Quiet little drinking village with a fishing problem

If you are from South Africa, think Fish Hoek or Simon’s Town, North America, Corpus Christi or Sarasota. St Ignace, Michigan was a nice surprise. Loads of hotels and motels right on the beach, place to walk next to the water, parks, marina, harbor, some really nice restaurants and pubs. This would be a great alternative summer beach break much closer to home than the ocean.

Once I’d settled in the room at the Village Inn, and showered away the grime of the day I decided to take a short ride through the town, naked, in a manner of speaking. Well my head was naked and it was the least amount of clothing I have ever worn to ride my bike, short trousers, short sleeve shirt, and running shoes. My usual attire is jeans (I don’t wear chaps, but I’ll talk about that on another post), boots, mesh biking jacket, leather gauntlets and a modular full face helmet. It was late afternoon and still pretty hot and humid, helmets are not required in Michigan and I’d seen plenty of other bikers wearing less, particularly the women, spaghetti straps, miniskirts and sandals were not uncommon. At first I feel very vulnerable and nothing sounds quite right, does changing gears really sound that loud? With the wind in my bald patch, I start to relax and feel a bit Dennis Hopper, bad ass and free, but although it was fun, I was relieved to park the bike without having fallen off. Tempting fate is not recommend and coming off at any speed without proper gear can only be a lot more painful than necessary. As an aside, I have heard that the states that allow biking without helmets do so because it is considered cheaper and better for society to have a biker, post-accident, to be known as an organ donor rather than disabled. Cynical… perhaps.

 Yours truly , feeling Dennis Hopper, looking more Jack Nicholson 

Dinner is on a patio overlooking the lake – spicy blackened lake whitefish, a wonderful salad and potato wedges, washed down with a couple of pints of Blue Moon wheat beer. The Star Line ferry boats shooting plumes of water make quite a sight. I noticed that the flag is flying half-mast and enquire at the Star Line Ferry ticket office, “Lieutenant Governor passed.” Man these Yankees are proper!  

Not my picture, I couldn't seem to get the plume in the picture 

 I spend a comfortable night at the Village Inn, the room is bright, fresh and newly renovated and leave in the morning after breakfasting on fresh warm muffins and coffee. The coffee could have been stronger, but here in North America the folks seem to be happy with monkey’s piss rather than coffee, I deal with it.

No arguments from me, especially the chewing (chewing comes with spitting!)

First stop is gas. I suppose that I am a little paranoid, but I don’t like to go far when the fuel indicator shows two bars (full equals 5 bars empty is 0 bars) and now it displayed only one bar. It’s not a terribly accurate fuel gauge, but it is a whole lot better than nothing. Helena’s Harley Davidson has no fuel gauge at all, now that would engage my paranoia big time and I would become, with gas stations, as my dickey prostate has made me with public washrooms, never pass one un-visited. Tank full, five bars showing and I hit the road, Lake Huron on my left as it has been since Owen Sound. Over the Mackinac Bridge, just awesome… I mentioned I like bridges, especially suspension bridges, this one is a duzie.  

Also not my picture - great bridge though

Through Mackinaw City (City? Really...more like teeny village), pick up Highway 23 and follow the lakeshore going east. It’s a great ride, pavement in excellent condition, paved shoulders and not too much traffic. I’ve worked out a reasonable system for translating KPH to MPH that does not involve too much mental arithmetic - the advent of calculators just as I was becoming an accountant put an abrupt end to the development of that particular skill. The system works like this, 50 MPH is equal to 80 KPH, so 55 MPH is about 90, 60 is 100, 70 is therefore 115. On the slower scale if 50 MPH is 80 KPH, then 25 MPH must be 40 KPH, 30 is about 50 and 35 is about 60. That pretty much covers the range, except of course that nobody gives a rat’s ass for the limits, and traffic speed is generally at least 20 KPH over the limit, except inside the towns. I travel through lots of forest on my right, but there seems to be a good deal of housing between the road the lake, holiday cottages, mile after, mile after, mile of them.

This leads me to a short Chautauqua – the cottage discussion. When I was growing up we had a saying, “do not cut a stick for your own ass.” (It worked better in Afrikaans, “Moenie ‘n riet vir jou eie gat pluck nie.”) I suspect that buying a cottage is a terribly romantic idea, but is ultimately the equivalent of cutting the proverbial stick for your own ass. Some Torontonians take this concept to heart… throughout the summer every Friday evenings they sit in traffic jams for hours crawling their way to the cottage, where they spend half the weekend fixing shit and mowing, then another traffic jam all the way home on Sunday. Now these particular cottages, next to Lake Huron, are wedged between the lake (wonderful) and highway 23 where trucks, cars and assholes on noisy bikes are zooming past at 110 KMH. Anyway, I think cottages are for people that can’t ride motorcycles.

