Tuesday 21 April 2015

17°C feels like 17°C.

Today is the best weather I have experienced since September last year, or so it feels (holiday in Namibia excluded of course!) The weather report has been promising this for several days and so far there has been no significant amendment. This is a day to ride no mistake, though it starts off cold. I’m awake at 7a.m. and there is frost on the ground, but no wind and it's sunny. I settle in front of my computer and do a few hours of work while the world warms up. The others in this family are late risers, even the wiener dogs (actually they are the least keen to rise and shine), so the house is quiet. I open the door to the back yard and enjoy the moment alone with my thoughts, my demons are silent and I can just listen to the birds and watch a squirrel in the tree thrash his tail from side to side. Ah yes, it feels like spring may actually be here.



                               Spring in Muskoka, maybe not quite there 


I don the special Kevlar jeans, despite the poor cut, these will keep me warm enough without having to wear tights or rain gear and I think I can do with some extra protection, roads being as they are this time of year. T-shirt and a sweater for under the mesh jacket, double socks and I am ready. 11.45 a.m. I take off down the road sweating somewhat under the layers, but cool down by the time I reach my first stop… about 800 meters, to fill up gas and buy a couple of Red Bulls. I have decided on a turn through Muskoka, quite doable in an afternoon. I take an old favorite route and follow highway 27 to Barrie. Hunger gets to be by the time I pass through Thornton, there is a cafĂ© in Thornton that has always looked interesting, so I stop there for lunch. The service is good, food is tasty even though the menu is not very original, I wish that this sort of establishment would discover that there is more that could be offered than burgers, wraps and various variations of Caesar salad. The waitress advises that the chicken Caesar will take in excess of twenty minutes, whilst the standard burger will be quicker. I go for faster… burger and ordinary Caesars salad, washed down with diet Pepsi. While I eat I can see out the window that I am not the only motorcycle rider taking advantage of the good weather, the old fart brigade is out in force… few younger farts as well.


The O.F. Brigade is out in force in Thornton

Tummy full, I head on north to join up with Highway 400 in the city of Barrie. The traffic is moving fast, but is relatively light and once the road splits from Highway 11 the condition of the pavement improves substantially. I noted last year that Highway 400 is in excellent condition from this point onwards, pity about the rotten piece south of Barrie, more or less to Toronto, the really busy section. The traffic is so light that here and there I can’t see any cars ahead, nor any behind, it’s weird, like a Steven King sort of weird. I half expect the Langoliers to start chomping up the highway behind me.

As I get further north and enter the Muskoka region, the reason for the dearth of traffic becomes clear. This is cottage country, but whereas we are at least starting to have spring, it is still winter here and what cottager wants to spend the weekend in winter when they are just starting to enjoy spring back home in Toronto. I’m fine with this, the Muskoka is really lovely even at this time of year when everything is grey… there is an eerie beauty and empty roads make up for lack of greenery. If you have been following these chronicles you’ll know that I have a high regard for the natural beauty of the region, however I have one big complaint, half of Toronto decamps here every weekend for as long as summer lasts and every little piece of water is almost entirely ringed by private property… and the traffic, goodness me, just bloody awful. The Friday afternoon traffic from Toronto is bumper to bumper and crawls at times, the Sunday afternoon traffic southbound is the same. So if you do ride this way in the summer do choose your ride times carefully.  


Lovely, but still winter 





Eerie Beauty


I’ve written before about the cottage culture, and at the risk of offending the affluent I will write some more. This desire we humans have to own land is funny when viewed from a certain perspective. Land ownership I think is our attempt to control our destiny and maybe achieve some sort of immortality, we call it real estate. I suspect in the end it’s a bit like fleas declaring ownership of the dog they live on. The older I get the more I realize the transitory nature of our stay on the planet, as individuals and as a species, all the title deeds in the world don’t amount to a mouse dropping in the face of our demise, personal and collective. I believe that in a world where everyone is striving to own more land and houses than they can live in at one time, is a world that is not sustainable. Demanding to own a piece of the natural beauty and fencing it off and building second homes is defacing the beauty you wanted to own in the first place. I guess I would like to be more free of the rat race, mortgage and the consumption society than I am (I’m not in the least bit free), a bit more easy-rider and less weekend wild hog character. Still all this ownership of the natural beauty offends the socialist in my soul….and clogs up the roads in summer in the loveliest places for motorcycle riding.    

