Christmas In Nam

I have a complicated relationship with Christmas, I have long ceased to believe in Jesus, virgin birth, wise men (we’re all damn fools), or even that religion is necessarily a force for good, but despite myself the first time I hear the strains of ‘Silent Night’ in November, my heart lifts for a very brief moment.  It wears off pretty fast, there are very few Christmas carols that I actually like, Silent Night’ is the only one I can think of right now, and the extreme carols bombardment we are subjected to pisses me off so completely that I avoid shops as much as possible and leave the car radio switched off until January, when the horror of it has passed. I loathe the waste that Christmas insists on, the buying and giving of kitsch, useless things manufactured specifically to go into landfills. Now that I no longer have small children to share this festival with I am generally able to ignore it, nonetheless somewhere in my make-up there is a vestigial stump of Christmas spirit, a hankering for the magic and wonder I once felt, so many years ago.

Being a bit of a control freak, just a tiny bit, as people I live with will eventually admit if you pushed them hard enough, I had phoned ahead and made a booking for Christmas lunch. Not having a clue as to where would be good, I had initially tried the yacht club in the belief that all yacht clubs across the globe would be serving a passable Christmas lunch, but found that this particular yacht club was closed for Christmas. They referred me to The Raft, in the words of Sean Penn in I am Sam, ‘an excellent choice’. What a stunning place! It is instantly my favourite restaurant in the whole wide world. Built on stilts, close to the mouth of the Walvis Bay Lagoon, it has a bit of a Kevin Costner, Waterworld feel to it. The food is pretty good, but the attraction is the location, utterly awesome! Where else can you eat a meal watching the antics of pelicans, flamingos, busy little terns and graceful seagulls, not to mention the occasional dolphin and Cape fur seal? Today they offer a variation on the traditional Christmas fare with roast lamb and roast pork in addition to their standard menu. I opt for the trio of fish from the standard menu, ‘Fillets of Kingklip, Monkfish and Butterfish all simply coated in seasoned flour and flash-fried in palm nut oil’ they serve this with chips and crisply cooked fresh vegetables. Pretty damn good, way better than oily or bone dry turkey with cranberry jelly that half the rest of the world are stuffing themselves with today.

 The Raft Restaurant - new favorite... ever! 

My daughter, Therese, Christmas lunch at The Raft

Busy little tern, from the window of The Raft

There is an item on the menu that is a little beyond belief -‘BUSHMAN PLATTER; brochette of flame-grilled Oryx Sirloin, Beef Fillet, Kudu Sirloin, BBQ Pork Spare Ribs and Cajun Chicken Strips, served with mushroom sauce, pepper gravy and sweet & sour sauce, accompanied by your choice of Asian fried Rice, shoestring French fries, baked potato, vegetable couscous or basil mashed potato and a garnish salad.’ Holy smoke, if I ate all of that I think I would fall down next to the table and go into spasms for a few hours. We live in a world of excess, unless you happen to be one of the unlucky majority that can barely scrape enough calories to make it through the day. Oh well let’s leave this rant for another day, it’s Christmas, I’m with my sister and daughter and having a really great time.

I recall that Walvis Bay had exactly one restaurant way back when. Café something or other, typical of what was on offer in any small town in Southern Africa in the sixties and seventies, chrome and Formica tables and chairs, almost certainly owned and operated by a Cypriot, not licenced to serve alcohol, but would do a katemba (1 part cheap red wine and 1 part Coke, served in a pint beer glass with ice) at a price. The menu consisted of various pies with gravy and limp salad, tenderized steak and mash potato, and the pièce de résistance, ‘le mixed grill’, in some ways a little like the ‘BUSHMAN PLATTER’ I suppose, a piece of tenderized steak, grilled Russian sausage, fried onions, lamb chop, fried slice of calf’s liver, fried egg, fried tomato, toast and limp salad. For dessert you could tuck into a hefty slice of Madera cake with custard and/or ice cream. For your unwilling soldier that had been subsisting on the awfulness that was usual fare served at Rooikop, this was as close to heaven as it got. Things certainly have changed around here, there seems to be a restaurant of some description on every corner, though the café I once knew is nowhere to be found.

After lunch we take a walk, traditional attempt to walk off the Christmas lunch traditional excess, even though the wind is starting to pick up, vaguely I remember that afternoon wind is a feature of this area. We pass the public swimming pool and picnic area and peek over the fence, lots of people are having lots of fun in a non-Eurocentric way.

A peek over the fence at the 'other' half

Around the corner we discover the Walvis Bay Waterfront, more Kevin Costner Waterworld, utterly charming, but I predict will all too soon be bulldozed and replaced by some awful generic mall thing, maybe in fake Tuscan or Greek Isle motif. I know, I’m a cynical bastard, still I am going to enjoy this exactly the way it is with no thought for the future. Except for the very near future and make note of a few establishments that serve seafood or can take you on an excursion, a harbour cruise seems interesting and as far as I can tell relatively inexpensive.

 Walvis Bay Waterfront

We make it back to the car, having walked off a few of the lunch calories, actually as I had salad for a starter, fish and only a very small dessert, I’m feeling fine, virtuous almost. We decide on a drive rather than head to the guest house and lie down on our beds. We take a route south past a new and very swanky residential area, not really knowing where we are going, but destination does not matter. We go past a resort with chalets right on the beach, I remember the name, I’d tried to book in there, but they had been fully booked, pity it looks nice. Soon we leave the town behind, dunes to the left, bay to the right and salt pans ahead, this is a paradise for flamingos and artists, colours and contrasts are utterly amazing, whoever would have thought that salt pans were so interesting? Salt is apparently the most important export of the area, I thought it was uranium, or at least fish, well there you are, better than guano (bird shit) as it once was not that long ago.  Before the invention of the Ostwald and the Haber–Bosch processes, barely a hundred years ago, bird shit was the principle source of nitrogen for explosives and fertilizer, it was known as ‘white gold’ and the Skeleton Coast had many little islands that were covered in layers of the stuff, several metres thick. No guano to harvest here though there are birds aplenty, flamingos poop into the water, which is perhaps one reason that waters of Walvis Bay are so rich in marine life.

Colours and contrasts on the way to Pelican Point, salt making in progress

There are two species of Flamingos that inhabit the area, the Greater Flamingo and the Lesser Flamingo, apparently they are easy to tell apart, but my birding eyes are out of practice and I’m not exactly sure which are which, they often flock together. Both species wade in shallow water, the Greater eats shrimp and the Lesser eats blue-green algae, the Greater is less pink with solid red on the wing tips and the Lesser is pink over the whole body with some red speckles on the wings. The beaks are the easiest way to tell them apart, the Lesser flamingo has a darker beak whilst the Greaters’ beak has only a dark tip. When flamingos fly and especially when they land, is a study of skill and grace with the oddest of equipment, like a flying hockey stick, long neck stretched out in front and equally long legs behind, in the middle are the wings and a very slender body. We stop and watch them in the bay, they work their legs backwards and forwards as if in time to bebop, they do this to agitate the mud to get at the shrimp. It’s just a wonderful sight, made even more magical by the appearance of three pelicans that glide in and land on the water like 747’s  The wind is blowing strongly now, but the birds don’t seem to notice, neither in flight nor on the water.

