Calgary

It is true that I usually write this blog in the first person present tense, the idea is to give the reader a sense of being with me on my travels. This post will just not work that way as the events are so clearly in the past, so I’ll do a more traditional story telling mode, first person past tense. This year is just not turning out the way I had hoped, between a bathroom reno that frankly did not go well thanks to a bad contractor decision, and being frantically busy at work, I’m writing a whole lot less than I should and riding the KLR only a fraction as much as I want to. It is now at the beginning of official summer and I don’t think I’ve done more than 2000 kilometers this year so far, bloody disgrace. The weather has also played its part with the arrival of summer this year in a peak-a-boo, now you see it now you don’t fashion. Snow in the middle of May and morning temperatures below 5 degrees Celsius in the middle of June.

Token motorcycle for this post (Gasoline Alley Calgary)

A few Sundays back is a case in point, I had signed up to do the Cannonball Ironbutt 500, which is a 500 mile ride to be completed in twelve hours. This sounds like an easy feat and in a car is not a particularly heavy drive, but on a motorcycle it is quite grueling as you don’t have time to take many breaks and to rest much, hence the name ‘Ironbutt’, motorcycle seats are generally rather uncomfortable. Anyway, the day dawned and I was up at the fart-of-sparrow to get to the starting point by 7 a.m. It was about 5 degrees centigrade when I left home and the weather was expecting to reach a balmy 18 degrees (feels like 14, or something like that), with 60 km/h gusty winds. Not entirely motorcycling weather at its best. I’m not just a fair weather biker, but I do ride for enjoyment and in normal circumstances I would not be staring of a day’s ride on a day like this, of course if I was already on a trip I’d take the rough with the smooth. In any event I set off manfully after inserting the lining back into the mesh jacket, double socking and donning the full rain gear outfit – rain gear is not just for keeping out rain, but is very effective at keeping a chap warm. I think it was the windiest conditions I have ridden in, at least on the KLR, the Boulevard was a lot heavier machine so probably handled wind better. Even before reaching my starting point, I had a few underwear soiling moments when a gust of wind took me from one lane to another on the motorway. This became a bit of a theme for the day especially when one was riding north or south and through open county. Forest areas were less difficult as the trees shielded me from the wind to some extent, but a lot of the route was on motorways and main roads, which tend to go through farming areas with little forest cover. No excuses offered, I have no point to prove, I bailed less than half way after a particularly wild gust of wind nearly popped me onto the soft shoulder with potentially fatal results. As it is wisely said, he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day. Instead of battling high winds and busy traffic, I took the little roads less travelled by and wound my way home exploring dirt roads, even had time to stop at a really nice (sheltered from the wind) spot and enjoy the lunch I had packed of store bought grilled chicken, boiled eggs and homemade mayonnaise, washed down with a tin of sugar free Red Bull.

I see that I have gotten a little off subject as this post is titled ‘Calgary’. There was no motorcycling involved in this trip, but it was a pretty interesting week nonetheless. Calgary, outside of the annual stampede event, is not usually considered much of a tourist destination, so you may be wondering what on earth I was doing there in the middle of May, and without a motorcycle to boot. The irresistible attraction to this immovable object was a chance to meet-up with my youngest sister, citizen and resident of Australia these past couple of decades. My siblings and I are true participants of the great white South African diaspora, we each literally live in a different corner of the globe – North America, China, Australia and South Africa, like the British Empire, the sun is always shining on one of us. Tamra, my youngest sib, and Liam, my nephew, were in Calgary for Liam to compete in an international wrestling meet, where he was representing Australia as a junior (under 21, I think that means). The young man has talent and took the Gold Medal – three fights that each lasted not much more than the blink of an eye. The interesting thing about this sport was the number of female participants, in my fuddy-duddy old fashion way I had somehow assumed that this was an all-male

sport. Lady wrestling was something done in nightclubs in large tubs of mud for the edification and financial fleecing of oversexed men. Clearly I was wrong and in this completion at least, there were as many female bouts as male and not much difference in technique between the sexes.

Liam takes Gold

The event was held inside an enormous indoor stadium on Calgary University campus, originally built for the speed skating events for the 1988 Winter Olympics. The venue was big enough to host two other tournaments at the same time, Judo and Taekwondo. By midday on Sunday the competitive part of the wresting was done and the athletes retired to wherever athletes retire to in order to rest and recuperate for the week ahead, which was a training camp. Tamra and I decided to head downtown to check out the Devonian Gardens. After about an hour delay getting the campus security to look after a dog locked in a car (see http://not-so-easy-rider.blogspot.ca/2016/05/a-hole-of-week.html) we made our way, courtesy of my Tom Tom GPS, to the center of the city where the Devonian Gardens are to be found. These gardens occupy the top floor of a downtown shopping mall, flourishing under a glass hothouse. On that day the air-conditioning was probably working hard to cool the place down, but I

guess in the middle of winter - Calgary gets pretty bloody cold, not for nothing do cars around here have block heaters – they probably need to push a bit of heat. Now for anyone that hasn’t been to Calgary, the city is obsessed with paleontology, there are dinosaur motifs everywhere. Of course the Devonian period was way before any dinosaurs walked the earth, but it still all fits in with the general image of Calgary. I presume the intension is to have plants growing that would have not been strangers to this particular epoch. From my perspective they really succeed in creating a fascinating urban park that is completely unexpected. I would imagine that coming here in February to get away from the icy winter outside must be a truly wonderful thing for residents of Calgary – the Devonian was apparently a comparatively warm epoch.  

We had lunch at a fast foods sushi place in the gardens, which was pretty decent for a fast food joint, and it served seaweed salad, a dish that has become a favorite for me. After lunch we took a walk through downtown Calgary, this really is a delightful little city. It’s on a completely manageable scale, but has all the sophistication of art, museums, restaurants, bars, squares and fountains, a small China town, street performers and so on that you can wish for.

Downtown Calgary

It reminds me in some way of Edinburgh, vastly different in antiquity, but similar in spirit, both of these cities layer grittiness and urban sophistication in a similar way.  Our walk took us to the Bow River where it looked like half of the city center residents were out walking and enjoying the sunny weather, nice.

Back at the hotel we made a supper of ham, cheese, coleslaw, avocado and hummus, Scotch for me and wine for Tamra. We shared a hotel room, something we probably had not done in forty years, but it seemed to work out fine, I felt no discomfort with the arrangement and neither, it appeared, did she. The room is billed as a suite, which I guess it is as we had a very basic kitchenette and a couch, in addition to two queen size beds, bathroom of course. It was enough and we spent many happy hours catching up, sitting on that couch. And we had an awful lot of catching up to do, we have led very different lives. Tamra has managed to achieve a domesticity coupled with career success that is nothing short of enviable.

