2023 NE USA Tour: Preliminary Plans

March 5, 2023March 5, 2023 / 650thumper / 3 Comments

The second tour of the coming season will be down memory lane.

Jumping waves on the Outer Banks, NC, circa 1970.

When I was a boy, my parents used to take us down to Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks of North Carolina for our family vacations. I was the physical barrier separating my two older sisters in the backseat of our Pontiac Strato-Chief. My dad had installed seat belts in our favourite colours according to this arrangement: red, blue, green. Or was it green, blue, red? I can’t remember, but I remember quite a lot about those vacations. They were among my happiest memories growing up, despite the backseat shenanigans.

We went with another family, and apparently those vacations left an impression on them too, for one of the children named her future child after me. En route, we camped at Shenandoah National Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I still remember the nature hikes led by a ranger (who taught us to recognize a particular birdsong by its resemblance to “Drink your teeeeeea!”), the nighttime slide shows at the amphitheatre, walking back to our campsite afterwards, the fog so low you could bounce your flashlight off the underside of a cloud, and the rainstorms. The rainstorms! To this day, I love a good rainstorm from inside a good tent.

Since getting my licence in 2016, I’ve wanted to return and ride the Blue Ridge Parkway, and this summer I finally will.

We would drive much of the Blue Ridge Parkway before spending a day in Williamsburg, then head over to the coast and camp along the Outer Banks. The campground was so close to the ocean you only had to walk along a boardwalk over the dunes to the beach. I wasn’t a strong swimmer and the sea always frightened me, but I enjoyed playing along the shoreline. One year, we went to The Wright Brothers Memorial at Kitty Hawk, and I think my first ever book was a staple-bound biography of The Wright Brothers I purchased from the gift shop there with the few dollars we were given for “spending money.” That seed of interest later sprouted into a dream of being a pilot when I grew up, and although my career ultimately went in a different direction, it has combined with another interest of mine—poetry—to produce a collection of poems that explores the theme of flight. I might not be a pilot, but I can imagine being one; the opening section is in the voice of Wilbur Wright.

A postcard of this famous photo of the first flight sat on my desk and served as inspiration.

The last time I went down there I was 14. My sisters by this point were already doing their own thing and didn’t go, so I had the backseat all to myself and Supertramp playing on my cassette recorder. During one rest stop on the Blue Ridge Parkway, we came out just in time to watch three motorcyclists start up their bikes and roar off down the parkway. One was a woman on a BMW. I’d never heard of that manufacturer but my dad clearly had. “Did you see that young woman take off on that BMW?” he remarked to my mom.

Perhaps another seed was planted on that holiday because, since getting my licence in 2016, I’ve wanted to return and ride the Blue Ridge Parkway, and this summer I finally will on my Triumph Tiger 800 named Jet.

The trip so far is pretty sketchy, but that’s generally how I like to tour when I’m on my own. In the earlier trip planned for this coming summer, my wife and I are going to visit Newfoundland, and much of that trip has been scheduled. For this one, however, all I know so far is that I’ll ride The Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive at some point, camping at Shenandoah National Park. I also know that I’ll ride some dirt in the MABDR and NEBDR (Mid-Atlantic and North East Backcountry Discovery Routes respectively). The MABDR and Blue Ridge Parkway plus Skyline Drive cover similar geography, so it makes sense to do one down and one back. One is asphalt, the other primarily dirt.

I’m thinking I’d also like to get out to the Outer Banks and ride them too if I have the time. They are less than a day’s ride from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lea of Got2Go recently rode them and titled her YouTube video “The BEST road trip of the USA East Coast?”

Got2Go Rides the Outer Banks

At the time of this writing, there are lots of unknowns. Will I be touring solo or with a few friends? I’m good either way, but it would be nice to ride the technical sections of at least the NEBDR with a few buddies, and I’ve put a few feelers out. If I get some takers, will they do the whole tour with me or only one or both of the BDRs? If they can only do the dirt with me, I might change the order of things and ride the BDRs down and the asphalt back, to accommodate them.

I also don’t have a precise route mapped out yet from the Canadian border to the top of Skyline Drive. I’ve got Google Maps, Kurviger, and Rever open in separate tabs of my browser with the “Avoid Highways” option selected and am studying their suggested routes. Depending on which router I’m looking at, it’s between 1000 and 1100 kilometres from my house to where the scenic drives begin. This is prime Civil War geography through Pennsylvania and I’ll be tempted to stop often at historic landmarks.

Will I ride Tail of the Dragon while I’m down there? I’ve heard from several people that it’s not worth it and, in fact, is a little dangerous with superbike and sports car idiots treating it like a track instead of a public road. There are apparently many roads in that area just as good or better and less populated. Do you have any suggestions? Let me know.

So there’s a lot still to decide about this one but one thing I do know is that I’ll be leaving sometime in the fourth week of July and will have a little under three weeks before I have to be back for work mid-August. That’s not a lot of time but my parents did it in three weeks, if memory serves me well, and they had three kids in tow.

I know a lot will have changed and I can’t expect everything to be as I nostalgically remember it. You can’t go back in time or relive your childhood, nor would I want to. But I suspect the mountains and the ocean won’t have changed much since I saw them last, and that’s what I’m going there to see. And this time, instead of being stuck between two sisters in the back seat of a car, I’ll be riding my Tiger 800XC, putting it through the full range of its abilities as I carve new memories through the Appalachian, Blue Ridge, and Great Smokey Mountain ranges.

2023 East Coast Tour: Preliminary Plans

February 17, 2023 / 650thumper / 7 Comments

Sketching out the next big adventure

As I write this, we’re having yet another major snowfall in Montreal. It’s been a particularly snowy winter and after a few mild days, some of us got lured into thinking spring is just around the corner. But as I sit looking out the window of my 2nd-storey study, it’s hard to imagine that the Montreal Motorcycle Show is next weekend and we can legally be back on the road in less than a month.

My favourite way to avoid shoveling: write a blog post!

Still, I must continue making travel plans in a kind of blind faith in the power of nature. If I put on my cheap Dollar Store shades, all that white outside becomes a shade of green, and I can almost imagine it being June and setting off. With this trip, there are some reservations that have to be made, like booking the ferry on and off Newfoundland, so I have started to map out a rough outline of our planned exploration of the Canadian east coast. This will be the book-end tour of the west coast trip of 2021.

Learn from your mistakes

I’m trying to keep in mind what I learnt from that last one, specifically, sometimes less is more. That’s what I keep telling my students, anyway, who think they are clarifying their thesis statements by adding clause after clause. The last trip was spent too much on the Superslab in my need to cover distance in the time I had. I don’t want to make the same mistake so am trying to be realistic in what we can see in the time we have away from the dog and our jobs. Marilyn, the domestic accountant, likes to remind me about our budget too.

My first route planned included The Cabot Trail. It seems sacrilegious not to “do” The Cabot Trail if you are anywhere within 150 kilometres of it on a motorbike, and we will be passing through Cape Breton en route to Sydney, NS, where one catches the ferry to get to Newfoundland. But my practical wife reminded me that we have been to Nova Scotia several times and both ridden (at least, I did) and driven The Cabot Trail and maybe we should devote that time to Newfoundland and perhaps Prince Edward Island, which we haven’t visited. This is a classic case of idealism (i.e. “we can do it all”) versus realism (“we are only human”) so we’ll see in the coming months which ideology wins.

Gaspésie, PEI, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland

What we do agree on is that we’d like to ride the coast of the Gaspé Peninsula, or as they like to call it here in Québec, La Gaspésie. I’ve driven that before and it’s spectacular. Marilyn hasn’t seen the Roche Percé, and like the Butchart Gardens we visited on Vancouver Island, we will make a stop at the Reford Gardens in Matane, QC. Forillon National Park at the tip of the peninsula is pretty special too.

Another decision we have is whether or not to visit Prince Edward Island. Our Insight Guides book suggests a three-day 250-kilometre road trip that includes Charlottetown, Argyle Shore Provincial Park, Brackley Beach, and the West Point Lighthouse near Cedar Dunes Provincial Park. Hopefully, those provincial parks offer camping. Technically, I’ve been to PEI, but I was too young to remember much. If we can’t work it in this summer, we will definitely get out there next. Aside from NWT and Nunavut, PEI and Newfoundland are the only provinces or territories I haven’t visited, so I’m hoping we can devote a few days to get a taste of the island.

Should we take the day or night ferry to Newfoundland? There are pros and cons of each, as I see it. A day crossing might be time wasted, just looking out for 7+ hours over endless water. I know there might be the opportunity to do some whale watching, but I’m sure we’ll be doing some of that once on the island. A night crossing is more expensive if you buy a cabin and try to get some sleep. On the other hand, the cabin isn’t any more expensive than a motel room, which we’d have to get soon after landing from a day passage. I’m leaning toward a night crossing. I’ve never experienced sleeping on a boat like my parents did when they immigrated on the Queen Elizabeth II and I think it would be novel. If we cross during the day, we will camp at a favourite campground in Baddeck in order to get to the ferry in the morning; if we cross at night, there might be time to ride The Cabot Trail or stay at Meat Cove, which is an amazing campground off The Cabot Trail right at the eastern tip of Cape Breton Island.

If you’ve visited Newfoundland, what did you do and why? I’m open to advice. There is a growing sense of urgency to decide, especially if we want a cabin as they sell out early, so decisions have to be made soon.