Group of Lesser Flamingos

Mixed group... see if you can spot the difference. My photos don't do them justice, they flock in vast, and I mean vast numbers. 

Pelican in Flight 

I switch on roaming data on my phone and the GPS/map feature to figure out where we are heading. I have learned to do this very judiciously as the roaming package was outrageously expensive for the smallest amount of data imaginable. It turns out that we are on our way to Pelican Point, going along a narrow spit of land that forms the southern end of the bay. I believe there is a lodge at the end of it, but we don’t manage to get there, the condition of the road gets worse and less than half way to the point I turn back, the VW Polo is at the limit of its rough road ability. On the way back we stop to get some pictures of a strange green and purple grass that grows next to the road and discover, on closer inspection, it’s not a grass at all, but a succulent.

Purple and green 'grass'

I had some misgivings about selecting Nambia for this holiday, but it is turning out to be such a fascinating and very different place. My sister has spotted a town called Solitaire on the map, so our next excursion will be Solitaire by way of Dune Seven, a true mountain of shifting whispering sand – eat your heart out Johnny Cash.      

To Wallfish Bay

The Afrikaans word “walvis” (pronounced “vull” to rhyme with dull and “fis” almost like “fizz”, but more of an ‘s’ on the end), actually translates to “whale”, but many English speakers refer to Walvis Bay as “Wallfish Bay”, which sounds funny to my ear, so I have always used the Afrikaans. 

Apparently it got this name because of the large numbers of southern right whales that were drawn to the bay by the presence of a great deal of food, it was then, and still is, a place where marine life is rich, varied and abundant. Walvis Bay has a very interesting history thanks to its geography. It is the only natural deep water harbour for hundreds of miles north and south along the southwest African coast line. The Cape Colony, on behalf of Great Britain, annexed the bay together with a small arc of surrounding land, amounting to about 430 square miles, in 1878, shortly before Germany annexed the rest of what is now Namibia. The arrogance, greed and generally disgraceful behavior of our recent colonial ancestors is quite breathtaking when viewed from the zeitgeist prevailing today. Nonetheless it was a canny move to grab this enclave, Walvis Bay is the gateway to Namibia and remained part of South Africa until 1994, when the government of South Africa handed it back to Namibia, A very fair thing to do in my view as it had no business not being part of Namibia from the beginning. In any event this small port city (population 85,000) is where we are heading.  

Map - predates Namibian Independence

   

My own history with this city goes back to those dark days when I was stationed there as a conscripted lowly gunner in a field artillery regiment. Our unit was not actually stationed at the barracks in town, but right at the edge of the enclave, beyond the dunes, at the base of a great big lump of red sandstone known as "Rooikop"… Red Hill. Of all the postings that a conscript could get, this one was regarded as the shittiest, only marginally better than a stint in detention barracks. The accommodation was primitive, all 120 of us slept in a corrugated steel aeroplane hangar that we shared with eight 5.5 inch field guns. The hangar had no windows and massive doors on rails that had to be dragged open and closed, an effort that required at least three men pushing with all their might. The floor was rough concrete that sloped towards the doors. Although we had electric lights these were switched on or off from the duty officers’ room, there were no electric outlets, which was a blessing in disguise, we were at least not expected to iron our uniforms and nobody played loud radios deep into the night. When the wind blew off the desert in summer there was no relief from the heat and dust, and when the temperature dropped on winter nights to below zero, which it occasionally did, the temperature inside the hangar was the same as outside.

Rooikop - as close as we could get to it, it is still a military base and restricted

The bathroom facilities were even more primitive. We shared five showers and three wash basins and as water was brought in by truck, running out of water was a regular occurrence, sometimes in mid shower. I recall that I always shaved my downy cheeks, brushed teeth and washed my face using my steel helmet filled with water taken from an outside faucet rather than wait for a basin to come available. The shower block was constructed out of 44 gallon drums filled with sand and a flat tin roof, when the wind blew as it often did, it howled through the gaps between the drums like avenging angels. Toilets were the worst of all, you did it straight into a tank, no running water, just through a horrible bloody hole, sometimes in the company of three others, privacy in the army was not big on the priority list. The tank was emptied twice a week by a truck that we called ‘the honeysuckle’. It is funny that although I can easily recall the toilets, my memory of actually making use of the facility eludes me completely, it is as if those memories have been completely erased in the interest of self-preservation.

We had no kitchen at Rooikop so all of our meals were trucked in from the main base in Walvis Bay about 15 Km away, you can just imagine how yummy our food was.

Being far away from the scrutiny of any civilian authority, it was also a paradise for sadists, an animal that all military establishments seem to be well supplied with. I suffered under a particular bastard with the inappropriate name of Major Human, Major Inhumane would have been so much more accurate. However, Rooikop had four positives, the officers went home at 5 pm and left us mostly to our own devices until morning, it was in the desert proper, which I grew to love, the threat of denying weekend passes was utterly meaningless and we somehow tapped into a seemingly endless supply of good quality, inexpensive weed. Smoking weed is of course a thing of the past, but I am looking forward to seeing Walvis Bay again.

   

To get there I decide to take the longer route, the B2, which tracks an arc, north from Windhoek to Okahandja, west to Karabib and Usakos, south west to Swakopmund and then a final 30 Km directly south to Walvis Bay along the Skeleton Coast. It is 400 Km, a whole 50 Km longer than the C26, but it has the distinct advantage of being paved 100 % of the way. I have discovered that outside of the main towns and cities, Namibia has relatively few paved roads. The absence of touring motor cycle rentals makes sense now, my Suzuki Boulevard would be close to useless, if you want to ride a motorcycle here, you’d better get something that can handle gravel and loose sand, maybe next time I come here that’s what I should do. I am starting to realize that the only way to really get around here is with something a lot more robust than a VW Polo Vivo, a 4x4 would have been much better.

The trip passes very pleasantly with conversation, six and a half years catch-up… so much gossip, so little time, the Kardashians have got nothing on my family. Once we get beyond several miles of road works close to Windhoek the road settles down to a single lane highway, the blacktop is in reasonable nick, though the lane is quite narrow. I’d guess this is the most important artery in the country, linking the second most populous area and the only harbour, to the most important city, still it is not much more than a typical country road that you’d find anywhere in Ontario, such as between Zephyr and Mt Albert. The speed limit is 120 Km/h, but the traffic speed is mostly about 130. The VW Polo holds its own, provided that you work the gears. There are of course plenty of assholes that feel they really do need to go at 160 even though the road is not safe at that speed. The scenery is nothing short of magnificent. Close to Windhoek its hills and dales, but that does not last long and soon it is all flat plains with thorn bush and mountains in the distance. We cross many rivers, but not a single one has a drop of water, this is supposedly the rainy season, but it is as dry as dust, and it gets dryer as we go west. Next to the road we spot warthog (Pumba for those whose experience of African wildlife is restricted to the Lion King). It’s hot, it’s dry, it’s empty of people, it’s just wonderful.