Lunch at Rogers City, a little early, but the muffins don’t last as well as I had hoped.  Hamburger at the Harbor Café – kiosk really, Rogers City does not make that much of the waterfront, but the food is okay and I don’t stop for long. Main thing is to be able to see the lake when I eat… growing really fond of this piece of water.    

Water lilies in the marina. 

After lunch the day starts to drag a bit, day three and I am feeling tired, a little lonely and damn, my ass hurts, saddle sore is not just for cowboys. It’s not just my ass, my right hand on the throttle gets so numb I completely lose any feel…not good. Endless green and the road is way too straight, I start to   lose concentration, you may think that it’s not possible to fall asleep riding a bike, believe me, it is entirely possible. I stop and drink both cans of Red Bull that have been in my saddle bags from the very beginning, essential supplies on any long ride.

I’d sort of planned to stop for the night at Bay City, it seems a nice small city, bit like Newmarket where I live, lovely old city centre, but with garish periphery of strip malls with the template shops you find in every town in North America, Walmart, McDonalds, Home Depot, Crysler/Ford/GM, etc. etc. – there really is ‘nothing new under the sun’. (Ecclesiastes 1:4-11). I decide not to stop and push on, now on highway 25, looking for another St. Ignace.

The road leaves the lake shore and I pass through farmlands, pretty much the same sort of landscape I ride through on my Saturday and Sunday rides. Jedi like, I feel the presence of the lake a few miles away to my left, but for many miles I don’t even get a glimpse of it. It’s getting late and I’m getting tired, but I don’t see anywhere to spend the night. Finally I reach Caseville and the Rainbow Motel. Another great find. 

Thank You Murray

Webbwood was only the start of what turned out to be a really superb ride. Highway 17, is the Trans Canadian Highway, reasonably busy, but the pavement is in pretty good shape. (Note to my South African friends - here in North America the word ‘pavement’ refers to the road, assuming it is paved, and not the ‘sidewalk’, as it is used in South Africa. So the joke, keep death off the roads and drive on the pavement does not work very well here.) The route takes you through some farmland, but mainly forests, mostly conifer type species - spruce, pines and probably cedar - here and there are broad leafed species, but I am no tree expert and I don’t get to look closely enough. Though I don’t see much of Lake Huron, there is plenty of water, including the Spanish River – which apparently gets its name (also the lovely town of Espanola) from French exploders encountering Spanish speaking Ojibwa in the area that had learned Spanish from a Spanish woman they had captured on a raid to the south. I took a short detour at Deans Lake Road, over a single lane bridge and explored the area for a half hour or so, stunning, with some of the most picturesque farming scenes.

Bridge on Deans Lake Road 

From Highway 17

My next door neighbour, he rides a Goldwing, suggested that at Bruce Mines I should take the 638. Well, all I can say is “Thank you Murray”, I think that short ride may have been the best stretch of the whole trip. The pavement is in good condition albeit grainy and a bit too much gravel on some of the corners for my likening – I came off last year thanks to gravel on the road, fortunately I was doing about 10 K.P.H and no harm done, but now I am super aware of gravel on corners. But other than that, really great road, with lots of bends. But take care, some of these you would not want to take at 100 or even 40, also passed a horse drawn carriage, this is Amish country. Had one great moment when I rode behind a raptor (I don’t know what it was, it had a wingspan of at least 2½ foot and was brown with black markings on the wings) that was flying about 20 foot up, following the road. I accompanied it for at least 300 metres, when it decided that was enough and flew off over the forest.

Rest Stop on Trans Canadian 

All good things must come to an end, the 638 crossed the Trans Canadian a short distance from Sault Ste. Marie, where it had become double lane highway. I don’t know why, but somehow I had it in my mind that Sault Ste. Marie or ‘Soo’ as the locals refer to it, is a charming city, with roots in a French past – in my mind I’d conjured up images of Trois-Rivières in Quebec - that sat on the junction of Lake Superior and Lake Huron. No Dice, it reminded me of Vaughan (for the South Africans, read Germiston).  It was a bit earlier than expected, so I rode around the city a bit in search of the charm I was sure (still am a bit) was there, just hiding from me. Eventually I gave up and lunched on a chicken wrap and a diet Pepsi at a soulless chicken wing franchise and headed for the US border and the State of Michigan.

