14 Days Rolling

I’m packed and out of camp by 6:30. I slept well and am ready to make some miles up. I put in 140 miles before breakfast. Made it to the harbor to check out the ferry to the mainland. Fog slowed my progress most of the way from New Glasgow to the Digby harbor. Sometimes it was thick as goo. More of that Scotland feel, I suppose. The scenery, when I could see it was pretty cool. A lot like an exceptionally hilly and wet eastern Kansas with the same crops (except for occasional apple orchards).

I stopped for breakfast and an attempt at finding replacement parts for the hammock. No luck, but I got an idea for the repair from talking to a clerk at Canadian Tire. He was looking for fiberglass tape, which gave me the idea to wrap the pole end with nylon rope and duct tape that on tight. Might work. Might save me having to buy a tent.

No plan today, except to keep moving. I figured on hitting the Digby ferry. If that didn’t work, I’d move on to Yarmouth. I picked Digby as my first choice because I figured the combination of a ferry crossing and a boarder crossing might overwhelm my capabilities. I lucked out and arrived at Digby right in time to get on the ferry. $80 for the bike and my over-60 discount. I have no idea how long it will take to cross the bay, but it doesn’t much matter because I’m not having to work to get the job done.

Like the fort, the ferry is pretty empty. I had no problem getting on the boat, but either did a collection of foot passengers and a few cagers. For August, this is pretty slow business. “Prime tourist time” may have a different meaning if energy and economics continue to flag. I saw a lot of closed businesses on the way across Canada. Some of them appeared to have barely opened before they went bust. Lots of houses for sale, too.

Some little parent-less retards commandeered the ships computers and dialed up a noisy on-line computer game. I put up with the noise for a few moments and turned off the computer’s sound for the little morons. Mommy bitched, so I told her to turn it back on if she didn’t know how to parent her little retards. She left in a pout. A few moments later, a steward came by and took the little shits off of the computer and delivered them to gutless, brainless mommy. Even Canadians are allowed to spawn without credentials. What a world!

After St. John, I’m taking Highway 1 to Maine. I haven’t decided if I’m going to cross Maine or follow the coast for a bit. I’ll decide when I get there. I’m generally westward bound for the rest of the trip.

Ferry’s are peaceful. Some folks are on the deck whale-watching. I’m too lazy to be that focused, but if someone yells I’ll look up. It’s too foggy for pictures and we’re too far from shore for the pictures to be worth much. It’s warm, however. I’m in my riding gear, but it’s all opened up and it feels good to have the fresh air without being cold. It’s a long ride. We’re heading toward 2 ½ hours and land just came into sight. The Atlantic is calm and even Robbye would enjoy this motionless ride. If you don’t look out the window, you’d barely know we were moving. It’s not the north Atlantic I expected, for sure.

I’d like to make Maine before dark, if possible. Now I have a goal for the day. It’s good to have goals.

I made Maine, barely. About 20 miles in, in fact. I was doing well, even ahead of my non-existent schedule, until I hit the boarder. I screwed up. I was wearing my wife’s “Green Man” t-shirt. I hadn’t brought anything but nylon dirt biker shirts and thought a t-shirt would be comfortable as a change. The boarder guards took one look at the shirt and flagged me for “inspection.” Honestly, they were pretty polite about it. I didn’t get a cavity search. The worst thing about the whole episode was having to sit under the leering picture of the head What-Me-Worry idiot while his minions went through my gear and burned up my daylight. They made a mess of my top case, but probably neatened up my side cases. Other than their almost pathological lack of humor and the lost time, I can’t say anything bad about the experience. Where do they find guys so humorless? Is there a factory they send ordinary people to for funnybone extraction?

I’m camped in an incredible place. It’s a good distance from Highway 1, so the traffic noise is vanishingly absent. Some local doofuses are firing off fireworks, but that will quit in an hour or two. My “fix” for the screwed up tent pole sort of worked. I should be able to survive the night, anyway. I plan to hit the US’s most eastern point, tomorrow. After that, explore more of Maine. It’s good to be back in the US where my AAA card is useful.

Unlucky Thirteen

I gotta hope that title is bogus. But today is my thirteenth day out. After getting drowned yesterday, I can only imagine so many ways today could be worse. However, the sun is shining and the air is warm and humid. It feels like summer again. I am almost inclined to skip out on the Fort Louisbourg trip, but I won’t. I was advised that it is worth the time.

The rebuilt fort is pretty amazing, in fact. Almost every building has a reenactment actor to explain the structure and its historical significance. I was particularly impressed by the engineer’s quarters and the tens of thousands of documents he turned out in his 20 period at the job. His documentation, kept in triplicate at the fort, in Quebec City, and in France, was what allowed the Canadian government to rebuild the fort accurately. The engineer’s house and the many improvements he made to the fort put most of today’s engineers to shame. His auto-barbeque-spit was freakin’ amazing. I need one for my barbeque. His office, home, and kitchen were inspiring. His layout for the city inside the fort should be a standard study for modern city designers.

I was feeling pretty good about the position of engineering in the past (3rd on the fort’s totem pole) until I arrived at the “accountant’s” home (2nd on the pole). This example of pre-MBA evil managed to screw France out of $80 million during his rein of incompetence. The entire fort cost the government of France less than $4 million. As an early ENRON-style carpetbagger, he probably managed to screw France out of a substantial portion of the New World all by himself. When he was finally “punished,” he received a pat on the hand and was banished to the south of France with only half of his stolen money and property. France put away the guillotine way too soon. So did we. The definition of “treason” ought to include any politician or bureaucrat ripping off the public till and the penalty should be the firing squad.

The fuel and economic damage really shows in outback places like this. Obviously, Canada and Nova Scotia built this as a major tourist trade attraction. It provides lots of employment and significant support for the area, when it is working. The outgoing bus I took from the center to the fort was about 2/3 full. A guy I met at the coffee shop, before heading to the fort, turned out to be my ticket taker. He said the fort attendance was down at least 50% from previous years. I “business” would be laying off, bigtime, now. My return bus, at noon, held only me. I had no trouble taking shots of the fort that weren’t obstructed by other tourists. This can’t be the intended plan.

After that experience, I decided to go back to the road. I headed for the Cabot Trail and the solitude of ocean, road, and mountains. Several bikers told me that if I came all this way and missed the Trail, I missed Nova Scotia. So, I’m on that road and it is kind of a mini-mountain road with occasional great views of ocean from beaches or cliffs. This, of course, is what my wife would have loved to experience. She wouldn’t have liked much of the ride here, though.

Crossing from the main island to the cape, I got a dose of rain. It fell hard enough that I stopped to put on my over-gloves, but it stopped almost immediately. All the way to the top, I had great weather, great scenery, and a wonderful ride. My luck held all the way around Cabot Trail. I saw some clouds, a little mist, even some fog, but no rain. It was, in fact, a nearly perfect day on the road. I could have stopped a lot more. In fact, I could have parked the bike for a week and walked most of the park and it wouldn’t have been enough time.

This is where Nova Scotia gets its name; New Scotland. It would be easy to imagine these hills populated by sheep and herders, denuded of their trees and covered, instead, with grazing. It would be a shame, but not unbelievable or unlikely. As Robbye said about the rest of Nova Scotia, it’s obvious that not much of this forested area is old growth. Most of the pines are well under 20 years old, in fact. I have seen absolutely no large, old trees since I entered Canada. Canada has lots of things going for it, but conservation is not one of them. For such a small population, the place is highly industrialized and the ecology is “farm land” to the inhabitants.

I came out of Cape Breton wanting to cover some miles before I slept. So, I stayed on the gas through a variety of attractive towns and likely campsites. After suffering a long road maintenance wait at Antigonish, I decided to make New Glasgow, at least, before stopping. The stop-and-go traffic after that half-hour wait caught me mentally napping. I spent so much time in 5th, passing slow moving trucks and SUVs that I spaced off shifting back to 6th when I had the chance. I had plenty of fuel when I left Antigonish to make it to New Glasgow, but that assumed I would be using my transmission competently. I didn’t, so I found myself about 20 miles out of town with the fuel gauge flashing at me. I nursed the throttle, coasted down hills, and gasped into town with my tension level at stupid.

That was enough. I needed a place to camp, or plan on riding all night long. I asked the station mechanic for advice and he sent me to Trenton, a town about 5 miles back from where I’d come. His directions involved a lot of well known landmarks, none of which were known to me or visible at night. I made it to Trenton, stopped at a Tim Hortons and asked another local for directions. He used even more landmarks, no street names, and got me within ½ mile of the park. Finally, I hit a dead end in a trailer park. Some kids came out to ask what I was doing making a u-turn in their front yard. I explained my quest and one of them volunteered to put on a helmet and direct me to the park. Turns out, “follow the highway to Park Street, turn right until the street deadends into the park” would have done the job, description-wise.