Neither Marilyn nor I has visited Newfoundland before, so this is going to be a treat. Again, we can’t do it all, and we’ve decided to focus on the west coast. Gros Morne National Park is a bucket list item. Then we will continue up the coast on what’s called The Viking Trail because I like history and am interested in seeing the Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows. Then we will cross the island to Saint John’s because, well, you can’t visit Newfoundland without strolling around Saint John’s, including “hydrating” at a pub on Water Street before climbing Signal Hill. I’ve heard and read about these places and look forward to exploring them in person.

Finally, we have to decide whether we have time to ride The Irish Loop, a 325 kilometre loop along the coastline south of Saint John’s. The name is intriguing since we both have some Irish blood. And anything along a shoreline is bound to please me on the bike. Our guidebook suggests 2-3 days for this, so it really depends on if we can fit it all in.

Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont

Currently, the plan is for Marilyn to fly out of Saint John’s back to Montreal like she did from Vancouver when we were out west, and I’ll continue on solo. And I’m pretty sure I’ll come back via The United States instead of my initial plan to return via Labrador and the north shore. Like the caribou during their migration, I’m detouring to avoid bugs. Besides, the riding through Maine and New Hampshire will be more interesting than through Labrador. I recently purchased a subscription to Rever, which classifies roads on a colour coding system, and there’s a cluster of G1 (Best) roads in the White Mountains of NH that is calling my name.

G1 Best roads to ride are in yellow. That cluster in the White Mountains looks interesting.

I might saunter my way back along the coast, checking out Bar Harbour and a few other places before cutting diagonally north-west through the White Mountains. Without the deadline of ferry crossings, this will be the unplanned, unscheduled segment of the trip, which is generally how I like to tour. Maybe I’ll stay an extra night in New Hampshire so I can ride those primo roads unladen with gear.

This trip is going to take me about three weeks—two weeks with Marilyn, and about a week solo to get back. After a short rest in which I’ll service the bike and change my tires to something more dirt-oriented, I’ll head off again, this time to ride some BDRs. It’s going to be a full and exciting summer on a new bike, and I’ll have lots to write about so click Follow if you want to follow along.

ADV Riding as Thrill-Seeking

January 14, 2023January 14, 2023 / 650thumper / 5 Comments

Is extreme remote riding simply gratuitous risk-taking?

Video credit: Troy R. Bennett

Recently a story was circulating about Eric Foster, a guy who crashed on the Trans-Taiga Highway. Perhaps you’ve seen it. He was riding solo and woke up eight hours later in a hospital in Montreal. It’s actually an old story from 2017 but was republished end of November and that’s when I saw it. It’s a pretty gripping story, as far as crash stories go. He was riding in perhaps the remotest area of North America when he crashed, breaking his back and a leg. Some trappers saw the smoke from his motorcycle on fire and came to his aid, but it took hours for first responders to get to him, and then hours to get him to a hospital. The story has a happy ending; he returns to the spot where he had the accident and finishes his trip, stopping to thank the trappers along the way who helped him.

I’d never heard of the Trans-Taiga, so the article got me looking. It’s a dirt road built by Hydro Quebec to service their dams, and it is indeed about as remote as you can get in Quebec. According to Wikipedia, it’s the “northernmost continuous road in Eastern North America,” snaking 582 kilometres (362 mi) through forest from James Bay Road to the Caniapiscau Reservoir. That’s right—that’s all there is at the end of a dangerous journey: a reservoir. Then you turn around and ride the same road back.

Why would someone want to do such a ride? Well, the answer is in the article. Eric Foster describes himself as “a challenge guy.” When asked why he wanted to ride the Trans-Taiga, he replied, “Just to say I did it,” then added, “I love a good challenge.” I’ve found myself saying the exact same words of that last sentence, and I’ve written about risk-taking in an earlier post when discussing my decision to try The Dempster, another dangerous highway. Quoting Jordan Peterson, I wrote at the time:

“When untrammeled—and encouraged—we prefer to live on the edge. There, we can still be both confident in our experience and confronting the chaos that helps us develop. We’re hard-wired, for that reason, to enjoy risk (some of us more than others). We feel invigorated and excited when we work to optimize our future performance, while playing in the present. Otherwise we lumber around, sloth-like, unconscious, unformed and careless. Overprotected, we will fail when something dangerous, unexpected and full of opportunity suddenly makes its appearance, as it inevitably will.”
12 Rules for Life

Research on the Trans-Taiga led me to looking at James Bay Road, a highway so remote that you have to sign in at a check point before riding it so officials can keep track of who’s up there. I watched a YouTube video of a group of guys who rode it to James Bay, including a few kilometres of the Trans-Taiga, “just to say they did.” And then the YouTube algorithm did its thing and showed me another series of videos of a father and son riding the Trans-Labrador Highway, which was right up my alley because I was considering riding it back from Newfoundland this summer after crossing to Blanc-Sablon.

Coincidentally, this series is also by Troy Bennett.

The Trans-Labrador Highway is one of those classic ADV rides you’ve apparently got to do to call yourself an ADV rider. It also snakes through some pretty remote territory, and until recently, was mostly gravel. (The final remaining section of dirt has recently been paved.) I watched the six-part series and the riders did have some adventure. They had a break-down and had to be saved by some locals, and they encountered some unseasonable weather and were held up for a few days by a late snow fall. There was some good bonding time, for sure, but in terms of the ride itself, it seemed like hours and hours of mind-numbing coniferous forest. No lakes, no mountains, no cliffs, no hill climbs, and as of last summer, no dirt.

Why would the Trans-Labrador be such a popular ADV ride? It has to be its remoteness, and if you live in the northeast of North America, the Trans-Lab is one of the few remaining truly remote roads.

If you’re looking for a challenge, remoteness will provide it. For one, there is the not-so-little issue of fuel; you have to be able to cover upwards of 400 kms between fuel stops, which can be done by carrying extra fuel in a Rotopax or another fuel container. With remoteness usually comes some challenging riding too since no one wants to pave a road that has limited use. And if it rains, that challenge increases significantly, especially on roads like The Dempster or The Dalton that are sprayed with calcium chloride as it makes the mud greasy. Then there’s the danger of wildlife, whether it be an aggressive grizzly bear or, worse, the black flies.

Stuck in otherwise pretty safe lives, we seek danger in answer to an ancient call somewhere in the reptilian brain that harkens back to another era when we lived close to death.

But the real challenge of riding remote is simply the lack of assistance should you have a mechanical or medical problem. I won’t say you are on your own because even on these remote highways there are still trucks passing periodically, but parts and medical assistance become scarce. This is where you have to be prepared: know how to fix your bike, carry spare parts, bring a first-aid kit, and have on you a satellite tracker like the Garmin inReach units that are connected to emergency services.

Is it worth it? Well, to each his or her own, but for me, the risk itself is not enough. In fact, I’ve been wondering if riding remote for its own sake is really just a way for some people to feel alive again. Stuck in otherwise pretty safe lives, we seek danger in answer to an ancient call somewhere in the reptilian brain that harkens back to another era when we lived close to death. Some people skydive. Others bungee jump. Some climb mountains. And some race The Isle of Man TT in search of what Guy Martin calls “The Buzz,” that adrenaline hit you get when you are on the edge of life and death.

But watching these videos has led me to rethink my upcoming tour. I don’t think I’ll be coming back from Newfoundland via The Trans-Lab. It’s not because I’m scared of remote riding, but in my world, there has to be some pay-off for the risk, and bragging rights just isn’t enough. When I rode up The Dempster, every kilometre was worth the risk for the magnificent views the highway provided. I’d never seen geography like that before and likely won’t until I get up there again.

Golden Sides Lookout just north of Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon.

But the Trans-Lab, the James Bay Road, and the Trans-Taiga don’t offer much beyond hours and hours of forest. From what I can determine, there aren’t even places to pull off safely for a rest or to camp. These are roads built exclusively for trucks to get from Point A to Point B, cutting a single line through otherwise impenetrable bush. I’ll leave it to the black flies.

For a challenge, I’ve decided instead to ride this summer the NEBDR and MABDR (North East and Mid Atlantic Backcountry Discovery Routes respectively) down to The Blue Ridge Parkway, and while there, I’ll probably do Tail of the Dragon, although riding a curvy section of road at the limit of my skill and the bike is not my preferred mode of challenge these days. Rather, I’m looking forward to testing my metal on those Class 4 roads of the NEBDR. I’ll take a rocky hill climb over speed or gratuitous remoteness any day; it’s what drew me to ADV riding in the first place. Off-roading provides a challenge that is relatively safe. That might sound like an oxymoron, but you don’t have to risk your life to get “The Buzz.” Successfully completing a technical section of road or trail will give you a hit too, and if you don’t make it and drop the bike, well, you live to try another day. And along the way, there are some pretty great views, villages, and campgrounds.

What do you think? If you ride a motorcycle, you’re familiar with managing risk. Is remote riding your thing, and if so, why do you do it? If not, what kind of riding gives you The Buzz? And if you don’t ride, what do you do to step outside your comfort zone and feel alive? Drop a comment below; I’m always interested in hearing from readers.

You Can’t Get There From Here: Navigation Apps

November 26, 2022November 26, 2022 / 650thumper / Leave a comment

In this final post in a series on gear, I discuss the navigation apps I use when touring.