I decide not to go as far as Parry Sound, but take Lake Joseph Road east towards Port Carling, picking up regional road 169.  I get the twists and turns I came this way for, but caution is the better part of valor, way more gravel than any self-respecting motorcycle rider likes to encounter, and even once a patch of ice. For the benefit of those that don’t ride, the tyres of a motor cycle have a half round profile, all the better for leaning as you zip around corners at reckless speeds. Unlike a car you only have a teensy bit of rubber in contact with the road, especially when cornering, as the center of gravity is not vertically over the tyres, so any loss of purchase means the bacon will meet the blacktop (hence the Kevlar jeans). To date I have been lucky and learned this lesson early in my riding career doing less than 20 km/h, on my first motorcycle, a 900 Kawasaki Vulcan… still no guarantees. All the same it is a great to ride and the little adrenaline rush on each decent corner is what it’s all about.   


Nice corner coming up

Lake Joseph is one of three largish lakes around here, Lake Muskoka and Lake Rousseau are the other two, but there are no shortages of smaller lakes, not that you can get anywhere close to a piece of water for private property signs. (Actually more like a piece of ice as it is all frozen still.) Though I seldom get to glimpse Lake Joseph, I know that I am following its shore south east to Port Carling, which is a pretty little village, if somewhat spread out along the highway. This is a bustling little touristy place in summer, a good place to sit on a verandah of a pub, have a good meal and a class of wine (or Pepsi if riding a motorcycle).



                                             Cottages surrounding iced lakes 

From Port Carling I head towards Bracebridge on the Frank Miller Memorial Route without a good idea who Frank Miller was, Google does not help with way too many Frank Millers and none with any real connection to Muskoka that I can see. There was a Frank Miller musician that made music with a group called The Easy Riders sometime back in the 1950’s, I kinda hope it is named for him, but somehow doubt it.  Bracebridge is a more substantial town, with a population of about 16,000, it is the ‘main’ town of the Muskoka district. It’s a nice enough place with an attractive old town centre, I believe several historical sites, a few waterfalls that are worth seeing and home to the Muskoka Cottage Brewery, brewers of some pretty fine beer. http://www.muskokabrewery.com/brewery.php. Unhappily the town has not escaped the unattractive developments that blight every town in Canada and make every town look like every other town, I refer to the strip malls that house Walmart, Home Depot, Wendy’s, Shoppers Drugmart and so on. Oh well I guess the good folks of Bracebridge have as much right to shop for cheap imports in garish, ugly, cheaply built shops surrounded by acres of parking as anyone else. It does, however, break the spell a little.


 The Bridge at Bracebridge 



Muskoka River


From Bracebridge I pick up Highway 11 and the 144 km dash home. There is a strong gusting wind, the variability of which makes for a few heart stopping moments as I suddenly discover I am over or under correcting. On the whole the Boulevard holds the road pretty well, assisted I suppose by a bit more ballast than is ideal from the not-so-easy rider. It’s a long more or less straight road, only moderately busy and with the need to go from 100 km/h to 140 in a heartbeat, arising at satisfactory intervals. As I cruise past Lake Simcoe I can see a little bit of water around the edge, but it is still mostly frozen and when the wind blows across from the lake I can feel the drop in temperature. I once had a romantic thought of moving to a place on the shores of Simcoe so that I could spend my days looking over the water while I worked. I’m not entirely sure about that anymore.      

Friday 10 April 2015

Yippee, Yippee, Yip.