The Trenton city park was closed, but the caretaker told me to find a spot and I did. Bits of my Lawson hammock are beginning to fail on this trip and one of the poles bit the dust tonight. Duct tape “fixed” it temporarily, but I’ll need a new pole or a new tent sometime soon.

I went to sleep to the sound of partying teenagers and frustrated mosquitoes.

Back on the Road Again

Robbye took a shuttle from the hotel to the airport at 7AM and I loitered around Halifax for a few hours. I found a camping equipment store and bought a collection of Nikwax products. I thought about going back to the street party, but it looked like rain and I had an itch to be on the road again. I took the easy way out of town, 104 which is a fat, four-lane freeway northeast toward Cape Breton. I stayed on the big road because it was raining hard by the time I left the remnants of Halifax. It rained all the way to Sydney. Just like Friday, my boots still leaked, but my ‘stitch didn’t.

I started looking for a campground a dozen miles out of Sydney but I couldn’t find a site with a pair of trees. Finally, I decided on an unlike place called “The Arm of Gold.” I struck gold.

Don, the caretaker, took pity on me and aimed me toward the well heated laundry room. I stripped off my wet gear and tossed the Aerostitch stuff in a washing machine with my Nikwax chemicals. The rest of the stuff went into the dryer. While I was taking care of my gear, Don talked to the camp’s owner and decided to put me up in the “barn” (pronounced bay-er-in, but say it with a single syllable).

Four old guys sitting around a dry room talking about how much they dislike the motorcycle crowds that rattle their windows. They weren’t big fans of pickups, either. “Rich brats get a new truck from mommy and the first thing they do is put new pipes on it and raise hell in the neighborhood.” Then they told me about two guys on Kawasaki’s who rode in so quietly that nobody notice they were there until they started rattling their money.

Nova Scotia motorcycle joke: “What does a Harley and a Labrador dog have in common? They both like to ride and drool in the back of a ¾ ton truck.”

“I never rode anywhere I regretted riding, even that road that took from me the best thing I ever owned.” The guy was talking about crashing his bike and killing his wife on the Alcan last summer. As you’d probably assume, he was riding a big Harley. He was at “cruising speed” when he topped a hill and discovered the next few hundred meters were paved with gravel. Create your own scenario from here, but the gist was that the bike went down, his wife’s helmet came off, and she was killed. He wasn’t hurt too badly and the bike was totaled.

He was driving a truck, pulling a big camper when we met at the campsite. I was in the laundry, “refreshing” the waterproofing of my Aerostitch and drying my boots and clothes. He brought in a load of laundry and was a little irritated that I hadn’t pulled my gear from the table quickly enough to suit him. He looked at the ‘stitch’s armor lying on the table and said, “Your stuff?”

Yes it is. All of it.

“Pretty silly looking helmet.”

He’s talking about my bright yellow full face HJC. I have a yellow reflective strip on the back that adds something to the silly look, I guess.

“Lotta gear to be wearing on a bike.”

I guess it is. It didn’t seem like much in the rain, though. My wife sort of agrees with him. I brought armored perforated pants and a rain cover for her, but she didn’t want to wear them because they “look hot.” Life is hard when your internal temperature regulation fails and you are claustrophobic.

It didn’t seem like a lot when I dropped the bike on the Dempster last year, either. Even with my Darien and every piece of clothing I owned, I still managed to bust a rib or two, separate my left shoulder, and crack a bone in my right hand. I didn’t, however, lose a drop of blood or suffer any damage below the waist. My helmet was wreaked, but my head was no worse than usual.
In the Louisbourg café, one lady was saying she was done with Nova Scotia weather and was retiring to one of the islands. “What island?” She hadn’t decided, but it sounded like the Bahamas.

The waitress said, “I’m retired here, so it sucks to be me.” This part of Nova Scotia hasn’t seen summer since July 22. Every day from that point, it rained at least a little.

4 Easy Days in Nova Scotia

After the exciting ride to the Marquis of Dufferin Seaside Inn (http://www.marquisofdufferinmotel.com/) the bike was mostly parked for a day. We walked around the resort areas to work up an appetite, taking extra time to relax on the Inn’s pier. The resort has a collection of gardens and Robbye took special enjoyment out of pointing out plants that won’t grow in Minnesota. We spotted several loons in the bay and even more gulls and a variety of ducks and other water fowl.

The inn has one telephone, stuck to the outside of the restaurant office building. I’m still wrestling with the identify theft residue and I spent about an hour on that phone sorting out charges that did and did not belong to me with my bank’s fraud representative. Otherwise, if the world ended we’d never know. The room does have a small television with the usual 60 uninteresting channels, but we’ve chosen to avoid that opportunity. I called Holly and left a message that Robbye had arrived and we were alive and safe. Otherwise, this will be 4 days without contact with our usual world. I'll miss hearing from you all. Right.

After a superb breakfast at the Inn’s restaurant and a lazy morning, we took a ride to Sheet Harbor to hike and enjoy the scenery. It was an overcast but otherwise clear day and we discovered several spectacular views and local hiding places. We even stumbled on a local parade. When we got back, we hiked to a nearby waterfall, accidentally discovering some wonderful local gardening on the way.

The resort loaned us a canoe and we paddled out into the bay, experiencing some wave action and working up an appetite for dinner. We found a fairly isolated beach on the east side of the bay and waded around looking for seashells and enjoying the solitude. Even during the day, much of the time spent is spent in dead quiet, outside of natural sounds.

Dinner at the resort was the same kind of rare experience as was breakfast. Robbye had Scallops Dufferin and I had Beef Burgandy. If presentation is an important part of a dining experience, the inn’s chef is an artist. The owner, Pat,s does every job at her inn. She is, clearly, a marketing wizard, but she is a management and customer service wonder also. I don't know if I have ever felt more at home away from home. This is a terrific place and if you only came here and stayed for a whole vacation you would come away rested and satisfied.

Saturday was no more than a 10 mile biking day. I didn’t even show the motivation to cover up the bike when we crashed for the evening. I’m writing this at 7AM on Sunday, our 41st Anniversary. Robbye is gently snoring, working on 10 hours of sleep for the night. I woke up to the sound of loons calling at about 6AM. The place is so quiet that you can hear gulls across the bay. The highway wraps around the bay, so every car that passes is audible and visible. In the last hour, I’ve seen and heard two cars. Our neighbors are waking up and I can hear every word they say. They can probably hear me typing. It’s that quiet.

Again, it’s a little overcast, but the air is clear and I can see miles of the shoreline. Robbye had hoped to see a lot of Nova Scotia on the trip and I thought she might be over estimating her traveling capability. The flight and airport hassles and the 90 mile trip to the inn was about all her knees were able to tolerate. She was stiff and in pain Saturday morning. She’s tough and really wanted to experience more than a motel room, so we walked (slowly) around the resort and took a short ride to Sheet Harbor to check out the town, river and bay.

It was worth the effort. The old industrial area had reverted to most of its natural state at the nature walk around the river was a vacation in itself. It’s easy to forget that traveling isn’t a means in itself. The point is to go places and experience them.

I could, easily, spend a week on the deck of this motel room. It’s dead quiet, except for nature sounds, the view is spectacular, and the air is as clean as anywhere on earth. We took a long canoe trip around the bay, finding an isolated shoreline to look for sea shells and animal life. This was the first time either of us had canoed on an ocean and the waves were mildly exciting. At first Robbye tended to panic and seize up on the larger waves but, after I offered to whack her on the head with my paddle, she settled down. Crossing the bole at the mouth of the Salmon River was a lot of work and we’d generated a reason to eat another terrific dinner at the Inn’s restaurant.

Sunday, I sort of hoped we’d make a run for the north shore. We rode into Sheet Harbor to check out the galleries; all closed. We headed out toward the north shore, but when we stopped at about 50 miles to check out a historic city, Sherbrooke, Robbye complained that her knees were already giving out. She could barely get off of the bike. We spent a couple of hours walking around Sherbrooke, a town that was once a booming logging, gold mining, and ship building city and is now nearly a ghost town.

We’d spotted a wild looking river on the way out that we’d planned on checking out. I was so focused on watching for animals on the road and she was so focused on looking for a moose in the swamps that we ended up at the inn and missed seeing the river altogether. We stopped at a roadside stand and had the best mussels ever prepared by human hands and ice cream.

Robbye was hurting pretty badly after that 100 mile ride, so we took a short walk on the beach and called it a night. Monday is our last day here. Woke to the sound of a loon touring the bay, calling for attention. The gulls chimed in and drowned out the musical sound of the loon with their screeching. The bay is flat as a Kansas plains in the morning. Totally waveless.

