Freeride Motocross, E-MX

KTM Freeride E is a 7.5kW electric motocross bike designed for quiet cross fun. This year, smack in the middle of Zolder Circuit, Clean Week 2020 organisers put together a first ever electric motocross event dubbed E-MX. Some took an issue with the “first ever” monicker, stating that it simply wasn’t a first at all. There have been previous e-cross events, but none strictly cross related. Previous events were all more enduro based, with a long track and prolonged ride times, such as the ZERO 24 hours of Electricross. E-MX was strictly cross in every sense of the word. Quick laps, big jumps, warmup-qualifier-final heats, it was all very cross like.

Except for the sound. That was nowhere near the noise level one is used to at a cross event. I’ve been to a few cross races, the familiar “waaaaaamp” was nowhere to be heard, and to me that took the soul right out of this motocross race. Instead, all you heard was the unwinding of an electric motor and a funny clunk every time a motorcycle landed, like something was just not right. That was of course the rear shock and the noise of the heavy bike simply landing, but since everything’s dead silent, you heard that instead.

Actually, it all sounded like an electric off-road remote control car race. I’ve done a few years of that and it all sounded too familiar. Close your eyes and instead of a person on a bike you can imagine a Team Associated RC10T2 truck or a Schumacher Cat2000 which is what I used to race.

The track seemed to be we well prepared and a lot of fun for the riders, but there wasn’t much space for spectators and we were all forced to stand on a large dune with limited track viewing angle. This could be improved.

Between heats, everyone followed riders back to their pits where battery exchange took place. Now that’s the future; bang-bang, battery swap done, and back to the race you go. Except for the physical weight of the battery, the swap seemed pretty painless.

The entire thing seemed pretty KTM driven. There were a few Swiss made Quantya bikes on site, but they just stood there for show with no actual representation. Unlike KTM which everyone rode, and who showed up with a big orange KTM truck…

Final thought: while this has to be the future, it lacks the fun factor of a regular gas-powered cross event. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about it was just a little boring-ish to me. I guess I just want my “waaaaaamp”!

Tesla Fever at Clean Week 2020

Attending the CleanWeek2020 event in Zolder, Belgium you simply couldn’t help but notice the abundance of Tesla Roadsters. Even a couple of Model S made an appearance, but the roadster was to be seen all over the parking lot charging or racing on the track.

Now there’s something to be said about Tesla Roadster racing; it’s quiet! To be honest I felt that a ZERO DS electric motorcycle taking off made more noise, cooler noise, than the Roadster. The DS taking off sound a little like a small jet engine unwinding, the coolest sound ever. While the Roadster just sounds fast, but doesn’t quite catch the ear. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but cool factor considered, and electric is all about the cool factor, DS does a better job.

Racing around the track all you heard was a quiet ‘wooosh’ when cars passed you by, quite a change from the MotoGP-like racing that took place a day earlier.

While the Roadsters were out casually racing the Model S took in all the glory by simply being parked nearby. Inside the Model S seems like a luxury living room, white leather big screen and all, from the outside it simply looks like a well made luxury car. Unlike the Fisker Karma I saw not too long ago which just looks ridiculously futuristic and sexy.

I saw the Model S go around the track a few times, but that’s just a family sedan going around a track, not much else to say about that.

Zolder Circuit – Clean Week 2020

I am currently at the Clean Week 2020 event in Zolder, Belgium. The annual event takes place at the Zolder Formula One circuit built in 1963 and focuses on showing off electric and hybrid vehicles of all types. Today was mostly focused on two wheeled scooters and electric motorcycles alike, but Tesla and a couple other cars did make it around the 4km track as well.

Of course we entered our fleet of scooters into the competition but we did come up with one little surprise scooter seen above. Dubbed GO! Fast, it is a total prototype that’s got very impressive specs and the power to put a smile on anyones face.

I will write about the event in more detail at a later date, but I did want to post a few photos today as I took so many and wanted to show off some right away Like this Tesla Model S all the way from Florida!

Karma

Seeing a Fisker Karma in L.A. I probably wouldn’t even whip out my phone to snap a photo. I mean even Bieber has one!

But we don’t get too many toys like that in Poland, well, none at all actually, so when I saw this Karma on my current visit to Munich, Germany I had to take a closer look.

