Tuesday June 30, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy
“Shall we go with Atlantic Time, Eastern Time, or split the difference?” Kitty asked last night. We “lost” an hour riding into New Brunswick because the province is on Atlantic Daylight Time. We decide not to follow the New Brunswick time zone since we’ll be here only for two days at the most; when we cross back into Maine at Calais, we’ll be back to Eastern Time.
So, because time is relative, we don’t set an alarm and, when we are ready, pack up the bike and trailer, conveniently parked overnight in the warm, dry garage offered to us by the hotel. What a blessing that was to find shelter from the torrential rain that accompanied us to Bathurst! Now, using yesterday’s newly-formed trip parameters, we have decided to try to make Cook’s Lobster house on Bailey Island, Maine, in two days, leaving more days to ride through New England’s White and Green Mountains without riding Interstates. It’s about 930 km (580 miles). This will put us completely out of sync with any of the towns I’ve researched, so we are winging it on our Gold Wing with our trusty Garmin GPS to help us find our way.
We set out a little after 8:30 AM Eastern after doing the Dance of the Rainsuit. At the moment it is very foggy and chilly (about 53F, 12C) but not raining; however, we expect that to change. We have one-piece Motoport rain suits that we may re-evaluate if Kitty learns to love her electric suit. (The one-piece suit is a sealed garment and has no openings for an electric cord to plug into the bike; a two-piece suit would solve that problem.) We have waterproof Cruiserworks riding boots that actually look like normal boots that one could wear into a nice restaurant, and we wear them all the time while riding. It seems odd that they are waterproof, because they look just like normal boots. We have SealSkinz waterproof riding gloves, manufactured by a company that makes diving wet suits and dry suits. They know how to keep a body dry! Kitty wears her balaclava along with the rain suit.
Thus attired, we strike out for more coastal riding, roughly following Rt. 134 and Rt. 11 along what is known as the Acadian Peninsula region, and within 30 minutes we are once more engulfed in torrential rain and enveloping fog which, while preventing us from viewing the seacoast, does not hinder our riding vision. In the midst of all this, we see several cars stopped and first think there’s an animal in the ditch, but it’s just folks picking what I imagine to be wild strawberries by the road. It’s too early for blueberries, which ripen in August, and I remember the delicious tiny wild strawberries, hardly bigger than large peas, that we found for our picnic lunch dessert somewhere on the Cabot Trail during our last trip to Nova Scotia.
“Oh, no!” I say with dismay. “We have to go back to Percé! We forgot to get coffee cups!” We’ve made it a tradition to pick up coffee cups from wherever we travel on our motorycle, and we have cups from all over the North American continent. It makes for some great morning conversations at home as we each choose a cup and reminisce about where and why we got that cup. But in Percé, we inexplicably forgot to purchase our cups. Someday I hope we can return for our coffee cups. I could be content to stay there a while.
Eventually, at the village of Caraquet, Rt. 11 turns southward and we run along the coast to Miramichi. For six days now the sea, always on our left, has been our constant companion. Several times Kitty would look across an expanse of water and ask “Is that where we’re going?” My answer was always the same: “If you see a place where land and water meet, yes, that’s where we’re going unless we’ve already been there!”
I’d like to take some pictures of the foggy seacoast when we can see it; frequently I will ride all day with the camera around my neck so I can easily stop for a photo. But with the foul weather, I can’t risk exposing the camera to the elements, and it is difficult to find the right place to pull over, get off the bike, open the trunk, take out the camera, take the shot, put it back, and continue. And thus to Miramichi and onward without a single picture. At Miramichi, we must leave our restless blue-green friend who has brought us fog and rain and hidden the sun for many days, but has also yielded some great vistas and many great memories. “Good-bye, Ocean,” I say.“Au revoir a la mer!” says Kitty in my headset. We’ve had a great time learning to speak better French, and almost invariably, when people saw that we were making real effort to learn, they would light up and go out of their way to explain things in both French and English, and laugh with us as we tried to form the idiosyncratic French vowel sounds. It sounds so lyrical when they do it, so awkward for us. Nevertheless, there were several times we were able to order off the menu in French or ask for something in a store and people didn’t appear to give us a second glance. It has been fun!