If the Fed-X guy doesn’t arrive with my replacement bank card by noon, we’re going to leave without it. I’ll survive with the backup card Robbye brought and my cash.

It’s another overcast, high visibility morning. The view from the deck is awesome. The cabin next door is stuffed with a family of small children. They are breaking my concentration but cracking me up. Kids are such doofuses.

If I can get Robbye out of bed, I’d like to take the canoe out before breakfast. She woke up about 7:30 and we did a several mile, cross-bay canoe trip.

My money and credit card didn’t arrive on time. We’re on the road to Halifax. Robbye is having a terrible time on the bike, especially with the luggage loaded. 25 miles at a time are about the most she can stand. We made it to the hotel. Unloaded. Rode into downtown and saw some of the Busker Festival and bought tourist junk. Watched a guy lie down on a bed of nails and have another guy stand on him, for a crowd’s pocket change. Talk about a tough job. Tomorrow, early, Robbye is going home. I’m going back east to see the rest of Nova Scotia before I head back to the US.

Eight Days and Resting

I found a great campsite last night, got a solid night’s sleep, and was indecisive about my next move. I need to get to the resort, dump gear, get to the airport, pick up Robbye at 8:30PM, get back (85 miles) to the hotel. I also want to see some of Nova Scotia while I wait. I headed west toward the ferry (Yarmouth) to see what that ride might be like when I get ready to leave Nova Scotia and to check out the coast. I gave up at Liverpool.

Liverpool is some kind of demonstration of terrible city management. The town is cute and ought to be a tourist mecca, except that the city mismanagement was viciously greedy. There are parking meters all over downtown ($1 an hour) and the place was dead empty. At least a half-dozen stores are having “going bust sales” and I didn’t feel motivated to leave my bike long enough to see if they were selling anything I’d want. I need a tourist

Had breakfast, decided to head north to the Kejimkujik National Park. I made it to the park, but didn’t have time to do much. I probably should have just gone to the resort and slept so I’d be alert for the ride to the airport. As it was, It was a blast to get to the resort, unpack, and turn around for the ride back to Halifax Airport.

People commute this far every day, but I don’t know why. I’d be miserable if I had to retrace my steps this far more than once or twice a year. I can’t imagine living anywhere so perfect that I’d drive 100 or more miles a day to live there. The trip back to Halifax was pretty boring. It would be less so on the third time around.

I got to town early and it was raining. I knew Robbye would bring inappropriate gear, other than the rain pants I packed for her, so I looked for a shopping center where I could buy disposable rain gear. I wrestled with the Halifax freeway system, which was designed by Minnesota DPS rejects or someone equally unsuited for urban planning. Exits are few and poorly identified and even more poorly located. Signs are usually placed right on the exit and are labeled to be as close to perfectly useless as possible. I found a hell-hole of a shopping mall that looked like a carbon copy of the dumbest plan ever concocted by the Mission-Veijo Company. It was so new that no part of it was on my 2007 Garmin maps. However, about half of the stores were already going out of business. A mostly customer-absent Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, and Best Buy were surrounded by other name brand clothing stores that have failed to find customers all over the USA. I hoped to find a sporting goods store that stocked Nikwax products, but no such luck. The entire mall was designed for clothes horses. A whole, larger, section of the mall was uncompleted and, if the current renters are examples, there won’t be much point in finishing the exercise in fiscal irresponsibility.

Halifax had been cursed with the Eagles in an outdoor concert during the week. Some enterprising person read the weather report and bought out all the disposable rain gear from every store in the mall. They probably made a fortune. I, however, struck out.

It stopped raining when I gave up on finding gear for Robbye. I decided to go to the airport and wait for the plane, maybe get some sleep on a bench. When I arrived, I noticed that the 20:30 flight from Toronto had “arrived.” Nuts, Nova Scotia is yet another time zone. I was late instead of early.

She was there, pissed, worried, and angry as hell at the airport and Air Canada folks in Toronto. Apparently, the airline worked hard to lose her box of riding gear. Just in time, she rescued it from the Toronto “lost and found,” although it was labeled and any semi-competent system would know it needed to follow the owner’s flight. Flying is harder, these days, than walking. You have to seriously want to go somewhere to put up with the stupid systems these stupid people have put in place to make life entertaining for terrorists. I don’t want to go anywhere that badly. I’d rather ride cross country than fly. If there is a reason for me to get there fast, I’ll just pass on the opportunity.

Once out of the airport building, we got her stuff together, loaded it and her on the bike, and headed for the resort. It started raining almost immediately. Of course, it was pitch black with total cloud cover and rain. It rained soft and hard all the way, all 92 miles, to the resort. The road was dark, every town was shut down for the night, and there was no rescue between Halifax and our destination. I probably averaged 10kph below the speed limit for most of the trip. Visibility was no better than 100 meters in most places and for a long stretch of highway the road was newly paved and unmarked. It was like riding on a narrow black void. Often coming into a town, the bike hydroplaned across sections of pooled water adding a new level of insecurity to the ride. My knees and back were aching from tension and I suspected that Robbye’s already damaged knees providing worse pain. Several times on the way, she whacked me out of fear and frustration, but she didn’t want to stop and change her gear. “Keep going,” she’d shout. As we past Sheet Harbor, about 5 miles from our resort, she really whacked me and I understood her frustration.

We were both soaked when we arrived. My Aerostitch gear had kept me dry through 20+ days of Alaska and western Canada rain, but it didn’t hold up to a Nova Scotia soaking. Robbye wasn’t that much wetter than me, having used me for a rain shield. It was a long, miserable night drive, but the animals were absent from the roads. They were probably too smart to be caught out on that kind of evil night. If a deer had run on to the road, we’d have probably hit it and killed us all. At some point, that thought might have provided more relief than terror. To start off her weekend in Nova Scotia, we had a real motorcycle adventure.

Seventh Day Adventure

I overspent on a motel last night, it was “biker-friendly,” clean, had plenty of hot water and towels, and convenient to food, though. $100 for a tiny room is silly. My hammock is turning out to be more hassle than advantage. There aren’t many campsites, apparently, with a pair of usefully spaced trees. The hammock is less than a coffin on the ground, so I need trees. I may ship it home and buy a 1-man tent somewhere. It packs a little large, too.

The highway to and into Nova Scotia is a rocket pad. Traffic is allowed to travel at 110k/h, but it speeds along a good 40k/h faster than that. I was getting passed like the good old days in Montana. If I weren’t so far from home, insurance, mechanics, and a tow truck, I’d be inclined to play along. Since I am where I am, I’m going to take it easy on my equipment. I sort of like this bike and would like to ride it all the way home; 2200 miles away from where I ended up today.

I found Halifax right where the map said it should be. Garmin directed me to the “Halifax Airport,” which appeared to be a dirt field about two miles from the bay. “Detour” signs directed me past a guard shack, where the guard waved me on while his buddy’s dope sniffing dog looked at me as if I were something to eat. The further I rode up the route my GPS indicated, the sketchier the airport looked. I saw what looked like C12 cargo planes in hangars and one jet with an insignia I didn’t recognize. I kept going where the GPS told me to go, until I came to a really nasty dirt road with a van parked in front of an old man standing next to a stop sign. I stopped.
“Where do you think you’re goin’?”

“To the airport to pick up my wife.”

“Not here you aren’t. This is the Canadian Air Force base and if you go over that hill a couple dozen guys will be takin’ pot shots at you until you stop movin’.”

“I don’t want that. This isn’t the Halifax Airport?”

Turns out, Garmin missed the airport by about 35 kilometers. The Halifax International Airport is way north of town, the Air Force base is not. I found the real airport, the one for the “rest of us” and got my travel plans sorted out. I also tracked down a hotel for the last night Robbye will be in Nova Scotia. Other than figuring out how to stow her luggage on top of my luggage, I think we’re set for the next few days. The old deal about how two people can keep a secret only if one is dead sort of applies to road trips, too. One person on a road trip is an adventure and an exercise in freedom. Two people is a convention. The planning required for two people is exponentially greater than for one. And that’s when the second person is as easy to please as my wife. Any normal person would need to be killed.

After all the plane, motel, hotel crap was done, I headed down the coast, west, to look for a campground. I found one about 60 miles west of Halifax and settled down to read a little, write some of this blog, and to listen to the stream beside my campsite. It’s getting dark at 8:30PM, so summer is almost over. No bugs, though. The campsite has a pool, but I’m too done in to take advantage of it.

Six Days on the Road

I found an abandoned city camp ground at Berthier-Sur-Mur. No services, but clean, manicured camp sites and a safe place to sleep. I slept well, got up at 5AM, struck camp, hit the road as the sun came up. 50 miles later, I had breakfast at a Normadin Le meilleur du resto. I don’t know what that means, I’m just copying it all from the place mat. Great meal, good service, nice people who accommodated a non-French speaking American with style.

