Saturday 10 September 2016

Riding with a new friend, Tom Tom

This can only be described as a lovely dewy morning as I set out from Bancroft on day two of my week long, much delayed and anticipated ride. The planned three-week mid-summer ride, went to a one week at the tail end of summer. I take what I can get and this will be a week to sustain me through the long winter that is surely coming. Actually the timing may not work out too badly – today is the first day of school for the new academic year so the accommodation should be more available and hopefully cheaper and the weather is holding up so far the days are still hot, but the evenings have cooled down. The rainy season, has happily (for me anyway), not yet arrived, though this may not last.

I actually left home yesterday afternoon at about 2 p.m. on Labour Day Monday, a couple of hundred kms just to ease into the adventure. The traffic coming from cottage country was just horrendous, I was very glad to be going in the opposite direction, almost devoid of traffic – people going too cottage country on Labor Day afternoon were clearly the exception. It was somewhere between 5 and 6 when I stopped in Bancroft and started looking for a place to stay. It turns out that there is not much, and the reasonably priced B & B I had considered earlier had a ‘No Vacancies’ sign hanging, damn, so much for my theory. I ended up at the Sword Inn Hotel, a motel, that calls itself a hotel and charges extra for that. The place is ok, just a bit overpriced, but a Google search didn’t get me much else at a better price, and I was tired and hungry. There is a reasonable restaurant a few hundred yards away, so all worked out fine and here I am on Tuesday morning back on the KLR, lining zipped into the mesh jacket against the cold. Temperatures are expected to get into the thirties later on, but the night time temperatures are already much cooler. It’s a bit later than I should have taken off, but a combination of doing a little work (or possibly just interfering with my colleagues) and a desire not to leave when the sun will be shining directly in my eyes, has kept me procrastinating to almost nine.

The KLR’s very simple totally mechanical instruments has been augmented with a very 21st century device – a very fancy Tom Tom Rider 400 GPS system. I finally closed my eyes to the expense and splashed out on this. I have tried it out on a few short rides and so far it has been damned good. You can get it to produce a route that is either the standard fastest route, or three degrees of thrilling and mountainous routes. The icon is labelled ‘plan a thrill’ which I think is somewhat cringe worthy, nonetheless I have planned a few ‘thrills’ (hey, keep the mind from the gutter) and so far that is exactly what the device has delivered. The nice thing is you can do the planning on our laptop and then sync the routes to the Tom Tom. Needless-to-say the documentation and instructions available are conspicuous by their absence and a great deal of frustration and wasted time has gone into figuring how the thing works, I am getting there, but suspect that I still have a lot to learn. Anyway, I have planned a fully, most thrilling and mountainous route from Bancroft to Trois-Rivières, it’s six hundred and something kms, and ETA as calculated by the device  is 7 p.m., that can’t be right, 5 p.m. at the latest.

View from the road - Ontario Eastern Highlands 


I am cocky and confident, besides the Tom Tom, I have loaded the KLR with three additional items for the trip:

  • 1.       A 5 litre can of gas to extend the range to about 430 kms of the stupidly small 13 litre tank this bike is equipped with.  I have not yet completed the blog post of where I came within a half teacup of gas to being stranded in a cellphone-signal-less zone whilst the sun setting and the mosquitos were revving up engines.
  • 2.       A light-weight tent with mosquito protection – see above.
  • 3.       A light-weight sleeping bag, see nights getting cooler comment.
Of course this means that I look more like a Bedouin on a camel than a cool dude on a motorbike, but so be it, cool is not me anyway, I am the not-so-easy-rider!


Fully Loaded


The thrill factor is certainly being delivered, the Tom Tom leads me besides still waters, up hills and through valleys, yeah though the shadow of death haunts, I fear no evil. It could barely do any better, this is the Eastern Ontario Highlands lovely forests and some of best motorcycle roads to ride anywhere on the planet. Highway 28 with it’s sumptuous curves and smooth blacktop, god it’s almost sexual. Eventually I end up on Centennial Lake road, now devoid of cottage traffic, marvellous, simply marvellous. I have ridden here before, but in the opposite direction. It’s forest, lakes and hills, Canadian Shield nary a human planted thing to be seen. Then suddenly without warning I enter the Ottawa Valley, fertile flat once upon a time flood plain, and the hills are history, this is farming country and John Deere rules the roost. It’s almost a relief to ride some straight roads and pick up the speed