Monday morning after a breakfast of microwave bacon and scrambled eggs we headed off to the Badlands of Drumheller and the Royal Tyrrell Museum. This is a good 150 kilometers from Calgary and the source of the paleontology theme referred to earlier. I stupidly decided when we reached Drumheller that I should turn off the GPS as I had an excellent idea where to go to find the museum, so we got to

travel an additional 30 kilometers on the entirely wrong road. Luckily we were in no actual hurry to be anywhere and at least Tamra got to see a herd of bison, farmed like cows, but bison nonetheless. Memo to me, the GPS knows the route, I don’t. Actually now that I am thinking about this I really should get a GPS for my motorcycle, though that would spoil all the fun I have getting horribly lost and seeing things I would otherwise not see.

The Badlands of Drumheller are interesting, reminiscent of all those western movies of my youth, and the photo comics of my army days – poes bookies for my South African readers, ‘Ryter in Swart’ esv. The badlands are of course the very reason that the museum exists, the erosion exposed the dinosaur fossils that have made this area world famous for, well dinosaur fossils.

Badlands

The Royal Tyrell Museum is totally worth the admission fee of $18 each, costly though this is.  The exhibits are arranged in geological ages. They illustrate this with globes of the earth, showing how the continents stacked up at that particular age. Starting with the pre-Cambrian, then Cambrian explosion as documented by the Burgess Shale - discovered not that far from here in the Rockies - and taking the visitor right through to, geologically speaking, modern times. Sometimes just skeleton, sometimes fully reconstructed, the exhibits are really well done and for a brief moment I am able to fathom a succinct sequence of epochs and the creatures that played a part in each epoch, but this does not stay with me quite as well as I would like it to.  Jurassic, Triassic, Carboniferous and so on tend to get a bit mixed up in my mind. This is sad because these were great big swathes of time that I really ought to be a whole lot clearer about. What is a certainty is that this is an absolute must see place, if only to put us in our real place as Johnny-come-latelies that in the greater scheme of things will barely be worth a footnote in the annuals of life on the planet earth. I can compose that footnote for us, ‘Homo sapiens sapiens, so called, but not actually very wise. This species very briefly inhabited the planet for approximately a mere 100 000 years, before going extinct due to its own over consumption and stupidity.’ 

After the tour through the museum we took a short walk on a marked trail through a piece of badlands, part of the museum experience, where we came across some very tame prairie dogs, a species of ground squirrel. Our plump dachshunds at home would love to encounter tame squirrels that don’t have trees to escape into.     

Tame prairie dog

We met up with the young athlete for dinner at a restaurant, carefully chosen for its proximity to the hotel and hence the ability to have a few Scotches and walk home. The restaurant was called ‘Nick’s’ and the theme was 70’s steakhouse, owned and operated by Greeks. I liked it, though the food was not really fantastic, it took me back in time to my youth when eating out was a novel experience and steakhouses were about the pinnacle of culinary experiences. In the large town I grew up in, aside from the handful of small hotels that had dining rooms with set menus and a few roadhouses, there were literally no restaurants, until some Cypriot opened a steakhouse. Here we learned the term À la carte. I recall that ordering a ‘Mixed Grill’ was considered a sophistication of note. I don’t know if mixed grills were on menus anywhere else in the world, but for us this comprised of a feast of grilled sausage, fried steak, lamb chops, bacon or ham, two fried eggs, fried onions, chips, a token slice or two of tomato and several slices of white toast, possibly also fried. It was freaking awesome, if a little fattening.

Tuesday dawned and after a great brekky of microwave bacon, microwave eggs, coleslaw and avocado we headed out to Banff. Now Banff is a bit of an Albertan, if not a Canadian, institution. People talk about Banff as if they have actually lived there, I suspect it lies in the spelling of the town. How do you pronounce it, ‘Banf-f’ or just ‘Banf’, the former is more fun, but I presume the latter is correct. I have been to Banff once before during a business trip to Calgary, the client I was working with took me out there on a Sunday. Banff is situated at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, a superb location.  It was the winter when I visited, but even then it was a great experience, indeed the mountains have a stark beauty in winter that is something to be seen. I’ve mentioned before on this blog how much I miss mountains here in flat old Ontario. As we got close to Banff the mountains rose up from the prairie and my heart lifted with them.  

Banff from Sulphur Mountain

Of course I turned off the GPS when I was sure I knew where to turn off the Trans Canadian Highway, and of course I missed it so overshot by about 13 kilometers. Why it took me so long to realize my mistake is a bit of a mystery, but there you are. After my little detour we drove through town heading first for the obligatory trip up Sulphur Mountain on the cable car… see http://banffandbeyond.com/banff-gondola/. Being a little early in the season it wasn’t too crowded and there was not much of line-up (‘queue’ for non-North American readers). I noticed that many of the tourists were retirees, the new nomads driving these enormous RV’s, pains in the ass on the road. Anyway we ended up sharing a gondola with just such a couple on the way up, and later a different, but identical pair on the way down. Pleasant and chatty though they were, my anti-social persona

Boardwalk with back of sister

would have preferred indifferent silence. I’m not sure I’d conclude that a trip up Sulphur mountain is worth it had we had a two-hour line-up as I suspect would happen in high season, but for us it certainly was. Utterly fantastic views and the walk along the boardwalk on the very top of the mountain to the old weather station was quite something. I drank in the Rockies knowing that soon I’d be back in Ontario and would have to be satisfied with the Kawatha ‘Highlands’ which are barely more than a few pimples on the flat face of Ontario.

Once back in the valley we headed to town in search of lunch. Banff is surprisingly short on parking space, but we eventually we found a spot and after a short walk through the town center found a nice looking Japanese restaurant where we had an entirely passable meal of Sushi and Sashimi washed down with Japanese beer. During lunch Tamra had mentioned that she had not had much of a sense of the aboriginal history, or even encountered a North American Indian. This is true, there is precious little to remind you that only a few hundred years ago this was all the homeland of Sioux, Blackfoot and so on before Europeans obliterated and dispossessed those that lived on the lands that they wanted. A Google search using my phone managed to find at least one museum dedicated to the Indian people that had lived here, the Buffalo Nations Luxton Museum. The building looks like a fort of timber construction; like the ones

a little on the cheesy side exhibit - Buffalo Nations Luxton Museum

you see in old Western movies. It isn’t the greatest of museums and some of the exhibits are rather cheesy, the old fashioned type with poorly made dummies in poses around teepees, still it was interesting and the quite reasonable entrance fee included a small cup of terribly bad coffee in Styrofoam. We were a little disappointed in that we didn’t get a chance to meet with a genuine Indian, the lady that manned the entrance cash point was almost certainly Filipino. Tamra however did pick up some literature on a place called Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, more of that later. 