My tourist destination for the morning was the motorcycle museum at St-Jean-Port-Joli. I wanted to hit the road and stay on it, but I had to blow almost 3 hours messing with the stolen credit card crap. Between the bank and the credit card company, I was on hold for two of the three hours. Let me make this clear, I’m not a fan of capital punishment. However, I would fire one or two warning shots to the head of the bastard who caused all this trouble. Anyone that worthless ought to be dead or in massive pain

Once all the crap was done, I was ready to visit the museum and, then, hit the road. The museum is a cute little thing with about 100 mostly European vintage bikes. I would have bet that I could find a cool bumper sticker at the museum, but I was disappointed. For some reason, they have lapel pins but no bumper stickers. Foolish marketing plan. I took a load of pictures, stared at historic engineering tactics, wondered about the several bikes the museum has still in the crate, including a Bimoto db1 and a Ducati 900SS. Why anyone would buy those expensive wheels and never put them on the road is a little past my comprehension. Collectors, I guess. I got a picture of my fat self standing in front of the museum, post-maintenance work pre-museum opening. After gawking at bikes, I hit the road late, distracted, and a little tired.

I ended up in Frederickson, New Brunswick at about 6PM, following CA 2 most of the way. The once-two-lane is now a manicured 4-lane freeway. My GPS was so thrown off by the new route that it crashed and didn’t recover for 200 miles. Garmin ought to make the software a little more flexible or provide simple updates for downloading (free). A system that blows up when the road varies a few hundred feet isn’t particularly useful.

That’s not the route I planned, but with my wife meeting me in Halifax on Friday and the complications that will entail I decided to follow the “discretion is the better part of valor” route. My original route involved a two lane that would have taken me across the hills to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There was a 100 mile stretch of nothing that really looked good, but I chickened out. My wife has a pair of flawed knees that are making it nearly impossible for her to get around much. I probably need to be at the airport when she arrives. I may take this path on the way home. Because of her visit and Scott’s work-search goals, the first week of this trip are more scheduled than I like to travel.

Five Days on the Road

Monday was a vacation/tourist day. Scott arrived late afternoon and when I got back from the 1000 Islands excursion we spent the rest of the day catching up. Lots more talk and a wonderful home Italian meal prepared by Lee. She served the best bread I’ve ever eaten and it was all I could do to not curl around the plate and growl at anyone else who tried to take some.

When I called home, my wife said my credit card company had been calling, lots. Of course, she didn’t have the number, so I called the general purpose VISA number and got a kid who didn’t seem to have a clue. I wasted time with him for a while, he wasted time saying something to the folks in the VISA department, and I went on my merry way. Turns out, someone else was being merry, too.

Other than minor disasters, I’m getting into the hang of it today. It took a while to say “goodbye” to the Hills, so I didn’t get on the road until about 8:30. I didn’t get much out of the backroad route I started with. Mostly Nebraska farm land and I’ve been there and done that. I took a few pictures, but got bored and flipped the boarder into Canada and headed east with commitment. I mostly made good main highway time, but got lost once and burned an hour in some mid-sized town that was having a festival and had almost every escape route blocked with barriers and an excessive number of cops. When serious irritation set in, I found the CA20 freeway and dropped the hammer for a while with the rest of Quebec’ers. These folks drive like I’ve heard Europeans drive (I wouldn’t know from actual experience) and it is easy to hang on to a fast group leader and average 90mph for as long as the gas holds out. Lots of bikes, at least every 10th vehicle is a bike and, some areas, I’d bet we’re almost 1/5 of traffic.

I bailed in Montreal. I was there in 1989 and saw a lot of the city. I hoped to see more on this trip but the Montreal speed freakers did me in. Kids in Honda or Toyota sedans imagine themselves to be drivers. It’s mostly twenty-something guys, but a few older doofuses join in the fun. They drive as fast as their piles of crap will travel, crawl up your rear fender, swap lanes without a glance to see who is there, and, hopefully, die often enough to justify their lousy driving skills. Quebec, in general, is very third world, driver-wise. Lots of bumper chasing, thoughtless lane-swapping, and crazed driving behaviors. The larger cities are, as best I can tell, police-free on the freeways. Maybe they are hoping to thin out the population by letting the fools sort themselves out. Anyway, Montreal was too much for me and I gave up after nearly getting killed a couple of times.

I kept traveling until Quebec City, the province capitol. The city was celebrating its 400th anniversary and I got there in time for a pretty cool downtown parade. I practically drooled on diners’ plates because the street-side cafes’ fare looked so good. I couldn’t find a bank to get Canadian cash and didn’t feel like using my card, so I ended up skipping dinner and looking for a room.

The surprise of the Quebec City parade was the music. When I was last in Montreal, I was there supporting QSC and doing my audio guy gig. After I did my bit, the rep took me bar hopping one night to hear local bands. This would have been about 1989 or so. Every band was a cover band. There was no local “flavor” to the music. If you’d have stepped into a club in Kansas or Massachusetts or LA, you’d have heard exactly the same thing. I expected some French flavor like you’d hear in New Orleans. Montreal was a disappointment. So, when I heard about the 400th Anniversary parade, I expected the same kind of boring US-based music. I was not ready for the bands in this parade.

The art was pretty good, too. The giant historic masks were, sometimes, eerily life-like. Other times, they were caricatures of famous French people from 400 years of history. It was odd being in the middle of something so personal to this city and not understanding a word being said around me. The costumes were mostly of the city’s 200-400 years history. Lots of color, lots of animation, and the city was a perfect place for the celebration.

Quebec is very European in its layout (as best I can tell from my vast experience reading books about Europe). Every restaurant and café had outdoor seating and the food looked incredible. I’m a bread freak and those restaurants had some great looking bread. It didn’t matter, though. It was late when I got to Quebec City. Every room was booked for about 100 miles in all directions. I needed to find a place to sleep. Great party, though.

Every room in Quebec City was booked and I stopped for information and cash and gas. When I tried the bank machine, I discovered my card was rejected. I called my bank, got switched to the VISA folks, and discovered someone had been racking up just-under-$100 charges to my card since August 2nd. After a long, foolish conversation with the help desk guy, I headed for a real bank, checked out a load of cash, and hit the road looking for a motel or a campground.

Motels were all booked for the next 50 miles, but I found a city campground. It's practically abandoned, but it's clean and I don't need much. Tomorrow, I’ll deal with the bank crap. This trip just got a lot more complicated.

Third Day Push

Today started evil and kept at it until I parked. Parking was good. Everything before that was questionable.

Scott and I spent the night foolishly looking for a motel room to split. At 2AM we stumbled into a park and thought about tossing our sleeping bags on the ground until the cops rousted us. A local pointed us to a city campground across the street and at 3AM we attempted to setup camp. Scott did pretty well. I managed to screw up my hammock knots and found myself sleeping half on the ground in the morning, at 6AM.

Tomorrow ought to be a nothing ride. I’m going to ride to Alexandria Bay and sit on a cattle boat around the Thousand Islands. However, today we rode/drove from Owen Sound to Toronto to Black Lake, NY. The first part was a little boring. I had no idea that Ontario could be so much like Kansas-Nebraska, including flat, boring terrain and corn fields by the miles. Toronto started off interesting, great skyline, and turned deadly. I’d heard that Toronto was Canada’s New York, but it seemed a little more like Dallas (or Chicago without the lousy municipal workmanship). Traffic was very much like Chicago, braindead and fast moving. I followed Scott to the riverside and skipped out on him when he turned west on Lake Shore Drive. I went east. I was entertained by the diversity and the shops for about five miles. About the time I passed Ontario Place, the filthiest park I’ve ever seen in my life, I decided to bail on Toronto. Getting out was harder than I expected, though. The city has damn few freeway entrances and lots of loops and frontage roads to nowhere.

When I hit the freeway, finally, I found I was in Tailgater Heaven. Toronto drivers are every bit as foolish as the worst US city drivers and no more skilled. I stuck with the freeway all the way to Kingston, though. I tried getting off and checking out the river roads, but they were lined with dead industrial towns and way too many cops for my wallet’s safety. It was one of the most miserable 200 miles I’ve ever ridden and I felt like crap the whole way.

I crossed the boarder a little past Kingston and headed for Gary and Lee Hill’s Indian Head Point Resort. Gary is an old friend of Scott’s and they’d foolishly offered to put us up for a couple of days. I wanted to tour (by boat) the Thousand Islands and after the miserable night we spent before a good night’s sleep sounded awesome. Gary and I hit it off pretty naturally and ended up talking politics, tree hugging, economics, music, and business until late. Lee showed up about 9PM and joined the debate until about midnight. Showing more intelligence that Gary or I, she bailed for bed. I don’t remember lying down, but I woke up Monday morning feeling human again. I can’t vouch for my appearance.

