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 café
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.
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).
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.
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.
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