The next day was to be a quiet day, we spent the morning doing housekeeping stuff like laundry, getting up late and lazing about in the suite and sadly I had some work to do. In the afternoon we decided on one short excursion to Gasoline Alley, a motor car museum. Actually we wanted to see Heritage Park, which is a sort of collection of historical buildings, some actually transported from the original spot, others are recreations, but we were a few days too early as the season had not yet started and the park was not open to the public.

Gasoline Alley, part of Heritage Park is open all year round and worth a visit, more so if you are a petrol head. I’m not, but still it was a well spent few hours. The museum has two floors chock full of the largest collection of cars I have ever seen, spanning from the late nineteenth century to cars from the sixties… even has a caravan which I think dates from about the fifties. They were all meticulously and beautifully restored. There was also a collection of gas station pumps going back to the very early days of motoring. On the lower level there was a guide, a retired chap with an interest in motor cars and he gave us the background story about many of the exhibits which made the visit more interesting than it otherwise would have been. The museum does however fall short in one aspect as far as I am concerned, no motorcycles, can you believe it. None unless you count one motorized bicycle, but then I guess I am prejudiced, motorcars I see as a mode of transport, motorcycles are for fun. 

To be fair the museum does give a sense of the time when motoring was more fun and I felt some nostalgia for the golden age of motoring, Route 66, dive-in theaters, road houses, driving through small towns en-route to a holiday destination, motels and so in. This era is often considered to be a North American phenomenon, of course it wasn’t confined to this continent, it was worldwide. I have wonderful memories of our annual holidays, which usually meant a twelve hour, 650 kilometer drive to the Natal coast. The towns we went through as we progressed to the sea are burned into my mind, Heidelberg, Warden, Harrismith, Van Reenen (and over the magnificent Van Reenen’s Pass), Ladysmith, Colenso, Estcourt, Mooiriver, Pietermaritzburg, Pinetown and finally Durban. I loved going through Estcourt as that was when you started to see lots of Indians about the town and you knew you were well inside Natal and the seaside had to be just ahead. I can recall all of the cars we did this trip in, even an old Morris with wooden beading. One year my dad and the four of us siblings did the trip in a Volkswagen Beetle, with luggage for a two-week holiday, my eldest sister, Karen, was a teenager, so you can imagine the luggage issue. Tamra was quite small and being the youngest spent the trip in the little luggage compartment behind the back seat. The two middle children, Tracy and I sat on the back seat squeezed between a heap of suitcases and the side of the car.

 

The construction of motorways and malls has brought this era to an end. Now one can drive from Johannesburg to Durban in an air-conditioned steel, glass and plastic bubble listening to perfect quality sound in 5 hours without even having to stop for gas. The towns I knew so well are just signposts on highway exists and if you did go there the businesses that served the travelers are all gone and I suspect the towns have become poorer and probably uglier. The drive-ins and road houses that were the highpoints of entertainment of my childhood are also gone, I mean could you possibly beat a toasted cheese sandwich and lime milkshake at the roadhouse, followed by a spaghetti western at the drive-in? Ah yes, hanging out at the mall, stuffing your face at the food court with plastic food and pounding a smart phone with your finger.

Our last day together arrived all too soon. The weather had turned to cold and rainy, being the prairies snow would have not been entirely out of the question.

We decided to drive the 180 kilometers south to the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump site, which turned out to be a world heritage site and another stunning place to visit in this part of the world, despite its gruesome sounding name. A buffalo jump, I assume that there were many of these in the time before the Europeans arrived on the scene and decimated the buffalo (bison) herds, is a site that naturally forms a funnel between two hills with the narrow part of the funnel ending in a cliff. Before horses and guns this was probably the only way that native Americans could effectively hunt this animal. They would lure, by employing several ruses, a small offshoot of the herd into the catchment area of the funnel, then frighten the animals into a stampede that took then over the cliff, where a group of the hunters would finish then off with clubs and spears. Fairly horrible way to go I suppose, but no worse than getting taken down by a pack of wolves, as it is said, ‘nature, red in tooth and claw’, and in those days’ humans were part of nature. A few successful buffalo hunts in the fall were critical for a band of Indians to make it through the fierce winters here. Pemmican (fire dried, crushed meat and berries mixed with fat) for food, hides for shelters and all sorts of thing and bones for fuel, at least nothing went to waste.

The cliff at the end of the funnel

Blackfoot man explains how his ancestors did not waste any part of hunted animals 

 The facility is really well done and the museum staff are all genuine North America Indians, bit of mixed blood here and there I am sure, but that is the reality of what has happened to the native Americans since the palefaces arrived. It’s been a story of near genocide, mirrored almost everywhere where Europeans have decided to lay claim to territory that was populated by so called primitive societies. Now we bemoan the fact that aboriginals, be they be in the New World, Africa, Polynesia or Australia, have social issues, high levels of alcoholism and type 2 diabetes, conveniently forgetting that we destroyed their social structures, stole their land and in some cases actually hunted them down like vermin. The Head-Smashed-In site is a reminder of the heritage of a people that learned to survive, nay thrive, in a tough place to do so, but which has been lost forever. I think these people once lived well, they had community, their lives had purpose and they had a whole lot more freedom than we enjoy today.

Back in Calgary we met up with Liam for a farewell dinner. I was to fly out at 6 a.m. the next morning, which meant I would be leaving the hotel at well before any early birds have begun to look for worms, and not likely to see the young man and my sister again for some years. We talked, wistfully, of our childhood desire, indeed firmly held belief, that us siblings would all live our lives in walking distance of each other and our children would grow up together in a large extended family. Obviously things did not work out that way, our children all speak with different accents and probably keep in touch because of Facebook more than anything thing else. It is sad in some ways, but in other ways we have all led interesting lives that perhaps we would not have had we all simply stayed in Boksburg where we grew up. Had we lived on the edge of the prairies 300 years ago and drove bison over cliffs for a living, maybe we would have seen our children grow up together, maybe I would swap that life for mine, but we are not given that option.

I miss my sisters, all of them, and the way Tamra and I just ‘clicked’ again after all the years since we have been together made me realize that blood, or at least a shared youth, is thicker than water. I must admit that I like Calgary and surrounds. I have spent a few weeks in this city in the past on business, but this is the first time I have been really able to explore a little. It’s nice, but I don’t want to live here, as mentioned, winter in Calgary is the real deal, it gets waaay colder than a witch’s proverbial.

 I must try to get to Australia sometime, I believe there are some awesome roads to ride a motorcycle on there.  

A-hole of the week

I normally am not a busy-body that goes around telling others how to behave, but I will make an exception or this.

I am currently visiting Calgary - sadly not on my motorbike - got here by plane and hired a car, I had business at the Calgary University Campus today, the subject of a future post. As I was about to leave the parking lot, I noticed this little guy panting in the car parked next to me.