This is a spectacular place. Completely different than my expectations of New York, upstate or any state. Gary and Lee have built an amazing resort that is an escape from any where you might want to escape from. This feels more like Oregon or Wisconsin than New York.

Second Day Grey

The next day, Saturday, was a massive improvement. No chills, no belly heaving, and nausea is back to the philosophical realm. I woke up at 6AM, took another scalding shower in case some memory of the previous day lived in my gut, and we were out of the cabin and on the road by 7AM or so. Today, the target is South Baymouth on Manitoulin Island by 5:30PM. It’s a reasonable target and takes us through one of the most scenic bits of Ontario, in my opinion. The best description I can generate of this area is “the southern Rocky Mountains with a giant lake on the south side.” The mountains, of course, are not there, but the rocks are. Giant chunks of granite, shale, and other bits of geology that I should, but don’t recognize decorate the landscape and the Trans Canada Highway is cut right through this material.

It’s a great road and a constant source of entertainment. Mostly, the traffic is light and moves quickly. We passed a fair number of Canada’s finest flashing their lights behind some unlucky motorists, but they don’t seem to be viciously aggressive about enforcing the 90km/hr limit because we’ve pushed that pretty hard constantly and haven’t attracted any official attention.

There is, in my opinion, nothing to see in Sault Ste Marie and we take the new bypass and skip the wonders of that boarder town. The traffic is a lot heavier here and slower. It takes a while to get to the cutoff, Espanoia, and from there on the going gets really slow. I fired up my helmet cam for the first real test and managed to get it on the helmet after about a minute of one-handed fumbling. Turns out, it works really well. Good thing, since my Sony DVCam died in the rain yesterday. Note to self-send tapes back to Minnesota with Robbye and get a SD Card USB thingy.

South Baymouth is booming on Saturday. There is some Canadian holiday this weekend, plus a music and art festival, and something else. Whatever. The motels and campgrounds are all jammed. Scott had made an advance reservation for the late ferry and discovered that there was no option for moving it to the next morning. Good thing. We discovered that every room and campground was full after he asked about moving his reservation back. On a motorcycle, I could have gone any time. We ended up catching the late, 10:30PM, ferry across Lake Huron and discovered that something was going on on the other end of the link, too. Every motel was booked from the tip practically to Toronto. We stumbled on to a town campground in Owen Sound and put up “camp” at 1:30AM. I hate making camp in the dark and this turned out to be no exception. When I woke up in the morning, the head end of my hammock was on the ground.

The crows were doing their nature’s alarm clock bit at 5:30AM and they did their job on me. I struck camp and let Scott know where I’d be (at a Tim Horton’s in town) as I rolled out of camp. He showed up an hour later, looking no better than I felt.

I struck up a conversation with an older guy, who’d driven a truck in the Canadian west 30 years ago. He described the Dempster as being pretty much the same road I crashed on. Time doesn’t, apparently, improve or change everything.

Geezer on the Road East

First Day Blues

I left home for Nova Scotia on Friday. I spent all of Thursday and most of Wednesday doing last minute bike and trip preparations. My parts, that were supposed to come on Monday, didn’t arrive until late Wednesday. So, I had left my bike balanced on the centerstand and a floor jack, waiting for the new sprocket, shock hub, and other drive bits. I didn’t have the guts to pull the front end off with the back end off and, each day, I held off hoping the parts would arrive until it was too late to start a different approach. Bad planning, poor tactics, lazy attitude.

Wednesday evening, the parts appeared and I began a panic repair procedure on the drive line of the V-Strom so that I could get the back end on the bike and tear off the forks to fix the mess I'd made trying a non-Suzuki procedure for replacing the fork fluid. I wish I could promise this is the last time I will ever take this kind of short cut, but I'd probably be lying.

After getting through the mechanicals, while being whined at by my two grandkids and my wife because both days were miserably hot and they all wanted to go to the lake and swim, I started on packing and getting my gear arranged late Thursday. At 8PM, I gave in and took the crowd to the lake. I don't know why they (especially my wife) needed me to be part of the process, but they did. Apparently. Supposedly. An hour's swim, a fast shopping trip to get RAM for the helmet cam, and back to work on the gear pile. In the end, I did a fair job of organizing myself, but a lousy job of avoiding distractions in the morning.

My wife, upset or something about being left alone for most of a month, did a song-and-dance with noon's fried chicken, pulling it out of the frig for the kids, leaving it out until I found it and put it back, and doing it all over again at least three times, finally managed to poison me. She decided to "cook" dinner for me about two hours before I finished putting the bike together. When she handed me the plate of potatoes and chicken, with my hands covered in oil and grease, I told her "Not now, I can't stop now." She put the plate on a chair in the basement and went back to working on an art project. I discovered the plate and, exhausted and distracted, sat down to shove it down my gullet. About 3AM, I woke up with my stomach boiling and chills. I spent the rest of the morning evacuating my innards and cursing my garbage disposal eating habits.

Friday, at 6:30AM, I’m loaded and ready to go, mentally if not physically. Scott shows up in his Toyota about 15 minutes later. We get on the road about 7AM and make it to Duluth about 11AM, via I35. We didn’t slow down for the big city and stayed on the gas all the way to the Canada boarder.

About a mile past the boarder, the sky fell and even dropped some marble-sized hail. I was wearing as little cover as possible, under my Darien suit, and it felt like being smacked by a zillion BB-guns. After the hail-beating, it poured for another 20 miles. All the while, I’m shivering from food poisoning, my joints ache like I have the flu, and I’m even a little nauseous (something that never happens to me). We kept going to a little short of White River, Ontario, and found a cheap cabin for the night. I was past freezing and exhaustion. Scott wanted to talk a little before giving up the day, but I passed out on him about 20 minutes after getting my gear into the room, taking a scalding shower, downing a pair of pain meds and a beer, and lying down on my bed.

My Top Ten Bike List #5: Yamaha 850 TDM

One of my favorite bikes, ever, happens to be one I owned, twice: the 1992 Yamaha 850 TDM.

This bike had everything I ever wanted in a motorcycle, almost. I've written about it before, on my home website: http://home.comcast.net/~twday60/850tdm.htm. So, there isn't a lot of point in restating words from my past.

When the TDM first arrived in the US, practically every bike rag said ugly things about the bike's appearance. They called it "bug-eyed," "ungainly," and "a collection of assorted spare parts." 15 years later, every Italian manufacturer is making a bike that owes most of it's lineage to the Yamaha TDM and it doesn't seem to bother anyone that these bikes could easily be mistaken for the TDM. Yamaha didn't give up on the TDM, they still sell a version of the bike in Europe and Japan. However, they gave up on the US market in 1993 and we haven't seen anything as interesting from Yamaha TDM 850 since.

One of the cool side-advantages of picking the TDM is that I get to include it's relatives: the Super Tenere' and the TRX 850-900. Both of these near relations are Europe-only releases, so like the majority of the coolness that the TDM represents (years 1994-present), the US wasn't cool enough to be part of the show. Regardless, I think the XTZ 750-900cc Super Tenere' is one of the hippest DP bikes ever made and the TRX is a prototype of the kind of all around standards/sport bikes that Europe would be copying for the next two decades.

Hyosung GV650 Avatar stuff

The review is out, last month in fact. As of this writing, it's not on the Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly webpage, but I'll update this blog when it is. I'm getting a fair number of email comments about the article and it has been interesting. The guys on the TC-DualSport list had some interesting things to say and one of the spurred a response from me: --- In TC_Dualsport@yahoogroups.com, pdstreeter@... wrote: > > I read that review, it seems to me Tom would have panned any cruiser, the > Hyosung just happened to be the one he was reviewing at the time. It's true that it would be impossible for me to love a cruiser. I wrote the intro to make it clear that "love" wasn't in the cards. It was a lame attempt to lighten up the otherwise panning of the bike. However, I think the Hyosung GV650 is a POS. Everything about the design screams "unfamilair with the concept" of motorcycle design. From the dumbass ignition key location to the goofy riding position, to the pitiful suspension, to the cobbly finish, to the godawful and unpredictable clutch just reeked "made in Korea without Japanese supervision." The motor had power, but I wouldn't trust it out of town. It was clattering like a tractor at the end of the most miserable 140 miles I've ever spent on a motorcycle. That history includes 150 miles of the 1973 Canadian River X-Country on a 1971 Kawasaki Bighorn that finished with 2 working gears (1 & 2) and a seized front fork and one busted rear shock and a hole in the right side case that sucked sand through the motor for 20 miles. I miss the Bighorn, I would set fire to the Avatar, if it were mine. The manufacturer (Hyosung) already banned Cycle World from ever riding one of their POS bikes. Now, MMM is in that fine company. The Hyosung marketing goof went ballastic when he saw the review. I'm going to post his letter, soon, on my blog. If you think Paul thinks I'm evil, you ain't seen nothing yet. ;-)

Selling Garage Candy

Here is my list of wild and crazy motorcycle adds. Feel free to add your own collection of nuttiness to this list:

"Harley Davidson Sportster 1200: Pearl white, fuel injection, removable windshield, 86 actual miles, warranty, brand new bike."