The town of Kanata brings the straight run to an end. I assume that the town’s name, Kanata, has the same root as Canada, which I believe means 'village' in Iroquoian. I imagine French explorer Jacques Cartier asked a local where the hell he was and the answer was ‘kanata’, you are in my village, and so this huge chunk of North America became to be called ‘village’ because of a translation problem. I end up on Sir John A MacDonald Parkway which traces the southern shoreline of the Ottawa River right the way into the centre of Ottawa City. I like Ottawa, it’s a lovely city, not entirely sure I want to live there, lousy with snow in the winter and lousy with bureaucrats all year round, only kidding on the bureaucrats, I have no issue with them, actually in many things I think we need more regulation rather than less. For my South African readers Toronto is like Jo’burg and Ottawa is like Pretoria. Anyway apart from one funny incident with the Tom Tom for no rhyme or reason takes me on a brief loop through a residential subdivision, I had no special reason to tarry in Ottawa and cross the river into Quebec, the city of Gatineau. Suddenly, and I have mentioned this before, you are for all intents and purposes in another country, it’s nice, international travel without the schlep.

Ottawa River from the Gatineau side


My end destination is Trois-Rivières as mentioned, I have made really good time, but still the Tom Tom estimates my arrival at about 7 pm, by my reckoning I’ll have eaten dinner and be on my second Scotch by 7 pm. However, that’s when things go a little awry. I seem to spend an age tracking through semi-suburbia, miles and miles of twisty roads I’ll grant you, but with a speed limit of 40 km/h and the constant danger of le enfants running out after wayward balls, is hardly a thrilling ride. I start to get a bit tired of this and stop for a cup of coffee I consider re-programming the Tom Tom to take a more direct route, I look at Google maps on my smart phone and see that actually the original route will very shortly get me out of the populated area and into more wilderness. So coffee-ed up I resume the ride.
Indeed the hilly area north-east of Ottawa is as lovely as the Ontario Highlands, more rugged even. The blacktop is generally in not a great condition, the curves are quite tight and mostly the speed limit is 90 km/h. The cars on the road actually expect you to honor the speed limit at it’s maximum even though cornering here at that speed would be suicide, so yes this is turning out to be a pretty thrilling ride. One of the routes I spend quite some time on is Quebec Provincial Route 315. Not for the faint hearted, and not for a cruiser, suddenly and with almost no warning the pavement ceases and I’m on a gravel road, one with seriously loose gravel. Twists and turns and 20 degree inclines, oh boy, it’s a real adventure ride, I’m very glad I didn’t re-program the route, and start to wonder if I will actually make it to Trois-Rivières even by 8 pm. I must tip my helmet to Clinton Smout and his one day course (see http://not-so-easy-rider.blogspot.ca/2015/09/on-and-offthe-road-that-is.html) I find the tips and tricks that I learned there invaluable in the endeavour to keep vertical. One section of the road is under repair, a fairly steep incline that is now just a narrow track of soft muddy material. The KLR takes it in it’s stride, piloted somewhat expertly I must say by yours truly.
 
On Route 315
Eventually Route 315 joins up with Route 323 and I'm directed to go north. It feels that I should be going a bit more east, but who am I to contradict the Tom Tom, another nice road to ride, much better condition than the 315, and fully paved. Then I turn north again on route 327, I’m starting to get a little worried, but then it directs me to turn east, good, but on a gravel road, up into a forest, I follow. I have a little bit of a bad feeling about this route, but I follow, this is supposed to be an interesting ride. This is where things go seriously tits up.  Several turns later and I get directed down a road that is a cul-du-sac. I turn around at the end of it and the Tom Tom demands that I should go go back into the dead end. I am reminded of the story of the woman that drove into a lake – her GPS told her to go there so she did, even though she could see it was a lake.  Here the Tom Tom totally loses the plot and it sends me in route that ends back at the road the ends in a cul-du-sac.  I stop and reprogram for the most direct route to Trois-Rivières, but that makes no difference to the immediate problem, still sends me in circles. I ignore the machine and manage to find the road that brought me into the forest and finally get back to Route 327. Just great, one reason for buying the thing is to stop me getting lost, looks like that's not going to work out.