Hills and dales near Windhoek 

Namibian River - bone dry!

Usakos - if I recall correctly, pretty anyway

As we get closer to the coast the bushes shrink and the length of the grass shortens until it disappears all together. We are in the Namib Desert, believed to be as old as 80 million years, the oldest desert on earth. This is moonscape, it is so different to what we are used to; conversation dries up as the awe of the scenery fills our minds. This is what I remember from my army days, walking out with a water bottle into the baking, empty and completely silent desert, paradise for an introvert that hated noise and constantly having people around. This was my weekend pass, where I got in touch with my sanity again, this was the iota of freedom I had. I now remember why I made that promise to return. To the right several miles away we spot Spitzkoppe, German for pointed peak. It is a group of bald granite peaks, like nine or ten really enormous boulders. The granite is more than 700 million years old and the highest peak rises about 5800 ft. above sea level, about half that much above the desert floor. I’d love to get closer, but note that the road to get there is marked as 4x4 only.

Spitzkoppe 

Emptiness, divine

Moonscape

Always life no matter how dry

 A few miles from Swakopmund fog rolls in from the ocean and the sun sets quietly obscured by it. We are by now pretty darn hungry, but it appears that Swakopmund is closed for Christmas Eve. I recall that this is a very German town and Christmas Eve is when Germans do the family get together, around the O Tannenbaum I suppose. We drive around in mounting despair, the packet of biltong we shared along the way is long gone. For those that are not in the know, biltong is sort of like jerky, only tastes really good, there is a butcher in Oakville, Ontario, that makes some pretty good biltong. We had envisaged a pleasant supper in a German style establishment, eisbein, sausages, steaming piles of cabbage, bratkartoffeln, perhaps an oompah band and serving wenches with large boobs carrying great fistfuls of beer tankards…well perhaps the last item was only on my list. Swakopmund is supposedly a bit of a party town, but it ain’t doing so tonight!

My sister mentions that she is sure that there is a casino here, which must surely be open, casinos never close (something about the work of the devil is never done) and at the casino there certainly will be some establishment that will serve us dinner. We are still wondering where the casino could be when we realize that we are actually passing it at that moment. The Mermaid Casino appears to be very quiet, but we decide to try it anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained. We find one of those ubiquitous Chinese restaurant all red and gold, dragons and temple lions, it’s open, not exactly pumping, but there are customers and it is serving dinner. The service is good, if light on the serving wenches and tankards, and the food is entirely passable. I settle for a bottle of Tafel Lager to accompany the rice, noodles and sizzling this and that, in the end it works out pretty well.

After dinner we follow the coast road south to Walvis Bay, we can just make out the ocean to the right, perhaps because of the lights of the many ships riding at anchor. On the left is a range of massive dunes, I know this from memory only as it is too dark to see anything. We pass the lights of a few beach village developments, the buildings are all new, sort of Middle Eastern style. They certainly did not exist the last time I came down this road, hitchhiking back from Swakopmund after a weekend of A.W.O.L. I remember that trip as if it were yesterday. A little fellow with a large wife picked me up in a small car, a Datsun, if memory serves me. The wife held a baby on her lap and the man had very greasy, dandruff ridden hair and chain smoked the entire trip. All the windows were shut so as to ensure that the baby did not catch a chill, as the wife explained. This was on a hot mid-afternoon driving through a bloody desert. At the time I smoked as heavily as my meagre army pay allowed, but I remember stepping out of the car in Walvis Bay gasping for air with my throat on fire, no doubt the poor child has since either made it as a jockey due to seriously stunted growth or is breathing through a little tube in its throat. No such problem tonight, my daughter has never smoked and both my sister and I are ex-smokers, as virtuous as prostitutes taken holy orders.

Walvis Bay is quieter than Swakopmund, but this suits us just fine, we are tired, well fed and seriously ready for bed. It has been an awfully long day. I know three things, the guest house is on Sam Nujoma Drive (every town in Nambia has a Sam Nujoma drive, street or avenue), which runs north/south and the place is called ‘The Shifting, Whispering Sands’. It takes me less than five minutes from entering the town to stopping in front of it. Tula and Tilla welcome us to their establishment, it is spotlessly clean and comfortable, but ever so slightly reminds me of Fawlty Towers. Tilla makes an older, but perfect Sybil and Tula is Basil down to his toenails, later we will meet a small black dude that is a dead ringer for Manual. As we unpack the car I realise that I cannot be happier.

Nam

I am only a few kilometres from the spot where my mother lost her life 46 years ago when SA 228 crashed, seconds after takeoff, a life changing event for my family. Nonetheless I do not think about this too much, there has been too many gallons of water flowing under too many bridges since then. I'm alert and awake as the wheels of the Airbus A319 touch down at Windhoek's Hosea Kutako International Airport, despite the 37 hours elapsed time since boarding a plane at Pearson international. The last few hours have been spent chasing the setting sun as we flew directly west from Johannesburg, now darkness has finally descended. The heat of the day remains to greet me as I descend the aircraft on the stairs rolled up for us. We walk across the apron to the terminal building, no retractable walkway to ease you from the plane into a cool air-conditioned airport building. Actually as it turns out the building isn't air-conditioned at all, leaving your weary traveler gasping for breath. On the plus side there are no silly HSBC adverts making sage sounding, but generally stupid statements about the future, and the friendly smiling ground crew that line the route welcoming you to Namibia. All is good.   

Chasing the setting sun

It’s always exciting to arrive at your destination, especially when it’s a fairly ‘exotic’ one, but this is extra special for me. My daughter runs up and greets me in the immigration hall, I’m a little puzzled by this, but the emotion of the reunion pushes the question to one side, it's been nearly three years since I waved her goodbye as she left Canada to follow a life in South Africa. As it turns out I neglected to supply her with the address of the place we are booked into, so although her flight landed an hour before mine she has not been allowed through until I arrive and provide this piece of crucial info. This amazes me as a five minute internet search will yield up several thousand addresses of places to stay in Namibia – you only have to supply one, and no need to validate it. The idiotic questions employed by passport control seems to be standard across all nations. Not as idiotic as the so called airport security universally imposed since 911…all that searching, stripping, limits on gels, no nail files and so on is completely negated by the existence of restaurants and shops on the other side of the security checks. I am all for security and would be happier with more inconvenience, but actual meaningful security.  However, I digress and will leave this little rant for some other time. I’m embarking on a 17 day vacation in warm and sunny Namibia with my daughter and for some of the time, my sister. I am jet lagged, sleep-deprived and beyond grubby, but nonetheless as happy as a sand boy. I believe that sand boys are pretty happy creatures.

Perhaps I should answer a few questions that may be forming in a reader’s mind. Why Namibia and why is the Not-so-Easy-Rider blogging about this. The last time I visited Namibia, or ‘Nam’, as we called it in imitation of our US counterparts doing something similar in Vietnam, was almost exactly 36 years ago. I was nineteen and finally going home after two years as an unwilling, but obedient soldier, very small cog in the Apartheid military machine. Back then despite the misery of the existence I had led, I recognized the tremendous and extremely varied natural beauty of the country and promised myself that I would come back under more pleasant circumstances. I’m not entirely sure why, until now, I have not returned despite ample opportunity. When I decided to meet up with my daughter, Cape Town, where she lives, would have been a more logical choice, but ‘same old, same old’ came to mind and actually I loathe Cape Town during the Christmas holiday season, it heaves with people, everything is fully booked and the prices go through the roof. Then I thought of Nam and that old promise to come back. 

