Status Report

 Whats happening with work, Covid, Moto project and my plans?

Progressing slowly on all fronts Id say...

1) The moto project.

Ive ridden it enough to complete the engine break-in now, but the weather here in Vancouver is now into winter mode with lots of rain and cold temperatures and darkness in the mornings and evenings, so Im about done with riding for the season. But I have done a bunch more modifications on the bike (not done yet though)

First I added an auxiliary fuel tank which gets me another 100Km of range or so... bringing total range on a single fill to about 450Km... which is plenty good enough... The extra tank fits in quite neatly on the rear side at the back of the bike, and it automatically fills into the main tank via the breather line... (no fuel taps needed and no "forgetting to switch over/back issues)

BTW, the bike gets about 21Km/l on either highway or city which is pretty decent; You might expect better highway mileage but with a very blunt profile and big luggage boxes on the side, its pretty non-aerodynamic so at highway speed it loses the efficiency a streamlined bike would have.

Then Ive added all the electrical options I wanted with relays and fuses and busbars etc.... It took a while to wire it all in how I wanted but its done now... I added heated grips, GPS mount and Tire pressure sensor system... It makes the control panel a bit of a "space-ship" with readouts and controls for different things everywhere, but like I said, none of it is critical but all of it adds significantly for comfort/safety on long long trips; and if any of it does break-down then I can keep riding without it, no problem.

And Ive added a windscreen extender as well for now till I can get a larger plexiglass touring windscreen to stop the turbulent air buffeting of my head when highway riding.

And Ive done some sculpting of foam to make both the main and pillion seats far more comfortable... Its all temporary at the moment while I sort out the subtleties and get the fit right. Once Ive finalized it I will get it upholstered professionally so that its wear and weather proofed... The mod's do make it much better for long rides but worse for off-rad technical riding, so Im making it all removable so if I want to take it off, I can.

And I lowered the suspension by 40mm or so... which is easy enough to do with a couple of pieces of steel bar and a drill to lengthen the rear suspension links... But the trick is if you lower the suspension then you have to shorten the side and center stands too, and that requires cutting and welding... But its done now and I like it much better for maneuvering.

Still more to do but getting much closer to ready to tour with :)

So thats the bike updates; What about Covid and work?

Well, covid is an ongoing "fly in the ointment" as they say. The Delta variant is far more contagious, though about the same lethality. Most of the urban population in British Columbia are well vaccinated now but the rural populations and some specific cultural groups decided they didnt like being told what to do by the government and so decided they w/could tough it out (or whatever), so now those communities are keeling over in droves and the hospitals in those areas are all massively overwhelmed and so we are all still in lockdowns imposed by the government because about 15% of the population dont want to get vaccinated... very frustrating!

BTW, my view on the whole vaccine thing was never that it would make us all immune to infection... My view was always that we would all eventually get exposed to the virus, and that the vaccine was merely to control the impact on the health-care system... and these "hold-out groups" are simply prolonging the phase where our health systems cant handle the flood of victims and lots of people (thousands in this province as time goes on) are dying unnecessarily because of it... Covid will I think become endemic and much lower threat in the long term.

Im really saddened by how this issue became so political... Vaccination status is so massively correlated with which way a person votes here in North America (and in truth most western countries it seems) its pathetic, and its so incredibly hypocritical too in my opinion.

I dont like to have to take the vaccine either (I am at low risk myself and also dont have anyone in my circle of contacts who is at higher risk either)... but I got the vaccine because it was the socially responsible thing to do... 

I hate having to wear shoes instead of thongs/flipflops in a bar when its hot weather, and I hate having to wear a helmet when I ride a bicycle, and I hate having to stop at a stop sign when there is no other traffic too, but if I break those rules then I am doing it by choice and I will pay the fine if I get caught doing it... And those rules are there for the protection of the community regardless of if I think they are necessary for me or not. Its part of being a community member. There is no freedom in a community without responsibility to the community also... And if you believe in Democracy as a process then that means you have to agree to abide by the rules that are set by the majority when its your turn to be the minority... I think thats the real problem... people are not actually in favor of Democracy when they find they are the minority and it has impacts that directly effect them... Clearly they have scant regard for what happens if they live in a non-Democracy (and that is a very scary though I must say!)

... All in all, its a perfect example of "humans"... and its a perfect example of why Im such a grumpy person and so "judgy" of others...but Im like this because Im grieving! 