"Harley Davidson Softail Custom: 2K miles. PM wheels, driveside brake, 240 Phatail kit, HD chrome covers, HD Deuce chrome lowers, Hi-flow intake, 9.6:1 comp, Crane Hi-4TC ignition, coil, 310-2 cams, and pushrods – over $38K invested."

"Invested" would not be the term I would use. "Wasted," "flushed," or "foolishly squandered" would be more along the lines I'd consider appropriate. $20/mile is a long way from an investment.

"2005 30th Anniversary Goldwing: beautiful Black Cherry color, 1832 cc six cylinder, 5 speed, cruise control, adjustable windshield, great sound system and more. The bike has driver's backrest, highway pegs, drink holder, power outlet, wing foot boards, and low miles (7200) - this is the ultimate road bike - like new and ready to ride!!!"

"1980 Yamaha XS 850 Special with only 3,500 miles like new condition, it has been stored since 1982. It has been gone through from top to bottom so its ready to ride."

For the kind of money this owner is asking, the XS ought to ride itself. However, having been store since 1982 is a long way from being "like new." Like new plus rust, varnish in the fuel system, contaminated lubrication stuck in every small port in the engine, and well oxidized finish, maybe.

"2001 Bourget Low Blow Chopper, 5700 actual miles, 113 S&S, Jims 6-speed, polished stainless everything, awesome custom paint, fast and fun and gets 40 mpg!!!! May consider partial hotrod trade. This bike was $33k new. Buy it for $17,900. Turns heads everywhere you go. I cannot respond to e-mails as our computer is messed up........"

More than just your email is messed up, buddy. People are turning their heads as if they were oggling a gory crash. You probably think they are covering their ears so they can focus on how cool you look on your hippobike.

"2005 Good big bear chopper;s&s mtr polish,96 cui;morris magneto;5 speed trans rivera;bb springer;240 rear tire;custom paint , $28,500 OBO"

"2001 Harley-Davidson FXST SOFTTAIL Ajustable Lowering Kit. New 2 tires, Sampson2 pipes, Drag bars, Custom tail blinkers, Lots of Chrome- Low miles. Looks & SOUNDS great. Very Loud. $10900.00 offer"

“SOUNDS great” as in irritates everyone within a few miles of the chrome plated junker?

"1999 HARLEY DAVIDSON Excellent rebuilt engine, 3600 mi, excellent condition. am/fm stereo , $10,500 OBO"

" Showroom Condition 2005 Big Dog Ridgeback with 56 orig miles. Originally $31,600 MSRP. This Bike Was Not Only Voted Most Dependable V-Twin Back To Back But This Ridged Chopper Also Offers Tons Of Power With It's 117 CI S&S Motor, A Bulletproof Baker 6 Speed, And A Fat 300MM Rear Tire. This bike Is Right Side Drive So It feels lighter and is well balanced."

I had no idea that swapping the drive side would make a machine lighter. Of course, this hippo bike feels light in comparison with a steam locomotive.

http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/

My Top Ten Bike List #4: Yamaha SRX Series (250, 400, & 600)

I'm pretty sure I'll hear that I should be embarassed about this selection: Yamaha's SRX Series (250, 400, & 600cc) .

The 1988 600cc version is pictured on this page, but I love 'em all. Probably, knowing my state of motorcycle perversion, I loved the 250 the most. The single-cylinder, balance-shaft-smoothed, single overhead cam motor has a kind of mid-tech simplicity that really tripped my trigger. The two stage carbs (like the XT dirt bikes of that period) was a bit of high (for the time) tech engineering that added bandwidth and performance to the SRX bikes. The sturdy but lightweight metalic-painted steel frame and cool looking alloy wheels created a striking, functional bike that has yet to be beaten for trick-ness. I'd buy one today if I could find one. In fact, when I was unemployed a few years back, a 600 SRX showed up on Craig's List and I went after it as if I actually had money. I still regret that someone beat me to it.

Yamaha made the SRX models from 1985 until 1997, but the 400 barely appeared in the US and the 250 was only bootlegged here. The 600 was available (and ignored by the buying US public) from '85 to '89, sort of. The dealers I knew had '86 bikes until '89 and relabeled them if they bothered to try to move them at all.

The specs are underwhelming:

Detailed Specifications:
ENGINE
Type: 4-Stroke, SOHC, 4-valve, Single Cylinder
Displacement: 595 cc
Bore and Stroke: 94.0 x 84.0 mm
Compression Ratio: 8.5:1
Maximum Torque: 34 ft·lbf @ 5500 rpm
Maximum HP: 40 hp (30 kW) @ 5700 rpm
Carburetion: 2KY27PV
Oil Capacity: 2.5 Quarts
Transmission: 5 Speed

CHASSIS:
Overall Length: 82.1 inches
Overall Width: 27.8 inches
Overall Height: 41.5 inches
Wheelbase: 54.5 inches
Ground Clearance: 5.7 inches
Seat Height: 30.3 inches
Dry Weight: 329 lb.
Wet Weight: 375 lb.
Fuel Capacity: 4 Gal.

But the bike outperformed the sum of its parts. Anyone who owned one expected a fortune in exchange for a title. The SRX6 sold for $2495 list in 1988, but if you can find one for less than $3k today, you are scoring a big one.

Crazy Collector Stories

This blog entry is nothing more than a statement of inquiry. I’m trying to write a story about the mental state (habits, motivations, attitudes, and rationalizations) of folks who “collect” motorcycles. A collector, in my mind, is everything from:

• someone who inherits/buys a bike and keeps it, unused, in the back of the garage for decades
• to the packrat who buys and stores as many rat bikes as his garage can hold
• to the Leno-style loony who builds an ostentatious storage facility and employs professional mechanics to clean and maintain his motorcycles in case he gets the urge for a short ride to the local Hard Rock or just wants to straddle a clean seat and make “vooroooom” noises.

For my money, each of these characters is exhibiting a form of eccentricity that is worth examining, simply for the entertainment value. When we’re being honest, I imagine all of us “hoard” something: family pictures or letters, ceramic dolls, musical instruments, ballpoint pens stolen from the office, and items that symbolize precious memories. Motorcycles are on the mild extreme of the crazy side of this addiction. After all, you can stuff a dozen bikes into a normal two-car garage which is slightly less nutty than buying a barn or airport hangar for a “collection.” Of course, that means the garage can’t be used for anything else. Even a collector has to admit filling a garage with unused machinery is an obsession; especially a collector who lives where severe winters make owning a garage a near necessity.

What I’m hoping to gather in this space (http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/) is any kind of story that describes the motorcycles in one of these collections or a description of the collector himself. Please, feel free to pass this along to anyone you know who can add something to this highly academic “analysis.”

The Repercussions of Having an Opinion

This summer, I reviewed a bike that put me in an ethical bind. I really liked the folks at the dealership, although they were clearly not motorcycle people. The dealership was a hardware store trying to get into the exciting, high-profile, profitable scooter and motorcycle market. Yes, I'm joking about the characteristics of our market but I'm not joking about their expectations for that same business. They were almost childishly anticipating a flood of cash from their entry into American motorcycling. I thought they should have been a little more cautious, since they had only recently dropped Polaris' and were still trying to offload their inventory (two bikes) of last years' It turned out that the bike was, largely, junk. 

 You can read the review linked to this column for a mild-mannered opinion of that motorcycle. Not only was the quality and design short of modern standards, it was overpriced, unreliable (based on my short and uncomfortable experience), and possibly dangerous. For example, the clutch grabbed so severely that it would intermittently yank the bike several yards on engagement and disengaged a fair distance from the misnamed "friction zone." The dealer admitted they had experienced this before, the factory offered a "fix" that didn't work, and I still have no idea if the bike can be made safe due to this defect. 

When my review hit the stands, I got a few calls and emails from Hyosung owners describing their experience with the clutch problems and asking if there was remedy. Since the dealer had decided to toss fuel and a lit match on our relationship, the best I could offer the Hyosung victims was a phone number and web-link for the NHTSA recall hot line. 