There is no cell phone reception here so I can’t check with Google maps, but my instinct tells me to ignore the Tom Tom and go south, back down the way I came until it recalculates a route that makes sense, which it finally does. Memo to me, dial down the adventure level, too much thrill and you can get lost and if you want to get to an end point in a reasonably amount of time. I realize that I’m actually not even going to make it to Trois-Rivières at all today. It’s after 5 pm and I’m tired, I’ve been riding nearly all day, and still about 200 kms from where I intended to be. The ride was great, but I am disappointed that I’m not where I wanted to be. I know all that stuff that it’s about the journey not the destination, nonetheless when I set out to from Point A to get to point B, I actually don’t want to only arrive at point A and a half.  Which today means my sainted Aunt Agatha, or in French, Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts. This may well be a lovely town, but I only get as far as a few blocks in from the motorway, slap in the middle of the ugly zone that seems to surround all North American towns, empty lots, car dealerships, semi-derelict garden centers, car tire places and cheap motels. It is the latter I am looking for, I just want clean, safe and with decent internet connection. I have a question for the proprietors of motels – what is with the couple of plastic chairs next to each door, really, like a table would be too much?

 I spend the evening trying to work out a nice route to follow, for tomorrow. 31

Wednesday 3 August 2016

M2 Exit!

So I find myself doing the M2 Exit course at the Georgian College in Barrie. I have paid the $400 odd for the one-day course and test. It’s a fair amount of cash, I could have simply booked the test with a MOT approved test center for much less, but I suspect that I would not stand a chance in hell of passing. There is a plethora of little unwritten rules that I don’t know, which would in all likelihood prevent my success. In any event I am sure that the course will be fun. The first part of the course is a Friday evening classroom session starting at 6 p.m. but thanks to horrendous traffic, every bloke and his dog are heading up highway 400 to the cottage, I arrive half an hour late. I mean how was I to anticipate that the 60 kilometers from Newmarket to the campus would take me 2 hours? Anyway by the time I get there the evening had just got underway, and I only missed the introductions. The first half hour is in any event consumed with filling in a bunch of forms, mostly waivers and such like. I assume the college legal advisors have insisted these forms must be read out aloud as if we can’t read them for ourselves. I get it, but it is a real pain in the proverbial, probably more so for the instructor doing the reading. 

Our instructors are Sheri and Carolyn, hope that I have at least spelt their names correctly, at this point Carolyn has not yet made an appearance so Sheri is doing all the talking. She has a whole Kelly McGillis in Top Gun thing going, which is sexy and nice, but I am neither Tom Cruise nor Val Kilmer, so I reign in my imagination and concentrate on the lesson. I begin to realize that I am a really crap rider and start to harbor some doubts as to passing this test first time, there is just so much stuff that I know I don’t do properly and I seem to have developed as many bad habits as your average nunnery. Still Sheri is fairly confident that between her and Carolyn they will get us into shape and ready for the testing on the Saturday afternoon. I am less than sure, but more than willing to give it a go. For the benefit of my non-Canadian readers, divers’ licenses here have three levels (I am only talking about a normal car or motorcycle licenses, any other class I actually have no idea). So an M1 is just a written test about rules of the road and road signs and has a very limited life span, also limits the rider to certain classes of roads, daytime riding, no passengers etc. M2 is what I have, I can travel on any road, at any time of day, can have a passenger, but may only ride with 0% of alcohol in my blood. I am not here because I want to quaff a beer and ride, I am here because my M2 license expires after 5 years, so I have only two more years to get the full M. I could have, and indeed had planned to do this last year, but killing the Suzuki Boulevard in mid-season threw a spanner in the works. I have not entirely let on in these chronicles quite how that incident freaked me out.

M1 Exit course - ready to roll
  
On Saturday, morning after a night of disturbed dreams, I leave home at quarter to seven, which should get me there in time, even with a stop for gas. It is thankfully cool today and apparently forecast to remain cool for the whole day. I am not complaining; the M1 Exit course I did at Georgian College a few years back, took place in the middle of a heat wave.  I totally enjoyed the course and I think that’s when I became smitten with this particular activity, but it certainly was a sweaty two days. I decide to attempt to put everything I was taught last night into practice, maybe by the afternoon when I test, I’ll have drilled this stuff into my thick head. I find that singing the actions out helps me, ‘mirror check, look for hazards, check my speed, mirror check, flash the brake lights, mirror check, look for hazards, curbside lane, left track’. My head bobs up and down, side to side, maybe I’ll live longer, but I’ll surely get repetitive strain injury in my shoulders. I’m not as successful with this as I would like to be, and to my surprise keeping within the speed limits is a harder trick to get right than I imagined it would be – well maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised, I’ve never been exactly great at keeping to speed limits.