Anger and sadness are parts of the popularized "grieving process" (stages 5/6 I think). And Im grieving for us!... Its just that I have too high expectations for us humans... I was taught (by my upbringing in society) that we are intelligent beings; and I see all the amazing things we can do and understand and make because of our rational minds... But in my upbringing, they neglected to emphasize that we are also incredibly able to completely disregard the blatantly obvious facts, and to decide "not to be rational" and just be emotional, and make the most basic of stupid choices... And so Im grieving for us and for the false vision of us that I got during my upbringing... Its a very long slow journey for me... I feel I am still along way short of the "acceptance" stage :) 

Addendum here...Truth be told, the fact that we humans are emotional more than rational has been blatantly obvious throughout my upbringing, so I really have no excuse for my "false vision" other than my own willful disregard of that obvious fact throughout my upbringing... self inflicted denial of facts... I guess Im just another "human"!

So, covid rages on and society rages with it and all in all it looks like it will be a while before things resolve and before Ill be able to go off on any long moto ride... Though I have to say that the impediment to me taking a long ride is about the least significant factor in the whole covid debacle, even for me :)

And what about work?

More fun twists and turns there too :)

As Ive explained of my own situation there recently, Im strongly leaning toward "leaving" very soon... and thats because the company I work for, in my opinion, has been behaving very badly toward its employees, and shows no signs of changing that behavior, and Im sick of it so Im gonna stop helping them do what they do...

Well, it turns out that Im really not the only one, and the "karma train" is now arriving in the station so to speak. Over the past six months or so things have really changed at work, though not in a good way; at least not yet anyway...

The chain of events looks roughly like this to me:

The company has been being very greedy and selfish (though they dont see it that way at all of course) and the Engineer employees have been getting less and less satisfied over the past 4 years or so (Since the old smaller company got acquired by a much larger multinational) as rewards for work have gone down or stayed flat, company profits have gone steeply upward, and cost of living in Vancouver have also gone steeply upward (mostly cost of housing). Then Covid came to town and everyone went into "keep your head down" mode and was more or less grateful to have a paying job while many others lost theirs... But covid also taught us all that the whole office work thing was not as critical as had been thought and in many ways we could all be pretty damn effective while working from home too.   And now that covid is starting to come under control and there is light at the end of the tunnel (though we are still in it for a while longer), people are "popping their heads up" again and looking around at options... and new options there are indeed!

It seems that there are now a bunch of new players in the "employer" game in the Vancouver area for electrical Engineers of many sorts... And ironically its because of Covid... It turns out that because we can all now work from home, companies see that they dont have to have employees located near their offices... so there are many remote employers now bidding for Engineers in the Vancouver market place... What used to be a small pond with just a few big fish employers, has suddenly become a big pond with many other even bigger fish... and those fish are hungry.

So, there are several more employers without offices who are aggressively hiring... and Vancouver is now effectively in the same time zone and hiring range of "Silicon Valley" companies from California.

And so in the past six months, I estimate that over 50% of the senior experienced design Engineers at my company have left for much bigger salaries.

This sort of thing (disruptive events) happens in HiTech companies every 10 years or so and companies either adapt and survive/thrive, or they fail to adapt and die... The company I currently work for appears to be unable to adapt this time... Which is ironic since it (when I say it I really mean the company senior executive I guess) has a self-image of being really good at adapting quickly and anticipating the market trends... and that's true as far as their products and manufacturing go, but as far as their human resources go they are clearly a dinosaur... and we all know what happens to dinosaurs.

And its now happening fast and hard... To the point where the company has seen the largest voluntary exodus of intellectual talent/resources it has ever seen... And still the company executive cant manage to grip the situation and adjust... I think its because they are in "preservation" mode and not realizing that their competition (the other companies that are hiring their people) are in "startup" mode. My company is asking how do we keep our Engineers and what counter offers to key people do we need to make... But the other companies are thinking, we need 30 Engineers in 3 months, how do we get them... The result is that by the time a person goes to their manager and says "I quit", they are long past the point of even listening to a counter offer... they crossed that line weeks if not months before and now its way too late... and the employees have the last 4 years of grumpiness with the new "megaCorp" overlords to justify their leaving too.