In my review I tried to briefly describe many of the bike's defects as accurately as possible. There is, or should be, a public service aspect to product reviews and I take that seriously, having been burned a few times by half-honest product reviews. It is hard to be critical of a motorcycle that has been handed over with the expectation of unbridled love, but that's a critic's job. Of course, the basic design was pretty funny on its own, which added an aspect of humor that was out of my control. The Korean manufacturer went for a really weird and retro chopper look and a totally stupid riding position, which was a regular source of entertainment by everyone who knows me and saw me on the bike. 

 To be blunt and honest, I hated the bike and think it is the worst representation of the style I've ever ridden. But, I'm no cruiser expert. I do my best to stay off of the damn things and have yet to ride one I'd consider owning. The article says as much. In a form-follows-function world, cruisers have lost their way. The Hyosung was the worst representative of a terrible motorcycle style that I've ever suffered. My review didn't reflect even half of my dislike of the Avitar. As toned-down as it was, the resultant article received the following comments from the manufacturer's sales department:

• ". . . You assured both myself and [names deleted], our National Sales Mgr. that you just wanted to do a fair, light hearted review on some of Hyosungs models and that no matter how bad the bike or scooter may turn out to be (should that be the case, which it is not), neither you nor your writing staff would be overly hard or in anyway unfair on said unit and would emphasize the strong points of the model more so than its weaknesses. . .
• "Well I can assure you that if this lop sided, closed and narrow minded, cruiser hating editors article hits the newstands as written, I will personally guarantee you that you will never ever review one of our bikes, scooters or anything else we manufacture again either. Did the same Jackass that wrote this article happen to ride the HD too?
• "I am shocked that you call yourself a motorcycle magazine and that your reviewer considers himself a motorcyclist at all least of all an motorcycle editor? . . .
• "However to send a person to test a motorcycle that openly admits to hating any and all types of a certain style of motorcycle (in this case cruisers) is just plain stupidity and completely unethical and can only lead to an uninformed and uninspiring review!
• "Also, how small is this reviewer that he doesn't fit on the GV650? We had women that stood all of 5ft 4 inches tall and weighed 105 pounds soaking wet sit on it at the show, easily pull it up off the sidestand and feel very comfortable doing so? In fact, its neutral riding position along with how well it carries its weight low . . .
• "He has no business testing ours or any other manufacturers products because he does not carry anything remotely close to unbiased, fair or ethical writing skills...or dare I say any writing skills at all. . .
• "There are so many holes in this article that I couldn't plug them with all ten fingers and toes...but I digress, if this is what you call a review in your magazine, then please don't bother to ask to "review" our products in the future. . . "

Where the marketing doofus got the idea that I'm an "editor" is a confusion. He also appears to think my first or last name is "Jackass," which I suppose is more likely than me being an editor. While his own "writing skills" would make most text messengers blush in shame, he seems to feel pretty confident in his ability to blast mine which makes for entertaining reading. It is interesting that he conveniently chose to forget that MMM had not signed up to review the cruiser. In all the magazine's negotiations, the bike we were anticipating for review was the Hyosung GT650R; a Korean attempt at copying the Suzuki SV650. I was signed on to the review because I ride a Suzuki V-Strom 650 and previously owned and enjoyed an SV650 for 50,000 miles. Neither Sev, Victor, or I would have even considered putting me on a POS cruiser from any manufacturer under practically any conditions. If the goofball sales doofus had done any research, he would have known that MMM, in general, is not fond of cruisers and I, in particular, think they are clown bikes. 

Until the Avitar was rolled into the dealer's driveway and my wife had driven away in my escape vehicle, I had no idea that I would be test riding a Shriner vehicle. I would have dressed appropriately, had I known: protective bandana, butt-less leather chaps, Doc Martins, and the usual Harley comedy accessories. As it was, I arrived in full Aerostich gear, helmet, boots, and all. I was as appropriately dressed as a riot cop at a Grateful Dead concert. If I weren't cursed with a Midwestern inability to say "no," I would have recalled my wife and simply left after explaining to the dealer why they did not want me reviewing the Avitar. 

As it was, the dealer had spent all of the magazine's lead time prepping the bike, delivering it almost two weeks after they had promised it would be ready. Two of the four possible reviewers had dropped out of the pool of writers because of the near deadline and the poor timing. It would either be me and Steven Heller or Steven alone. It probably should have been Steven alone. So, I can't disagree that with the marketing doofus' basic premise that I was bound to dislike the Hyosung cruiser. A more adventurous manufacturer might have taken my position as a challenge and accepted any level of approval as an accomplishment or an opportunity to fine tune a vehicle that clearly needs critical design input. So it goes and Hyosung was already on record as being "sensitive," since they had burst into indignant flames over Cycle World's mediocre review a few months earlier. I admit it. I hated the bike. 

Riding the Hyosung Avitar was almost a crippling event and it felt unsafe at all but in the slowest, least traffic critical situations. My neck and back hurt for a week after escaped the Avitar experience. And the bike is butt-ugly. I did my best to picture it in the best light, including a pretty flattering (in my opinion) picture of the abomination next to a lake on a dirt road upon which only a masochist would venture with a machine so limited in capability. I gave it my best shot, but we were doomed to hate each other. 

Obviously, I didn't rave about the bike's glorious features and that was, apparently, a crime. Even I can only lie so much in 1,200 words. I do apologize for the "uninspiring" quality of the review. The best I could do was to reach for "funny." When I look back at the pictures of myself on the Avitar, I think we both accomplished funny. I still take crap from friends who posted a collection of pictures of me on that damn bike with my feet extended in the gynecologically-correct cruiser position and the rest my body so uncomfortably positioned that vacationing Guantanamo prison guards were taking notes as I rode by.

 In the aftermath of this experience, I've been relegated to finding my own bikes for review because MMM is growing gun shy of sales and marketing department backlash. Every once in a while, I feel a tinge of jealousy when the other writers get to play with cool bikes like the BMW F800ST (and I was on the list for that review before the Avitar fiasco) or the 2008 Aprilia Shiver. But I missed out on the H-D FLSTSB Cross Bones and the Can-Am Spyder, so I'm not all that injured. 

Successful humans almost always become more conservative and, no matter how you play games with the meaning of that word, that means we become less adventurous, courageous, and less willing to challenge the status quo. Believe it or not, I can remember when FM radio was adventurous. I can even remember when National Public Radio produced radically entertaining and informative programs. Way back in the dark ages of motorcycle publications, Dirt Bike Magazine actually performed shoot-outs that ended up with clear winners and losers. I wonder if Newsweek and Time Magazine had a golden age? I think the reason so many of us get our news and information from the Internet instead of magazines and newspapers is that the World Wide Web is still largely economically unsuccessful. Until the money starts pouring into blogs and web news sites, there are still ways to get attention on the Web without much financial incentive, so there is nothing to lose in telling the whole, nasty story. Once money creeps into the equation, the story's motivation changes. It's human nature. That doesn't make the occurance any less disappointing, though. Mostly due to a lack of patience, I'm going to post more product reviews on this blog in the future. I like the fact that I can say exactly what I think here without having to worry about offending whoever I'm likely to offend. It's easy enough to simply not read a blog if you don't like the writer.

Why I Hate Cruisers

What a totally bogus title. I don’t hate cruisers. They are inanimate objects. You should reserve a powerful emotion like “hate” for vicious characters like Nixon, Reagan, Georgie Bush and his sidekick Little Dick Cheney, Sideshow Bob, and the Anti-Truth (Fox News and their cast of clowns and freaks). I don’t hate cruiser owners, either. Some of them are among the lowest of the low, but they advertise that fact with their patches, tattoos, and crimes. Most folks who put on Village People costumes and ride a hard 50 miles-a-day from bar-to-bar on their big iron are mid-life-crisis walking wounded and are no more dangerous or despicable than the guys who dress up in gray flannel in Civil War enactments. So, really what this rant is about is why I dislike cruisers and the culture from which they are spawned.

First and most obviously, I can’t find a purpose or a function for the basic cruiser design.

It’s just a dumb-looking design without a single practical consideration. I once suffered through a Discovery Channel program on the history of motorcycles and that program tried to explain away the dopey riding position as being reminiscent of western cowboy saddles. I grew up riding western style saddles and I always had my feet under me anytime I was horseback. I’m completely unconvinced that sticking your feet in a pair of gynecologist stirrups is western, macho, or functional in any way. The “style” is derived from the piles of crap that the gangbangers chopper crowd rode during the days when only degenerates and Europeans rode motorcycles.

The riding position is primitive and uncomfortable. The chassis design negates all of the advantages of a motorcycle. The long, low, heavy, low ground clearance means the bike can't be maneuvered quickly in any kind of emergency. Cruisers can't turn, they can't get over obstacles, they can’t stop quickly, they can only accelerate in a straight line, and they are too heavy to get out of their own way. From a motor vehicle perspective, a cruiser is the equivalent of a Cadillac or, even more accurately, a single-passenger limousine. In other words, useless.