*Old-School Navigation. I still like to tour with a map on my tank bag.*

“I learn by going where I have to go,” Theodore Roethke says in the refrain of his famous villanelle “The Waking.” That may be a good philosophy in life, but when motorcycle touring, it’s downright dangerous. There’s nothing worse than not knowing where you’re going and fumbling with a GPS in traffic while riding. Yeah, I’m all for exploration and adventure when you don’t have to be somewhere, but when the light is fading and you still don’t know where you are pitching camp, or when your fuel gauge is on one bar and you don’t know where the next gas station is, that’s a problem.

Charging

I learnt early in my touring experience that navigation is huge, maybe because I had so many problems keeping my phone charged. If the USB port detects moisture, the phone stops charging, and it doesn’t take long for a GPS app to drain your battery. And then there’s the cord. If your phone isn’t charging and the port isn’t wet, it’s probably the cord. They make them so cheap these days that the internal wires break. I once had to ride from the Cabot Trail over to the Best Buy in Sydney, NS, just to buy a new cord to get me home. What a pain!

So let me say at outset that if you don’t yet have wireless charging on your bike, you should. It’s a game changer. It avoids 90% of the issues you are going to face on tour. For years I worked around the charging problem by using the type of cord that has magnetic adapters. I siliconed the appropriate adapter into the port of my phone, then just attached the USB cord via the magnet to charge the battery. Rain didn’t affect the charging. The cord was still liable to break, but they are cheap and you can buy, like, a 4-pack on Amazon for $20 so can carry several.

The problem with this set-up is that the magnetic adapters are fine for charging, but most can’t transfer data, so now your phone is limited off the bike. Maybe you don’t want to silicone an adapter into your $1,100 iPhone 14. I worked around this by buying off eBay a cheap, used, military grade phone that I dedicated for bike navigation. It didn’t have a SIM card in it and was locked, but it didn’t matter: I used it in Flight Mode. That’s right, I don’t have a huge data plan and I ride in places that often don’t have cell service, so I download all my maps before leaving.

Navigation

The main app I use to navigate is OsmAnd+ because it is open source and includes free maps to be used offline. This is also great when I travel in The States because I don’t get hit with roaming charges. Last I looked, OsmAnd+ was about $20. I bought the Plus (paid) version because it imports GPX tracks, which I need for leading club rides, but the free version works perfectly well for navigation, if that’s all you need. OsmAnd also includes contour lines and hillshades layers. When I venture off-road, it’s nice to know how steep the mountain is going to be. There is also a Points of Interest (POI) layer so I can see gas stations, restaurants, healthcare, parking, and convenience stores and supermarkets on the map (configurable), and a Wikipedia layer, so I can see what significant landmarks I’m riding past or near. It’s a great little app, available for both Android and iOS.

I’ve tried maps.me, Gaia, Locus Map (Pro and Classic), Scenic, Eat Sleep Ride, and others, but I always come back to OsmAnd. It’s easy to use yet full-featured, a rare combination. It does what I need it to do and no more. Do I really need to know how far over I leaned the bike on my latest ride? Do I really need crash detection? Does my wife prefer to hear that I’ve crashed from an app or a person? But the main reason I like OsmAnd is for the free maps. I started using Locus Map Pro but maps are $1 per country. That sounds cheap—$1 for all of Canada—but for some reason they consider each state in the US a country, so that can add up fast. I still have these other apps on my phone as back-ups but I don’t really use them.

The other main app I use to navigate is Google Maps, now called just Maps. (I guess Google figures it’s so ubiquitous we no longer need the brand name.) Maps handles addresses better than any other app, thanks to Google’s AI. Need to know where a specific place is but you don’t know the address? Just Google it, then press the navigation arrow icon and it loads in Maps and guides you there. Easy peasy. As much as I like OsmAnd, you need a specific address for it to find your destination. (You can, however, press and hold on the map to choose a specific point of destination.)

You can use Maps also offline, but like OsmAnd, you have to download offline maps before leaving home. (The search feature, however, does require cell service.) In the upper right hand corner, press your identity icon, then select Offline Maps from the menu. Press “Select Your Own Map,” zoom and position the frame using two fingers to select the area you want, then press Download. I name each map so I can keep track of them. They will expire if left unused for a certain amount of time, but you can update them all quickly and easily every once in a while when you are in a Wi-Fi zone. I downloaded maps for all the provinces I planned to tour before heading across the country. I didn’t need the northern part of most provinces, but I grabbed everything where I thought I might be riding. This was important since I was often not in a region with cell service.

The only other navigation app I use is Waze, and I only ever use it around town, frankly. That’s because it shows where the cops are. Nice! (Not that I ever speed.)

Route Planning

For route planning, I use the web-based Kurviger. Forget BaseCamp. Kurviger is intuitive and full-featured. I choose the type of route (highway, straight, curvy, very curvy; one-way or round trip), the origin and destination, and Kurviger comes up with an interesting route. I then drop in shaping and waypoints to shape the route exactly how I want it, flipping back and forth between Kurviger and Maps in street view to check the quality of the road. (Drag the little yellow man, ur, person, icon onto the map to see a street view.) When I’ve got the route exactly how I want it, I export it to a gpx file. Kurviger can generate a QR code for the file or hyperlink to share, or send it directly to Scenic, if that’s your preferred navigation app. I usually email the gpx file to myself then open it on my phone, which knows to open gpx files in OsmAnd.

I have Kurviger Pro on my phone as well, and it uses BRouter to do the routing. BRouter takes some setting up; like the offline maps in Googe Maps, you have to download in sections the areas you need first, but the upside is that you can use Kurviger Pro in the field. For example, say you’re riding with some friends and you’re looking for a good route to a specific place but nobody wants to pour over a map to make those decisions. Just open Kurviger Pro on your phone (it will load a map at your current location), press and hold on your destination, and it will generate a route—again, to the degree of curviness you want. You can even share the route with your friends.

*Screenshot of Kurviger Pro*. All roads lead to Lachute.

Non-Navigation Apps

There are some other apps I use, not for navigation, strictly speaking, although they can be used for that. If you’ve followed Itchy Boots as she makes her way across the Americas, you will have heard of iOverlander. Noraly uses it to find her accommodations. I’m rarely sleeping with a roof over my head when I tour, but iOverlander is equally useful for finding campgrounds and even wild camping locations (i.e. places on crown land where you can camp for free). The app is user-based, and users submit descriptions and photos of the sites they’ve stayed at. This is helpful because there are a lot of people boondocking with campers and vans, and their needs are different than those who are tenting. So a safe gravel parking lot might be good if you have an RV, but not so nice if you are tenting. I wish iOverlander made this distinction, perhaps using a different symbol for each type of wild camping.

*iOverlander screenshot. Tent icons are campgrounds; crescent moon icons are wild camping spots.* *Clicking on the icon brings up a window with user-based descriptions and photos.*

Last spring, a friend and I planned to camp at a state campground in Vermont, only when we got there it was closed. In fact, we were too early and all the state campgrounds were still closed for the off-season. (Doh!) So I opened iOverlander and it showed a wild camping spot a short distance away. We ended up at lovely site next to a river with a few other campers nearby for security and even a drop toilet to boot!

I also use weather and radar apps, of course, to monitor the weather. They are pretty straightforward so I won’t spend any time on them. But for the record, my preferred apps in this department are WeatherCAN and MyRadar. I like WeatherCAN because it’s generated by Environment Canada. I reluctantly open Weather Network only when I need a 14-day forecast, steeling myself for the clickbait.

The Best Riding App on my Phone

I’ve saved the best for last. There is one app that I have come to love, to love I say, so much so that it’s become almost indispensable. It’s an app like no other since it is an overlay on the Android system and replaces the usual interface. It’s called Drive Mode Dashboard, by Thork Racing.

This is what I see when I launch DMD. (This is Version 2.0.) Instead of my usual desktop and app icons and widgets, I see this. It’s fully configurable but this is how I’ve set mine up—with a set of most-commonly-used apps on the left and a compass, digital speedometer, and odometer on the right. There’s more info along the top, as you can see. Along the bottom are icons for a map, my full list of apps, settings, even a digital rally book. Pretty cool.

But where this app really comes to life is in conjunction with Carpe Iter Controller, a bluetooth controller that mounts to my handlebar. With this controller and DMD, I can navigate throughout my phone—open any app, open and control media in Spotify, change the volume in my helmet, the brightness of my screen, and more. Where I use it most is to zoom in and out and pan around in maps. I think I could even tune my ECU while riding if I wanted to. About the only thing it can’t do is stop Microsoft Office Update from reminding me to check for updates every time I open Word! (Can Bill Gates avoid this?)

I see Thork Racing have a new unit out now with three buttons and a toggle and it can connect directly to 12V. My 1st generation controller has a rechargeable battery that lasts about a week with full-time use. There wasn’t room on the Beemer’s handlebar to mount it vertically so I made up a bracket and mounted it horizontally on the mirror stem. I have it mounted vertically on the Tiger, and yes, you configure the orientation in the driver software so the toggle switch pans your maps accordingly. Needless to say, with this set-up, if my eyes are not always on the road, at least my hands are on the handlebars. The controller is a little pricey but it’s a very nice modification.