The day was not wildly hot, but was sunny and cloudless and in the sun the interior of my rental car was hot enough to be quite uncomfortable even after the windows were wound down.

Now the drivers' side window and the passenger side window were open a crack, but even so it must have been getting really hot inside this car. I could not see if any water had been made available and as I said the little dog was panting. I could see from the pay-and-display ticket on the dash that the car had been there more than two hours.

I called campus security and waited until they arrived - I trust that they took the matter further and did not just leave the poor dog to it's fate. I want to give this message to whoever left that dog in that car - you are a fuck-wit and the winner of this week's Stupid Asshole of the Week award. Congrats.

 Asshole of the week... And the winner is....

Man For All Seasons

The thought has struck me that I have managed to ride more than once during each season of the year over the past year. Spring, summer and fall are expected, but I did ride in Ontario on Christmas day and technically it was still winter in Savannah, albeit on the cusp of spring, when I rented the Harley Softail. I guess Savannah doesn’t really count as it was T-shirt and shorts weather most of the time I was there. The long and harsh winter here in Canada is the bane of the lives of anyone that loves to ride a motorcycle. Anyone else that likes outdoorsy stuff as well I suppose, but winter does allow me to do other things with the time that I would otherwise fritter away with riding my motorbike and writing blogs about it. That is the theory anyway, and now that the riding season has started I look back on the achievements of the winter compared to the plans I had in November and frankly I despair for myself. The book I was going to write hasn’t progressed beyond 40 pages, the carpentry projects I was going to tackle floundered, the house interior did not get a single lick of paint, I did not even read the books I had intended to. Goodness knows what the fuck I’ve been doing with all my time.

Here in Canada we are living through a paradox that we are not entirely happy with, a mild winter followed by a shitty spring. It’s as if the mild winter has seriously overstayed it’s welcome, like a guest that has drunk too much of your booze and simply doesn’t get the message that it’s time to bugger off home. We have a few warm days, then the temperature drops to zero or even below. Two weekends ago Sunday was warm enough for Helena and I to take a ride together, now Helena just does not ride if it’s too cold, so it was actually pretty decent, still cool enough to need to be well wrapped up on a bike though. We went north to Terra Nova, not far from the spot that I wiped out on with the Boulevard, actually went passed the scene of the crime… very slowly around that particular bend. We had a reasonably decent cup of coffee at the Terra Nova Public House, before heading home. They do a prime rib roast dinner every Sunday evening, it’s a nice little pub, so I’d like try this out one Sunday evening, possibly just drive up in the Dodge Caravan. Boring I know, but I don’t like to ride at night in these parts due to the abundance of small forest animals that can wander across your path and create an issue for you and themselves – also I don’t ride with alcohol in my blood. It would be difficult to enjoy an evening in a pub and not have a glass or two of something stronger than Diet Coke. Maybe I’ll invite someone that can be the DD and then I can imbibe enough to make everyone much more interesting… but not enough to convince myself that I am interesting or can actually dance the fandango.

Anyway, that’s just all speculation – today is the last day in April and the weather is playing ball for a change, a glance at the forecast tells me that this is just a blip on an otherwise wet and overcast spring pattern we are experiencing. Tomorrow is not going to be pleasant so it’s a matter of use it or lose it, I decide on the former, and rush through my Saturday chores. Just a note here on my screwed up generation, when I was a kid my dad did not have chores to do, I did, now having reached the age when I start to get senior discounts I still have chores, WTF went wrong? No matter, by noon I’m all chored out, its KSU (kick stand up) time and I’m out of there. I have set out with no real idea where I’m going to ride to, normally I have some sort of plan, If I’m riding with Helena or some else then I plan the route as carefully as possible, but when I’m riding alone it’s a little loosey-goosey.

 I find myself heading north on side roads west of Highway 27, mostly gravel roads through farming areas. Preparations for the coming growing season are well underway, fields are plowed, some even planted. I notice that the sod farmers are already rolling up the first batch of the season. Indeed, I have noticed that the temporary garden centers that appear in the parking lots of grocery stores are in process of going up, gardening has started despite the lousy weather. The rule of thumb is not to start planting seedlings until Victoria Day - May 23, possibility of low overnight temperatures. Helena violated this rule a few years back and we ended up frantically digging up hundreds of seedlings one evening and bringing them into the house to escape the frost. Canadians seem to be big on gardening even though the gardening season is even shorter than the motorcycling season, my personal contribution to the garden comprises of one day a year to repair and re-commission the sprinkler system and I look after the composters. Gardening isn’t entirely my bag, baby. Luckily Helena is an enthusiastic gardener.

Our Garden in Summer - Fruits of Helena's Labor.. and my compost 

Riding in this area this time of year reminds me strongly of the Natal Midlands in winter. It’s something more than the rolling hills, mostly grey and brown fields, olive green patches of forest, tidy farms and an occasional patch of green, it’s in the light and angle of the sun. A wave of nostalgia hits me, which is a little ridiculous as I have, all told, probably spent less than three weeks of my whole life in that area and most of that just driving through on my way to the Natal Coast. Nostalgia is a really an odd phenomenon, it’s just a trick our minds play on us, false memory syndrome for the most part. I think my nostalgia is for the time that I knew that if I wanted to I could drive a few hundred kilometers and be in the lovely Natal Midlands in just a few hours, though that never actually happened on a whim like that. Of course the Midlands are not all that lovely in all of its parts, hidden in the hills are thousands of hopeless shanty settlements where possibly millions of people live lives mired in poverty and sometimes tribal violence. The reality of the other side of the African coin.

 Shades of Natal Midlands 

Anyway, as I get close to Barrie I drag my mind back to the task at hand and decide to take Highway 400 north through the city, past my Alma Mater (Georgian College weekend M1 exit motorcycle license course) and up to Horseshow Valley and Craighurst. I make a mental note to register for the M2 exist course, I’d like to do it this spring. It was my intension to do the course last summer, but the episode with the Suzuki Boulevard and the steel barrier got in my way  http://not-so-easy-rider.blogspot.ca/2015/08/death-of-boulevard.html, at the time the incident freaked me out a little more than I cared to admit.  I am over that, I still like to go fast now and then, but I don’t take a corner faster than am confident to do so. I have, however, improved on my cornering and maybe even have regained confidence beyond the Boulevard crash point, certainly the KLR is a much more maneuverable bike.