With our new trip parameters, I’d envisioned riding as far as Fredericton today, but that will take us off the road by 2:30 PM (Eastern) and we think we can do better than that. “Shall we make a run for the border?” I ask Kitty in the headset.
“I’m up for it!” she responds.
I haven’t researched this area carefully, and at a fuel stop I inspect the route. Not many towns there, no amenities listed in the GPS along that route. The waypoints in Garmin’s Canadian maps tend to be less accurate than their US counterparts, so I’m not too concerned. But what I am a little concerned about is that tomorrow is Canada Day, and I wonder whether all the existing services will consumed by travelers. But we make a run for the border at St. Stephens (Canada) and Calais (USA), hoping not to need the scarce services of the New Brunswick interior. From Fredericton on Rt. 8 and Rt. 3, it promises to be a ride of about two hours plus. I’m still a little concerned about housing: Will all the motels be booked by Canadians escaping tomorrow’s madness? Or perhaps by vacationing Canadians eager to return to their home for the festivities? Or perhaps even by Americans escaping to Canada for a day of revelry?
Without any research other than issuing a GPS command to find hotels near the town of Calais, Maine, I find the Calais Motor Inn in the GPS. I make a call from my cell phone and book a room. The place has a restaurant and a bed. For us today, that’s good enough. Lord willing, tonight we will be south of the northern border!
For four days straight, we have seen no sign of bright sun or blue sky. Suddenly, somewhere between Fredericton and Calais, we see a patch of blue sky. It makes me so happy I create a GPS waypoint and title it “BlueSky.” But 20 minutes later we are once again in a foggy downpour that lasts most of the way to St. Stephens.
We arrive on the Canadian side of the border at 5:10 PM. Except that now the time zone matters because it’s really 6:10 PM and all the international money exchange places have closed at six! We were told they were open for “extended hours” which I’d interpreted as “at least until eight.” I’m glad I didn’t know they close at six, because I would have stressed all day about whether we’ll make it in time. Even so, Kitty had earlier remarked “Slow-Down Guy has gone into hibernation today, hasn’t he?” I go into the Canadian duty-free shop where the attendant tells me the duty-free shop on the US side can exchange our Canadian money for the US equivalent.
While sitting in line to cross the border, I reset the GPS back to statute units instead of metric, and I retire British Emily Version 1.50 to reactivate American Jill 1.50. The unit reboots and automatically issues the next appropriate routing command in its new American Jill persona. “Emily is done?” asks Kitty with a note of sadness. British Emily has guided us faithfully for nearly a week through the metric mazes and has been flawless.
We cross the border by surrendering our passports to be swiped and by answering only a few perfunctory questions, then stop at the US duty-free shop where indeed they can change out our several hundred dollars Canadian for US. And just like that, we are back in the USA and back in Eastern Time.
At the Calais Motor Inn, I ask if there’s a car wash in town. The GPS lists no car wash services. Black Satin and the trailer are as dirty as they have ever been. Between two days of pouring rain and wet fog, mist and drizzle, muddy wet construction areas, and dusty dry construction areas, the rig is covered with grit and dust. “Don’t even think of touching any surface on this bike!” I’d told Kitty at the border. I can’t stand it one more day! Even if it starts all over again tomorrow, I will clean this bike tonight!
Instead of a car wash, the motel guy offers us a complete little motorcycle-wash setup just outside the motel office, replete with soap, sponges, drying towels, a water hose, and a bucket; he encourages us to park the bike in the shelter and wash it right there. After dinner at the motel restaurant (which closes at 8:00 PM Eastern), where we each order prime rib that turns out to be large enough we could have split one between us and have some left over for a moderately hungry stranger from the street, Kitty helps me wash and dry the bike. I appreciate this, because one of our rules is that she never has to help with my idiosyncratic care habits for my bike. But it’s a lot faster and a lot more fun when both of us do it!
In our quest to make Cook’s Lobster House by tomorrow night, we have ridden 324 miles (521 km) today, a third of which was in slow-down mode in pouring rain and fog. We’ve ridden 1,914 miles (3,080 km) in total. I have added two potential routes to Cook’s: a “fast” route and a “coast” route. I believe Slow-Down Guy might make an appearance for the coastal route tomorrow. But on the other hand, even Slow-Down Guy doesn’t want to be late for Cook’s!
Tomorrow alone can reveal how this might play out. See you then.
GPS Track Log (Yellow)
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