Traffic is as expected way lighter than last night, folks are either at the cottage or not going at all, still I manage to keep within the speed limit and to the right hand lane, left tire track just as the book says. A few lane changes for practice, ‘check the mirrors, indicate, check the mirrors, shoulder check, change lanes – keep in the right tire track, cancel indicator, check the mirrors’. Actually that’s exactly how I do this anyway, come to think about it. I fill up gas just before reaching Barrie, my C type KLR has the silliest little tank with a maximum range of 300 kilometers, assuming reasonably favorable conditions. I have discovered to my embarrassment that heavy winds can cut this by as much as 60, but today I’m sure that I’ll have plenty of gas to get through.

The Candidates
 I arrive well in time, most of the other riders are already there so we get to inspect each other’s’ bikes and chew the fat a little. Three of the group are there for trike licenses, all three ride CanAm Spiders, damn nice machines, different sort of ride for sure. There are a few cruisers and a couple of sport bikes, I’m the only enduro. The morning starts off with a quick turn through the M1 exist nemesis. It comprises a short course painted out with white lines in the parking lot. It starts off with a sharp right turning S bend, then into a curve that you are supposed to accelerate through to a stop. You turn around, come back through the curve and stop. Today with 40,000 kilometers experience it seems as easy as pie, yet this is where all the M1 exist course candidates lose points, this is effectively where on my first attempt I failed the test. Even the two big Harleys go through with ease. This is not part of the test, but apparently some sort of screening to check that you can actually handle your bike, I fully understand, this is about safety, they don’t need to be out on the road with a total greenhorn.    

We spend the morning riding on a route through the campus doing the various maneuvers over and over that we will be tested on - roadside stops, left-hand turns on red, on green, right-hand turns on red and green, through intersections, lane changes and so on. I’m liking doing this on the KLR a lot more than I would on any other bike, it’s light and maneuverable and designed to be able to move at 1 km/h without falling over. Soon it’s lunch time and I’m parched as well as hungry, everyone else rides off, I assume to some or other Tim Horton’s, but I am very virtuous, so have a packed lunch of boiled eggs, meatballs, homemade mayonnaise and some cheese…and water, lots of water. It’s not really that hot, yet still one dehydrates when dressed in jeans, motorcycle jacket, helmet gloves and boots.

Now I always dress like this when riding, I’m big into protective gear, especially since my little mishap on the Suzuki Boulevard. Normally the wind factor cools you down, but here doing these circuits and bumps you don’t get enough speed up to keep cool.  Speaking to the other riders on the course, my attitude to protective gear is the exception rather than the norm. Well whatever blows your skirt up, if riding with a piss-pot helmet, shorts, T-shirt and sandals does it for you, that’s fine, but I tell you when the moment comes, and it probably will, when your bacon meets the blacktop it’s way better to be dressed for the fall than for the beach. I actually think that riding a motorcycle at high speeds without proper protective gear is a bit of a Darwin Award thing.
And this year's award goes to....


After lunch we gather around the instructors and are divided into two groups, the Sheri group and Carolyn group, I am in the latter, we are all bikes, whereas the other group has the spiders as well as a few bikes. We are going for a group ride to get us used to what we will be doing during the test, part of which is to wear a wire. Well sort of, in reverse, we can hear the instructor through an earpiece attached to a radio, but our microphones are disabled. Our group sets off through the streets of Barrie with Carolyn’s voice in our heads, ‘When it is safe to do so, perform a roadside stop’ or ‘At the intersection, turn right’, and so on. She is being driven in a car following us. After a while she directs us to a parking lot where we get scolded for not shoulder checking the blind spot enough and insufficient head bobbing and weaving. This it seems is the key to passing or failing on points – of course you will fail instantly on a few other knockout things like; dropping your bike, causing an accident, going through a red light, riding over a pedestrian and exceeding the speed limit by a generous margin.