The idea of renting a motorcycle and doing some touring with her on the back did occur to me, but I knew that she wouldn’t enjoy that sort of trip, I didn’t get much further than Googling motorcycle rentals, there are a few places that offer rentals, but I could only find for road scrambler type bikes. Sorry to disappoint those that only want to read about motorcycling, this is not a motorcycle trip, for now, sadly, I’m the Easy–Driver.  But as this blog is also about my travels, I've decided to do a few posts on this trip…believe me it’s shaping up to be pretty damn interesting. I’m fast realizing that this is an awesome place to visit, on a motorcycle or off it.

We get a taxi to take us to the lodge we are booked into, the quote is N$400 (about CAD 40), it seems excessive, but then I discover that the airport is more than 40 km from the city and another 5 to the lodge, so I guess that it’s reasonable. I get my first experience of the Namibian interpretation of the gentle art of driving a car, but put it down to just this one crazy taxi driver, grit my teeth and buckle up. The 40 km drive passes awfully quickly, on a few occasions I swear I see episodes from my life flash before my eyes. We go through what looks like a very new suburb, big expensive looking houses with high walls, topped with electric fences. I am reminded of Pretoria.  We pass a large estate with a long fence of black and gold pickets with an odd looking coat of arms repeated every few yards. “The residence of Sam Nujoma?” I ask, displaying my general ignorance of the current politics of the country I am visiting. It turns out to be the residence of “His Excellency Hifikepunye Pohamba”, the current president. Our old adversary, Sam Nujoma has retired after what I believe, objectively, can be said to be a very decent go at running the country. In the short time since landing I sense a feeling of prosperity, pride and stability…crazy taxi driver notwithstanding.

Crazy Taxi driver dude (at least got us there) 

  

I have booked us in at a place called Arebbusch Travel Lodge, It looked nice on the website, was reasonably priced and the online booking was easy and logical to work with. The lodge itself does not disappoint in most departments, our chalet is clean, reasonably furnished, with a new and properly functioning air-conditioning unit (an absolute must in this part of the world). The only negative is that the place is not really as “in the bush” as I had been led to believe, it looks like it was just that not very long ago, but the city has grown towards it and  shortly it will be just an enclave. Nonetheless once inside the lodge enclosure you certainly get the feel of being out in the bush, the units are spaced reasonably far apart, with quite thick thorn bush between them. There is tranquility, African night sounds and the heat has subsided enough to sit on the verandah and enjoy at least some of my first African evening for six-and-a-half years. It’s wonderful and we have lots to catch up, but I struggle to keep my attention from wavering, I am exhausted and soon have no choice but to shower and bed.  

I’m awake before dawn, my internal time mechanism is completely screwed up, but I’m not grumpy about being up, sitting on the verandah and experiencing an African dawn is one of the things I’m here for. Despite the proximity to the city, I hear a hyena in the distance, I guess its concluding business for the night before settling down to sleep the day away, a sensible strategy here where the weather report is predicting 37 degrees Celsius. I, on the other hand, am looking forward to some of that, had enough of sub-zero stuff for now. The sky turns from black to purple and then to pink and the birdsong rises to a crescendo. The growing traffic noise from a main road about 500 meters away reminds me that I’m not actually deep in the bush, but the mood holds, it’s good to be back in Africa.

Sunrise in Windhoek

I boil some bottled water for coffee, there are no warnings that the tap water isn’t drinkable, but it has a funny smell and tastes a little unpleasant. Windhoek is a very dry place and I know that a fair percentage of water is reclaimed, Fremen style, if you get my drift. Gives the term ‘eau de toilette’ a whole new meaning. Of course I know that it has been purified, still I think I’ll stick to drinking bottled water and beer. The beer, I recall, is worth drinking, this country has a strong German heritage despite the hundred years that have passed since the end of German rule, and that heritage is stamped strongly on the brewing standards – an excellent place for a bit of Teutonic rigor in my humble opinion. The coffee I made is pretty horrid with the lodge supplied sachets of instant coffee and chicory blend (yuk) and non-dairy creamer, despite my serious coffee dependency I don’t manage much more than a few sips.

Breakfast (included in the rate) is a reasonable affair, the usual fest of eggs, bacon, sausages, fruit, muesli, Kellogg’s poisons, baked goods, toast, juice and yogurt set out for the customers to serve themselves. I stick to eggs, bacon and sausage and try the brewed coffee, only slightly too weak. We take a table outside that we share with a praying mantis and watch the antics of the weaver birds in the tree next to the verandah, the males desperately showing off the nests they have built to attract a female. Bit like the male of the human species, only we use Ferraris, Platinum Amex cards or whatever the income can stretch to. Of course the tactic doesn’t work as well since the equality between the sexes has improved, unless it really is a Ferrari and a holiday home on the French Rivera that you can flash around. The male weavers are having as little success as far as I can tell, at least ten of them are trying to impress two ladies that do no more than view the nests on offer in a decidedly disinterested manner.

 Weaver nests at Breakfast

Sharing the table with a Praying Mantis 

After breakfast I phone a taxi to take us to the Avis location, which turns out to be only 3 Km from the lodge, I could have walked, but then the sun is already shining with a ferocity that I’m not exactly acclimatized to.  The group B vehicle I booked is a VW Polo Vivo 1.4, known elsewhere in the world as the Polo MK4. I note with some amusement that the car has a slightly smaller engine displacement than my Suzuki Boulevard motorcycle and produces slightly less horsepower, 74 versus 77.8. Nonetheless it feels reasonably gutzy, handles well, has enough space inside for three adults and luggage and is air-conditioned… and the rate Avis charge (CAD 670 for 16 days) is definitely not over the top.  I am a little nervous of driving, not sure how I’ll manage a stick shift again since I have mostly driven automatics for the past 6 years, but more concerned about driving on the right hand side of the road again. No problem it seems, it’s as though I have a switch in my brain and the transition to driving on the right is almost seamless, it feels perfectly natural, ditto the stick shift. Not ditto the Namibian drivers. I soon discover that the taxi driver is not an aberration, Namibians are a nation of god awful, super dangerous, terrible drivers. I swear I have never seen anything so bad, and I have driven in Greece before.

The chalet and Polo Vivo 1.4. 

