Memories on My Luggage

Turned out, the big thing I missed about my 12 year partner in travel, my 2004 DL650 V-Strom, was getting to see those place-marker stickers on the luggage and right side cover. The guy who bought the bike, Paul Purdes, generously took excellent pictures of the cases and stickers which my wife will make into a collage that I can hang on my office wall. In the meantime, I put his pictures and some of my favorite memories of that motorcycle into a video that I can enjoy right now. Hopefully, you find something entertaining in it also. 

Go East, Old Man

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

Last year, when I got back from my excursion to Alaska, a friend got the bike bug. Scott bought a 1992 850 TDM and began to regularly ride to work. About the same time, my brother sent me a collection of pictures from Thousand Islands, NY. The islands were decorated with a collection of dream houses; many were small, all were surrounded and isolated by water, and some were outright castles. The pictures appealed to a part of me that wants to visit Europe but assumes I'll never have the time or money. Scott knew about the Thousand Islands and that area. We started talking about doing a trip together, east. The more we talked, the more eastward the trip progressed. Finally, decided to ride to Nova Scotia, possibly ferrying to Newfoundland. Our wives planned to fly to Halifax to take in a little of the most remote part of the trip.

Once I get a trip direction sorted out, I'm mono-tracked about going. Other people program in some flexibility in their lives, accounting for work, family, health, and other responsibilities and realities. Not me. If I say, "I"m going ," you can assume I'm going. I spent the first 35 years of my working life giving up vacations for the demands of work. For whatever life I have left, work takes a backseat to my vacations. Money is time. Time is finite and the last twenty-five years of incompetent government have proven that money is infinite. Spend finite resources carefully and let the infinite stuff take care of itself. 

Once I had a destination picked out, I set out to plan my route, Canadian side going east, US side coming home. Garmin's Mapsource software and I picked the roads, almost all two-lanes through places I've never been and where I hoped camping sites would be plentiful. I made a best-guess as to when I might be able to reach Halifax, cleared the dates with my wife, made her plane reservations, found a remote motel/resort where we'd spend some time together, and started putting my traveling gear together. August rolled around and I was ready to hit the road.

Right. In fact, I struggled for a month to find a pair of sprockets for my V-Strom. Nobody had them in stock. While waiting for sprockets, I tore down the back end of the bike, replacing bearings and such, replaced all the bike's fluids. Before that, I'd installed new tires and taken the easy way to replace the fork fluid; which turned out to be the non-functional way. The forks were almost seized. I don't have the equipment to securely pull both the front and back end of the bike, so I needed to get the back tire on the bike so that I could redo the forks. I got all that finished one day before the trip date. Three near-panic days of going over the maintenance list, packing clothing and gear, and triple checking it all. I'm tired, but ready to go.

While my stuff was in process, Scott's fell apart. His bike turned out to be the victim of a retarded past owner and the final straw was discovering the countershaft sprocket had been welded to the shaft and Scott would be stuck for five more weeks before all the parts to repair that idiocy would show up. He decided to trail along to Kingston, New York, in his Toyota. His wife bailed out, entirely. We'd made alternative plans from the start of trip planning, so . . . no problem, I'll do most of the trip on my own.

August 1, Scott arrives at my house and we're headed to Thunder Bay. About twenty miles out of town and I realize something is very wrong. Most likely, food poisoning. My stomach is boiling and I am freezing. I have had chronic pain in my neck for a month and I'm ignoring it. If it's serious, there is nothing I can do about it. If it's a pulled muscle, I can live with it. However, combined with the symptoms of ptomaine, I can barely turn my head to see what's around me. Whatever doesn't kill me . . .

We whip through Duluth via the interstate and take the scenic route on 61 to Thunder Bay. A few miles from the boarder and it starts to rain and I stopped to get into my Darian pants. Hardly slowing for the boarder crossing, we get into Canada in good time. It starts to rain harder. Then, it hails. There is no place to stop and I can't see more than 50 feet and it feels like being sandblasted by golf balls. Now, I'm freezing, cramping, and my neck, knees, shoulders, butt are killing me. I'm beginning to wonder if I have a flu. I stop on the edge of Thunder Bay to add layers.