Final Lecture - Sheri


Doing this group ride makes me a little worried about my left-right/east-west dyslexia. This is a very weird problem that I have always had, goodness knows why. If you say to me ‘turn left’ I have to think first as to which side is left, and I don’t always get it right, or do I mean left? Same with east and west, I have no problems with north and south, up and down positive or negative. Here’s another funny thing, I’m an accountant, and a pretty decent one at that (no false modesty here), yet I also have to think if debits are written on the left or right of a T-account. I am eternally grateful for the computerized format; debits are positive credits are negative, my brain gets that, no problem, it’s a north-south way of looking at things. I am also not into group rides, as anyone that follows this blog may have noticed, the not-so-easy-rider is mostly a lone rider.  I’m fine with two, maybe even three or four, but beyond that I am not keen. Anyway, all goes well, I guess everyone is on their best behavior and Carolyn herds us like a border collie, she knows what to do and after a nice little ride we arrive back at the campus.

I’m lucky, I get to test first – after just a short bio break I’m riding and Carolyn is in the car behind me instructing me to do this, or that, turn left right or go straight, change lanes, take the highway. It’s almost like a GPS. I try not to get flustered by all the FU’s I’m making, wrong lane, dropped the brake light while waiting for the signal to change, missed the shoulder check, forgot to bob the head to show I’m looking for hazards. The right/left dyslexia only manifests once and I hear Carolyn yell, ‘your other left’ when I indicate a right turn.  Finally, we make it back to the campus and I make a last FU, just for good measure, as we get to the entrance, failed to get into the curbside lane quickly enough. I stop in the parking lot and after a few nail biting moments Carolyn presents my result, I did better than I expected, but worse than I hoped. I did crap, but I passed, 20 demit points, just 5 short of failing. I graduate, not with honors, but I graduate. I hope that I may just hang onto some of the good habits I have learnt and leave behind some of the bad ones I have discovered are part of my riding repertoire.

The Graduate 



It’s just after three and I’m done so I head home, but haven’t gone far when the thought strikes me that a little celebratory ride is in order, I go home the long, scenic way, via Terra Nova and a salad and a half pint of beer on the patio of the Terra Nova Public House.  I linger over a couple of coffees to let the beer out of the system before riding home. Technically I have still got an M2 license which, as mentioned, means zero alcohol in the blood. I take a leisurely ride home; life can sometimes be sweet.

Sunday 17 July 2016

Dynamite Alley

So I have ridden some of these roads before, some of them a few times, yet I expect that will do nothing to diminish the fun factor. The Ontario Highlands are not soaring mountains, they are but ragged hills, still they are beautiful and home to some of the finest roads to ride a motorcycle on. Today the southern end of Highway 507 is the starting point of a loop I plan to ride, just over 510 kilometers, which, with the distance from home and back, going via Beaverton, Fenelon Falls and Bobcaygeon, should bring the full trip to a tidy 800 kilometers, or the magical 500 miles, a real Iron butt ride.

I have a subscription to the magazine Inside Motorcycles, ‘Canada’s Source for Motorcycling News’, the May edition came with a map, a nice big folded map called ‘Ride The Highlands’. Now anyone that has finally mastered the art of map folding, not as skillful as origami I will grant you, will confirm just how fascinating maps are. The map is of the Ontario Highlands with a bunch of routes worked out. The idea is that the Ontario Highlands have ‘handmade’ roads, roads cut from the forests of the Canadian Shield by human labor in the mid nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. They did not have the equipment that modern road builders have, as a result these roads tend to go around obstacles instead of through them, hence the fabulous twisties and why it is so awesome to ride a bike in this area. Which is not to say that they did no cutting at all, the route I have chosen to ride today is called Dynamite Alley, it is called that because there are enough examples of where the road builders simply could not go around all the obstacles and employed judicious amounts of dynamite to cut through the hillsides. The result are roads that have grand sweeping, truly sexy curves that are exactly what I’m after. Unhappily I have only one day available this weekend to ride, really need to organize my life better, so although the ride is billed as a two-day ride, I plan on doing it in one. http://ridethehighlands.ca/en/index

It’s Saturday on the Canada Day weekend, its already 10.45 and I’m just at the starting point of the loop, so I am feeling a little bit of pressure if indeed I’m going to make it all the way. 
It's Canada Day Weekend, Eh
I left home at about 8 a.m., not entirely at the proverbial fart-o-sparrow, but in my defense it was cold. Yes, in mid-summer it was cold, so I waited for it to warm up a wee bit, call me a ninny if you will, but I don’t enjoy being cold. I was attired in jeans, boots and mesh jacket when I pulled away, but stopped barely 5 kilometers from home and donned the full Frogg Toggs outfit, rain gear, as noted many times in this blog, keeps the wind out and the rider nice and toasty. I am stopped at a small gas station that is insanely busy with people filling containers with gasoline for motorboats, also a lot of motorcycle. They have a funny system here, I guess it is called the honor system, you pump your gas, take a note of the charge, then go inside and tell the cashier how much and pay. There are not many places in the world where something like this would work, there is something to be said for that. On a less happy note, after filling up gas I take a pee in the most disgustingly filthy washroom I have yet encountered in Canada.