The short stretch on Highway 400 is fun once the City of Barrie is in the rear view mirrors and road works are behind me. The pavement is in super condition on this stretch, nicely redone in the past year or two. The KLR has no problem doing highway speeds and I can totally hold my own in the motorway traffic, surprisingly going from 120 km/h to 130 to overtake takes only a couple of seconds, more to the surprise of the motorists than to me.  This is actually quite a gutsy little machine, it would totally smoke the V-twin 900 cc Kawasaki Vulcan, the first motor cycle I owned. It does, however, burn oil at sustained speeds over 120 km/h so I try to avoid long distances on the motorway, but the odd 30 or 40 kilometer stretch playing a bit of Russian roulette in the high-speed motorway traffic just adds to the excitement of being alive. There is a line from the movie ‘The World’s Fastest Indian’ where Burt Monro (Antony Hopkins) says that he lives more in five minutes riding his motorcycle flat out than most people manage to live in a lifetime.

I’m not trying to break any land speed records, but I do get what he is talking about, the feeling of pushing the envelope, that’s what is so alluring about riding a motorcycle. I’m certainly not looking for death, but I have reached the age when I have realized that immortality is not an option, actually if it were to be available it would not necessarily be a good option, so if my end were to come riding my bike that would be acceptable. My children have reached the age that they are, or should, be independent, I would be missed I’m sure, but nobody will go hungry as a result of my demise. The one thing I worry about is getting into an accident that leaves me seriously impaired, mentally or physically, much rather I be a total write off.

On that depressing note I take the turn-off to Craighurst and Horseshoe Valley. This is where I did the one day course last year on off-road/dirt bike riding with Clinton Smout (see http://not-so-easy-rider.blogspot.ca/2015/09/on-and-offthe-road-that-is.html ). This really is a lovely area to ride through, but first things first, I am starving now and a stop at Loobies Restaurant in Craighurst is in order. This is a place worth stopping at and spending more than the 45 minuets I have budget for. Last year Clinton bought me a coffee and slice of strawberry rhubarb pie at the end of the course at Loobies. Today I order the Canadian hamburger, sans the bun, with creamy coleslaw, I’m still eating low carb. They serve this on a bed of lettuce and tomato, beef patty, cheddar cheese and bacon, very, very tasty and the coleslaw is delicious… the coffee is not too shabby for a place like this, especially with a good helping of cream.

After lunch I follow Horseshoe Valley Road, aka Simcoe County Road 22 in an easterly direction until 5^th Line N, which I follow south. The sign says ‘Rough Road’ and they are not kidding, this is the type of road the KLR was designed for, gravel, very loose and plenty of soft sand, steep up and down hills. Enough to get the feeling of adventure touring, without really adventure touring, it’s nice. I see there are lots of trails around here where OTRF (Ontario Trail Riders Federation) members are allowed to ride – I haven’t renewed my membership for this year, mainly because I found that I didn’t really ride the trails very much. I like to ride the gravel roads, but the hard core trail riding is just not for me, perhaps had I started doing trail riding when I was much younger the bug might have bitten, right now I find it a little too energetic for my taste. I probably ride 95% on pavement, I need to figure out more routes that include more gravel, at least so that I can justify the semi knobblies I have on the bike.

5th Line N

This area is nicely forested with a mix of evergreen and deciduous, the deciduous trees have not yet got their spring leaves so the forest maintains a bare sort of beauty. I’ve said before that spring is the ugliest season in Southern Ontario, at least until the leaves appear and the ferns and flowers erupt from the earth. However, I have to admit when you are inside a forest different standard prevails – it remains lovely through all seasons, just the nature of the lovely is different. Slightly to the north of here is the Copeland Forest, though I have seen it from Highway 400, I haven’t yet been there.  I believe that it is really gorgeous, a small piece of the deep woods that remains from the great forest that blanketed the entire eastern side of this continent. It’s a popular place for walking trails, bird watching, horse trails and riding mountain bikes, I don’t believe you can ride a motor cycle there, but that’s ok with me, we need tranquil places that anyone can go to and commune a bit with nature is peace and quiet. The forest I’m riding through seems to be partly Simcoe County forest and privately owned land. I notice that there are Skidoo trails here… mmm maybe I should consider that for a winter thing to do.

All too soon the gravel road ends at the intersection of 5^th line and Bass Lake Side Road, it’s paved from there on to where it meets up with Lake Simcoe. I turn left, there are a few nice little twisties on this road before it ends in a T-Junction and I make my way south to Old Barrie Road and through the small city of Orillia. Orillia is the second largest city on the shores of Lake Simcoe, not a very large city I will grant you, but a city nonetheless with a population over 30,000 and growing. I always fancied that it must have been named after some or other hot Iberian babe, but apparently ‘orillia’ just means ‘lakeshore’. Which is not a bad name for a city that borders on two lakes, Simcoe and Couchiching. There is evidence that this area has been settled by humans for at least 4,000 years, with the setting of fish traps in the narrows between these two lakes as the main attraction for settlements here. In fact, it is this narrows that the name Toronto comes from, which was the original name for Lake Simcoe, so perhaps Orillia has the real rights to this name. Of course the Indians that last held sway over this point on these waterways are no longer here, they, or their descendants are instead running a casino a few kilometers to the north on the east shores of Lake Couchiching - Casino Rama where some idiots regularly pour a decent proportion of the bi-monthly income into slot machines.

As I cross over the narrows and join up with the Trans-Canadian Highway I see that both lakes are well and truly thawed, ice fishing is done, normal fishing and boating activities are well underway. Oh yes, I like it. I may well be a man for all seasons, but bring on summer!  

It’s getting late so I stick to the main routes and I’m home in an hour and a half, in time walk the dogs and enjoy a sundowner on the deck, albeit with a thick sweater on.

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Deep South

It’s Wednesday and Mike is attending to his course with Gulf Stream and I’m going to find out what this baby really can do. Actually that’s just a joke, I don’t think I have quite got the cojones to take this Harley to the limit. Yesterday before I met up with Mike I did a stretch on the I95 and rode at 90 mph, about 144 km/h, I could feel that there were still plenty of horses available in the store. Taking my KLR 650 up to the max is a little scary as well, not because it’s so fast, but because at 140 km/h, which is about the most one can expect to get from it, it no longer feels terribly stable, the bike is just not heavy enough. The Harley Davidson Softail Heritage is plenty heavy enough so stability isn’t an issue, it’s just that it vibrates like crazy. This seems to be a Harley thing; I have experienced this with Helena’s 883 Sportster, but thought that it was something that just the Sportster did at anything over 110 km/h, but even the Softail gets the shakes at about the same speed. I mean really it shakes, like enough to loosen the ancient amalgam in my back teeth. Even the single cylinder KLR is a smoother ride, I’m no mechanic, but I suspect this is because the engine is air cooled, which is less effective than liquid, hence the design allows for a little more play in the moving parts than is the case for a liquid cooled machine.

