O, Canada!
Wednesday June 24, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy
Wednesday June 24, 2009
Copyright(c) 2009, Jim Beachy
I am floating effortlessly and peacefully in a soft puffy white cloud that somehow supports my weight although it has no mass of its own, and slowly become aware of a shadow falling across my upturned face. I struggle to make out what it is, and finally realize it is Kitty standing next to the bed saying something that sounds a lot like “Are you going to get up today?”
I struggle awake and glance at the bedside clock. 8:17 AM! I thought we’d be rolling by this time. “Can we be on the road by nine?” I ask in confusion.
“I thought we weren’t in a hurry,” says Kitty, an ocean of calm in the face of my agitation. Oh, that’s right, I forgot: we really aren’t in a hurry, and today it’s not a disaster to oversleep. Well, this has been the best night of sleep I’ve had for some time, and after I calm down I realize that she is right, we really don’t have to hurry. Even if we don’t make the 220 miles I’ve roughly sketched out for today, we have plenty of time to make it up and we have no hard points in the trip. We finally roll out at 10:00 AM. Kitty has put our passports into her purse in the bike’s trunk, and we set off for Canada via the slow road.
We veer right on Route 9N out of Lake George and head north along the lake. Greg and George had recommended this last night as a possible route. It was great to see them last night. They knew we were in Lake George because I’d posted a mini-message to the WOTI message board. George and I had met once or twice before; “Somewhere in Texas or Florida or Maine,” he said, or maybe it was right here in Lake George at Americade. Neither of us could remember. I’d ridden with Greg, joining up with him and some other folks for a ride to the WOTI Alamo Run near San Antonio, Texas. Under my helmet is a wry smile as I recall the next day’s ill-fated event that will follow me as long as I ride. After dropping the rest of our group for the night in Austin, Greg and I had arrived safely in Kerrville, Texas, in the dead of a deer-infested night after a 600-mile day, and the next morning we were rousted by a group of WOTI friends eager for us to ride the Texas Hill Country with them. Out of sync with the rest of the bikes’ fuel tanks and in a hurry not to hinder the rest of the group, it was in Leakey, Texas that I filled my Wing’s fuel tank with diesel fuel! And thus will I never escape the ignominious title of “Diesel Boi.” I am now and will be forever greeted as “Diesel Boi” whenever anyone from WOTI sees me, frequently accompanied by sniffing noses and wondering if anyone else smells diesel fuel.
9N generally follows the lakeshore, but wanders off to the west at Westport, and we choose Route 22, proceeding northward to join the shores of Lake Champlain. This is a nice if unspectacular road with minimal traffic today.
We run sedately through the curves, up and down the hills, skirting the shore and then ducking away into the hills. There is one eight-mile rough stretch that requires some serious slow-down. But this is not a problem today, as I sense the emergence of a new person I’m just learning to know: Slow-Down Guy. Unlike Solo Guy, with whom I’m most familiar and who has a definite need for speed — lots of it for many hours! — Slow-Down Guy would never set cruise above the speed limit. In fact, if 55 mph is good, 50 mph is better. Slow-Down Guy makes it up as he goes, not to worry if there’s no plan, no magenta GPS track, no guiding GPS voice from American Jill announcing the next turn. Slow-Down Guy barely uses the routing feature of the GPS. And he is quite content to let the miles and the hours play out as they may, the destination a moving target that ceases to be important; the destination is wherever the day happens to end. I actually think I’m starting to like this guy.
I’m wearing my T-shirt with the inscription “If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” I’m not the lead dog, don’t even think of myself as one of the big dogs, but today we find plenty of ever-changing scenery as we wander along the shores of Lake George and Lake Champlain, ever northward toward Canada. Across the expanse of the lake we can see Vermont’s Green Mountains, hiding the even mightier White Mountains lying still farther to the east in New Hampshire. From many miles away and across the lake, the mountains still look somehow regal with dark cloud-crowns that wreath the tops of the tallest peaks.