Once we're clear of Thunder Bay, the temperature dropped but the rain stopped in another sixty miles. My body was working poorly, but my 'stich gear kept  me dry. My boots, however, leak. I forgot to pack the Nicwax. Now, I have something to hunt for at every stop until Halifax. Doesn't anybody go outside in Canada? I gave up trying to push myself around the lake a little before dusk, about halfway across Lake Superior, just before the scenery gets really cool. Because I was shivering like I'd been naked in sub-zero temps, I begged off on camping and we settled for a decent cabin with a hot shower. I stepped into the shower before the water temperature settled down and boiled myself until the shivering stops. Scott bought a couple of beers from the campground store, I drank one and fell asleep to the sound of Scott talking about the rain and the trip. I woke up about 3AM to crawl under the covers and go back to sleep.

The next morning, I felt great. Cramps were mostly gone, chills vanished, and my neck pain was back to its normal dull throb. We got on the road fairly early, covered a hundred miles before stopping for breakfast in Wawa, Ontario. I looked, for the first time, for a boot treatment and bought more bug spray. Five days later, I would discover that some scumbag at either the restaurant or the drug store snagged my credit card data and started racking up $100 charges on my account. We'd passed a little of the coolest parts of the north shore, but the best was yet to come.

We kept going, through the boarder town of Sault Ste Marie to Manitoulin Island. The "plan" was to get to South Baymouth and the ferry before it sailed at 5:30PM, in case we could jump the boat earlier than Scott's 10:30PM reservation. Turns out, a bike can get on pretty much any time, but Scott's cage was stuck to the late boat. We discussed my going ahead to find a campground or motel, but neither of our cell phones worked on Manitoulin, so that plan had a fatal flaw if we were going to find each other on the other side. We decided to gamble on the late crossing. Bad plan. Everything was either full or out of business from Tobermory to Owen Sound; only 70 miles but in pitch black with a little fog and the constant watch for deer and other night time hazards, stopping at ever "vacant" sign to discover the proprietor was a lazy bastard who hadn't bothered to add "no" to his sign. Finally, on a tip from a clerk at a full-up Travelodge, we straggled into a city campsite at 3AM for two hours of sleep.

Back on the road for Toronto and Kingston, New York. Scott has friends to meet in Toronto, I want to get to the islands to play tourist. Another friend of Scott's has cabins on Black Lake, NY, . All the way down, from Tobermory, I experienced the east coast trait that had put me off from the beginning of the trip; massive overpopulation. This part of Ontario is as scenic as Kansas, with one-hundred-and-ten-times as many towns and people. The map is speckled with towns and so is reality. The only upside is that the going is so slow that I get almost 60mpg out of the V-Strom.

Scott and I are going to meet a his friends' resort on the 4th. I get through the boarder check, cross the St. Lawrence, follow my GPS to the Indianhead Point Resort. Knowing Scott is, apparently, a ticket to the easy life on the East Coast. We end up talking politics, business, tree-hugging, and music way into the night. The next day, I rode into Alexandria Bay and took a cattle boat tour of the islands. I took a lot of pictures, found a dream house, ate sea food on the beach, learned a little American history, and went back to the resort tired and with a satisfied tourist Jones. Scott was there, we all hung out another late night, and went to bed a few hours before I planned to hit the road again.

In the morning, I'm off for Montreal, Quebec City, and as far as I can get east into Quebec. I made Montreal about 11AM, toured the city, saw some sights, freaked out at the crazy French Canadian drivers, and decided to keep going so that I could help celebrate Quebec City's 400th birthday. I got there in time to find a parking place and dash for a spot to watch a really cool parade. This place knows how to throw a birthday party. Great music, awesome costumes, an elbow-to-elbow crowd, and gorgeous, incomprehensible French-speaking women lining the streets. The food on the tables of the outdoor bistros looked amazing, especially the bread. I went looking for an ATM and a place to sleep for the night. First, I discovered banks and downtown Quebec City don't go together. Second, I learned that every room within 100 miles had been booked for months. Third, at an ATM 25 miles out of the city I learned my bank card had been locked down. I called the bank, learned that their card fraud folks had decided that someone was playing with my credit card number. They reopened the card for the night and I pulled out a bunch of cash and killed the bank card the next day.