The big Harley parked  outside my the hotel

The gal at the Harley dealership – hardly a gal I suppose, she is at least my age and then a few – that did the rental for me gave me a few routes that I could try. Just some Google maps printed out, very simple, probably took someone an hour or so to do, but hey, what a fabulous thing to do. I’m not from around here and they know the good routes to ride, it’s great that they thought to do it. That is something that one just has to hand to Harley Davidson, if I ever bought a Harley it would be less to do with the bike and more to do with the service. Helena, and even I, always get treated like long lost buddies or family when we go to Barrie Harley Davidson, the dealership where she bought her bike. Sure they do it to sell bikes, but it’s still nice.

I chose the ‘Millen Loop’ route that will take me inland, I’m keen to see the Deep South, warts, guys in bedsheets and all. Whereas there may well be many rednecks that are backward, bigoted and inbred, my travels in the southern states so far have not revealed a great many of this type of person. On the contrary, the friendliest and nicest Americans, both black and white that I have come across have been encountered in the southern states. This may well be because I have so far mostly only visited the more sophisticated spots, seaside Florida, Hilton Head, Charleston and Savannah hardly qualify as the deep south. Anyway, from my hotel in mid-town Savannah I head south on Abercorn Street, which seems to be the road that divides Savannah into east and west sides. Abercorn Street is also Highway 204, which swings west as you reach the outskirts of Savannah. Loads of construction on the road and my progress is a little delayed, I tap into the power of the big Harley and do some skillful maneuvering to get past the obstruction much faster than my four wheeled fellow travelers, it is the advantage of this mode of transport, I feel their chagrin as I sail past and into the sunlit uplands of the open road.  Under the I95 and past the Harley dealership, zoom do I. There is a smile on my face; it’s March break, I’m free, it’s warm and I’m riding a great motorcycle on a road I’ve not ridden before – what more can a chap reasonably ask for?     

After going under the I95 the road changes name to Fort Argyle Road, but keeps the Highway 204 identity there are some nice gentle twistiness through some pine plantations and natural forests. It’s pleasant, but no real match for the more beautiful forests of the north where I hale from. One can just imagine what this continent must have looked like a mere 500 years ago, before Homo European Destructus had completely tamed and exploited it. It’s not that I believe in the well debunked ideal of the virtues of the noble savage - it is reasonably well proved that the arrival of the ancestors of today’s First Nations in the New World spelt extinction for the mega fauna of two continents – however the ignoble savage certainly was lighter on the ecology than western civilization. What I am talking about is a lost world that we only get to glimpse from the remnants and so imagine the great forests and endless grass plains that once was this continent.  Sadly, most human beings don’t even think about what we have lost, we are too busy working to feed our consumerism or concerning ourselves with the doings and screwings of the rich and famous and other trivial shit.

As I travel further from Savannah I notice that the level of apparent prosperity declines, not marginally, but rather sharply. It doesn’t take many miles to be right in the boonies and the quality of the housing drops like a stone. I have remarked on this disparity in the USA before, but it still surprises me that the biggest economy and most powerful country on earth has such a level of wealth inequality. Mike said to me that he thinks that Americans value personal independence above anything else, hence socialistic ideals of social equality, redistribution of wealth, universal health care and so on have never really caught on. Personally I think the poor have bought into the myth of the American dream and have swapped an acceptable standard of living for a one in a hundred thousand chance of becoming a George Clooney.  The middle class is no less delusional, but this problem is more universal, we have sold our souls and waking hours to the capitalists for the dubious privilege of buying and owning what is mostly unnecessary rubbish. Oh, how I would love to be free, to spend my days riding a motorcycle and my evenings writing about it, but sadly that is not my life and these moments are rare and snatched, my soul, like everyone else’s, is forfeit.

There is another phenomenon that I notice. No matter how grubby and poor the housing in the small settlements I encounter along the way, there is no shortage of churches. Honestly, I have never seen so many churches for so few houses before. I’ve discovered that there are more varieties of Baptists than even Heinz could cope with. Also the churches are always way nicer looking than the homes, I pass one sign outside a church for some or other flavor of Baptist, ‘Pastor appreciation week – give generously’. I wonder whose bright idea that was? It seems to my cynical mind that the only business that’s doing well out here is the God business. Maybe it makes sense, if you are poor and living in squalid circumstances, you have limited education and opportunities out in the boonies are almost non-existent, then the promise that God will see to it that you have an eternity of good things in the next life must be very appealing. Of course this is one of the means by which the haves have kept the have-nots in their place for millennia. Oh well perhaps it’s more pleasant to live with hope, that may be delusional, than no hope at all.

I take a right where Highway 204 ends with a T-junction with US Highway 208, which feels like I’m going the wrong way, but I have confidence in the map I’m following, and indeed it is just a short while before I’m heading North West again on Eldora Road. A nice quiet, but sadly straight as a die, road. I pass some scraggly looking cotton fields; I am guessing they look scraggly because it is the time of year, probably early spring is not the best time to look at a cotton field. One cannot but think about the history of this industry in this part of the world, and shake your head in wonder. The American Civil War officially ended in 1865, so that would be a good date to use as the definitive end of official slavery in the USA. This is 151 years ago; it is about two life times past – which means that there are still people alive today whose grandparents were born into slavery. I know that perceptions of morality have a lot to do with the prevailing zeitgeist, but I believe that for one human being to own another is the most immoral thing in relative and absolute terms. It is difficult to get one’s head around the fact that this practice was only finally abandoned by this nation, whose foundational values was supposedly liberation of the individual, a mere 151 years ago. It is also interesting to note what the the ancient texts, that so many people believe provide our moral compass, have to say on the subject – the Koran positively endorses and encourages slavery, and the Bible, both Old and New Testaments makes no negative moral judgement on the issue, God clearly has no issue with the practice.

As I turn off Eldora road to Old River Road I’m starting to get quite hungry. I deliberately didn’t eat breakfast in my hotel room, it has a bar fridge where I have some ham, cheese and hard boiled eggs, because I fancied to find a little rustic diner somewhere and have fried eggs, bacon and maybe try some grits for bnreakfast. I have in my mind the scene from the movie ‘My Cousin Vinny’ where Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei have breakfast and taste grits for the first time. To this point I have not passed any place that is remotely what I have in mind since leaving the city limits of Savannah. Grits, by the way, for the benefit of my ‘mieliepap’ eating readers in Africa, is just roughly ground white corn (maize) made into a porridge, it’s ok, but Africans have more and tastier ways of cooking this staple.  Old River Road is a pleasant road to ride, the blacktop is in pretty decent shape, as is the case with most roads in the USA, there is not much traffic and the scenery is a nice mix of farmland and forest, albeit absent of diners and infested with churches. I believe the ‘River’ in ‘Old River Road’ is a reference to the Ogeechee River which it runs parallel to, but not close enough to ever actually get a glimpse of it. I’ve crossed this river a few times earlier in the day and yesterday on my way down to Brunswick, it meanders across the coastal plains to eventually meet the ocean about twenty odd miles south of Savannah. Ogeechee must have an American Indian origin, some cursory research doesn’t reveal exactly what, but it does have a really great sound when you pronounce it… try it.