I struggle awake and glance at the bedside clock. 8:17 AM! I thought we’d be rolling by this time. “Can we be on the road by nine?” I ask in confusion.
“I thought we weren’t in a hurry,” says Kitty, an ocean of calm in the face of my agitation. Oh, that’s right, I forgot: we really aren’t in a hurry, and today it’s not a disaster to oversleep. Well, this has been the best night of sleep I’ve had for some time, and after I calm down I realize that she is right, we really don’t have to hurry. Even if we don’t make the 220 miles I’ve roughly sketched out for today, we have plenty of time to make it up and we have no hard points in the trip. We finally roll out at 10:00 AM. Kitty has put our passports into her purse in the bike’s trunk, and we set off for Canada via the slow road.
We veer right on Route 9N out of Lake George and head north along the lake. Greg and George had recommended this last night as a possible route. It was great to see them last night. They knew we were in Lake George because I’d posted a mini-message to the WOTI message board. George and I had met once or twice before; “Somewhere in Texas or Florida or Maine,” he said, or maybe it was right here in Lake George at Americade. Neither of us could remember. I’d ridden with Greg, joining up with him and some other folks for a ride to the WOTI Alamo Run near San Antonio, Texas. Under my helmet is a wry smile as I recall the next day’s ill-fated event that will follow me as long as I ride. After dropping the rest of our group for the night in Austin, Greg and I had arrived safely in Kerrville, Texas, in the dead of a deer-infested night after a 600-mile day, and the next morning we were rousted by a group of WOTI friends eager for us to ride the Texas Hill Country with them. Out of sync with the rest of the bikes’ fuel tanks and in a hurry not to hinder the rest of the group, it was in Leakey, Texas that I filled my Wing’s fuel tank with diesel fuel! And thus will I never escape the ignominious title of “Diesel Boi.” I am now and will be forever greeted as “Diesel Boi” whenever anyone from WOTI sees me, frequently accompanied by sniffing noses and wondering if anyone else smells diesel fuel.
9N generally follows the lakeshore, but wanders off to the west at Westport, and we choose Route 22, proceeding northward to join the shores of Lake Champlain. This is a nice if unspectacular road with minimal traffic today.
We run sedately through the curves, up and down the hills, skirting the shore and then ducking away into the hills. There is one eight-mile rough stretch that requires some serious slow-down. But this is not a problem today, as I sense the emergence of a new person I’m just learning to know: Slow-Down Guy. Unlike Solo Guy, with whom I’m most familiar and who has a definite need for speed — lots of it for many hours! — Slow-Down Guy would never set cruise above the speed limit. In fact, if 55 mph is good, 50 mph is better. Slow-Down Guy makes it up as he goes, not to worry if there’s no plan, no magenta GPS track, no guiding GPS voice from American Jill announcing the next turn. Slow-Down Guy barely uses the routing feature of the GPS. And he is quite content to let the miles and the hours play out as they may, the destination a moving target that ceases to be important; the destination is wherever the day happens to end. I actually think I’m starting to like this guy.
I’m wearing my T-shirt with the inscription “If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” I’m not the lead dog, don’t even think of myself as one of the big dogs, but today we find plenty of ever-changing scenery as we wander along the shores of Lake George and Lake Champlain, ever northward toward Canada. Across the expanse of the lake we can see Vermont’s Green Mountains, hiding the even mightier White Mountains lying still farther to the east in New Hampshire. From many miles away and across the lake, the mountains still look somehow regal with dark cloud-crowns that wreath the tops of the tallest peaks.
I think back over the trip so far and think of an email I got last night from Wes St Onge, another WOTI friend that I don’t think I’ve met in person. He said that yesterday he saw a black Wing and trailer with two people taking pictures of the old locomotives near his home and thought it might be us but then abandoned the thought. I checked our GPS log and yes, Wes, that would have been us at Cooperstown Junction taking pictures of the “GG1’s”. Sorry we missed you yesterday!