 Mouse Birds in Windhoek

Arebbusch Travel Lodge

I head towards the city centre to buy some essential provisions, such as water and liquor, it is Christmas Eve, and we will be on the road most of the day, driving to Walvis Bay. I notice that there are not many motorcycles about, actually that’s an understatement, I realize that I have actually not seen a single one, not even a Vespa. I guess that anyone brave enough to ride a motorcycle around here will likely not have a long life expectancy. All motorcycle riders know that a large percentage of motorists are assholes when it comes to us, we have got used to riding defensively, but with these guys, I have no idea how I would manage. In the few miles I have driven here I have witnessed the following:

• ·         Without signalling, a car did a U-turn across four lanes of busy traffic, two coming and two going. When the driver saw me looking at him with what must have been an incredulous, jaw-dropped expression on my face, he shrugged and laughed in a slightly embarrassed way.
• ·         At least three cases of overtaking on a blind curve, crossing double lines.
• ·         A fancy Mercedes driven by a young guy with no shirt on doing no less than 130 Km/h in a 60 zone.
• ·         Turning left from the go straight only lane, right in front on me causing me to slam on brakes and nearly requiring an underwear change. I realise that the insurance package that I took with the vehicle (the lightest on offer) was probably a serious mistake.
• ·         Everyone is in a wild rush, and the slightest delay between traffic lights (they call traffic lights ‘robots’ in this part of the world) turning green and pulling away earns you a hooting.

Once on foot inside the mall, however, a very different perception of Namibians is evident. This is a friendly place. The mall is as busy as hell, but there is a good-natured atmosphere, people chat while waiting very patiently in long lines to get through a check-out. It seems to be a relatively prosperous place, the shelves are bulging with stock and there is variety with no shortage of luxury items. The shoppers appear to be healthy and well dressed, indeed the only real difference between this mall and a mall in Toronto is that most of the people here are a shade of brown, and there are many shades of brown as Namibia has a very diverse indigenous population. I am amused to see that a bottle of Crown Royal Canadian rye whiskey sells for about two thirds of what I would pay for it in Canada. The shops are mostly the same shops that I am familiar with from South Africa, even the banks are the same high street banks. The Namibian dollar is pinned to the South African Rand at a one to one and it seems that South African Rands circulate as legal tender just as common as the Namibian Dollar notes.

Service is somewhat laidback, but on the whole fairly good, except for one instance that was so spectacularly bad that feel I must write about. We have a couple of hours to kill before we need to drive to the airport and fetch my sister who is flying in from Johannesburg to spend a week with us. We had spotted a Mugg and Bean coffee shop, which is a South African franchise that serves cold and hot beverages, light meals, cakes, sandwiches and so on, sort of a restaurant-cum-coffee shop. I was never a huge fan as I found that indigestion was often the result of eating there.  Nonetheless we decide to have an early light lunch before heading out to the airport, having already booked out of the lodge. Strike one, the maître d'hôtel type person leads us to a table and hands us menus and assures us that a wait person will be with us in a few minutes. This turns out to be 20 minutes. Strike two, during the wait I decided to visit the ‘washroom’ (to use the Canadian euphemism), the lights are not working which renders the facility so dark that I cannot not see my hand held an inch from my nose, only my cell phone illuminates the place enough to facilitate a pee into the appropriate receptacle. Strike three, I order a waffle with maple (flavoured) syrup and ice-cream, and my daughter orders a chicken wrap. The waffle arrives after 15 minutes with ice-cream, but no syrup, the waitress says that the syrup will be brought shortly. Forty-five minutes later the syrup arrives, by which time I had given up and eaten the waffle (which is not terribly good and the indigestion is already starting) with the melted ice-cream – still no chicken wrap for my daughter. Strike four, an hour after ordering the waitress comes to the table, opens a notebook, pages through it and announces that the chicken wraps are not available today and would we like something else instead?  We decline and request the bill. Strike five (there is a strike five?), the waitress brings a chicken salad to the table, announcing that instead of the wrap, the chef has prepared this dish for my daughter. She looks hurt when we refuse the offering and insisted on the bill. Strike six, the bill includes the chicken wrap and the chicken salad and charges me for the maple syrup as well as bacon to accompany the waffle, which I had not ordered nor received. Really, I don’t understand the aggrieved look on her face when I don’t leave a tip.

We arrive at the airport, me guzzling antacids and my daughter a bit on the hungry side, to meet my sister. It’s been nearly seven years since I have seen her, but she seems to have not changed, we’re older, none the wiser and thrilled to be together. This is destined to be a great holiday!

Last Rides

As I write this my heart is heavy, my eyes are tearing up just a tiny bit and the rather large whisky and soda at my elbow really is there to ease the pain. The moment I have been dreading since April has finally arrived, officially my riding season is over…finished, done, klaar, kaput. The Boulevard is taking a long, well deserved vacation in Barrie Harley Davidson in the company of others of its kind. It will spend the next five to six months warm and cozy and well looked after in heated winter storage. Apparently I may actually go and visit, but if I do, I certainly won’t be telling you about it, that will seem a tad over-obsessed. If you live in a place that doesn’t have a real winter you may be a little puzzled by all of this. Here in Canada, most of it anyway, it gets way too cold and icy to ride, in Ontario with the high moisture content in the air, leaving your motor cycle in the garage will result in rust, not to mention the danger of getting scratched by snow shovels and so on. Harley Davidson in Barrie offer a great service at a reasonable price, they stabilize the fuel, keep the battery charged, wash and shine your beast before you fetch it and, as I said, let you visit from time to time.   

Could the flag have been anything else? 

There was some paperwork to be done, which included recording an odometer reading, 13,032 Km. Fuck me, that is not shabby, when I took delivery of the bike back in late April it was like 2 Km., I don’t travel that far in the Dodge Caravan in a full year. I know that a lot of motorcyclists are grumbling that this was not the greatest of biking seasons and I concede freely that my lack of experience is at work here, but this for me was just an awesome year. I did not need perfect weather, half the time I did not even need to know where the hell I was going, all I know is that I rode and I lived and I learned so much along the way. I learned to really ride, to master the machine and respect our limitations, I learned my way around the area and discovered how beautiful this part the world is, and I learned some things about myself, some good and some bad. Most of all I learned to love life again, yet be prepared to lose it, it’s a paradox, but I have come to realize that only when you live on the edge do you know what living means. This is something I once knew, but had forgotten along the way.

Since driving to Ottawa and back in my car, I have managed a few short-ish, but still decent rides. It is Saturday October 18, Helena and I ride up to Barrie Harley Davidson to test ride some bikes. It is an event arranged by Harley Davidson, a marketing exercise, but fun nonetheless. It’s a chance to ride their bikes over a route of about 15 km, in formation with 10 or so other riders. Regretfully we are a bit late in getting there, so I only manage to get one ride. I ride a Fat Boy…nice machine! A little more powerful than the Boulevard, more responsive and I really like the gear changes, smooth as eggs, but a rather pricey option at $22,000 before windshield and touring bags, at least it has a passenger seat and Jesus strap. For the uninitiated, a Jesus strap is the belt that the passenger is supposed to hold onto, and when you accelerate he or she calls out, as they grip the belt with renewed dedication, ”Jeeeesus!”. It’s air-cooled which gives it a more traditional look, but I like the idea of liquid cooled, it feels to me like the engine takes less of a beating when you are riding in slow traffic. I would have liked to have ridden some of the other offerings, maybe next time I’ll get there earlier and ride them all!   

http://www.harley-davidson.com/en_CA/Motorcycles/fat-boy.html

Fat Boy, nice ride. 