But there is also a flip side to this story that the older senior Engineers see too... and that is that with the 10 year cycler of disruption comes the inevitable downcycles as well as the upcycles like this one... and sure as eggs is eggs one of those is coming too!  Those new competitor companies are quick to hire at the moment but they may well also be quick to fire in a downcycle. So these new jobs could be short term, and my company is saying to its self... These huge salaries being offered are not sustainable... soon enough they will stop and come back to our level... But it doesnt matter, because in the meantime, my company will have lost all its skills and its development projects will fail because of it, and so their revenues will tank in a couple of years... Who cares if the other companies also fail... you killed your engineering teams by not adapting now... Its like the common trope that companies dont fail because they are not long-term profitable; they fail because of their short-term cash flow problems... Its just human resources instead of cash that is flowing at the moment.

So where does that all leave me?  Well for better or worse, my job (Silicon Validation) does in fact mostly require an office and a lab to test the hardware, so there are not currently lots of new job opportunities for me at the moment... But if other companies are starting lots of new design projects then soon they will be in serious need of lots of Validation work and thus Validation Engineers... They may or may not open offices in Vancouver and set-up labs, but certainly some of them will, so soon I expect there to be lots more options... 

But do I want them or do I just want to retire?      I dont know.

At the moment I am sitting squarely on the fence of a three way junction... 

1) Stay at the company I am at and expect that they will have had to adjust their compensation quite a bit (and the compensation adjustment would be the reason to make it worthwhile staying with a company that now recognizes employee value.

2) Get a new job and start a "shinny new project/adventure" that pays even better... This actually is a really quite exciting idea... Its scary leaving the comfort zone of the old company and processes etc but the "shiny new" aspect revives the idea of continued working for more years in a role that can be quite rewarding and fulfilling, and that could overcome those fears... and the definitely larger compensation certainly helps too :)

3) Proceed with the full-on retirement plan... Though I have to say, having thought about this for a few months Im coming to the conclusion that a "traditional" retirement simply would not work for me... or not yet anyway... Im gonna need to "engage" with something significant in some way for some more years yet... though I really would like to take a break for a few months and go for a ride :)

I dont know which way I will go yet, but its certainly interesting times :)

That'll have to do for now... lets see what happens after a few more months?

Building a New Machine

It finally went ahead and bought a brand new motorbike... right from a dealer!... Which is something that Ive never done before.

Ive only ever bought used vehicles in the past, and this was my first new vehicle purchase experience ever.

The bike is a Yamaha Tenere 700 and its the epitome of the Adventure Tourer genre... A quick list of the features that make it so "perfect for what I want to do (and have done in the past) is as follows:

Mid size engine capacity  - 400 -750cc is my requirement, and this one is 700cc, so its at top end for size and the penalty will be weight and it'll be a pig for off-road, but the advantage will be good highway speed and comfort... In truth I would really like something at the other end of the scale for traveling in Europe where the distances are much smaller, or if I was focusing on mostly off-road riding... But this is good for North America :)

Medium weight - as light as possible is best but my limit is 200Kg and this one is on the limit.

21" front wheel for good off-road control (especially in sand) - many other bikes are only 19".

High ground-clearance and off-road suspension. - Yep and Yep.. Actually a little higher than I need so ill probably lower it a bit to aid maneuvering with feet down..

Good fuel range - preferably 400Km or more - this one is actually only 350 or so - biggest limitation but there are some after-market fixes I can add..

Fuel Injected and water cooled engine - For bomb-proof reliability and startability in all conditions... Carbs are great, but get them wet or leave them unused in salty air for a few days and starting can be a real beast... Fuel injection is without doubt the way to go.

Very reliable engine - Yep, the engine design is known reliable from a couple other Yamaha bikes. 

And as Ive said, Im getting ready to leave my employer and do some traveling soon so I decided to get the "bike of my dreams" and start setting it up ahead of time... So I went in and put $1000 down and then had to wait 3 months before the bike came in from Japan... Its not that it was custom built or anything, its just that these bikes are very new to North America and they are very popular and I just couldnt get one sooner... Total cost with all taxes and duties etc was CAD $15000 ... which is a LOT of money for a motorbike as far as Im concerned, but compared to lots of other new motorbikes, its about mid-range.

Anyway, the point of getting it now while Im still at a full time job and cant actually go off touring on it is to get it all set up and ready, rather than doing it in a hurry once I have started taking a longer break between jobs or retired.

And of course, no bike is set-up and ready to go straight off the shop floor, and especially not for Adv-Touring like I do. So Ive been spending quite a bit more money and "adjusting things'...And so far Im about half way through the mod's list I want to get done (and about $1000 extra spent).