Final Words

Despite finally getting my phone set up to be my primary means of navigation, I ended up buying a used Garmin Montana 600 for the big trip. I was nervous after having so many tours tainted by navigation issues and wanted a reliable back-up. The Montana has a WAAS-enabled GPS receiver and HotFix® satellite prediction. No, that’s not a dating service but the latest technology to ensure your connection to satellites is never dropped. The Rugged Mount is waterproof and robust enough for off-roading, and while I’m not positive, I think the Montana has a more comprehensive off-road mapping system than the phone apps. The Google Car made all the way up to Tuktoyaktuk, apparently, but it can’t go on single track or some of the ATV trails I do.

When all electronic devices fail, I rely on that thing called a paper map. No batteries needed! My Wolfman tank bag has a nice big clear plastic sleeve on top for them. It’s easy to lose sight of the big picture, so to speak, after staring into a 6″ x 3″ screen all day. I’ve recently discovered Butler maps, made for motorcyclists, and they are not only water resistant but also contain routes suggested by other motorcyclists and a ton of other information on the flip-side. I bought the one for The Maritimes and it currently hangs in my upstairs hallway outside my study, as did the one of North America I used to plan my cross-Canada trip. So a paper map serves multiple purposes: it’s great in the field, but it also serves to navigate me through the dark winter months of the off-season.

What are your preferred navigation apps and devices? Are there some I haven’t mentioned? Drop a comment below. I always like to hear from readers.

Where Has the Summer Gone, 2022 Edition

August 7, 2022August 15, 2022 / 650thumper / 2 Comments

In the 100th post of 650Thumper, I reflect on a summer of forced relaxation.

Yesterday, the image above popped up as a Facebook memory of exactly one year ago, just to remind me that I once did something pretty remarkable. By contrast, this summer has been pretty tame, even by my standards.

To be fair, this was supposed to be a restful summer after the Epic Adventure of last year. I had eight months to recover, of course, but teaching is a pretty intensive profession, the workload of the semesters off-set by the summers of recovery, and this past year was especially draining as we continued to deal with masks and Covid protocols and the accompanying anxiety of a global pandemic. As a teacher, I am part pedagogue, part social worker, so found myself assuaging the anxiety of some students and standing firm against others who tried to take advantage of the situation. Deciding which is which is the hardest part of teaching, to be honest, and by the end of the semester, I and many of my colleagues were limping to the finish. “Boo-hoo!” I hear those in the medical and services professions saying. It’s true that I didn’t have to wear a mask 8-12 hours a day, but my experience has only heightening my respect for those who do.

But the real reason for a stay-at-home summer is that my wife and I got a new dog, and he was a rescue from a horrible situation. He doesn’t travel in the car without getting sick, and he has some triggers and in general is still settling, so we didn’t feel we could do our planned east coast trip this year. We’ll give him another year to get comfortable enough that we can leave him for even a few weeks so Marilyn can join me for part of that trip, as she did last year. We pledged to make the best of it, doing short day rides and maybe an overnight to test his limits.

Introducing Rusty to agility to build his confidence.

The summer started with a bang—buying a new bike and doing a series of short trips with friends in June while Marilyn did dog-sitting duty. First was a club ride to Westport, a small village on the Upper Rideau Lake, that took us along the Saint Laurence Seaway and up through the twisties of SE Ontario. I was on my new bike, purchased, registered, and insured the day before, so I was grinning the entire 700-kilometre, 2-day trip, except for when I watched in a local bar The Leafs lose Game 7, once again.

I followed that with a trip to visit my sister and friend at a cottage in Denbigh, my first solo ride with the Triumph and a chance to put it through some paces on the winding highways of the Ontario Highlands. Then I did a little road trip (in a car) with a writer friend to Vermont in search of literary landmarks, followed by a return soon after with Mike and Danny, my riding buddies who did The Puppy Dog Route with me pre-Covid, but this time we finally did Bailey-Hazen, a military road dating back to the War of Independence. We also did some of the Hamster Ride, a similar dirt-route in New Hampshire, and road out to the ocean in Maine.

On the Bailey-Hazen Military Road, Vermont

I did another trip with Mike and another riding Buddy, Steve, to the VRRA races at Calabogie Motorsport Park on the July 2 weekend. And between those trips was a ride back to my hometown of Burlington, Ontario, for a reunion of The Burlington Teen Tour Band, a marching band I was in through my teens. So lots of short trips in June, when I usually rest on the couch watching a major football tournament, and by July, I was ready for that rest.

VRRA Summer Classic at Calabogie Motorsport Park

July is a bit of blur, to be honest, and the short day rides with Marilyn didn’t materialize. I did a few club rides, but to honest, I didn’t ride much in July. I think that had something to do with a good friend’s passing. I kind of fell into a funk, and didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I’m not sure where my time went, but I know I spent a lot of time on the couch. It’s true what they say about depression: it takes the incentive out of doing even the things that normally bring you joy.

Finally, with the end of summer looming, I decided to do a solo ride to Lake Placid, and that put a grin back on my face. I let Kurviger decide much of the route, and for some reason, part of it was a gnarly section of Class 4 road that had me wishing my Outback Motortek crash bars and skid plate weren’t back-ordered. At some point, I decided it was easier to keep going than turn back, and I managed to get back to asphalt without dropping the bike. I had on the front only the Pirelli Scorpion Trail II, the stock 90/10 tire, but we managed. I’ll be doing a comparative blog of the GS and Tiger, but one thing I can say now is that the front end on the Tiger is much better than the Beemer’s. That 21″ front wheel was rolling over stuff surprisingly well! I don’t think I’ll be doing trails with this bike, but it’s good to know what it’s capable of should my adventures take me through some technical riding.

Marilyn and I did finally do a day trip yesterday, down to Smuggler’s Notch in Vermont. I’m back to work in a week so I said it was now or never. Unfortunately, now was 34C and it required all of our tenacity to get through the day, especially the border crossing that had us sitting in idling traffic for about an hour. Brutal.

The silver lining to the end of summer always is that the best riding in Canada is in the fall, when the leaves have turned colour and the temperature has dropped. There will be some more club rides and day trips and maybe an overnight if my son is available to dog-sit. The Triumph Tiger is a blast to ride, and fingers crossed, so far there has been no indication that we’ll have to wear masks again in class, so my work will be relatively back to normal. I have a lot to be thankful for, and a big east coast trip to plan for next summer.

Homeward Bound

July 12, 2022August 22, 2022 / 650thumper / Leave a comment

In the completion of my Epic Adventure, I cover 5,500 kilometres from Whitehorse to Montreal in seven days to be home in time for work.

In my last post, I rode up The Dempster Highway to Rock River Campground, just south of the NWT border, then went to Whitehorse and did an oil change to prepare for the final leg of my Epic Adventure Tour. I had a week to be back in Montreal, 5,500 kilometres away, so I knew there were going to be some long days in the saddle. I would have to let Google Maps do its thing and direct me there on the shortest, fastest route. It was beginning to feel like my tour was coming to an end, but I still had those seven days and lots to see and to experience as I crossed the country for a second time.

My first night was at the famous Liard Hotsprings Provincial Park, just outside of Yukon in northern BC on Highway 97, the Alaska Highway. I retraced my ride on the 1 back to Upper Liard, but instead of turning right and heading south down the 37 (Stewart-Cassiar Highway), as I had come up, I continued south-east to Watson Lake. My first rest stop was at Sign Post Forest.

A quick peanut butter sandwich lunch and I was on my way again. Somewhere along the 97, heading into Liard, I encountered Bison on the road. I’d heard they are unpredictable and will charge a motorcycle, so I waited until the road was reasonably clear, then slowly passed, one hand on the throttle, one snapping photos.

I was especially nervous about passing this cow (left) while her calf was suckling.

I also came upon sections of burnt-out forest. All summer we had been dodging forest fires. Now I was seeing close-up the after-effects of one.

Looks like fire came through here a few years ago, based on the new growth.

I’d been told you have to make reservations at the campground—it’s that popular—but I took my chances on a weekday and got lucky; there were lots of spots left. I pulled in late afternoon, pitched my tent, and headed to the hot springs.

There, I met a couple of other ADV riders, so we naturally struck up a conversation about our travels. When I mentioned a few details about my trip, one of them said, “Oh you’re that guy with the blog.” That was a bit of a surprise. I’ve been writing and publishing poetry for over 30 years but have never been recognized for my writing outside of a literary context, so it was an unusual experience. Hmm . . . might the universe be trying to tell me something? I’m proud of my poetry collection, Invisible Sea, but I think my next book will be something more like this, related to my motorcycle adventures, targeting a more popular audience.

Mike at Liard also rides a 650GS and lives in Powell River. He had sent me in a previous post before I left some tips for BC touring, including the possibility of buying a week-long pass for BC Ferries, which might end up being cheaper than buying tickets for individual crossings. Thanks, Mike. I hope to catch up with you later when I retire to BC. Perhaps we will do some touring together one day.