Helena and I do a good ride the next day on a bright, but rather cold Sunday morning. It’s about 4 degree C when we leave home, justifying the layers of clothing and Kermit suit. We go through Beeton to Loretto (one horse town and the horse definitely died a century ago) to Hockley Village, there are a couple of fabulous S bends on the way. We stop at the famous Hockley General Store to take a pee and get some coffee, lots and lots of motor bikers hanging out, mostly old farts. It’s a nice little place and much more than a general store, actually it’s a restaurant, liquor store, purveyor of fine groceries and crappy souvenirs and coffee. We realize that we were hungry, but want something with less carbs than sandwiches and faster than the sit-down stuff, so we buy a block of aged Balderson’s cheddar, hummus and coffee. I realize that my folding knife didn’t make it on the trip so I to buy a souvenir butter knife and some wooden spoons. We feast on the cheese and hummus, then get back on the cycles and follow Hockley road to Orangeville. It’s a really great ride, pavement in top conditions, fabulous twists and turns and stunning views. Clearly, by the amount of motorcyclists we encounter (lots and lots of awfully cool gesturing), this is a particular popular ride. From Orangeville we take Highway 10 (Hurontario Street) south, until we reached the Forks of Credit Road, I have written about this route before (see ‘Manly Man in Tights’), and now in full Fall colors it’s totally gorgeous. We loop through the Town of Erin, doing a Fall Festival that includes some bad country musicians playing on the lawn of the Baptist Church, thank goodness for full face helmets and loud exhaust pipes. We travel through Caledon Village on County Road 24 to Airport Road, then north to Highway 9 and home.

Yours truly dressed in full regalia 

Friday evening October 24, sees us riding up to Barrie to put the bikes into winter storage, it’s a glorious autumn day. Reasonably warm and more or less wind still, we leave home at about 4.30 taking Highway 9 to highway 27, then north to Barrie. Along the way I decide that I want to keep my Boulevard for another few days. The idea of putting it into storage whilst the weather is so lovely goes against the grain, actually the very thought of ending the riding season is just too bloody awful to contemplate. My stepson, Anton, meets us there to fetch us, but as it turns out its only Helena that goes home in the car. I have a crazy notion to return home by way of Orillia and Beaverton. That would take me around Lake Simcoe, Iron John loves the idea and I take Highway 400 north, but don’t even make it past three exists when I realize that this is foolishness, the sun is setting so fast it makes the head spin. I take the next exist and turn around feeling slightly silly, but riding these roads at night on a motorcycle can be fatal, too many critters about that are likely to wander onto the pavement. I take Essa Road exit and head home on my old friend, Highway 27. I know that I’m riding on overdraft, the season is over, but I’m still riding, I like the idea of it.  By the time I get home its pitch dark.

Some trees are still dressed in red

Fall sunset in Newmarket

I plan a ride for Sunday that will take me to Stratford, then down to Port Dover on Lake Erie, before heading home. It’s an ambitious plan and I’d feel happier about it if the clouds didn’t hang quite do ominously overhead, gunmetal-blue, churning and moving across the sky at a rate that does not encourage. It’s cold, but not actually raining, I dither, drink coffee, check e-mails, eat breakfast, clean the kitchen and finally man-up enough to grab my keys and head outside to the garage. It’s a full regalia moment, tights and Kevlar jeans (never mind the butt crack problem), T-shirt, shirt, mesh jacket with lining, double socks, scarf and of course the Kermit rain suit. I don’t mention thick leather gloves and full face helmet because these items are implied, though they do help with keeping the cold at bay. I have tried to wear a Balaklava, but find that this causes my visor to mist up more than usual, actually it makes it impossible to ride with the visor down.

The route takes me to Orangeville on highway 9, I take the ring road around the town and pick up county road 109 for a few kilometers, then south on Highway 3. Since leaving home it’s been reasonably cold and there’s been a strong gusty wind. Once or twice I’ve been blown almost onto the shoulder, a little scary, but I’m watching for it. But it’s here, a few kilometers down Highway 3 that things start to go tits-up. The temperature drops significantly, you know that sudden coldness that descends just before a storm, and the wind gets really bad. The Weather Network, lying bastards, did promise no rain, but some icy drops are certainly descending.  As I cross highway 24 I make an executive decision to abandon my plans for Stratford and Lake Erie. In my defense my toes feel like some crazy sadist has clipped crocodile clips on them, by chin has gone into rigor and my hands are colder than a witches titties. I turn east on 24 and head towards Erin, Forks of Credit, Hurontario Street and Hockley Valley.  

Forests looking threadbare

There is a decidedly end of autumn feeling in air. Although there are still some trees with a full complement of red leaves, mostly the forests are looking bare and the ground is covered in a thick layer of brown and yellow leaves. I know that officially winter only begins on the solstice, but for me the cut-over is Halloween. Sure I have a slightly different definition of winter to real Canadians, I did after all grow up in a place where folks considers 2 degrees Celsius to be Arctic weather. I’ve become somewhat used to the winter in southern Ontario, and in comparison to some other places in Canada it is considered to be mild, but it really isn’t the sort of weather I want to ride my motorcycle in. By the time I pass the Hockley General Store I’m hungry and desperate for something hot to drink. Coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich followed by a good helping of heartburn. I head for home. I am disappointed in myself and in the ride. There are lots of other motorcyclists out, diehards like me, but I suspect that for them too, the enjoyment factor is not as high as one would like it to be. Running into bad weather on a trip is one thing, you suck it up and ride or find somewhere to hole-up whilst it passes, but forcing the issue for the sake of doing distance is another. The plump dachshunds are at least happy to see me, and take a break from their busy day to give me a warm and noisy welcome.

Dachshunds going about their busy day 

Monday it rains and the Weather Network is less than positive about the rest of the week, even forecasts “mixed precipitation” for Wednesday, a euphemism for god awful slushy mix of rain and snow. Tuesday it seems is the only window of reasonable weather, slightly warmer and mostly dry. I make the heart-wrenching decision to take the Boulevard in to storage, assuming that the forecast holds, it does, more or less. Anton good-naturedly agrees to fetch me. I planned to leave home at 4.30 take a leisurely ride up the Barrie, but somehow only manage to leave at 5.10 (I’m making a habit of leaving late), they close at 6.00 so the leisurely ride goes out of the window. It’s a wild dash on the 400 motorway in peak hour traffic. Traffic speed is between 110 km/h and 140, and the condition of the pavement is poor, half of the way it’s under construction and the other half is clearly soon to be that way, It’s a stretch of road that takes a real hammering. It’s an exhilarating ride at the top end of the traffic speed, I duel with trucks adorned with “trucknuts” dangling from trailer-hitches and feel in control, it’s an illusion, I know, but a great feeling. I get there with 20 minutes to spare. Somehow the ride is an appropriate way to end the season for me, with a bang and not with a whimper (apologies to T S Elliot).   

Picture of  a table on our deck, it actually did snow on November 1, a light dusting to be sure, but it snowed. 

Will I carry on blogging? I may post a few over the winter, assuming that I have something related to riding motorcycles to write about, but don’t expect too much. I’ll start posting again in the spring, if I am still around. Thanks for reading - cheers and have a bearable winter if you’re north of the equator, and a great summer if you are south. 