Parked just outside our bar for the night, was this beautiful pearl white Fisker Karma. Just sitting there in all its glory, charging from a standard wall outlet. My first impression was… this thing is HUGE! My second, it will take a week to charge from a regular 220v wall outlet. Size wise, this is not your standard sports car. It’s a sports family beast. It’s so big in fact it simply didn’t fit in the assigned parking spot while every other car fit in just fine. With 21″ wheels, solar panels built into the roof, this thing has a cool factor beyond anything I’ve  ever seen. This ain’t your family Prius, that’s for sure. I didn’t even enter the bar for a good 20 minutes once I saw it parked outside, and nothing keeps me away from a cold brew that long

The owner of the car is most likely the owner of the bar, too. We witnessed him a few hours later wrapping up the charge cable and all. I kind of thought one would get a more sophisticated charge cable recovery device for a cool $100k other than simply using your arm to wrap the cable around. “One day Slav” my boss said as we kept staring at this awesomeness of a machinery,  ”one day!”.

My trips to Munich are often short and filled with good work vibes. This time was no different. Got a lot done, discussed everything with the additional benefit of a human touch rather than a Skype conference, and then had a drink, or two, or three… with the people that make electric scootering so much fun.

Sure afterwards I felt just a little like that guy…

See you next time Munchen!

Ohh, and by the way, Munich is full of cool cars. This thing sits parked in a dealership just steps away from our company headquarters. I will visit them on my next stay and write it up.

My Hero

Friday night. Ohh what a night. Sitting at home, sipping away my Corona with lime, watching a week’s worth of The Daily Show downloads and making my first GoPRO Hero video. Sure I could think of at least one better way of spending my Friday night, but until that person again comes along in my life, Stewart and that little dude from The Game of Thrones will do just fine.

Weather sucks here in Wrocław. I mean we’re a day away from having snow on Easter! BUT… I did manage to take my work issue GoPRO Hero3 camera out for a spin today. I had to borrow a couple of accessories from my buddy Cichy, but it’s a good way to test a whole lot of camera mountings before I get a set of our own. At least I know that the suction mount works wonders on our GOVECS scooters. I’m not completely one hundred per cent convinced that it won’t ever fall off, which is why I will surely make some sort of a back up ‘catch’ just in case. But as you can see here it did fine on a crappy day like today. Should work like magic once summer, shit, SPRING decides to actually show up!

So here it is, my first attempt at creating an ‘action’ GoPRO film. Please be sure to let me know what you think. Thanks.

Oldtimer Bazar Redux

I did a writeup on Wrocław’s Oldtimer Bazar back in October, but I’m pretty sure it will be a recurring topic as I keep finding cool new stuff every time I attend. The original write up is here: Oldtimer Swap Meet.

The most recent show took place a week ago and even though it’s still winter and there was quite a lot of snow on the ground the turnout seemed pretty solid. Not too many bikers, but a lot more gear and a lot more old school parts. From old Schwalbe frames to gas masks, that show keeps impressing me with sheer variety of crap for sale. But one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, so perhaps there’s someone that’s been looking to restore an old Simson scooter, from ground up no less.

I really admire people who can take a piece of crap frame and through hard work and patience come up with a scooter such as the one seen above. There are times when I think to myself that I could do that, too, and then I usually have to sit down, relax, and wait till that thought goes away. Maybe one day…but not any day soon, that’s for sure.

I did however catch the Supermoto bug recently, with my purchase of the FMX and all, and found a couple of cool Supermoto bikes at this swap meet. I actually sat on a Yamaha XTX-660 and didn’t find it to be too tall, that was actually why I never considered it for myself to begin with. But I found an even beter toy shown for sale on a trailer nearby. A BMW GSX 650. Wow, what a cool looking machine that was. Very pricey, but I think that’s just a BMW standard, and only meant for a single rider, ever, but overall that BMW was pretty nice.

One of the most odd thing to see was some WWII memorabilia, swastika on crates and stuff.

I was surprised to see that the motorcycle stunt guys were doing their thing even though there was snow all around. It seemed that all drifting was much easier, obviously since it was wet everywhere, but wheelie stunts and stoppie’s seemed borderline suicidal.

The only part I can’t quite figure out is what that old school motorcycle did under the same tent with the stunt riders. I can’t image it was used for any stunt riding, or was it?

The car selection was very small at this meet. I spoke to the owner of this Willys made for the Russian market (check out the instructions plates in Russian) and he told me that everyone backed out due to too much salt on the road. Poland salts their roads heavily in the winter season.