The next day was some great riding through the mountains of Northern BC, including passing Muncho Lake. At one point, I passed a couple of motorcyclists stopped at the side of the road, so I naturally pulled a U-turn to see if they needed any help. I recognized one of them from the hot springs the day before. They had a little problem but nothing serious and would soon be on their way. As I left, I pulled another U-turn to return southward. I had the entire lane to do it and knew I could without crossing into the oncoming lane, so foolishly didn’t even check over my shoulder to see if there were any vehicles coming behind me. I also had my ear-plugs in, so the 18-wheeler barrelling down on me was a bit of a surprise and for a moment I lost my nerve and almost dropped the bike, saved by a couple of heavy dabs. The poor truck driver must have crapped his pants as he swerved onto the shoulder. I looked back at my friends and one dropped his jaw. Yeah, it was close. A momentary lapse of judgment is all it takes. In the entire 20,000K of the tour, this was the closest I came to an accident.

I also experienced in Northern BC the third and final rain shower of the six-week tour, it was that hot and dry all summer. I did “only” 616 kilometres that day and found a spot for the night at Inga Lake Provincial Park. There I met Jeremy and Samoyed, Rory, travelling in a converted camper van. Like Mountain Man Mike I had met in Yukon, travelling by converted van or truck seems to be a very popular choice these days. Gas is cheaper than with a full RV, it’s easier to get around, and most have a small kitchenette and bed. Walter and I ended up sharing a drink and watching the meteor shower together that night.

The next day was the big push into Edmonton. My friends at Liard had tipped me off that hotels are super cheap in Edmonton for some reason, so I indulged myself.

The next day I did 651K into Prince Albert National Park. I was trying to hit all or most of the national parks en route. I followed my GPS that took me the back way in (see title image above), which was more interesting but got me there later than I would have liked and campsites were scarce. In fact, I rode through the park to a couple of the campgrounds before doubling back and finding a single spot right on the water.

The site showed that it was occupied for another few days, but before I rode off, a neighbouring camper kindly came over to say that I’d be fine. Apparently, there seemed to have been a domestic dispute and the family packed up early, not bothering to remove the reservation from their site. My guardian angel had done the deed, of course, and I felt a little guilty to be profiting from an argument. How anyone can be at conflict in such a beautiful location is hard to imagine, but then again, they say a good test of marital compatibility is to go camping.

The next day was another 700K and another national park, this time Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. Where Prince Albert is remote and beautiful, Riding Mountain is a camping suburb. There are 427 available campsites at RMNP, and reservations are highly recommended during peak season, which it was. I think 425 were already taken when I got there, and I found myself tucked into a tiny site at the far end of the campground. I guess the park serves the generally landlocked residents of eastern Manitoba and Winnipeg and provides a summer playground for the kids, but it’s too big. It was good for a night’s rest but I wouldn’t want to vacation there. The next day I rode down to the beach just to check it out, and along Wasagaming Drive in search of a coffee. It felt very touristy, with fake indigenous trinkets, souvenir T-shirts, and plastic sunglasses. It didn’t feel like a national park, or any park, for that matter, and I didn’t buy a sticker for my pannier before hitting the road.

Okay, it does have a short beach, but with that many campsites and hotels in the area, I imagine it gets pretty crowded in the summer months. This was taken early morning. By afternoon, I suspect it looks more like this.

I started heading east on Highway 16 that took me through Neepawa. The name should have twigged but it didn’t until I saw a sign indicating that the former home of Canadian novelist Margaret Laurence was nearby. What an unexpected treat! I don’t do much research before touring but prefer to follow my nose, which generally serves me well. Her home is just a few blocks off the main road. If you like her novels, it’s worth a stop. Admission is a few dollars and you receive an audio tour through the house.

I knew that her novel The Stone Angel was inspired by a monument in a nearby cemetery and was directed there by the nice young man working at the house.

If you want to understand what it’s like to be inside the head of a failing old woman, read The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence, set in the fictitious town of Manawaka, based on Neepawa. It should be required reading for students in Special Care Counselling who wish to work in elder care. I am always impressed by prose fiction that is not autobiographical. A mature writer is able to imagine characters and voice, not simply fictionalize his or her own experiences.

I pushed on, aiming for Kenora, just over the Manitoba-Ontario border. I was in such a hurry leaving Kenora westbound that I didn’t get the required photo-op with Husky the Muskie.

In truth, my only reason for stopping in Kenora was in search of food and campsite beer after another long, hot day on the bike. I arrived after the imaginatively-named The Beer Store had closed, but thankfully Lake of the Woods Brewing Company was still open and had cans for sale.

This delay meant that I arrived at Sioux Narrows Provincial Park at sundown, after the park had closed, but I had phoned ahead and reserved a site. The staff there were nice to not charge me a reservation fee and my reservation paperwork and a map of the park were waiting for me under a rock on the picnic table of my site when I arrived. The staff at this park get full marks.

I was now in Ontario and things were looking familiar again. I was retracing my ride westward from six weeks prior, including an overnight stay with extended family on Shebandowan Lake, just west of Thunder Bay. It was nice to see familiar faces again and sleep in a bed. I was getting pretty tired from all the riding and needed a good night’s sleep before the big push home.

The next day I rode my favourite highway, Highway 17, which I’ve written about for Ontario Tourism, including a stop for the other required photo-op in Wawa.

It was all business now and I pushed all the way to Sault Ste. Marie. I deliberated where to stay that night. I considered Pancake Bay Provincial Park, just west of Sault Ste. Marie, but I knew the next day was already going to be a very long day to get home. I considered pushing past the Sault but it was getting late and dark. I hate spending money on hotels but with miles to cover and being my last night, I splurged on a room at the Quality Inn there. Counter to Edmonton, though, hotels in the Sault are expensive. Perhaps it has something to do with being so close to the US border, just over the bridge (although the border was still closed due to Covid), or maybe it’s just a factor of pure supply and demand. At any rate, I paid through the nose but had a good night’s rest before the final push home.

The next day I rode further than I ever have, 1000 kilometres (968 to be exact), pulling into my driveway in the dark at around 10 o’clock after having successfully navigated the requisite construction detours and pylons welcoming you to Montreal. Thankfully, I didn’t have to function the next day, but I was back in town for my official availability at work. I’d have another full week to decompress, prepare for classes, and wrap my head around the culture shock of stepping into the classroom again. When I did, it seemed almost surreal that just a little over a week earlier I had been above the Arctic Circle.

The bike was a mess, an absolute disaster, and some of that week would be spent on a thorough cleaning and some much-needed maintenance. But I was home. I’d completed a dream over forty years old to cross Canada by motorcycle. It was the end of that dream, but the trip had firmly planted an adventure bug in my ear. I knew now that I was capable of more—the east coast, including Newfoundland and Labrador, the Trans America Trail (TAT), The Continental Divide, The Trans Canada Adventure Trail (TCAT), and more. I was sadly at the end of my tour, but in many ways, this was just a beginning.

In my next post, I’ll complete the blogs about the Epic Adventure with some general thoughts and reflections on the tour overall and make an exciting announcement.

Klondike Days

June 2, 2022June 2, 2022 / 650thumper / 1 Comment

Continuing north, I explore Dawson City, then venture up The Dempster Highway.

When I was at Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan, a neighbouring camper wandered over to examine the stickers on my panniers. He had a box on the back of his camper and also collected stickers, so we struck up a conversation about the places we’d been. He told me that he and his wife had been all over Canada and their two favourite places were Newfoundland and Yukon. I’d never been north, as in North, and I had a bucket list item to see Canadian tundra, so I was especially excited about entering Yukon. The trip so far had been amazing, but in many ways this felt like the climax of the tour.

I left Boya Provincial Park and soon entered Yukon. I was expecting the 3rd degree but in the end didn’t even need to show my vaccination passport. There was a roadside check and I had to fill out some paperwork but was soon on my way.

The Klondike Highway (2) is long and under considerable construction, so there were delays and some tricky deep dirt and mud in the bypasses that was warm-up for The Dempster later. Apparently they’ve been working on this road for longer than Transport Quebec has been rebuilding the Turcot Interchange, but I suspect the mafia aren’t behind these delays. It led to a long hot day in the saddle. The heat was following me all the way north and it was 32 degrees Celsius in Dawson City when I arrived late afternoon.

The first thing you notice about Dawson City are the colours. I suspect it has something to do with there being little light for major portions of the year, like putting up Christmas lights midwinter. Or perhaps residents know that tourism is a major part of their economy so why not make the buildings look nice. Lord Elgin High School, built in the 70s in my hometown of Burlington, Ontario, with its purple and orange colour scheme has nothing on this school in Dawson City.

I crossed the mighty Yukon River on the free 24-hour ferry and set up camp right on the river at Yukon River Campground. I love the Territorial campgrounds! They are $12/night including firewood. Like the recreation sites in BC, they work on an honour system, with envelopes and a secure deposit box at the gate.

The forecast was clear so I decided to try sleeping in my hammock. That would turn out to be not a good idea. My sleeping bag is good down to 7 degrees Celsius plus I have a silk liner, but I was still cold. The relentless heat that had been following me across the country was finally abated at night in the Yukon. I also found it very difficult to get in and out of both bags (liner inside of bag) in the pitch dark for those nighttime bathroom breaks. I wish I had a video of me trying to climb back in. I tried climbing into the hammock and then inserting legs; I tried standing and pulling the sleeping bag up first and then climbing in. Both were comical, and I felt like I was in a Charlie Chaplin movie. The next night I slept comfortably in my little warm tent.

