the ‘faff’ of applying it and then having all of the grime stick to it then trying to get rid of it in the Spring so a good wash after each ride and a good dry using a pet drier is more than sufficient, but I will admit the cleaning ritual does get a bit tedious each week.  

Top Pic .. L to R, Me, Steve and Rob. Bottom Pics .. Steve with his  DB11. 

Ron Brett (2nd) , Gloria (5th), Me (6th), Pogs (7th), Steve (9th), Rob (10th), Gary (12th).

Back in early May myself and Rob arranged a ride down to Burford to meet up with Steve who I hadn’t seen since May 2022 and Rob hadn’t seen since 2011. I arranged Rob’s presence as a surprise for Steve, where we met up in the usual cafe on the High Street. I think Steve was quite shocked and pleased to see Rob, and we were able to reminisce over those HOG Brettours trips meeting up for the first time way back in 2007 (pictured). Recently we learned that Ron Brett has decided that 2024 would be his final year running organised tours and although it’s been a few years since we joined him (Rob sold his Harley and devoted his time to other activities, I traded the Low Rider for my first GS and Steve chose to tour with his BMW instead) we agree we had some great trips with Ron and wish him well in his retirement. Sadly too Steve has sold his BMW K1200GT choosing to focus his passion on his Aston Martin DB11 and other cars in his collection, but I noticed he did arrive wearing a very nice pair of ‘Portillo Trousers’ so maybe ‘Trains’ feature nowadays despite his hellish experience on Scottish rail over Christmas, but fortunately Steve has kept his Harley Softail Deuce, the very bike he was riding back when we all met all those years ago. You never know there maybe one more chance for the ‘Sausage Club’ to ride again if only to commemorate that fateful June day and our final assault of ‘Biffins Bridge’.

Some of the KAB Sunday rides have been fun too, and now I can join them on ‘free rides’, still keeping my hand in riding to the ‘system’ and enjoying the company of others at various cafes and interesting routes out into Hereford and Wales mostly. It’s been fun catching up with Rob as he gets back into biking again who is clearly enjoying the Triumph Tiger and I’m pleased his IAM associate training is of value getting help from other KAB members / Observers too.

Here’s one for the ‘techies’ .. recently I’ve been researching my tour/adventure option for this year and got to wondering how it would be possible to avoid creating pre-planned GPX file routes before setting off from home. I’d like to plot a route on ‘my-route-app’ via my iPhone at any time while away on tour and download the created route to my GPS unit. I’m not so keen on using a phone as a navigation device especially since I have the Garmin based BMW Navigator VI but the one downside is you must use a PC or Laptop to transfer the route file across and since I don’t carry a Laptop or Tablet on tour how could I do this allowing me to create ad-hoc routes while on tour? Since the Navigator won’t allow Bluetooth or WiFi transfers from my phone I came up with an ingenious solution to achieve this using the following:

• A Raspberry Pi 4 configured to use Ethernet over USB C OTG (on the go).
• A USB C Hub connected to the iPhone via a cheap USB C to Lightning adapter.
• USB C to the Pi 4’s USB C combined data and power using a standard USB C cable.
• The Navigator powered and connected to the Pi using standard USB.
• A USB power bank to supply remote power for the Pi and the Navigator via the USB C hub.
• A secure copy (SSH/SCP) client app for the phone (Termius) for GPX file transfer.

I’m now able to transfer the GPX file from the phone across to the Navigators gpx folder without requiring a PC/Laptop or WiFi connection. I did have to buy the USB C to Apple Lightning adapter to connect the hub to the phone, I already have a Pi 4 and a spare USB C hub available to me (the most expensive items). There is a bit of Linux configuration work to set the Raspbian OS (Linux) up for USB C OTG (On the Go) and to auto mount the Navigator file system, but a good explanation of how to configure most of this can be found here or on other sites. I’m sure this setup would work for other GPS units and phone combinations too, and easy enough to pack away in my panniers/tank bag.