Over a great bridge (I love bridges), a few questions at the border post to establish that I actually was who a pretended to be and off onto the Interstate 75. Initially you don’t notice any difference between Canada and the US, even the road signs look the same. “Maximium 70” identical, mind you that does seem awfully slow for a two lane highway. Of course they mean MILES per hour and all the angry eyes you have been getting from motorists is explained. I travel for a few more miles at about 120 KPH, but still the traffic speed is way past that. I decided that there must be a more pleasant route, exist the motorway and find the H63 that runs parallel to interstate, nice road, lovely forest nearly all the way and fairly empty of traffic. I settle into the ride.

I must confess that I like Americans (or as George W. calls them, Merikuns) and I like to visit their country. I have found them to be friendly (of course I haven’t been to New York, so this opinion may change) and self-confident in a nice inclusive way. They will strike up a conversation with you while you are pumping gas and seem genuinely interested in what you say to them. They may be pig ignorant about the rest of the world, but they know what’s happening in their neck of the woods and they are willing to tell you about it. There are some things that they really do extremely well, like the roads and rest stops. The roads are really well maintained and well built, the same class of highway in Canada has soft shoulders, in the US will have paved shoulders and seems to be repaved at shorter intervals. Of course this is just an observation and may not stand up to scrutiny. Rest stops are immaculate. There seems to be a prosperity there, at least in the parts that I have visited, that is palpable. Things are definitely cheaper so your $ does go further. I could go on for several pages on the good stuff, but that is not what this blog is about.

That said, I don’t want to live there. There are some things that all the prosperity in the world doesn’t compensate for. Their politics are driven by three things that cause them, as a nation, to follow some very destructive courses of action. These are, worship of might, worship of wealth and worship of God.

Sometimes these three all act together and results in the US version of gun boat diplomacy that has been foreign policy since World War II, to mention a few examples, Korean War, Vietnam, Bay of Pigs, Afghanistan, Panama and Iraq and use of drones to hit targets in countries they are not at war with. The list is not exhaustive and the catalogue of human suffering that is the result is just unbearable to contemplate. Sometimes the worship of ‘might’ is enough. The gun control laws are a case in point. The availability of really lethal weapons to any old Joe or Jo, is mind numbingly stupid and the resulting catalogue of human suffering is also unbearable to contemplate. Mass killings at schools is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg, family murders, gun accidents, gang shootings and so on. Take the guns away and 95% of this becomes history. When the right to bear arms was put into the constitution they were thinking of single shot front loaders that were lethal up to 150 metres and pretty darn inaccurate at that. Now we have 9mm machine pistols and assault rifles in the hands of some very immature people and the politicians are unable to pass sensible laws because the people worship the might of guns. The worship of God has become a problem because they are blurring the separation of church and state. So they throw millions (yes millions) of people into prison for marijuana related offences, not because marijuana is actually bad, alcohol is worse on many levels, but because the godly think smoking pot is a sin. Anyway enough Chautauqua.     

My plan was to stop at St. Ignace for gas, cross the bridge and pick up the 23 and look for somewhere to stay for the night, but riding through the town changed my mind. A real seaside town, just on a lake, but as I am discovering Lake Huron is more like a sea than a lake anyway.  The Village Inn had a very pleasant room for me at a mere $65 that included muffins and coffee for breakfast.

   The Village Inn

Welcome to Webbwood, Population 488

The ferry ride from Tobermory was worth the mere forty bucks and the foresight of booking. The bikes all went on first and we were directed to a few spots reserved for bikes that came with steel hoops anchored on the deck… tie bikes up, for the use of.  Hessian ropes provided, but no assistance, something about liability, you tie it and the bike falls over it’s  your problem, they tie it then damages becomes theirs. So the lawyers now make sure that those that can watch those that can’t try and fail, somewhere our values are screwed up. Two young guys behind me were in trouble, the art of tying stuff had been lost on them and no matter what they try their ropes hang uselessly slack. This old man ties their bikes for them and shows then the trick of tying a loop in the rope and threading the end through the steel hoop then back through the loop, pull to tighten and tie. High fives from the young ones, those bikes are going nowhere even if we capsize. I always knew those two years in the army would teach me something useful.