The next day I took a guided tour of Dawson City. Yukon Tourism provides tours with a guide in period garb and you get access to buildings that are normally locked to the public. We went into the local bank (one of the first in the region), the post office, the saloon, but for some reason not the brothel. I was surprised to find the same BC fir on the ceiling of the post office that is in my 1934-era home in Quebec. I guess that wood was freighted right across this country.

After the tour, I wandered up to Writers Lane, which contains the homes of three major Canadian writers—poet Robert Service, Pierre Berton, and Jack London—all a stone’s throw from each other.

I don’t know what is in the water in these parts, but there is some major literary talent up here. In fact, Maria Rainer Rilke and other writers like Robert Bly have written that the main ingredient for good writing is solitude, and there’s certainly plenty of that up here. There is also some pretty dramatic history that makes for good fiction.

The next day I pulled up stakes and headed up The Dempster Highway. I write that casually but in fact the decision of whether to try any of The Dempster had been on my mind the entire tour as I was traversing the country. My original plan, as anyone who has been following this blog knows, was to reach the Arctic Ocean at Tuktoyaktuk. I knew I didn’t have the right tires (Michelin Anakee Adventures) but thought I’d be okay at least for the bottom 70K into Tombstone Territorial Park if it was dry. Only once I was on The Dempster, all that was on my mind was “This isn’t so bad . . . I can do this . . . I wonder if it’s all like this? . . . I don’t want to have regrets that I didn’t try . . . you won’t be here again for some time . . . don’t be a wuss,” etc., looping through my brain like the daredevil “friend” who always gets you into trouble.

So when I got to Tombstone, the first thing I did was ask at the the Interpretive Centre if The Dempster is like this all the way up. The nice young ladies at the centre replied, “Have you received permission to enter Northwest Territories?” What now? I had been following the Covid restrictions on the Yukon border all winter because it was closed for much of it, but hadn’t checked NWT! Turns out strictly residents and people doing business were allowed in. The staff did encourage me, however, to go to Eagle Plains, about halfway, and from there I could ride another 45 minutes for the photo-op at the Arctic Circle sign.

Hmm . . . I had the rest of the day to mull that over, looking closely at the forecast. (If there were any rain, I’d be stuck and would have to wait for the highway to dry out, which could be days.) In the meantime, I decided to do a hike just north of the Interpretive Centre on Golden Sides Mountain. A short ride got me to a horse trail that leads to this spectacular view of four valleys—three in front, and one behind.

Feeling like I’m on top of the world.

That night in my tent I did the mileage calculations over and over again in my head. You need to have a range of at least 370 kilometres to get to Eagle Plains. Although I had not planned to go up The Dempster, I fortunately filled up at the base of it first. (One gets gas when one can in these parts.) My bike has a 17-litre tank and I have another couple of litres in bottles on the back, only one of those bottles was half full because I use it for my stove. So I had about 18.5 L and my bike gets 20-25 K/L, depending on the riding, so I calculated my worst case scenario and concluded it would be tight but I had enough to get me there. And in the end, I did. I cruised at 80 K/hr. and my fuel light came on about 60 K from Eagle Plains but I made it.

Click on any image to enlarge.

I’m reminded of the Ernest Hemingway short story “Hills Like While Elephants”

Once there, I treated myself to a steak at the restaurant at the lodge. I guess dining etiquette is a little relaxed in these parts because you can apparently play ball with your dog in the dining room here, and why not? I think you should be able to play ball with your dog in any dining room!

Eagle Plains Lodge. I like how the server casually steps over the rope toy.

There I met Mountain Man Mike. Mike is an avid outdoorsman with his own YouTube channel about his adventures in his truck-top camper. He told me about Rock River Campground just south of the NWT border so I decided I’d follow him up there for the night.

I headed up to the Arctic Circle sign. Mike was already there doing some filming and took the requisite photo. Thanks Mike!

I set up camp next to Mike and we had a nice campfire through the evening. At one point, about 10 o’clock at night, he was chopping wood and it was LOUD! I asked, “Isn’t it a bit late to be chopping wood?” He paused for a second, thought about it, then said simply, “It’s expected.” Well, it’s not like Security is going to come tell you it’s quiet time.

Washing my cookware the next morning in the turquoise Rock River. Strange to see the water flowing north.

Now there are a few places on Earth where you especially don’t want your bike not to start, and halfway up The Dempster is one of them. I had put 20W/50 oil in this bike in North Van when the heat had been relentless, but now it was about 2 degrees Celsius and my bike wouldn’t start. It doesn’t like 20W/50 in cold weather; the flywheel is just too big to crank over fast enough.

Mike could hear what was going on and wasn’t surprised when I slunk over to ask him for a push. He’s fortunately over 200 lbs. and very fit, but it even took him a few tries to get me going. Thanks again, Mike. You were a Godsend!

It was drizzling as I pulled out of Rock River so I high-tailed it down into lower climate where there was sun. A quick gas stop in Eagle Plains and I was on my way again.

I saw Mike only one more time, somewhere down The Dempster. He’d stopped to take some drone footage. After saying our good-byes, I pushed on and was soon back at Yukon River Campground for one night, exhausted but happy that I’d made it as far as legally possible. I didn’t make it to the Arctic Ocean, but it’s not going anywhere soon, and I’ll return to complete The Dempster when the time is right.

I’m glad I risked it. The geography up there is nothing like I’d ever experienced. The area is vast, remote, and pristine, untouched and unblemished by humans. And in that rawness is a natural beauty that is unparalleled by any park or nature reserve I’ve visited. There are very few places on Earth like it, and those are quickly dwindling. I hope that when I return, it will be as I remember it.

This marked the turnaround point of my tour and now I started heading back home. I had to be in Montreal in a little over a week for work. But first Bigby needed an oil change, so I went to Whitehorse, where I knew there is a Canadian Tire. Unfortunately, the large and excellent Robert Service Campground was closed so I ended up at High Country RV Park.

Note scavenged box underneath with plastic liner to catch the oil. You gotta do what ya gotta do. The dirty oil did end up back in containers and dropped off at the local Can Tire.

I found a private corner of the crowded camp and did an oil change. Now Bigby was ready to make the big sprint home across the country.

Northern BC

April 17, 2022April 17, 2022 / 650thumper / Leave a comment

The journey continues now solo from North Vancouver to the Yukon border.

In my last post, Marilyn and I toured the Sunshine Coast on our BMW f650GS. We’d been having some problems with a lithium battery I had put in before leaving, so as soon I was back in Vancouver, I headed over to High Road Vancouver and bought a glass mat battery. There was no way I was heading north into remote territory without a reliable battery.

While crossing the city, the most fortuitous thing happened: my phone fell out of its mount onto the road and broke. Why is this fortuitous, you ask? Well, because my phone was old and needed to be replaced. We’d noticed a huge difference between photos (the same photo) taken on my old Samsung Galaxy S5 and Marilyn’s new iPhone 11; the GPS often dropped the connection to the satellite (probably because I’d dropped it on my office floor); the screen sensitivity was failing and often didn’t respond to touches, which is really annoying when you are riding—in short, I’d developed a hate-on for the phone and just needed a good reason to replace it.

So before leaving North Van, I went to the Koodo store at Capilano Mall and upgraded to a Galaxy S21. Photos from this point on in my trip are much, much better. I had to pay a bit extra for the wireless charging, but finally I would be free and clear of the cords and charging issues on the bike. Okay, I didn’t have a wireless charger yet, but I’ve since picked up a Quadlock mount with vibration dampener and am never going back!

Marilyn flew back to Montreal and I suddenly found myself alone again. I love solo riding, but I loved touring with Marilyn more. This was—dare I say—a bit of a surprise to me; it would take a day or so to adjust. Her absence was felt all the more since the first day involved riding that same Sea to Sky Highway we’d ridden just the day before. But this time I didn’t stop in Whistler but blew past, all the way to Pemberton before taking a break.

Pemberton lunch spot. Nothing like a weeping willow on a stinking hot day.

Then the road got really interesting. Serj, a local ADV rider I’d met on the Sunshine Coast, had told me about this section of Highway 99 and it didn’t disappoint. Also known as the famous Duffy Lake Road, the small but well maintained mountain road weaves through the range with magnificent views of the valleys on each side. I passed a few recreation areas en route but had in mind to stay at the campground in Lillooet, only once I dropped down into the heat of the town, took one look at the parched and empty campground, I turned around and high-tailed it back up into the mountains.

BC has what they call “Recreation Areas,” which are unserviced sites for only $15 a night. They’re not full campgrounds but just a handful of sites on a loop off the road. You pick up an envelope at the entrance, drop your cash in it, tear off the portion that gets posted at your site, and deposit the money in a secure box. A park official comes by once in a while to check. These sites are a little rustic without running water (you have to pump it by hand, Waltons-style) and only drop toilets, but with a picnic table and fire pit, it’s a step up from wild camping (i.e. bivouacing). There’s also a sense of security with a few other campers nearby.

The next day I rode back down out of the mountains into the heat of Lilooet. Lilooet is apparently the jade capital of the world, so I stopped at The House of Jade Mineral Museum with the idea of picking up a gift. As it would turn out, the only gift I bought was for myself and it wasn’t jade. My eye was caught by a polished bit of tigers eye. I decided it would be a good-luck talisman for the rest of the tour and asked the owner to string it for me as a necklace that I could put under my gear.

“Do you know the particular properties of this stone?” I asked.

“No idea,” was his reply.