Ottawa - The Ride That Wasn’t

It’s one of those moments...should I, shouldn’t I? I have to go to Ottawa (or as it’s pronounced by Anglophone Canadians “Oddawah”), to attend a conference. I know this sounds terribly exciting, it is after all a conference for accountants, more specifically accountants involved in the public sector, but I am trying to decide if I should make it even more exciting by riding my motorcycle there and back.  A few weeks ago this would have been a no-brainer, I’d have been on that Boulevard like white on rice, but now I waiver, it’s the weather you see. I can handle a bit of rain, I can handle some cold, I can handle wind, but I am not sure that I want to ride nearly 500 km there and the same back through rain, cold and wind and that is pretty much what www.theweathernetwork.com is saying about Sunday through to Tuesday. Friends and family urge caution, Iron John inside me wants to ride the storm. I am sorry to admit that I wimp out. Shameful admission though it is, I will not pretend that I braved the storms on the Boulevard, instead I drove the Dodge Caravan – sad old joker that I am.

I manage to leave a little later than intended (as bloody usual), so decide to take the 401 motorway. Before leaving home I grab a few CDs from the collection and toss them onto the passenger seat – actually it’s been a long time since they saw service, what with YouTube and iTunes, CDs have gone the same way as vinyl. Some classic Eric Clapton and a more recent album where he does Country and even a bit of Reggae, the man has talent and like Keith Richards all the drugs in the world can't silence him. Koos Kombuis reminds me of a previous life, the haunting sounds of the soundtrack to the movie The Mission (Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons and a very youthful Liam Neeson before all that Taken shit), and a still wonderful compilation CD from 1999 – Radio 94.7 Highveld Stereo – featuring songs like Maria by Blondie, Simply Red and The Air That I Breathe, Savage Garden To the Moon and Back, and Perfect 10 by Beautiful South, keep me company. It is marvelous, but tame, oh so tame, however I seem to be vindicated, the weather is really foul. I stop at an Onroute for gas and the wind knifes icily through me, I have seen not a single motorcyclist since turning onto the motorway. Contrast to when I rode to the Adirondack, just a week or so before, man the weather changes fast at this time of year.

Driving along listening to music I realize something that hadn’t come to mind about riding my motorcycle. Driving in a car one has the need to be interacting with the world outside your head, listening to music or chatter on the radio, talking to passengers, assuming you have any. When I’m on the Boulevard, it’s just me and my thoughts, it’s become my quiet time, paradoxically I suppose, considering all that’s going on when you ride. It’s meditation of sorts, Zen at 130 Km/h. This is the time that I’ve been able to put so much into perspective. It has been humbling and empowering at the same time. I wouldn’t swap the hours on my motorcycle for a hundred times those hours more living, because that living is filmed in sepia and riding a motorcycle is in Technicolor.       

Just past Kingston I take Provincial Road 15 north to Smith Falls, ultimately to join up with Highway 7 at Carleton Place. Smith Falls holds a few powerful memories for me, it feels like a million years ago, but was just in the spring that Helena and I rode to Rigaud in Quebec for a memorable few days. It started to rain just after Smith Falls, we were travelling east on Provincial Road 43, not particularly heavy rain, but we stopped on the hard shoulder, such as it was, and donned the rain gear. Our mistake was to only put on the jackets, foolishly thinking that the trouser part was not really necessary, actually it’s the trousers that are the most important part of the outfit. We hadn’t gone far when it became evident that the rain strikes you on the shins, goes straight through the cotton of your jeans and runs down your legs into your boots, very unpleasant. Today I am going north through Smith Falls and it is raining cats and dogs – is it ever dry here?

Eventually I meet up with Highway 7, which is by now a dual carriage way, the sun has set and according to my Dodge Caravan’s instruments the external temperature is 4 degrees C. I tell Iron John that really, riding this on the Boulevard would have been hell, he tells me that I’m just a mommy’s boy… I deal with that, fuck him and his testosterone issues. Highway 7 becomes Highway 417 that takes me into Ottawa. After a bit of getting lost, not unusual for me, I am a little dyslexic when it comes to left, right and east and west, eventually I find the guest house. For some reason north and south does not present me with any issues.  Alexander House on Besserer Street turns out to be a really great find. My hosts, Sharon and Stephen, are an interesting and very pleasant couple and the room and indeed guest house is full of beautiful antiques. My only complaint is the weak Wi-Fi signal in the room, when I move my laptop to the dining room it is fine. Sharon is also ok with serving me breakfast at 7.00 a.m. a ridiculous hour dictated by some overeager accountant who wants the day to start  with registration at 8.00 a.m. Breakfast is served on Sharon’s lovely collection of white and blue crockery – Spode, Delft and Willow Pattern – a great meal with pleasant conversation, despite the uncivilized hour. 

Besserger Street

Modestly Prosperous 

Ottawa is a city of civil servants, a bit like Pretoria and I suppose like Washington and Canberra, but perhaps less contrived, at least it seems to be less designed and more accidental. It has that prosperous, yet modest air of a government town. I pass several embassies, confirming this is the capital. The Angolan embassy pulls a bit at my heart strings, sometimes when I’m reminded of Africa I get a powerful longing to return to the tropical heat and wilderness. I miss African people (black people) the most, their inherent kindness and capacity to survive and enjoy life despite terrible poverty, lack of opportunity and very often horrendous oppression.

Angolan Embassy 

As things turn out I don’t get a lot of time to explore the city other than the 25 minute walk from Alexander house to the Ottawa Conference Centre, but I find myself drawn to this city. This is a city of great compromise, an Anglophone Canadian city that realizes that it must accommodate, nay embrace, Quebec, and is truly the better for it. Ottawa has a sophistication that is more encompassing than any other city that I have been to in Canada. The balancing act that Canada performs to keep the interests of the Quebecois and the rest of Canada in sync seems to me to be symbolized here. I understand that the city was selected to be the capital city of Canada by Queen Victoria mainly as it is about equidistant between Toronto and Quebec City, a good compromise. My walk eventually brings me to the entrance to the Conference Centre, I know it is supposed to resemble a tulip, but frankly I don’t see it. It’s a moderately interesting glass building attached to a shopping centre, slightly out of character with the surroundings, but does not clash too much.  I sign in and conference away for the next two days.

The City of Gold, with Tulip in Foreground

Tuesday afternoon arrives and the coven of accountants breaks up, all of us much wiser and our craft honed to perfection. I bid farewell to my hosts in Besserer Streey and navigate the Dodge Caravan to Highway 417 westbound. It’s cold and rainy and as I leave the city the heavens open, I travel through a downpour of biblical proportions that even Moses would have been proud of it. Visibility is cut to 50 metres and the highway becomes a river. I am glad not to be on a motorcycle, this would be a profoundly dangerous ride, not to mention how uncomfortable it would be. The storm does not last and by the time I reach Highway 7 it is dry and the sun has come out, I wish I was on the Boulevard again. Driving, compared to riding a motorcycle, is like eating chocolate with a condom on the tongue, now there’s a mixed metaphor for you!