Somewhere along this route we stop at an overlook for some pictures and talk for a while to a biker named Brian, from Quebec City. He comments that today is Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day, the National Holiday of Quebec, celebrated annually on June 24. As nearly as I can figure out from a quick Google search on my BlackBerry, St. Jean-Baptiste is the patron saint of all French Canadians, so it’s probably good to have a holiday in honor of John the Baptist. I’m sure most citizens of Quebec will find something considerably better to feast upon than locusts and wild honey. Humble apologies to my excellent French Canadian friends if I got it wrong. Leo, Lenny, Furface, Joe Drummond and others — I know you’re out there and won’t be shy in correcting me!
Given this newfound information, I’m just a little concerned about not having any reservations, although from what I can tell in talking to Brian, the day prior is actually the big day of celebrating and fireworks. So at a rest stop filled with an inch or more of soft cotton-like castoff from a grove of cottonwood trees (which I think of as a southern tree but various subspecies occur all over the US and even Canada), I call ahead to a hotel; between the little French I can muster and the clerk’s considerably better attempt at English, we figure out that there will not be a problem with rooms tonight.North of the town of Au Sable, in a dramatic shift of topography, the hills give way to vast expanses of flat land that is relentless until we stop for the day. There’s a whole lot of farming going on here!
Soon we cross the border into Canada. I’d prepared for an hour to cross the border but in fact it takes about 10 minutes. “Are you meeting anyone in Gaspe?” asks the agent. “Hooking up with a group or anything? No? That’s a long way to ride your motorcycle. You’ve done your homework? Know how far that is?”
“Well,” I say, “we’ve been pretty much all over on our motorcycle. This trip is about 3,000 miles home-to-home.” After entering our license plate number and scanning our US passports (now required to travel between the US and Canada), he seems satisfied and tells us to have a nice trip.
Later, Kitty is talking about how surprised he seemed that we were riding all that distance.
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “I think he just wanted to see if we were legit, if we actually had a clue about what we’d just said we were going to do, and weren’t just making something up. You never know what’s behind those questions they ask.”
“And now,” I say, “We’re officially in Canada. I’ve already set the GPS to read metric units instead of statute miles. The most important decision is now yours to make: What GPS voice will we use?”
Kitty mulls this over for a while. “Do you have a French girl?” she asks.
“Well, uh, er, no, I don’t, actually. But I do have a French text-to-speech voice in the GPS.” So I select “French Europeen-Virginie 1.50” and the GPS reboots. Now we have a completely exotic but to my untrained ears, completely incomprehensible GPS guide. French Virginie issues a number of instructions for which I can find no common ground between the speech and the text on the GPS screen.
“I think you’d better choose someone you can understand,” says Kitty, always helpful.
“Ok, you choose,” I say. “Remember that I also have Hungarian.” Secretly, I am hoping that this time Kitty opts for Australian Karen (who is a real Australian person with a real website – http://www.karenjacobsen.com), but eventually she selects, as we did on our last trip to Nova Scotia, British Emily 1.50. So a female British voice it shall be that guides us as we traverse the shores of the Saint Lawrence Seaway and beyond.
Slow-Down Guy is ready for his day to end just before 5:00 PM, so we check in to a hotel in Drummondville. After an excellent meal artfully presented and perfectly prepared at la Verrière Restaurant in the hotel (which I actually learn to pronounce and the waitress says I’m doing a good job), we ask the English-speaking hotel clerk if there’s an ATM within walking distance. She gives us directions and after a several-block walk we find the CIBC ATM and withdraw some using with our ATM card. This is a great way to get cash, because the exchange rate is figured into to withdrawal automatically. So for every Canadian dollar the machine spits out, our account is debited, as of today, about 86 cents.
Today we have traveled 369 km (229 miles), and 1189 km (739 miles) for the trip so far. I will need to spend a little time tomorrow morning reviewing the trip parameters and remembering the location of the special points of interest I’ve discovered in my research.
So tomorrow promises to be another day in the life of the newly-discovered Slow-Down Guy. We’ll see you then.
Track Log, Day 3
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