Ogeechee River

It’s getting on to noon and the emptiness in my stomach is now making itself felt and still I haven’t spotted a rustic diner, or anywhere else that promises a decent meal – I decide to take a detour from the mapped out route and turn left down Highway 24, a slightly more substantial road in the hope of finding something. I’m also running a little low on gas, not dangerously so yet, however I have noticed that the v-twin 103 cubic inch (about 1700 cc) machine is a lot greedier on gas than my KLR’s 650 cc single and when you reach a certain point on the gauge the remaining gas seems to drop at an alarming rate. It turns out that my instinct is spot on and at the intersection of Clito Road there is a gas station and a Zip-n-Foods, not exactly the rustic diner, but I have dropped my standards due to hunger pangs.  Zip-n-Foods is more like a convenience store with a few Formica covered tables. The breakfast menu is no longer available, but they have hot trays of battered fried pork chops, Southern fried chicken pieces and stir fried rice. I opt for three large pieces of Southern fried chicken, two huge breasts and a generous thigh, served to me in a Styrofoam container with plastic knife and fork, which I do not bother with. Mm, mm, mm, the Colonel should retire, I have never tasted fried chicken quite as delicious as this. Seriously, the batter is just perfect in the balance between crisp and oily, with a nice little explosion of spiced oil as you bite into it, then the meat is tender, moist, tasty and cooked just enough. I wash it down with a bottle of Diet Coke and it feels like I have eaten at the Ritz. The funny thing is the place is run by Indians, not the North American kind, the Asian variety, and like all people that I have encountered in the Southern states they are friendly and helpful, and clearly have figured out fried chicken. I have just one complaint, the gas station only has 87 octane which is not really suitable for the motorcycle, my hosts advise that I’ll find a gas station back on the Old River Road not too far that sells premium grade gas.

Zip-n-Foods - home of great fried chicken

And so it turns out, stomach full and gas tank full I proceed on Old River Road which eventually becomes Old Savannah Road, then north on US 25 to the small town of Millen, hence the name that Harley Davidson gave to the route. From Millen it’s Highway 17 to the town of Wadley. Wadley is the most north-westerly point of the route. The route is basically a right angled triangle and Wadley is the endpoint of the hypotenuse. As we all learned in grade 5 math, although the squares of the other two sides together are equal to the square of the hypotenuse, the sum of actual lengths of the other two sides is greater than the hypotenuse, hence at Wadley I am less than half way, even though it’s already 2 in the afternoon. I have arrangements to meet Mike at 4.30. I text and arrange a later time. We are planning an early dinner in Savannah – sushi.  I actually don’t expect to be too late, from Wadley it’s motorway and main roads home. US 1 directly south is a dual carriageway motorway and the traffic speed is well over 80 mph which the Harley does with ease, albeit at the expense of jellied eyes and loosened dental amalgam. At the town of Lyons, I take US 280 east which eventually merges with Highway 204 which is, as mentioned earlier, none other than Abercorn Street, which is pretty much where my hotel is. I’m home in time for a shower and change before Mike fetches me for dinner.

As I put the finishing touches to this post, it is several weeks later. I am back in Canada, and sadly back in winter. It has been a very grey Sunday and I’m looking out of the window to the back garden that is covered in a light dusting of snow. I really miss the sunny and warm Georgian spring that I was able to experience for a short time. Frankly I miss Georgia and South Carolina.  Mike and I visited, by car, Hilton Head, Charleston and Tybee Island. What a fabulous part of the world, I will definitely like to ride down to the area on my bike sometime, I suspect that autumn is the time to do it, summer may well be too hot.

I managed one short ride since getting back, but then the polar vortex paid us a visit. For now, it looks like the riding season is delayed for a few weeks, it seems that Wiarton Willie, the Ontario groundhog, got it wrong.  

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Hilton Head - South Carolina 

Charleston - South Carolina  

Tybee Island - Georgia 

Savannah Georgia USA

It was 1974 or there about, the Age of Aquarius had already dawned, those of us boys that could wore our hair long, the rest of us were envious. I fell into the envious group, still at school and subject to school rules, an inch above the collar and no lock to touch the ears, my standing in the cool group was at an all-time low. I attended a strict boarding school, bit of a borstal in fact, that brooked no shit at all, beatings were as regular as clockwork and more often than not administered by a prefect. Happily getting buggered was not… it was not that sort of school.  Mike, on the other hand suffered from none of these drawbacks, he had long blond hair that hung down to his shoulders, was gainfully employed, owned a car and a motorcycle. He was also my elder sister’s boyfriend, the coolest guy I knew and a definite departure from the bad choices in men my sister had been exercising up to that point in time. The motorcycle was indeed the quintessential bike of the era, a 650 cc Triumph Bonneville that he had built up from a scrapped bike with love, care and attention to detail. It was the sort of machine that, had he kept it, would have been worth a small fortune to a serious collector today. It was the first bike that I ever rode on, passenger only, I hung onto that pillion for dear life as Mike carved through the twisties of the Magaliesburg Mountains on a breakfast run one Sunday morning during a school holiday.

Mike - still a cool guy

Today, forty odd years later Mike is still a cool guy and still has more hair than I have, which does not say much because I’m a natural bald – to be honest his is considerably thinner and wispier than the long blonde locks of yore. He and my sister were married before I finished high school and shortly after that happy event they moved to Hong Kong. We have spent most of our adult lives with only sporadic contact, sometimes years have passed with no more than a telephone conversation or two. Many, many gallons of water have passed under the bridge since that breakfast run in the Magaliesburg Mountains, but finally I get to repay the favor. Circumstances have brought us to the same continent and time zone for a few weeks, so we decided to meet-up in Savannah Georgia, which is how, right now, he is riding behind me on the passenger seat of a rented Harley Davidson Softail Heritage.

You can say whatever you like about Harley Davidson, but if you are going to ride two-up on a motorcycle and you are two sizable guys, a large Harley is definitely the bike to do it on. The stock Harley 103 cubic inch v-twin motor has enough torque to plow a corn field and plenty of horses, so there is absolutely no problem with the hardware we are riding. The software is perhaps not quite as good as it once was and mounting the bike for both of us is an inelegant affair, I had to take care not to kick Mike in the balls as I contorted myself to get my leg over the saddle whilst minimizing the pain in my (slightly) arthritic hips .The first few slow maneuvers  to get onto the route, which includes doing a few U-turns, are admittedly quite ropey, getting used to a different center of gravity takes a bit of practice, but as soon as we get going and the power of the bike puts me in control, I start to feel more confident and comfortable. Not only does the Softail deliver considerable brute force and the sheer amount of steel gives it stability, it really is a high spec machine – ABS brakes, cruise control, fuel gauge as well as miles to empty indicator. On the comfort side the seat is as easy on the ass as any seat I’ve ridden on, Mike claims that the passenger seat is not too bad either, but perhaps he is just saying that to make me feel better about his ordeal, and it does have a backrest. The bike has a pair of roomy black leather panniers that on this trip are nearly empty, but would be very useful on a longer trip, or if I owned this machine I’d fill them with the junk I like to carry on a ride. Thank goodness it of course does have a windshield; I am a total whoopsy where windshields are concerned – it is a must have. The suspension is excellent and despite the weight hasn’t bottomed out over any of the bumps we have traversed, oh yes, no false neutrals, not a single one – I really like that. This actually is a very easy bike to ride.   