He was very knowledgeable about the local geology and geography, but clearly not interested in the energetic properties of crystals. As I write this, nine months later, I see on Wikipedia that “Roman soldiers wore engraved tigers eye to protect them in battle. It is still used as a stone of protection today.” My intuitions were correct.

As I and a few others browsed the store, the owner gave a sort of impromptu lecture on an unusual local geological landmark. About 45 minutes further along the 99 is Pavilion Lake, renown for sections of brilliant emerald water. The water gets its emerald colour from limestone, extremely uncommon in the Rocky Mountains, but apparently a mountain of it drifted up from California during the continental drift and attached. Sure enough, about 45 minutes down the road, I saw what he was referring to.

Soon I was on the 97, the Caribou Highway as its called here, blasting through place names like Williams Lake and Quesnel that I’d heard of when my son was tree-planting. While also planting, my niece and boyfriend had a bad experience wild camping near Prince George, and really, the only place I was nervous about for security reasons in all of Canada was PG, as the planters affectionately refer to it. So when an old friend from my undergrad days who was watching my progress on Facebook messaged with an offer to stay at her place just west of PG, I was doubly happy. Her husband also rides a GS, so we had a lot to talk about over dinner. Kristen and Dale live in a beautiful log cabin on a gorgeous piece of property. The last time I saw them was at their wedding near Whitby over twenty years ago, so it was a treat to see them again.

The next day I rode west along Highway 16, the Highway of Tears, as it’s called because so many murdered and missing indigenous women have disappeared while hitchhiking on this road. I passed billboards such as this one, and roadside shrines, and the miles laid down that day were pensive as I reflected on yet another layer of trauma inflicted on the indigenous peoples of Canada. I’d seen singular orange garments hanging from trees right across the country like a breadcrumb trail leading to a sordid history Canadians are only now truly beginning to recognize and accept, but now I was riding along a road that was tangibly a place of violence for many women. The contrast between my ultimate freedom on the bike and others’ lack of freedom in even the fundamental aspects of self-determination was poignant. And I couldn’t help also reflecting on the perpetrators of these crimes, and how damaged and deranged their own lives must be to do such heinous crimes. It was one of the more melancholy days on the bike.

Just south of Smithers, I decided to take another look at my bouncing front tire. The open roads in these parts allowed me to look down at the wheel as I was riding highway speeds. (Okay, maybe not a brilliant idea, but 6,000 kilometres of curiosity had gotten the better of me.) I noticed, in addition to the bounce I’d been feeling throughout the tour, that there was a definite wobble in the wheel. Aha! It’s not that the wheel is not balanced but that it’s not true! At least this is fixable, or so I thought.

I’ve trued up bicycle wheels before. It isn’t easy, and you have to be careful because you can easily make it worse, but I had a spoke wrench on me. However, with this much at stake, I thought maybe I’d have it done by a professional. As I came into Smithers, I saw a Yamaha dealership and pulled in there. They didn’t have a mechanic on duty but directed me over to Eyecandy Customs motorcycle repair and bikes. Sam took one look at my front rim and said it was bent. In fact, it was bent in two spots, probably from the two failed attempts to get up a particularly challenging rocky hill climb shortly before my departure in Montreal. He said there was nothing he could do about it. It wasn’t a matter of adjusting spokes; I’d need a new rim. Damn!

With that bit of good news adding to my day, I pulled in to Seeley Lake Provincial Park just east of Highway 37. The sunset there was the most beautiful I’ve ever experienced, so there really was a silver lining to this grey day.

The next day was my big push north to the Yukon border up the Stewart-Cassiar Highway, but first I doubled back to Hazelton and the Ksan Historical Village because there are some totem poles there that Emily Carr had painted. It was getting late when I passed Hazelton the day before so I decided to do it this way. It meant that I arrived early and saw them in the rising sun.

The poles were impressive, and the colour paintings on the dark wood of the longhouses striking. I wanted to explore more and was curious about the history of this place, but like my visit to Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre in northwest Ontario, everything was shut up due to Covid. I found myself strangely alone without a single soul in the historic village or adjacent town. Old Hazelton—quaint and picturesque, with a paddle boat at the water and old buildings with original exteriors—felt like a ghost town.

So I read the historic plaques, took some photos, then hopped on my bike and headed off. I had a big day of riding ahead of me so perhaps it was for the best.

Soon I turned onto the 37. Now there are two ways to get to Yukon: the Stewart-Cassiar Highway (37) or the Alaska Highway (97). I took the 37 up and the 97 down. They are both pretty good for different reasons, but in terms of riding, the 37 is better.

Although tiring, I was happy to put on the kilometres, all 707 of them over nine hours with only a short break south of Dease Lake for fuel and food. I had to keep my eye out because there were a lot of bears on this road. You see a black dot up ahead and, sure enough, when you get up there, it’s a bear—in the ditch eating berries, crossing the road in front, or climbing the embankment on the other the side. I lost count how many I saw, thankfully all black bears. I even came across one dead on the shoulder, poor thing, half decayed, maggot infested, and stinking to high heaven in the heat.

I was aiming for Boya Lake Provincial Park just south of the Yukon border and pulled in exhausted, late in the day. The entire campground was full except for one spot on the water, too small for anything but a motorcycle and tent. As I was pitching my tent, it started to rain and I didn’t have time to cook. Suddenly a man was there, offering me food. He said he does a lot of backcountry camping so I guess was understanding if not sympathetic, and he and his family were just pulling out in their RV and had some extra dinner. I was of course very appreciative of the gesture and the food. It was a delicious bean and pasta salad, which I ate in my tent during the downpour. When the rain stopped, I poked my head out to see this.

Luck and human kindness had shone on me again. It had been a long day of riding and I was tired but didn’t feel much like sleeping. This far north, the sun stays up well past midnight, so I just sat there at my picnic table and smoked my pipe and admired this sunset that lasted for hours. It just doesn’t get any better than this. Or so I thought.

The Sunshine Coast

March 14, 2022March 16, 2022 / 650thumper / 3 Comments

We tour the Sunshine Coast from Powell River to Gibsons, then do a day trip on the Sea to Sky to Whistler before Marilyn flies back.

It’s been a busy semester so far, but I am on my March Break now so have a chance to complete our journey before the new season opens. In my last post, my wife and I crossed the Georgia Strait to Vancouver Island and spent a few days in Victoria and a few days in Tofino. Now we were heading back across the island to Comox, where we were going to catch the ferry over to Powell River. This plan was decided in Calgary in consultation with some friends who know the area better than we do. They said the ferries offer great sightseeing, motorcyclists get priority loading and are cheap, and the Sunshine Coast is lovely.

We arrived at Comox in good time but was surprised to find a single lane leading to the ticket kiosk. It was stop and go, literally, in the heat as we crept forward; the line was moving so slowly, I killed the engine and restarted a few times before we reached the kiosk. It was a bit stressful but we ended up buying our tickets with time to spare, then were directed over to the motorcycle lane where we pulled in behind a couple of grizzled ADV riders on KTMs. Yes, there’s a kind of competitiveness even among ADV riders, and their bikes, aside from being KTMs, had more mud than ours, knobbies, and soft luggage. You don’t want to stall your bike in front of them, I thought. Turns out that would not be possible because when we were signalled to board, the bike wouldn’t start.

The lithium battery was over-heating again. I guess all that idling in the heat, combined with the hot bath upon shutting off the bike once we were in position, had led to the overheating. The bikes behind me filed past, so when I turned around, I had a clear lane back for a push start. Marilyn knew the routine by now. Unfortunately, the loading area was flat and she couldn’t get me enough speed. We tried a few times, and just when I thought we would miss the ferry, a guy jumped out of his truck, and another even climbed over the high chainlink fence that separates the foot passenger area, and they helped Marilyn push. We began in 2nd gear, which is the standard practice. Several unsuccessful attempts left me crawling at the end of the lane, where I did a Hail Mary and kicked the bike into first and tried one last time. It fired!

Now I had to be careful to keep the revs up so the bike wouldn’t stall; I knew from experience that this bike doesn’t idle with a dead (or non-functioning) battery. I managed to do the U-turn, get back to the front of the lane where Marilyn remounted, gesture thanks to my helpers, then sneak onto the back of the ferry just as the ramp was lifted. It was like the James Bond movie chase scene with the lifting drawbridge, except we didn’t have to jump across any open water. Once on board, Marilyn was beside herself. A BC Ferries staff member took one look at her, doubled-over, red-faced, and gasping for air, and asked, “Are you okay?” “It’s just a hot-flash,” I replied, which didn’t earn me any points. I was red-faced too, but for different reasons.

Now comes the big wait during the crossing when the only thing on your mind is whether the bike will start on the other side or if you’ll be the subject of more dramatic theatre there. You try not to think about it, and there’s no shortage of spectacular scenery to distract you, but your mind always pulls back to the bike sitting alone behind all the cars and trucks onboard, and the thought of pushing it up the ramp if necessary. By the time we shored an hour and half later, I’d located a glass mat (AGM) battery in stock at High Road Vancouver and planned to swap out the lithium before I headed north. Better still, it was under $100. I’d ship the lithium back to Anti-Gravity and sort out the warranty claim later.

The bike did start, thankfully, after cooling on the ferry, and the hotel where we stayed had a bar that was open with a courtyard. There was a whack of Harley riders staying there as well and yucking it up at another table, and soon all the stress from the ferry incident was washed away with Guiness.