It is April 1, April Fool’s Day and I guess I could be labeled accordingly. I am standing in the foyer of Barrie Harley Davidson at 5.30 in the afternoon taking delivery of my motorcycle from winter storage, it is 5 degrees or thereabouts. Still the weather forecast looks like after a cool Thursday, Friday, Good Friday no less, may deliver up a few hours of decent motorcycling weather. It would appear that I am not the only fool in these parts, as fetching motorcycles from winter storage is a popular activity today.  I have heard the lovely, dulcet tones of v-twins around the neighborhood over the past few days, and caught the odd glimpse of an intrepid biker. The reason why I suggest we are fools is because spring may be sprung in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere, it has not yet done so here. No sir, no sprung spring to be found in Canada, (except maybe for the coastal region of British Columbia, where it is warm but wet). Still I am dressed in layers and wearing the raingear green regalia, the sun is shining a sort of, watery cheer through some wispy cloud and the Boulevard is shiny and clean, tyres pumped, battery charged and waiting for me to climb on. What more could a chap ask for?



Black is black, I got my baby back... Oh yeah. 

I am clearly out of practice, and put my helmet down on the concrete paving upside down, scratching the visor with a long vertical line down the middle. Man I am so annoyed with myself. That scratch is going to irritate me every time a wear the thing until I buy a new one, I cannot fathom why I did that. I’m also not used to all the layers and feel like the Michelin Man, but once I am on the bike everything just falls into place. Yippee, Yippee, Yip! I have heard it said that there is nothing as good for the inside of a person as the outside of a good horse, which may be so, but as my ass makes contact with that motorcycle saddle the world suddenly seems to be a better place.


I take it easy as I ride out into the road, letting things warm up and getting the lubricants to all the places they are supposed to be, motorcycle wise, of course. Ok, I’m just spit-balling here, I’m an accountant and not a mechanic and really have no clue what I am talking about, but somehow running her gently seems like a good idea. Actually the motor seems to be running a little ropey, not quite misfiring, but everything is not jelling as it should. There is a service in the very near future and I guess the fuel stabilizer and 5 months without the motor running would have some effect. Anyway as I progress down the road I imagine that things get better, the gunk gets shot out the exhaust. I head down Highway 27, for now avoiding the motorway, neither of us is ready for that balls-to-the wall experience.  It is fairly busy, commuter traffic, mostly heading north in the opposite direction to where I am going. Now and then I open the throttle a bit and the Boulevard responds like a race horse, I like it, oh yes I do. When I reach the turn-off to go home I find that I am quite unable to make the turn, it is as if the Boulevard decides things for itself, we ride a detour down to King City following Weston Road, then head back north on Jane street. I’m home by 6.45… supper then do some work until 10 p.m. – I need to pay the piper.

Good Friday arrives, I wake up to the sound of birdsong and open the blinds to a sunny morning. The mercury registers not very far above zero. The weather report has downgraded the outlook for the weekend considerably, but today is going to be ok, at least until this evening, it is expecting to hit 10 Celsius by midday, then steadily drop. Precipitation tonight, rain, maybe snow or ice pellets, this time of year one just does not know, management is quite fucked up, frozen yogurt falling from the skies would not surprise me. I plan to head out at midday so spend the morning doing a run-walk-run for a few kilometers along the Holland River trail, then walk the Dachshunds around Fairy Lake with my prettier half. The birds are on the wing, there is pairing off and nest building, avian sex is going on and the folks of Newmarket are walking/running/pushing strollers/dog walking/roller-skating/cycling/etc. on the trail, spring is promised, but just a promise so far.


I swear if you look closely there are buds!