Here are before and after pics... Minimal visual difference from the casual glance but believe me its much better prepared for a big trip now than before.

Bike as purchased.

Bike as modified so far.

Things Ive done:

Well first I put a black vinyl coating on the grey tank sections cos I just didnt like the three colour look of the stock bike... Not that Im a huge fan of black motorbikes but it was the quickest and cheapest solution to get something I liked.

Added heavy duty Belly-Pan... Cos they get absolutely hammered when you get into the rough off-road.

Added full front end crash bars... Again, they get hammered in the rough... Its not a matter of if you drop the bike, its a matter of how often and how hard :)

Added "Bark-Busters" to protect the hand controls when the bike gets dropped.

Added rear Side-Racks... To attach 2x large aluminium travel panniers - for all my stuff to go in while I travel.

Added center stand - for ease of tire changes and general maintenance while touring.

Added Windscreen lifter... Cos Im tall and the stock screen is too low which leaves my head in strong and turbulent airflow... not good when you spend all day every day riding like I do when touring.

And the list of things I still need to add:

Rear Panniers - I actually have these but they are sitting over the boarder in the USA waiting for me to come get them when Covid subsides here and they open the boarder.

Rear Rack and Top-Case... For me to put more stuff in

Extended range fuel tank... So I can get an extra 5l of fuel in there to get the range that I want between fueling up.

Handle-Bar risers... to raise the bars 30mm and bring them back 20mm... It doesnt sound like much but having the controls in the right place so you can sit comfortably with a straight back is again incredibly important for long trips.

GPS mount... For obvious reasons.

Heated grips and aux-plug - for cold weather riding... cos you get all sorts of weather when touring, and often all in a single day.

Tire Pressure sensors... I have not used these cos they didnt exist for motorbikes last time I toured but they are very good for letting you know in advance (even by just a few seconds) that you have a flat... better than losing control at highway speeds :)

Voltage monitor... warning for when the battery is getting low... which generally means that the battery is on the way out.

Radiator bug guard... actually more of an issue than you might think... once you get bug bits stuck in the rad its really hard to wash them out and it can really effect radiator efficiency when you are ploughing through deep sand in really hot conditions.

Tubeless tire kit (to convert the existing tubed rims to use tubeless tires).

Spare drive-sprockets, chain, fuel and air filters, brake-pads , and a clutch cable.

Lowering-Links and shorter side-stand... I want good ground clearance but I also need good foot contact with the ground... I think optimal height for my needs is about 40mm lower than stock so I need to adjust the suspension links... and that will mean I need to shorten the side and center stands as well... Its a pain to do these mods but when you are trying to balance a 300Kg bike/luggage combination in rough steep terrain, every bit extra leverage you can get with your feet helps.

Custom seat padding... I need to make the seat far more comfortable than stock... Again, when you ride all day every day you really what a comfortable seat.

So, still a fair bit to do and I have to run the engine in as well... Total of 250Km on the bike so far... I need another 1000 before its fully run-in :)

So, thats my new moto project Im working on.

I feel a Sea-Change coming

 I can feel a change coming soon...

Nothing important for the world at all,  just for me.

Im feeling less and less inclined to stay working for my employer much longer... and in fact working for anyone for that matter is a real option too. Im feeling strongly inclined to "retire" ( well work a whole lot less or at something I enjoy much more anyway)... within two to five years.

Now of course there are some pleasant things that come with "retirement" - like not having to do something that I dont particularly enjoy (although I dont actually hate it either... its just I dont like working mostly for someone else's benefit), but there are two distinct challenges with that idea.

The first is of course, "do I have the financial security to make that decision", and the second is "what do I do with myself after I decide to make that decision... And these are both very difficult questions for me to answer.

The financial security question is I think very tricky to answer for anyone... I think if I had children then it would likely be simpler at this stage  in that I certainly wouldnt have enough savings etc at this point to consider retiring... so Id just have to keep working, and that would be fine cos life would toddle along like most people raising a family with the kids lives basically driving my own choices... But of course I dont have that blessing/burden... and there is just me in the calculation which means its somewhat earlier in my life that I get to consider the option of retirement. But its still hellishly tricky to decide what to do... There are so many unknowns in the future and my lifespan and the things that could happen between now and when I die are so divers that its difficult to "plan" for.... 

How much wealth is enough?

How long will I live?

What will happen with my health?