My plan is to follow the Trans Canadian and retrace the road that Helena and I rode to Rigaud and back in the spring. It was our first long ride and we were both a little nervous when we set out. We had originally planned a longer trip, Rigaud was intended to be merely the first stop, then onto Île d’Orléans via Trois-Rivières. From a base in Île d’Orléans we planned to day trip down the Saint Lawrence and return home on a route that would have taken us through Maine, Vermont and the Adirondack. It would have been absolutely fabulous and I’d like to do it sometime, but we realized that it was overly ambitious and would take more time than we had available. I suspect Helena was also reluctant to leave the chubby little dachshunds to the tender mercies of the younger generation for the week or so, lest we return to emaciated little dachshunds. In stages we moderated the plan, and in the end it was just to Rigaud, day trip in the area, stay a second night and ride back. Modest in comparison to the original idea it was nonetheless a great three days and actually just the right distance, there is a type of fitness that one needs to build up to handle long rides. If you are not used to it you get tired and make stupid mistakes.  

Helena on her Harley D (883 Sportster) and I on the Boulevard B.O.S.S., we left home at about 8 in the morning. We took a slightly longer route to get to the Trans Canadian Highway in order to go through the Kawartha Lakes Region. Up until that point a long ride for us had been to the town of Lindsay, the main town of the Kawartha Lakes District, now it was just a coffee stop on the way – Tim Horton’s and a few double espressos. We picked up the Trans Canadian just after Lindsay and headed towards Peterborough through Omemee, home town of Neil Young, currently grumpy looking grandpa, once the fourth wheel of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. We bypassed Peterborough, travelling on a short stretch of dual carriageway. Our exposure to motorways had been limited and it was an exciting, if slightly scary, experience. Back on normal roads, the Trans Canadian traversed farmlands, but these soon gave way to forests, this is the Canadian Shield and there is not enough topsoil to do much intensive farming. It was late spring and all around the world was in the process of reawakening. It still blows me away how in the winter the plants die away and snow covers everything, then spring arrives and by June, Southern Ontario looks more like a tropical paradise than anything else. Helena is a keen gardener, and works hard to plant, mulch, mow and do all the other earthy pursuits involved in making our garden look as great as it does, but out here it’s all the workings of nature – just wonderful.            

We followed the Trans Canadian to Madoc where we took a coffee break and gassed up the motorcycles. Just before the gas station we passed the mad guy of Madoc’s place, at least that’s what we think of him – reminiscent of Howling Mad Murdock. From Madoc to the town of Perth the Trans Canadian goes through the loveliest stretch imaginable. Even now as I drive back from Ottawa on this road in the fall it is an absolute gorgeous stretch – lakes, rivers and ponds uncountable, now the forests are red and yellow tinged, rather than light green of spring that Helena and I rode through. We parted company with the Trans Canadian at Perth, where we took the provincial road 43 to Smith Falls. As we rode there was a sense that we were riding just ahead of a storm, it was chasing us eastwards, but as Hollywood will attest, nature will catch up with you, and we were forced to deal with the rain, poorly as mentioned earlier.

Howling Mad Madoc's Place

We crossed from Ontario into Quebec just after the village of Alexander. I have Anglophone Canadian friends that refuse to travel through Quebec on the grounds that they cannot abide the French. I have dealt with French speaking Canadians that refuse to speak English though they can. People, really, are we Canadians or not? Ok so I’m going to say something unpopular here – WAKE THE FUCK UP! The French and Indian War ended in 1763… that is a QUARTER OF A MILLENIUIM ago!  Underlying all divisions between human tribes is self-interest of one or other politician. I absolutely love to visit Quebec, it’s like taking a trip to Provence, without the expense of a transatlantic flight. The guesthouse in Rigaud is situated high up on the hill (mountain?)  Le Point de Vue - see www.lepointdevue.net. It is run by a gay couple that make you feel really welcome, even though we speak no French and they speak little English. The room is tastefully furnished with a stunning view over the Ottawa valley. We were tired, cold and hungry and after a shower we took a taxi into town in search of a nice French meal, it was still raining. It turned out that although Rigaud is a skiing resort and a university town in a French speaking province, it is cursed with a complete dearth of decent restaurants. I could not believe it, the best place to have dinner had pictures of the dishes on the menu (always a bad sign) and the food was pretty disappointing.

Breakfast the next morning was, however, a very different proposition. I hadn’t read the literature properly so was unaware of the treat in store, like it or not we were in for a six course breakfast. Helena and I are poached eggs and coffee fans, as far as breakfast is concerned, but for fear of offending our hosts we soldiered through – it was really good, just more than we could handle. We waddled out from the breakfast room at about ten, sleepy and at least an hour behind schedule, never mind it was fun, so who cares.  Our planned route for the day took us to Grande Île, down to Ormsville, through Franklin and eventually north through Huntingdon. It was a great day trip, lots of twists and turns and fabulous countryside – agriculture, but on a smaller scale and less industrial than Ontario.  Our route back to Rigaud was intended to take us onto the Autoroute De Souvinir west, then get on the provincial road 325 and up through the countryside to Rigaud. Unhappily Helena and I got separated and I ended up taking the motorway almost into Montreal. For once I was relieved to encounter a tollgate stop. The guy in the booth, in broken English pointed out the road I needed to follow. I was eternally grateful and once again realize that the myth of the arrogant, unhelpful Quebecois is just that, a myth. Fifty hair-raising kilometres later I arrived in Rigaud. The road to the guest house from the motorway went past a supermarket. I stopped to buy salad stuff, olives, cheese, hummus, tortillas and some wine. In the meantime Helena had followed the intended route and got to ride through some stunning countryside and enjoyed the twists and turns of a quiet country road. The distance for the day, about 350 Km.  We dined on my purchases on the balcony overlooking the Ottawa River Valley – absolutely gorgeous.   

Scenes from  Highway 7

 Even the water lilies change colour

Canadian Shield 

Really lovely - on Highway 7 

We left the guest house early the next morning dressed in full regalia, it was rainy and cold so the rain gear was on. Now I am as keen as the next guy on a six course breakfast, but there was no way we could make it home by a reasonable hour had we stayed for that, instead it was tea biscuits and espresso at Tim Horton’s in Alexander. We followed the same road home that we had come by. Not always a bad idea, the view coming is very different to the view going. I suggested we go through Peterborough instead of bypassing on the motorway, which wasn’t my brightest moment, stop-start traffic for 5 kilometres through the ugliness of Walmart, Home Depots and other cookie cutter emporiums that ruin all Canadian towns. We made it home before six o’clock to the boundless joy of the dachshunds, you would swear that we had been away for weeks and weeks. Poor little buggers, their needs are so simple and straightforward you just can’t help loving them.

My route home from Ottawa is much the same, it is rainy and cold with intermittent sunshine. Fall instead of spring, red and yellow leaves versus light green of the newly sprouted, only driving the Dodge Caravan is such a poor substitute. This is Canada, I deal with the downs because it has such ups. The riding season is coming to an end, but there is always next year. Older, but no wiser, I’ll ride again, assuming I’m still here and capable.