Once I had cash in hand, I started riding east, watching for a campsite. I found an abandoned city campsite in one of the many dinky towns along the Fleuve St. Laurent and rode around the barrier to find a campsite. The "services" were all locked down, but I only needed a pair of trees for the hammock. The next morning, I was on the road by 5AM and headed for my day's first targets, a pay phone and the L'Epopée de la Moto in St-Jean-Port-Joli. This is a weird motorcyclists' gem in a really out of the way place. The museum collects, mostly, European motorcycles from all periods and all sorts; road bikes, racing bikes, and dirt bikes. I needed the pay phone so that I could talk to my bank and the VISA characters. The conversation with my bank was quick and efficient. Panama is an interesting place for VISA to have moved their help desk. Interesting, but not useful. I wasted an hour lining up a Western Union cash pickup that never arrived and a replacement card that would arrive a day too late.

A couple of hours ogling historic bikes, mostly from my own riding era, and I'm on the road toward Riviere du Loup and Edmundston. At this point, I have decisions to make and I made them on the road. I need to get to a place called Dufferin Bay by early on the 8th, two days from now. My original route planned to hook into Maine at the top of the state, at Madawaska, and travel down US 1 to Houlton, where I'd cross back to Canada. The way US boarder crossings have been going for me, that seemed like a major time burner. I think Homeland Security has employed every unemployable ex-high school bully to man the checkpoints. So, I decided to stay in Canada on Highway 2. At Grand Falls, I had another decision to make, cross New Brunswick on 108 to Maraichi where I could ride south along the Northumberland Strait to Nova Scotia or stay on the fast track, Highway 2. I took the low road and stuck with the fast traffic. By the time I got to Fredericton, I was trashed. I stumbled into a worn out motel full of old gearheads who blasted Iron Maiden and AC/DC way into the night. It was a waste of money and I would have slept better on the side of the road.

Friday, I have to find the Halifax Airport, our resort, convince the resort folks that I will (eventually) have a working credit card, dump off all of my gear, get back to the airport, pickup my wife, and get the two of us back to the resort. The airport Garmin had picked for me turned out to be the Canadian Forces Base, which was a pain in the ass to find, harder to get to, and almost landed me in jail for the effort. The Halifax International Airport turned out to be about 20 miles north, but I found it. The resort was 95 miles east along the southern coast of Nova Scotia. I found it, the folks at the Marquis of Dufferin Seaside Inn were insanely trusting and left the financial problem for the next day. I dumped my gear, headed back to the airport with a couple of hours to spare. When I made it back to Halifax, I decided to find some extra rain protection for my wife, since it was raining and her gear was only waterproof from the waist down. I blew an hour looking for rain gear and failed. I gave up, headed for the airport, found it, found a parking place, walked leisurely to the baggage area, glanced at a schedule board and saw that her plane had arrived. Guess what? Nova Scotia is one time slot east of Eastern Standard Time.

She tells me her horror story from the customs clowns at Toronto. We load up her tiny luggage and hit the road, in the dark, for our 95 mile ride to the resort. It starts raining as we enter Halifax, rains harder as we head into the pitch black of 107, begins to pour as we turn onto 7, and only gets worse for the next 60 miles. There is no place to stop, turning around would be no better than going on, especially without a backup reservation. My brave wife tells me, "keep going" every time I ask if she wants to stop, rest, or strangle me. The story of that ride is a whole article on its own. We arrive alive.

The next three days we barely use the bike at all. Everything we need is walking distance from the resort. We take a couple of short trips to nearby tourist attractions, but this part of the trip is about getting to know one small spot in Nova Scotia. Monday, we head for our hotel in Halifax, the one that provides a shuttle service from the hotel to the airport on Monday morning. Halifax is hosting a Buskers Street Festival and that is a blast. We saw a guy set his mouth on fire, walk on a ladder of sharp swords, and lie down on a bed of nails while a 200 pound guy stood on his chest. Bloody stuff, but entertaining.