Highway 507 is a 38 kilometer stretch of one of the best roads to ride on that I know, I remember the first time I rode down Highway 507 from Gooderham, it was so much fun that I promptly turned around and rode back up again. I am of course not alone in this conviction, while I was stopped at the gas station I saw at least 40 bikes set off on Highway 507. It may be a little cold and windy, but the biking fraternity are indeed out an about today. I ride at a fair clip, carving my way through the curves at a little over the speed limit and well over the recommended speed for the corners, nonetheless I get overtaken by a group of about six sport bikes, big fast BMWs, that make me look like I’m stopped at the side of the road. It looks like awfully good fun, but I really don’t have the balls for that sort of riding. Perhaps had I learnt to ride in my reckless youth it would be different. The more I ride the KLR the happier I become with it, it fits the type of riding I want to do. It’s not the greatest bike on the pavement nor is it off-road, but it’s a decent compromise. I have discovered that to enjoy my ride I don’t actually need all that much power, all that much speed and I definitely don’t want all that weight. It’s also cheap and cheerful, as am I, so we get along just fine.


Views from Highway 507


From Gooderham the route carries on north on Highway 3 or Glamorgan road, marginally less twisty and as scenic as the 507, it’s 17 kilometers span is over far too quickly, but now I’m onto highway 118 going north-west and through Haliburton. This is one of my favorite towns in East Muskoka and home to the Baked and Battered Cottage Bakery and Fish Fry. It’s on Highland Street overlooking Head Lake, they do this thing call coconut shrimp, oh my. They use a large peeled shrimp, still with the tail, flayed open so that it is shaped like an oval disk, battered then coated in shredded coconut and deep fired. A few weeks back I stopped there for lunch and had battered haddock with four of these instead of chips – I’m still doing the low carb/Banting way of eating, though I guess there are carbs in the batter. Anyway, it was bordering on an orgasmic experience - sitting on the verandah, taking in the view and enjoying the meal.http://bakedandbattered.com . Though I am hungry by now I decide that it is too soon since the last stop to have a rest break, Dorset is about an hour away via the suggested route, which is on Highway 118 to Carnarvon then North on Highway 35, but first a little loop up to Eagle Lake on Haliburton Road, and back to the 118 on Eagle Lake Road. 
If you are ever in that area at a mealtime (or even if not at an official mealtime) stop by there

I like riding Highway 118 and 35. These are the main roads around here so they are wider, less twisty, and I suspect not handmade, but nonetheless have wonderful sweeping curves.  The blacktop is in great condition and traffic is relatively light so I manage to get up to a fairly exhilarating speed - well relative to the KLR - carving my way through absolutely stunning scenery of lakes, craggy hills and verdant forest. This may not be the Rocky Mountains, and I do tease a little that this hills are called ‘the Highlands’, but that does not detract from the fact that this is a truly gorgeous area. I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again; I am privileged to live in such a beautiful part of the world. I turn off Highway 35 to go into Dorset, a lovely little village, in search of a ‘spot of lunch’, as an Englishman might say. Alas that is not to be, there is something on in the town and it is heaving with people. I have serious doubts that I’d find a table anywhere, damn should have lunched in Haliburton, I am by now very hungry, but I have a pathological hatred for crowds, to be honest I am not all that keen on the company of my fellow man other than in moderate doses, crowds really scare the shit out of me.

I flee and head back to Highway 35 – maybe I’ll have more luck in Dwight, which as it turns out is exactly what happens. Shortly before the turnoff onto Highway 60 I stumble on the Bush Company Bar and Grill. Another of those great country restaurants I keep on discovering on my travels. I seem to be at the risk of turning this blog into a guide to eating your way around, still I’ll mention that the Southern fried chicken sandwich (I didn’t eat the bread) and baked brie and caramelized onion dip was way more than merely decent. http://www.thebushcompany.com. They had tables to spare and the service was excellent.
There is one thing I have realized about low carb eating – it is nearly impossible to find a quick meal anywhere that does not include bread. I ate on the patio which was inside a garden, fortunately far from the maddening crowd.