 Waiting to board 

Tobermory Harbour

I’d expected something smaller, but this is a pretty large vessel, two decks for vehicles, and two for passengers, with several lounges, bar areas, restaurants and outside decks and some gaming machines.  The view is something else, we pass small wooded islands and for a time hug the shoreline. I sit outside mostly, the bow side is windy, but the stern is protected from the wind. I chat to a woman that rode onto the ferry on a BMW, I’d noticed a tent and sleeping bag fastened to the back. She is seventy if she is a day, she tells me she is riding to Vancouver from Montreal, and this is day three. Wow, gutsy lady. Leaving the ferry was fun. They lowered the gate, and let the bikes off first, so we rode off the boat almost directly onto highway 6 – a fleet of strangers going like the clappers down the road.

The ferry

We don’t stay together for long, but for a time it was nice to have some companies to ride with. Manitoulin Island is apparently the largest fresh water island in the world, nearly 3,000 sq. Km, though it’s almost as much lake as land. I guess the black flies are pretty damn fierce in this part of the world, but I am going too fast to be bothered by them.  The twisties are fabulous, well compared to where I come from, I’ll go ten Km out of my way to get to ride a decent S bend. Its late afternoon, but the sun still rides high, the road is reasonably empty, I settle into the ride and into today’s Chautauqua. Nothing very deep or serious just something that bothers me.

Billboards are okay in towns and cities they are not okay in pristine forest, or even farmlands… give me wind farms rather than billboard. You’re in the zone, the road is twisting its way through a heaven of green trees, up hills and down, ponds lining the roads are covered in water lilies, and ducks are swimming. You round a corner and right there is a bloody great big sign that Tim Horton’s has an outlet 25 Km ahead, or the Espanola sports a Chinese eat-as-much-as-you-can buffet eatery called The Red Dragon, all terribly useful information I am sure, but could this not wait to be announced from within a  built up area? Amongst these signs are many that feature stylized bibles, crosses and hands pressed together with promises of immortality and threats of nasty ways to spend all that spare time if you don’t pay heed. Now don’t get me wrong here, the godly have as much right to peddle their snake oil as anyone else, but I wish that when they beg their deity to give then blind faith, could they perhaps ask for a little bit of good taste as well.   

I reach Espanola, where I have a reservation for one night. I looked it up ‘Espanola’ means ‘armpit’ in English… actually it doesn’t it means ‘Spanish’, ‘Axila’ means ‘Armpit’, so I think the city fathers need to change the name to ‘Axila’ to more accurately portray the town. Ok I am being unfair, I did not do my research and because Axila, sorry I mean Espanola, turns out to be a polluted mill town when I was expecting a quaint, nicer version of Beeton nestled between lakes and hills in a forest is actually my fault. I stayed at the Clear Water Inn, also my bad, I didn’t see the Motel in the name. It is actually in a lovely setting and the Clear Water Lake it gets its name from is quite something, but the most that can be said is that it’s clean. But no worries, clean really is all I needed and the manager did direct me to an unexpectedly good Italian Restaurant, The Cortina, in the middle of Axila…er Espanola.  

The Clear Water Lake

The  Jewel of Axila

Next morning (that is this morning), somehow it feels like a long ago, I hit Highway 17 going west. Busy, but a good road and very scenic. The first village is Webbwood that has a fancy looking sign that reads ‘Welcome to Webbwood, Population 488’… really 488, not 489. Why not a round 500. I started to wonder (ok this is a nonsense Chautauqua), if they have designated someone as the sign updater, not a full time position I’m sure, maybe just an honorary position like an occasional town crier. I imagined him (it must be a man somehow) sitting down to a pint in the pub and his mates say to him, “Have you heard, Molly Smith popped this afternoon, lovely little girl.” He gets up , bicycles home, gets his little pot of sign paint and brush, cycles out to the signs, makes it 489. Cycles back home, puts the paint away and goes back to the pub. He is about to tackle the pint when they carry on, “… and a sweet little boy, Molly always wanted twins”. 

KEEP CALM AND DRINK COLD BEER HERE

I’m waiting for the ferry at Tobermory, Bruce Peninsula, with a few hours to kill... fish and chips on the way and an only slightly illicit glass of Sleeman’s honey brown at my side. Only slightly illicit as the alcohol will hopefully have been processed by 5.30 when I’ll ride again. I only have a M1 licence so noo alcohol allowed, it’s the law, and definitely not a bad one.. Beer makes me sleepy and falling asleep on a motorbike is not yet on my bucket list. If this is on yours, make sure that it’s the last item.