We say goodbye early in the morning and she is off for the airport. Prowling Halifax by GPS, I find a place that sells Nicwax stuff and I'm off for Cape Breton. At this point, the first 2400 miles of this trip are logged and I have 3600 left to ride. The Cabot Trail is in my sights.

Getting Badgered

The vanishing summer and approaching time zone change bit me in the ass this morning. I’m used to sun and birds waking me up at 5:30, so I just let them do their work in starting my day. It’s still dark, I’m awake, and when I check my watch it’s 6:45. Crap! I have about 20 minutes to get to the ferry ticket office or I’m going back where I came from and, maybe, even around Chicago. My usual leisurely camp breakdown turns into organized chaos, but I’m pretty practiced at this and I think I made it out with everything I brought in. On the road in 15 minutes, I’m following the advice of my GPS like a robot.

Made it, with some hassle. With my ear plugs in, I get about a dozen instructions wrong and end up ping-ponging from security to the ticket office several times before they take pity on me and sell me a ticket. I’m on the boat, it’s heading west, it’s a beautiful cloudless, windless day and I’m back writing to you. The Badger has the coolest lounge chairs on the bow deck and I may fall asleep any minute.

Security has changed a lot since 1997. Then, I rode to the front of the boat, parked the bike, bought a ticket, talked to one of the ship’s owners about how cool he thought my SV’s Two Brothers pipe sounded (I thought it was an irritating racket, but he liked it), and rode on to the ship. Today, I pass by a gunpowder-sniffing dog and a collection of security questions, I screw up getting a second security check when I mistake the security guard’s weird arm waving as a direction to park with the other bikes (of which there are many), and I go through a collection of routines before finally being sold a ticket, parking the bike on the ship, getting the bike inspected, getting inspected myself, and climbing the stairs to the deck. It’s nothing like the bullshit of flying, but it’s a lot of pretend security.

We’re just not very good at managing anything complicated in this country. Like the Brits in 1920, our ruling class has inbred into total flaccid incompetence. G.W. is the best possible example of that breeding failure. I suppose there will never be a war that kills off the children of the rich and retarded ever again, but nature will probably find a way to weed their tiny brains and valueless lives out with disease or infertility. WWI and WWII did a job on Europe’s rich hillbillies, but those wars didn’t touch our richest and worst fit for survival. America has been specially good at protecting inherited wealth and its offspring since the Civil War. They have bought their way out of harm’s way so successfully that they look like the horse-faced British “royal family” or the chimps that we evolved fro. Every failed culture has been overbalanced by royalty and inherited wealth and power when forces against it tipped the scales toward defeat and obsolescence. Why would a boat ride make me think about that crap? Too much time on my hands, I suppose.

This probably isn’t the fastest way to get around Chicago, but it may be the most pleasant. You can sleep on the deck, watch a movie (when the satellite connection works, which wasn’t on this trip), sit in a comfortable interior lounge/museum/quiet room, eat, drink, or wander around enjoying all of those things.

I have decisions to make when the ship docks. The last time I landed in Manitowoc, it was hailing tennis balls, so my “plan” to explore Wisconsin turned into a roller derby/dodge ball contest between my, my sense of balance, and Mommy Nature’s worst tantrum in years. I rode past tornados, hail-decimated buildings and crops, wind-blown slick roads that were often flooded and the detours were worse than the roads they tried to avoid. I ended up riding all the way south to Iowa before I could turn west again. I was so wet and cold that for two days I could barely put in a 200 mile day without hypothermia. I quit, on the 2nd day less than 60 miles from home, finding a motel and standing in a shower to use up two charges of the hot water heater before I stopped shivering. I can’t imagine that this will be a repeat of that experience. Now that I write all of this, I can’t remember what made me thing taking the Badger across Lake Michigan would revive pleasant old memories. That was a miserable end to an otherwise fine trip.