Highway 60 took me through Algonquin Park. A nice enough ride, scenic, but not really anything to write home about from a biking point of view. You do stand a chance of encountering a moose or deer or even a black bear, any of which could do some serious damage to a motorcycle and/or rider and visa-versa I presume, but that doesn’t stop me riding at a bit above the speed limit of 80 km/h. I am certainly not alone in doing this, the traffic speed is at least 100 km/h, this is one of the main drags to Ottawa, the fact that it goes right through a provincial park does not detract in any way from its primary purpose of conveying cars quickly and efficiently. It doesn’t take me long to get to the east gate, a mere 60 kilometers from the west gate. By now my lunch has started to settle nicely and I’m feeling decidedly sleepy. This may come as a surprise, but it is entirely possible to fall asleep while riding a motorbike, even doing a decent speed. This is not something I want to do as I’m sure taking a nap at 85 km/h can be fatal or at the very least painful and inconvenient, so I stop at the Opeongo Outfitting Store, there is a sign that they sell coffee.

Now if you need to be outfitted for camping, canoeing, hiking, fishing and so on, then this is the place to come to. I think this is weird, if I were coming to Algonquin to do any of these things I would have all this shit sorted out long before reaching the very edge of the park. It’s a bit like those luggage shops you see in airports; WTF do people arrive at the airport destined for exotic places and they have their stuff in shopping bags pending the purchase of a suitcase? I assume these places must actually sell things because they are still in business. Anyway here at Opeongo Outfitting Store, 3 Generations of Experienced Outfitters Since 1936 you may also acquire T-shirts, baseball caps, key rings, moccasins, RCMP teddy bears, wee bottles of maple syrup and other typical Canadian crap that gets sold to tourists. They do sell coffee which is almost undrinkable, but I force it down anyway. I also buy a few cans of sugar free Red Bull and after downing two of these I think I’m armored against the midafternoon drowsies, not to mention that the pending pressure on the bladder will almost certainly keep me awake.

I notice that the sky above me has assumed an ominous dark aspect, it has been switching between clear and threatening rain for most of the ride so far, but this looks a little more serious. To the south things look better so I decide to moderate the route a little and take Highway 127 south instead of carrying on to Madawaska and the 523 south. Almost immediately I regret the decision, Highway 523 was one of the attractions of the route, not that the 127 is bad, but it’s definitely not a hand-cut road and almost bereft of twisties. Heading south does actually get me away from the storm clouds and it’s not long before I’m riding through the proverbial sunlight uplands on a road that is almost innocent of traffic. The blacktop is in excellent condition so I must confess to taking the old KLR up to a speed it was not really designed to do. The Suzuki Boulevard C90T, that I used to ride, could get to 140 without breaking into a sweat, but I assure you that it’s a heap more fun on the KLR maxed out at that speed, not to mention scary as all hell. At Maynooth I leave the main roads and turn west onto Peterson Road, which on paper looks like one heck of a road to ride – and so it turns out to be.

Peterson road, and eventually Elephant Lake road, as it morphs into, is definitely one of those hand-made roads. This is very hilly country and I am treated to many stunning views as I crest hills and get a brief glimpse of forest canopy and a multitude of lakes. There is not much traffic and I only see one motorcycle coming from the opposite direction, I find this a little odd as it is a fabulous road to ride, but I guess this is a little off the beaten path. Eventually, by way of a few other gorgeous little winding roads, I reach Highway 118, my old favorite and go east for a few miles until I meet up with Highway 28, south bound.

Elephant Lake Road

Elephant Lake 



I am now tired, sore-of-ass and heading home. Highway 28 takes me parallel to highway 507, just on the east side of the Kawatha Highlands Provincial Park, where I started the loop this morning. It’s nice enough, but no match for the 507 in terms of a great motorbike road. Burleigh Falls to Buckhorn and soon I pass the gas station with the honor system and disgusting washrooms, the loop is done and I’m going home. Twelve hours and three minutes after setting out this morning, I pull the KLR into the garage and ease ass from the saddle. I have covered 765 Kilometers, 35 short of the planned Ironbut. I am slightly disappointed in myself, but then this isn’t a challenge, I do this for fun and entirely for myself. 

Friday 1 July 2016

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.  

Sunday 15 May 2016

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....

Saturday 7 May 2016

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 5th 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 5th 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.


BTW – follow me on Twitter