So how does it happen that a life-long aversion for the noisy dangerous things, turns around into a crazy love affair between this old man and two wheels and a V-twin? The answer is easy – I don’t know. The sequence of events is simple, my wife, Helena bought a Harley and took lessons, it sounded fun, so I took a weekend course with Georgian College. By the end of day one, even though I’d stood the bike up on the front wheel and had to suffer the indignity of filling in an incident report, aversion had become infatuation. Since then it’s grown into love. I know that $15000 and 150 km does not a biker make, and I consider myself little more than a novice, but I am getting there. Less than a year since that fateful Saturday morning at the Barrie Campus, of which my beloved was in winter storage for 5 months, I have clocked close to 10 000 km.  Anyway, that’s enough history for now, no doubt I’ll delve into the past at a future date.

I left home this morning, on my own, Helena couldn’t squeeze the time off work, on what is intended to be a ride around Lake Huron. Now I know that the Mother Superior of the lake rides is Lake Superior of course, but Huron presented itself as more doable right now. I decided to give Muskoka a miss this time so slipped up the inside of Georgian Bay by way of the Tobermory Ferry to Manitoulin Island. The Eastern shore of Georgian Bay, Muskoka, Lake Nipissings and Algonquin are there for another ride.

I left at 8.30, a little later than intended, but as it turned out well in time, overslept thanks to not sleeping well last night – I never do the night before any trip, it’s a curse.  First stop, 3 minutes from home, decided to gas up, and had already realised that I was going to get cold. Luminous green rain gear made me look naff, but it would keep me warm. A few minutes later looking like a phosphorescent Michelin man I took off on the ride. Now here’s a good tip my brother-in-law gave me, rain gear keeps you warm. It is indeed marvelous stuff, designed to keep water from getting through to your legs and body when rain strikes you (or perhaps more accurately, when you strike the rain drops) at 100 KPH, it is almost as effective against air molecules doing the same thing… and way quicker than putting the lining back into your mesh jacket.

Cookie cutter sub-divisions and strip-malls soon gave way to farmlands and forest. Southern Ontario really can be gorgeous in summer (fucking awful in winter, I grant you). I headed North up county road 27 then headed west through Beeton, to Lorretto. Beeton is typical of a thousand small towns in Canada, established 150 to 200 years ago, I guess to serve the farming community, lovely and quaint old houses and shops lining the route through, then destroying the illusion a bunch of ugly ‘centers’ with the usual suspects Canadian Tire, Pizza Pizza, Walmart, Home Depot and without fail Tim Hortons. Lorretto is just an Hotel and a few houses, but the hotel has a truly great sign “KEEP CALM AND DRINK COLD BEER HERE” as good a philosophy as you are likely to find anywhere. Up through Shelburne (Beeton, just a wee bit bigger).

I stop just after Shelburne, one of the toggles of the rain jacket has got loose and has been beating a staccato on my helmet since before Beeton… can just drive a guy mad. It’s warmed up a bit so I shed the naff stuff, look manlier now in jeans and biker jacket. Lots of farmland now, only a few patches of forest here and there, but that’s fine, for a townie like me that’s pretty close to nature. At any rate it’s plenty green, and the cows look happy, lots of red, and blue and lilac flowers line the road, and the occasional oil seed rape field carpets the place in yellow…nice.

 Changing out of naff rain stuff - notice veteran car in background

Now riding on your own or for that matter with others, because you’re really on your own anyway, does something to the mind. I talk to myself, nonsense sometimes, but not always. Robert M Persig called these Chautauquas. Sometimes I just sing, and though I sing very, very badly it sounds ok inside my helmet, but I’d rather write about Chautauquas, might be more interesting.

I pass many wind turbines along the way, slowly turning in the light wind, churning out some amount of energy, how much I don’t know. I see some signs protesting these gentle giants. Now I am sure that I don’t know all the arguments, but I suspect that the only people that could possibly be against harnessing wind energy must be people with interests in coal, oil and gas. I don’t see theses in pristine forests, or near any other places of particular beauty, they seem to be mostly in farmers’ fields, so I don’t get the eyesore argument. Strange that these things are thought of as eyesores, but nobody blinks at the wart of a development right on the doorstep of the magnificent Niagara Falls. All I see is something that puts some extra cash in farmers’ hands which may lead to cheaper food. Well that’s not much of a Chautauqua, but it is late and I did ride over 400 km.

The ride through Manitoulin Island and up to Espanola a fabulous ride with great twists and turns, more on that tomorrow. Right now it’s time to KEEP CALM AND DRINK COLD BEER.