Anyway, I have a couple of possible things to do and see on my last leg of the 2008 Crazy Old Man’s Tour. I want to visit Green Bay, home of the Minnesota nemesis. It is such a tiny town to have a pro team that it has to be interesting and a fun place to pick up an irritating sticker for my gear. After that, I have two return plans: 1) down to Milwaukee to visit the new Harley Museum and, maybe, the Buell plant or 2) across country more directly toward home. It’s a tough call. Milwaukee isn’t a place I’ve ever found to be very interesting. It’s hard to imagine anything in the museum that I haven’t seen and Harley’s marketing always pisses me off. Buell, on the other hand, is fascinating. Eric is an engineering hero and his plant is making better products every year. If the Buell Ulysses had been available when I bought my V-Strom, I’d have considered the choice a long time. It’s the first American motorcycle I’ve ever liked, except for the XL750 Harley race bike. Either way, Green Bay is on the trip. I’ll decide about the rest when I’m leaving Green Bay. I have plotted two GPS routes home, so it’s a button push to re-route when I decide.

I hope I always remember leaving the Badger in 1997. The ship mostly avoided the storm, other than some wind. When it docked, the ground was pure white with hailstones. I waited as long as I could before leaving the protection of the boat. Eventually, the crew threatened to toss me overboard if I didn’t get going. Rolling down that ramp onto balls of ice in a pouring rain storm was one of my life’s greatest acts of resignation. I traveled about 2 blocks, until I found a bank drive-through awning to hide under. The bank opened and I had to move on. The security guy acted as if I was stealing something valuable from the bank, although there were no customers yet for me to have obstructed. I vowed to never start an account with Wisconsin something-or-other Savings and Loan. Eventually, I was on my way out of town and the sky looked threatening in every direction. I couldn’t have gone to Green Bay if I’d have wanted to, the road was closed and downed trees redirected traffic for at least 100 miles in every direction. A smart guy would have found a motel that morning and gone back to sleep for a day or two. I tried to find a way home.

Apparently, there is an adventure rider event going on in Wisconsin this week, near the Apostles. Several guys from Ohio trailered their bikes to Ludington, to avoid the boredom of Ohio and Michigan roads, and are riding the ferry across before they start their week in Wisconsin. I got lots of recommendations for a trip to Kentucky and West Virginia some later date. It’s possible, although my eastern drive is seriously tuned down after this trip. I need some Rocky Mountains to reset my appreciation for real mountains. The Rockies are sort of tame after Alaska, though. It’s a tough call, glad I get to make it.

I made it off of the ferry safely and on to the highway. I discovered a really cool two-lane that parallels the four-lane to Green Bay. I satisfied my rural ruins Jones several times. Green Bay is larger than I expected and a little nicer. I snagged a Packers sticker and a load of pictures. There are a ton of fans visiting Lambeau Field, even off season. Nobody looks at the Dome when there isn’t a game there. I listened to a pair of cashiers argue about the post-Farve Packers and realized how much difference a real city team makes. Only an idiot would care about the rest of the pro team world. The Lakers, Vikings, Jets, etc. don’t belong to the community any more than a McDonald’s franchise. They are just businesses that coincidentally ended up in a particular town. They’ll follow the money anywhere it takes them, like the players also do. The Packers belong to Green Bay, not some whacked out mess like the team organization that renamed the Cav’s stadium “Quicken Loans Stadium.” (“You can’t have popcorn or a hotdog, but you can get your home refinanced/repossessed.”) Cheering for these other corporations is as silly as wearing a Harley tattoo or jumping up and down and shrieking when you see the ENRON logo. The only pro team I care about is the Packers and I don’t particularly like football. I want the Packers to beat everyone, not just the NFL but everyone in pro sports. Actually, I want Green Bay to beat everyone; I don’t care about the Packers, either.

There was a small chance that I might get to tour the Buell factory, but that appears to be vanishing. My motivation to see the Harley museum is almost non-existent. After a heart-stopping meal at a Packer fans’ bar, I may diagonal across Wisconsin toward home. I didn’t give the Buell folks enough time. In my excitement over the idea and my focus on getting from one place to another, I didn’t allow the usual 4-5 days that it takes for business to react. Maybe another time.

I’m done with lunch, still nothing from HD’s marketing department. It’s settled, I’m taking the shorter way home. I have a $300 rat bike to find and fix. The route my GPS picked for the return home was based off of the “shorter route, faster route, etc.” options. I picked faster route, since I’d decided not to stay overnight between home and anywhere. Four and a half hours later, I was home.

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.

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.