The first few miles are not entirely what you would call picturesque, it is typical of the outskirts of any North American city, even one as lovely as Savannah, cookie cutter strip malls, car dealerships and ugly warehousing. We are heading south down USA highway 17 to Jekyll Island, just south of Brunswick. Mike is doing a course at the Gulf Steam facility in Savannah which has kept him occupied until two in the afternoon which is why I’ve chosen a route that I expect will get us home before nightfall. Fortunately, the scenery improves quite quickly, soon we are riding through marshy plains. Rivers, both small and large meander through the marches that are covered in tall reeds or grasses. I assume that as summer gets going these will change from grey to green, which probably improves the view... still it is pleasing enough on the eye. The Savannah River traverses just such plains on its route from Savannah Harbor to the Atlantic Ocean, so when you look across the plain to a ship sailing up the river you get the illusion of a ship sailing through the reeds. The route we are on, however, is more the province of small pleasure craft and we pass several little lakes with boat houses and jetties. This is not an area that I would gladly take a swim in and definitely wouldn’t walk the Dachshund through, I suspect that it is well and truly infested with ‘gators. Not that I have any issue with alligators, they were here long before us so I wish them well, will not buy shoes made from their skins, but I will give them a considerable wide berth.

The road is very straight, it’s a bit disappointing as there are so few twisties, but that is the nature of the area, it is flat so when engineers build roads there is no motivation to add a bunch of curves, a lamentable tendency not to consider the motorcycle fun factor and focus only on the cost of building the road. As a break from the marshy reed plains we do get to ride through some forest. There are a lot of pine plantations, but some patches of deciduous forest remain. Here the new leaves are making a light green appearance. It is mid-March, at least six weeks ahead of the schedule that the forests of Southern Ontario are following, but then it is 26 degrees Celsius here and people are wearing shorts and T-shirts, back home it is still overcoat weather.

We make our first stop in the little town of Eulonia at the Piggly Wiggly, yes for all the fans of ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ not privileged to visit the South, there actually is a chain of grocery stores called Piggly Wiggly. We park under a massive oak tree, liberally hung with Spanish moss, dismount with all the dignity we managed when getting on, and buy a couple of Coke Zeros and sugar free Red Bulls which we suck down our patched throats – it has been a warm afternoon ride so far.  Next stop Jekyll Island.

Piggly Wiggly and Oak tree we parked under 

 View from Piggy Wiggly

It isn’t long before we pass through the western side of Brunswick, not hugely attractive with the main feature being a large factory with a smoke stack that belches a constant belch of white smoke, it smells like a paper mill, but I’m not quite sure. I know that the town has a whole lot more to offer, with pretty squares in an old town center and the several islands attached to it are serious tourist attractions, but that smelly smoke stack does detract form it’s many virtues.  A short way beyond the town we cross over a lovely graceful suspension bridge. Americans certainly know how to build bridges and as you know, if you have been following this blog, that I love bridges, especially suspension bridges. This one is a decent height to allow for shipping to reach the Port of Brunswick a few miles inland along the oddly named ‘Fancy Bluff Creek’ which is no mere creek at all, but a sizable piece of water. We get a glimpse of a great view as we cross, but there is just no place to stop. Memo to bridge building engineers, would it add that much to the cost to make a few lookout points where a chap can stop and admire the view and your brilliant work?  Shortly after crossing the bridge we turn right to Jekyll Island.

Along the USA Highway 17 

There is a $6 toll to get in which is fine, only we are not planning to stay long, possibly just long enough to have an early supper before heading back the way we came. I’m not entirely sure what I had hoped to find, perhaps something a little more rustic, maybe a seaside village like Tybee on Tybee Island close to Savannah, with little greasy spoon diners, bistros and shops that sell beach crap like belly boards, postcards and flip flops – I like that sort of thing though I wouldn’t actually buy that stuff. Instead Jekyll Island is very upmarket, manmade and a little clinical, it’s nice for sure, but just not what we are looking for. We stop and take walk around, mosey onto the beach which is pretty empty. 

Tybee Island 

Best T-shirt ever - don't know why I didn't buy it

Mike mentions that he spotted an interesting place a few miles before the bridge that we could have supper at, it sounds like the sort of place that would suit my mood. The Marshside Grill turns out to be a pleasant, busy, noisy place that serves good food at reasonable prices. I have fish and chips, which is grouper, washed down with copious glasses of diet coke, no Scotch for me, no sir, not while riding a motorcycle. We eat inside, although there is a verandah overlooking a river which looks pleasant, already the midges are becoming a nuisance, I bet the mosquitoes here are something awful in summer. While we eat I notice that the sun is setting at an alarming rate so chivvy the proceedings along a bit. I want to minimize the distance that we will ride in the dark.  It’s the critters I’m worried about, nocturnal forest animals, I’m not sure if skunks are common here, but I’m sure raccoons and coyotes are plentiful. Hitting one of these creatures would probably undo us in a spectacular way. The wrath of my elder sister for returning Mike in a less than pristine condition does not bear thinking about.

In the end I drop Mike off at his hotel in one piece, we rode the last third of the distance in the dark, but without incident. I ride the final few miles to my hotel, a little closer to downtown Savannah, but still outside the area that would be classified as the historic center of town. I’m booked into a crappy Days Inn hotel/motel and lucky to be there, Savannah is busting at the seams with visitors. This is March break and St. Patrick’s day week to boot. Savannah is the second most popular city for this drunken street party in America, second only to Chicago, apparently bigger even than Boston, this is a piss-up that goes on all week. I wonder what St. Patrick, a sober character by all accounts, would have thought about this boozy annual celebration in his name that takes place more than a millennium and a half after his death, on a continent that hadn’t even been imagined by the Irish people he had supposedly converted to Christianity. I guess most of what he is thought to have done is more modern myth than real history, certainly he did not banish snakes from Ireland and did no better than anyone else to shoehorn a polytheistic doctrine into a monotheistic mold…. and he wasn’t even Irish at all. 

Party gearing up for lift off - time to get outa there - River Street Savannah,  St Patrick's Day week