And last but certainly not least is my pop, who no matter who’s junk will always find something for himself.

Supernexus Fail

Every since I got my work issue Samsung Galaxy SIII I’ve been playing around with new ROM’s. For those that don’t know, a ROM is basically a new software that somehow modifies your Android phone’s original operating system. For instance on my old Galaxy S Plus, Samsung only officially released Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread, but unofficially I was able to install Android 4.0 ICS via a custom ROM. More features that gave an old phone a new life.

When I got the SGS III I had a custom ROM running on it before I even took the plastic foil off of the display. Why? Well, why not? Sure everything worked fine right out of the box, but what’s the fun in that? Actually whenever someone (especially an iPhone user) asks me why I play around with ROMs so much I don’t really have an answer to that. I envy iPhone users sometimes, there’s nothing to do there, the phone just works. I on the other hand, with my inner geek at heart, have to find out what else my SGS III can do or else I won’t sleep at night. Come to think of it, I don’t sleep anyway while I constantly setup the phone…

Google’s flagship phone is an LG Nexus 4, the only phone to get an original, vanilla as they call it, factory stock Android experience. So naturally I want it. And I’ve been following Faryaab Sheikh (@Faryaab on Twitter) who’s been doing some awesome work for the Android community, mainly porting the Nexus 4 Android experience to other devices including the SGS III. I acknowledge this kid as an Android genius, but after playing around with his Supernexus 2.0 ROM I have to let it go.

I use my phone’s camera way too much to have any sort of lag or problems with it, and just over the weekend the camera has failed me enough times to get me pissed off and miss some shots. I like the stock ROM experience, but the camera features must improve. My battery life also decreased, even after using it for almost a week.

I was about to go back to the stock Samsung Android 4.1.2 when I noticed that Sammobile.com had a ‘leaked’ version of yet unreleased Samsung Android 4.2.1, and that’s what I’m running at this moment.

One weird surprise was that everything on the phone was in Hebrew at the very start, this meant blindly switching the language to English and skipping through all setup options just so that I could get to the keyboard setup and select an English, not Hebrew, keyboard. The only thing that still reminds me of this Israeli Android release is the Jewish Calendar that is permanently installed (upper left corner). I know that I can root the phone and delete it, but not tonight.

Playing around with phone software is a lot of fun, but at times I wish I just had an iPhone where stuff just works and playing around with software is not even an option. I would have gained at least two hours this evening alone…

My Funmoto

And the winner of my motorcycle conundrum is… Honda FMX 650.

Truth be told, I was thinking of giving up on the idea of motorcycle ownership altogether. Somewhere between not knowing what type of a motorcycle I wanted and seeing my savings account actually have some money in it I wondered if a two-wheeler of my own was a good idea. But then as I did my daily Honda FMX eBay check I not only found one close by, but found one only 2 miles away from my home. Now I’m not a superstitious person, but if that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is.

I visited the seller the next day with my buddy Tomek, my personal guru when it comes to motorcycles. Tomek graduated top of his class in mechanical engineering from Wrocław’s Technical Univeristy, has his own motorcycle garage where he services bikes, and spends thousands of miles every year on his Honda VFR. One wink from him that this FMX is a dud and we walk away. But that wasn’t the case. Besides some minor scratches and one big one on the left exhaust cover, Tomek gave the bike a green light even after admitting that riding a Supermoto is like riding a horse…it just felt weird to him. Yet that’s exactly what I was after.

With a green light to buy, I did it, and for the first time in my life, at 31 years old, I became a motorcycle owner. By the way, even though I officially bought this Honda a day later, I saw it, rode it, and made a small downpayment to buy it, all on the day of my 31st birthday. So Happy Birthday to me!

I rode it in to work the following day, a move I regretted at about the half way mark when it started to SNOW! In my defence, it did not snow when I left. But now that I got that first ride out of my system I have no problem letting it sit in my garage for another month or two. I actually got all my paperwork done today, taxes, registration, insurance, so starting today it’s officially official.

Seen here are a few mobile phone photos I took today, I will surely post something better once it gets at least 10 degrees warmer.

I simply love this thing. It’s exactly what I wanted coming from my dad’s old Honda XR250L. This has the same feel, same familiar ride posture, just a whole lot more oomph when you hit the throttle. And that dual exhaust with a deep thumping even when standing still…music to my ears. If there was one thing I could change it would have to be the speedometer. My dad’s ’94 Honda had the same exact thing, no change 11 years later seems a bit weird. But simplicity is sometimes key, and this Honda while not known for being best in class feature-wise, is well known for its reliability.