I leave the house at about 12.30, I have some layers on, but it is warm enough to leave the raingear in the side boxes. The idea is to follow an old familiar route, around Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching, a round trip of about 230 km. Nice little warm up for the season. The first stretch is a dash up Highway 404 to where it ends just before Ravenshoe Rd, nice chance to shake off the cobwebs. I take Ravenshoe travelling east towards the hamlet of Udora. There is still plenty of snow on the ground and ice on top of pools that have formed, the land is waterlogged and frozen only a few inches down. Predominate colors are still dirty olive green, brown and grey. Nonetheless there is a sense that at the very least spring is coiled to be sprung, I can see that buds are forming and here and there a green shoot peaks out from under the gloom.  The roads are lousy with loose gravel and winter damage, cornering is a careful undertaking, but I manage to take a few nice twisties at a reasonable speed, the not-so-easy rider is back and loving it!


Waterlogged and icy




From Udora I head north to Beaverton, then follow the shore of Lake Simcoe, cottage country, however Simcoe is still frozen solid. I guess not solid enough for ice fishing (weird pastime), but the breeze that blows off the lake is really, really cold. Here on the lake shore it is still mid-winter. Lake Simcoe is an interesting piece of water very close to where I live, actually the Holland River that I ran next to this morning is one of the rivers that feeds it. It is quite large, not great lake scale of course, but there are points that you can stand on the edge and not see the other side, altogether it is about 722 square km, a fair sized slab of ice! There is one city and several towns on its shores and riding around it is a pretty decent ride. I stop for gas, get a cup of tea, take a pee and decide that it might now be cold enough to don the raingear. Lake Simcoe was originally known as Lake Toronto (well by us whities of course, the Indians called it something else, but we pronounced it “Toronto” which referred to the weirs made by the Indians in the narrows between Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching to catch fish). This name was transferred to the city that grew up on the shores of Lake Ontario, so Sir John Graves Simcoe named the lake, “Simcoe", in 1793, ostensibly after his father… a likely tale if you ask me.


Spring on the shores of Lake Simcoe



Anyone for Hockey?



Just before Orillia I take Rama Road north to follow the shore of Lake Couchiching to Washago, though I only get to glimpse this lake, also frozen, a few times. Rama Road takes me through the Indian reservation of Rama. The smoke shops are closed, I am not sure if this is seasonal or Good Friday, but the casino seems to be open. Mmmm, I would venture a guess that a certain Nazarene, who didn’t have quite such a great Friday some time ago, would not be amused. Be that as it may, no bolts of lightning come down and I leave the gamblers to their business. At Washago I take highway 11 south towards Barrie and ultimately home.  By now the clouds have gathered and it looks like rain (or worse) is on the cards sooner than expected. I am very glad of the raingear, it keeps me warm even though I am travelling at 120-150 km/h and if the rain comes down at least I will be protected.

Highway 11 gives way to Highway 400, the traffic is moving at 130 km/h but the pavement is in terrible condition, cracks and potholes. This stretch of road was under construction last year and I haven’t been on it since then. Honestly, I can see no progress whatsoever, it is no longer under construction, but just as broken and crappy as before. WTF! Have the guys with the hard hats and orange vests merely been drinking tea? Really. Time for a short rant. I have never seen such a useless, wasteful industry as the construction industry in Canada, at least when it comes to government (federal, provincial or local) contracts. There needs to be a few public hangings. Here in the City of Newmarket, one of the major arterial roads has been under massive re-construction to add bus lanes and bus shelters for four years (yes that reads four years) and it is still nowhere near completion. My heart goes out to the many small businesses situated on Davis Drive that have gone bust or are hanging on by their fingernails. Another example is Toronto Union Station construction, still going strong and no sign of ending, four years on the go at least. I tell you public hangings are needed. We long suffering taxpayers and members of the public can sit around in the middle of the construction site fiascos, drink beer and knit sweaters while the useless and/or corrupt sods responsible for the mess are brought out and hanged from a gibbet, then we’ll see how fast the new appointees get the job done. Lickety-bloody-split, guaranteed.


The reality:

http://barrie.ctvnews.ca/businesses-closing-up-moving-on-because-of-construction-in-newmarket-1.1908677

The fantasy:

 

Just love these artists impressions


Rant for the day over…I make it home before the rain starts. And it does so start, ‘tis the season to get wet.