Most cruisers start with a single positive mechanical attribute; they are tuned so mildly that they can get pretty decent mileage when driven conservatively. Cruiser owners “fix” that almost immediately. Put on a noisy pipe, drill random holes in the intake system or put on a geeky chrome airbox and fuel efficiency will be sacrificed for the god of peak power at some random, probably unusable, rpm.

As far as the low CG advantage, that’s only useful when the bike is stationary, which (I guess) is a cruiser’s normal posture. Almost any inseam-challenged, overweight invalid can waddle a leg over a typical cruiser’s seat. A “tall” cruiser will have a 31” seat height while most customs will be modified so that small children can perch comfortably on the seat while planting both feet firmly on the ground. The other advantage to this “design” is that the bike practically stands itself in a parking lot. Like a sand-bottomed Bozo the Clown punching toy, with a pair of flat profile tires, a cruiser is a free-standing structure.

That, of course, is only an advantage when the bike is in a parking lot or barely moving. If form isn’t following some kind of function, I find no useful purpose for the form. A friend once said the cruiser “form is the function” and that lost me even further. If cruisers are art, I’m outta here. I don’t like non-representational art unless it’s on wallpaper and blends in with the furniture. I may not know art, but I know what I like; especially in motorcycles. A cruiser’s primary purpose appears to be to look impressively sedentary parked in front of a bar. I get that function from a rocking chair on my porch.

Tnere are folks who put the lie to my analysis, I'll admit. There are people who put long touring miles on their Harleys, Victories, and such and they amaze me. They are the exception to my "rule" and, as such, are exceptional. Sometimes I suspect they pick these ungainly, unsuited motorcycles just to prove that they can be ridden (tamed?) like a real motorcycle. I have the same kind of attitude toward really small motorcycles out of a similar motivation.

Humans are an irrational animal.

The social and historical aspects of cruisers turn me off even further. The riders who gravitate toward cruisers display a collection of traits that oppose most of what I believe in. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of very nice people riding completely silly motorcycles. Even some of them appear to be ignorant of what their ride-statement represents.

For example, the Nazi paraphernalia. A rider who also teaches MSF classes thought it was funny when I mentioned how insulted my WWII vet father would be seeing him displaying an airbrushed Nazi helmet. The guy is an ex-Marine, ex-policeman for cripes sake! How can it be that hard to figure out? Is there something about Nazis that I don’t know?

It gets a whole lot worse. I know bikers who sport Nazi swastikas and Harley tattoos, side-by-side. Biker rallies co-exist and cohabit with Klan’ers, skinheads, coke and meth dealers, gangsters, and all kinds of vicious, evil creeps. The posers who imitate the biker “style” don’t seem to realize that they are linking themselves with the worst of the worst.

The other social appeal for cruisers seems to be a freaky desire to turn back time to when men were boss and non-white men need not apply. The basic design of the “modern” cruiser recalls the crap that Hardly and Indian were making in the early 50s. Heavy, plodding, underpowered two-wheeled tractors that were more about sound than fury. All the 50s nostalgia recalls for me is fruitcakes like Joe McCarthy and lazy, do-nothing politicians like Eisenhower. The 50s were a time when superstition ruled our education system until the godless Russians gave us a demonstration of the axiom that “the only constant is change.” Of course, once science and engineering became popular areas of study, superstition took a lot of hits and off we went into the godless 60s and 70s.

From a public nuisance standpoint, it is, apparently, practically impossible to simply ride a cruiser. The kinds of people who pick this style of bike also want to announce their presence. Loudly. Their disrespect for my privacy and neighborhood goes right back at them every time they rattle my windows as they roar out of the corner in front of my house. You’d expect that kind of antisocial behavior from teenagers. Geezers blasting rapid fire farting noises are a different kind of retard. That kind of low tech cobbling passes for “customizing” and engineering in this breed of quasi-vehicle and I have to say I find it insanely boring and incredibly irritating.

The damage cruiser doofuses are doing to motorcycling is high on my list, too. They often pick these rolling wheelchairs because they are too fat, too incapacitated, and too scared to swing a leg over a real motorcycle. The prime quality of a typical cruiser is the low seat height. Some of these disabled machines are practically miniatures, with the associated useless suspensions, micro-powered motors, auto-pilot straight-ahead steering, and underpowered brakes. The obvious result is that near-cripples are riding these things into traffic and dying in large numbers. If they keep it up, they are going to give motorcycling such a bad name that no amount of whining by the rest of us will save our vehicle of choice from being banished to go-cart and snowmobile status.

Finally, I have to admit that I think the majority of cruisers are simply eyesores. All that shiny chrome placed in random patterns on badly welded low-grade steel chassis decorated with girlyman fringe and creepy, low-tech paint jobs grates on my nerves like a late night frat party that I can't shut enough windows to allow escape. To my eye, they are incredibly ugly and I can't get past that. It's no more rational than a "no fat chicks" tee-shirt, but ugly is as ugly does and cruiser owners do a lot of ugly.

There is a reason for this longwinded explanation. Stay tuned and all will be revealed.

A letter from a "fan":

From: Foxster5 . . .
Subject: MMM #103 (http://www.motorbyte.com/)

Thomas, in Statistics vs. Useful Information I found it disturbing that you would refer to the use of a PUBLIC way, by which the people PAY for, is referred to as a PRIVILEGE and not a right. A "driver" is a paid occupation, a "traveler" has the right to use the roadway free of charge and only so far restricted as the rights of others may be respected. We have the right to life, liberty and property as well and the STATE can not TAX our personal and private property, 10th Amendment of the Constitution.The STATE can not restrict or prohibit the right of movement. Almost all courts in the country agree, including the Supreme Court. I gave you a load of information on just this subject and you must not have read any of it. To say that the STATE may "BAN" motorcycles from the roadway is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. THEY CAN NOT!! It is our right to own property and included in that right is the right to use that property any way we see fit so long as we respect others rights. I would think that being your age you would have read the Constitutions and the Declaration of Independence and now these things to be self evident. Are you employed by the Rothschilds and are you part of the New World Order? Only a journalists that is employed by these morons would make such absurd and defeatist statements. I really want to meet you and explain the whole truth. You can reach me at 76 . . . and we can talk about meeting, I will even buy you dinner.

Cheers, Don

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don,

Even worse, I'm "subsidized" by the infinitely powerful Wanchena family. They are beyond New World Order and well into the Usual World Disorder, something far more likely to occur in my lifetime.

I read lots of silly stuff on the web, but I don't believe everything I read just because someone took the time to document their paranoia. If you really believe the government can't ban motorcycles from the road, try riding an unlit, unlicensed 2-stroke dirt bike from New York to California. Let me know how many dirt bikes you have to buy before you finally reach the Left Coast. Hauling it in a pickup doesn't count. How about putting a horse and buggy on the freeway? Or a 50cc scooter? Tried that lately? I don't find it difficult to imagine a high risk, low value recreation vehicle like motorcycles being legislated into limited use RV status.

A few years back, a self-described "ex-cop" took time to rant at me about his right to damage the ears of anyone foolish enough not to wear hearing protection as he rode his unmuffled Hardly through neighborhoods. I love discussion, but if I wanted to be preached at I'd join a church. His idea of "discussion" was to call me an idiot and to wave his years of meter-maiding as evidence of his superior knowledge. Again, I can get argumentum ad hominem and verecundiam at any bar or church. It's not worth crossing the street to hunt down. I've watched "rights" far more important than motorcycle transportation vanish without a whisper in my lifetime, especially in the last ten years. I'm unconvinced that standing behind our great Constitution provides much solace for those who are held in prison without hope or who are spied on because they aren't Republicans.

Anyone who has spent a moment or two looking at the history of economics, transportation, and individual rights can see that some "rights" are more inherit than others. Where privilege comes into play is nested in your own statement, "so long as we respect others rights." Publicly financed facilities, like public buildings, highways, and many state-managed natural resources (state and national parks, for example) are regulated by the will of the whole public for the good of the majority (even when we disagree with their assessment). I'm simply arguing that we should try to fix the unnecessarily disproportionately high mortality and morbidity rate for motorcyclists and reduce our irritation quotient before we join the long list of "historic" transportation modes.

As for the "whole truth," I've been an engineer too long to believe in it, or a close approximation, exists. You can wave the "I won't stand for this" and "You can't do this" flag at the rest of the population, if you think that will get any traction, but I'm not betting that it will be successful. You probably have noticed that many people have, even recently, ended up in jail imagining that the "STATE can not TAX our personal and private property." Evidently, they can. Ask Wesley Snipes.

Thomas Day

Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly Magazine
http://www.motorbyte.com/mmm/
http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/
thomas@motorbyte.com