Of course during my first ride I did also manage to test its off-road capability, and failed. As it is now, this FMX does not do off-read well. But I found this photo online and am seriously pondering the same wheel change to my machine. Make it more endure than supermoto, but I kind of like it.

Getting Old

I was sitting on my couch today sipping a glass of wine and reading a book on the subject of Twitter when it dawned on me; I’m getting old!

As humorous as this sounds it was funny to pick up all the pieces together to come to that conclusion. Here’s my train of thought.

Clue number one: who reads about Twitter? I mean really. Until now Twitter was just a social networking tool like any other. Teenagers all over the world are masters of Twitter from the day their parents get them their first smartphone, yet here I am reading up on it. Why? Well, it turns out that Tweeting for fun with your friends and trying to use it to extend the reach of your company’s social media awareness are two very different things. Sure I’m having fun doing it, but being smart about getting our brand name more readily recognised is a serious task.

Clue number two: I just traded my iPad2 for a Kindle. I replaced a shiny color half-computer with a smaller grayscale ebook reader. And I’m loving it.

Clue number three: my renewed California driver license has my date of birth written on it FOUR times. If that’s not a clue, I don’t know what is.

Clue number four: the above mentioned date of birth is fast approaching…on monday. Thirty one is just a stone’s throw away.

Clue number five: it’s 11pm and I’m thinking that I should have finished typing this an hour ago to get my 8 hours of sleep.

Clue number six: my bathroom scale is constantly reminding me that my metabolism is not good, is not bad, but is simply shit and only getting worse. I swear one day I’m just gonna stop stepping on.

Well, it’s all I got for now. I’ll make sure to update you with more clues as I become painfully more aware of them

Wrocław’s Oldtimer Swap Meet

Click PLAY to view my short film from this event.

Yesterday we stopped by Wrocław’s edition of the Oldtimer Swap Meet. I didn’t know what to expect as I’ve never been to this kind of event in Poland, but I quickly find out that this oldtimer swap meet was anything but.

The name suggest an old timer extravaganza at this particular flea market, but as I looked at hundreds of new motorcycles all around I had a hard time connecting the name to my surroundings. Of course there were small vendors with used parts present, but they were grossly overshadowed by vendors with fairly new stuff from Harley Davidson leather to body parts and actual modern motorcycles for sale. New and used tires seemed to be in demand as well with a crap load of rubber on display at the meet.

But nothing beat the sheer amount of motorcycles for sale. Hundreds of bikes all with prices and phone numbers clearly marked. I had no idea the motorcycle market was this big in Poland. I’ve seen plenty of motorcycles listed on Polish eBay, but to see so many of them all in one place was quite a sight. Again, it’s not that there were so many motorcycles gathered in one place, it’s the fact that they were all for sale!

What sort of saved the old timer theme of this swap meet was a small section of classic cars for show. From old Polish classics to good old American muscle, there were quite a few good looking cars there yesterday. Some, too, were for sale but prices seemed steep even by American standards and it seemed that perhaps these owners didn’t really want to sell their cars at all.

In the ‘pile-o-crap’, as I like to call it, present at the swap meet we found a few jewels here and there. Mainly old vehicle books from that 60′s and 70′s that were really cool to look through. The Wartburg logo seen above reminded me of my dad’s old car from the 80′s, a 2 cylinder Wartburg station wagon.

For the entertainment portion of the swap meet two separate events took place: timed slalom riding and a stunt motorcycle show. The former was an alright show, I mean it was cool to see how tight of a corner a huge 1200cc motorcycle can take, and in some cases how a motorcycle can slide out from underneath you. But it was the stunt riding that stole the show. To really take in what went on I’d like to invite you to watch my short film from the show as there’s no real explaining how they do what they do. There was even a couple of guys stunt riding scooters which made me wonder just a bit how difficult my very own GOVECS scooter would be to wheelie… just kidding boss.

For the lack of a better name I suppose calling this event an Oldtimer Swap Meet fits fine as long as you already know what to expect. I only found one single part for my Schwalbe project, a horn, but then I read 6V on it and quickly realized that my electric Schwalbe won’t have a 6V connection at all. One more detail to consider down the line.

Follow the link to a Picasa album: More photos here!

And here are a few chosen WordPress photos.