What will happen with the global and local economies and how will retirement investments and property values change over the next 40 or so years?... 

The answer to all these questions is "I really dont know!"

Base guess though is that Ill likely live for another 30-40 years, and I think the rule-of-thumb is that you need about a million dollars invested outside of your home to be "comfortable in retirement" (whatever comfortable means?)... And I certainly dont have that much money, so how can I be considering retiring?... The answer is, as Ive mentioned before, that I plan to downsize my house and use some of its equity to live on in my later years.

So I of course have a spreadsheet that I made that projects all sorts of income and taxes and expenses and investment and property growth etc... and its absolutely full of "wild-ass guesses" at every single calculation. So, its a big worry and the trade off is that every year longer I spend sitting here doing my current job is another year that my body deteriorates and further limits the sorts of physical things I can do. But every such year I stay working also adds financial assets for about 2 years of time that I can live in retirement. But if I retire now, then its very unlikely that I would be able to find another similar job in the future if I decided I wanted to go back to work later for a few more years... Employers dont really want to hire new employees who are over 55yo because they know they will be retiring soon and they will just have to train someone else up into the role again in the near future... Its a conundrum indeed.

But, at the end of the day I think I just have to say, my financial planning is reasonably conservative and that even though I will be wrong on many of my calculation estimates by some amount, on the average Ill be about right... And based on that, I think I have about enough assets to be OK in anything but a complete catastrophe of a personal future... And that is the basis of my current outlook... I think I have accumulated enough at this point.

And when I combine that with the view that the company I work for is flat-out making big profits for its self but at the same time is cutting back on sharing that wealth with its employees and has shown zero inclination to reverse that trend, then , well, Im inclined to stop helping them do that...

So that brings me to the second challenge, which I often express in my Blog here... I fundamentally dont know what to do with myself, and that makes retiring a real challenge... cos my usual behavior of stating expensive projects to keep myself amused when I get bored is likely to be a very bad idea going forward into retirement... Fixed fund base to work with and no external sources of income as I get older.

So, whats my plan?... Well I have several things to pursue but fundamentally Im willing to take the risk that Ill figure it out as I go along.... But I have a starting point at least.

First thing is to keep doing what Im doing now while the whole Covid virus thing blows over... probably another year. Then I plan to gear up and prep for what will likely be my last big Moto-tour.

Which is through Eurasia (since I feel I have at least had a look at the Americas and Africa, and I really enjoyed all of them, Id like to do the same for Eurasia). Im not sure of all the details but Im thinking of doing a reverse circuit - which means ship a bike to Vladivostok on East coast Russia then ride west through Russia, Mongolia and probably some of the 'stans, then into northern Europe and Scandinavia in late summer, then South through Western Europe and along the North coast of the Mediterranean then through the Balkans and Greece and Turkey then maybe Iran and on to India if possible and then probably ship the bike back to Canada from there... Probably a 9 month trip or so... lots of planning to be done and Carne' and visas etc... But that only occupies about 18 months of a 30-40 yr retirement.!

I figure I get the hard physical stuff out of the way first then consider further options.

There is also another big "walkabout" Id like to do in Australia by 4WD which is probably another 2 years of effort to plan and prepare and then do. And I would be happy doing another run through of North America in a van (which would be slower but much more comfortable than on motorbike), which would be another year or so... So Ive probably got about a decade of journeying interspaced with sessions at home and maybe doing some contract work to replenish funds.

After that Im expecting Ill slow down a bit more but Im considering trying to live for longer sessions in foreign lands like Mexico or Greece or Thailand... Lots of western retirees do it as their "lifestyle" in retirement and while Im not sure I could just do nothing and just sit around, Id quite like to design and build a house somewhere in a warm climate and there is no chance of being able to afford to do it here in Vancouver... So, while Im traveling around Ill be looking out for places that I may want to live for a year or two... I figure I can spend a chunk of money if I can be reasonably sure of being able to get 75% of it back when I sell... Not easy to be sure of that in foreign lands but I think I can at least spend some time looking into it.

Its of course all rather speculative at this point, but Im feeling like suppressing the uncertainty and money worries and embracing the unknown again and giving myself the chance to "encounter new opportunities" and trust that Ill find my way as I have done in the past.

So, I think Im on a count-down to leaving my current job at this stage, and the more I think about it the more enthusiastic Im becoming... which is a good sign I think   :)

Lets see how my thinking progresses in the next 6 months or so.