The next day we had a short ride along the coast to Saltery Bay and another ferry crossing. There, we met our KTM friends again, and they asked what had happened to us. They hadn’t realized that our bike didn’t start. Serj and I struck up a long conversation during the crossing because they went to Tuktoyaktuk when the ice road first opened, and he had a lot of good advice for me, including not to try The Dempster on my current tires (Anakee Adventures). He said I’d be okay as long as it was dry, but if it rained, I’d be “all over the road” and would have to wait for the road to dry, which could be days. We landed before he could impart all his wisdom on the subject so we spoke on the phone later. He was really helpful, providing advice on specific routes and campgrounds up through northern BC and Yukon.

We followed them off the ferry from Earle’s Cove all the way down to Roberts Creek. Marilyn had a few rest stops in mind along the coast through that stretch but we were enjoying the ride so much that neither of us wanted to stop. The next thing we knew, we were in Roberts Creek, where we were staying for the night.

I’ve never understood the appeal of McMansions. So much house to clean, and so much stuff to manage! When I first started teaching, I used to use a short documentary in class on Voluntary Simplicity, a movement during the late 1990s and early 2000s when people were downsizing and realizing that they’d rather spend more time with family and friends and less time at work to subsidize a certain lifestyle. I think I was more interested in the concept than my students, but I hope I planted a bug in their ears.

Of all my early rental days, I was never happier than when I had what’s called here in Quebec a 1 1/2 apartment—one room plus a bathroom. I remember carrying box after box of stuff on my bicycle handlebars to the Salvation Army store as I downsized. I had a large Williamsburg faux colonial pottery mug that contained all my cutlery, no oven but just a hotplate, a kitchen table with fold-down leaves, and a wardrobe for all my clothes. I knew the precise location of every single item in my possession. Once when I loaned the apartment to some friends, they phoned me to inquire where something was. “Yeah, if you look under the sink to the right in a plastic container . . . ” Life was simple; I didn’t even have a TV then. So I get the appeal of a tiny house. My current house is not tiny but small, and my next house will be small too. As Ennis of Brokeback Mountain says, “If you got nothing, you don’t need nothing.” It was a joy to spend a night in a tiny house at Roberts Creek.

After we had settled and met our host, we walked down to the waterfront to the famous Gumboot Restaurant. I don’t know where the name comes from, but the owners clearly have a thing about getting something stuck on the bottom of your boot.

There we had a lovely vegetarian dinner in the garden, tempered only by a loud-talker at another table who was enjoying announcing his private issues to the entire restaurant. If only they had a sign about that: “If you talk loud enough about your personal life in a public space, do strangers give a shit about your divorce?” His mom forgot to teach him about indoor voice and outdoor voice. Okay, so we were outdoors, but his poop was casting a smell over my dinner. We then wandered down to the pier and watched the magnificent full Buck Moon rise out of the UBC campus on the horizon across the Strait.

The next day we had a very short ride into Gibsons to meet some family for lunch. The ride was so short, I was getting the Jones for more, but there would be plenty more to come in the weeks ahead. Marilyn’s niece Savannah and beau happened to be there visiting Brendan’s family, so we met them at Tapworks.

The terraces in Place Jacques Cartier in Old Montreal don’t have anything on this place.

Gibsons is known as the setting of the popular show The Beachcombers, which ran from 1972 to 1990 on CBC. I was never a big fan of the show, but felt obliged to stick my head in Molly’s Reach nevertheless. I don’t remember any plot-lines of the show, but knowing CBC, it was probably about how local working class folk solve crimes the police and local authorities are unable to solve themselves. I will give it credit for being among the first to have an indigenous character on cast.

Gibsons has a charm, but if you blink you’ll miss it. After lunch we rode the three blocks, then turned around and rode it again in case we missed something. The appeal of this show is the setting, no doubt, so we spent the afternoon at the shore having one long final drink of it before we had to leave. We were coming to the end of our west coast tour and we hadn’t yet managed to make it into the ocean, so the perfect way to cap this amazing tour was to go for a swim at Georgia Beach.

The ferry crossing from Langdale to Horsehoe Bay was thankfully uneventful, but I’ll remember to my dying day exiting the ferry with the 50-odd bikes that were with us. There were a lot of Harleys and the noise was deafening as we rode through the belly of the boat and up the ramp and though the network of terminal tunnels to Highway 1, which turns into 99. It felt like the first lap of MotoGP.

We had one final day left before Marilyn had to fly back to Montreal and decided to spend it riding the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler with Savannah on her Honda 400. As far as motorcycle roads go, the 99 out of North Vancouver is about as good as it gets. Marilyn had bonded with the bike and motorcycle touring. It was the start of more adventures to come, but now I had to get used to riding solo again for the remaining three weeks. I loved having Marilyn riding pillion, but it seemed like the pinnacle of the tour—at least in terms of riding—was yet to come.

Savannah Wellman, Co-Founder of Tiny Kingdom Music

Vancouver Island

February 5, 2022 / 650thumper / 1 Comment

We explore Bowen Island with a good friend, then head over to Vancouver Island for the highlight of our west coast adventure.

Off the coast of Mayne Island en route to Vancouver Island

In my last post, my wife and I crossed The Rocky Mountains on our 650GS and arrived on Bowen Island, just off the coast of the City of Vancouver.

After a night of reminiscing with an old friend about our university days, we spent a day exploring Bowen Island. Our friend, Joanne, has a Honda scooter that predates Live Aid, so the two old gals (our bikes, that is) zipped about Bowen. We first went down to the shoreline where we got a good view back over to the mainland and witnessed a mini-earthquake, or so it was explained. When small waves suddenly appear without any passing boat to make them, there’s cause to believe there was just a micro-tremor. Interesting, but not very reassuring. I comfort myself that if there ever was The Big One and we happened to be there when it happened, I’d have an ADV motorcycle to get me past traffic and up onto higher ground.

Speaking of higher ground, we then hiked up a small mountain on good report that there was a wooly mammoth somewhere in the forest. You have to have a lot of trust in your host to do that on yet another excruciatingly hot day, but she was good to her word.

A local sculptor has built this from driftwood carried up from the shoreline. It’s pretty impressive, not just as an object of art but for the effort it must have taken to haul all that driftwood up from the shore. I couldn’t help wondering how many trips it might have taken him to complete the creation, if he worked alone (apparently it’s a “he”; I’m not being sexist here), what implement he used to carry the wood up the trail, etc. Maybe it was the heat, or maybe it was the pragmatist in me, or the masochist, but my mind went there as I marvelled at the accomplishment. And then, sadly, it went to issues of security, and how long it would be before someone vandalizes the sculpture. But let’s not go there. The directions to this local landmark are intentionally vague in tourism brochures, making it a bit of a treasure hunt, and we had to give a few clues while coming back down to a couple we passed who had been looking for some time.

The day was short and we had to say good-bye too soon, which was a running theme on this trip. But we parted with promises not to wait another decade before seeing each other again, either on the west coast or in Montreal.

The next day we crossed to Vancouver Island, landing in Swartz Bay. From there, it was a short ride down the 17 to our room at The Cherry Tree Inn. We chose this location because it was close to Butchart Gardens, a bucket-list item for Marilyn.

A love of flowers seems to have skipped a generation in my family, but strolling through these gardens was a very pleasant way to spend the day. What even a neophyte like myself can appreciate is how the original owner, Jennie Butchart, worked the vestiges of the original limestone quarry into the gardens. I could also appreciate the different aesthetic styles of the Sunken, Japanese, Italian, and Rose Gardens. Unfortunately the Menagerie Carousel was closed due to Covid but still visible through the windows. The Butchart Gardens is now a National Historic Site as a sliver of High Society preserved for even plebeians like us to enjoy. More importantly, they had ice-cream for sale.

After Butchart, we rode into Victoria and found ourselves cruising the scenic Dallas Road, which turns into Beach Drive and hugs the shoreline around the southern tip of the city. I have to say, I’ve ridden through some pretty swanky neighbourhoods, including the Hamptons in NH and Senneville on the western tip of Île de Montréal, but I’ve never seen such concentration of wealth as I did that day—one multi-million dollar home after the next for miles along the coast, with “only” few-million-dollar homes clustered off the coast in a sort of suburbs, but with nothing sub about them.

Of course we spent some time in Victoria. We aren’t city folk, but Victoria isn’t really a city; it’s a garden with some stores and restaurants. Somehow we had been on the coast an entire day without having had fish & chips, so we looked online for the recommended best in Victoria and Barb’s came up. It was pretty good, and right on the colourful wharf.

Where else to get the best fish & chips but the Fisherman’s Wharf?

And since I am an English teacher and practising writer, we naturally had to visit Munro’s Books. This famous bookstore, once owned by Jim and (Nobel-laureate) Alice Munro, is housed in a beautiful building with an ornate ceiling and has, of course, a nice selection of books. Space is tight on the bike so no hardcovers for me but I did pick up Eve Joseph’s Quarrels, 2019 Griffin Poetry Prize Winner—a collection of playful prose poems to savour at the fireside over the coming weeks. Then I walked down the street to Old Morris Tobacconist to stock up on pipe tobacco. The owner told me that they are one of the oldest tobacconist in Canada and other interesting factoids like what brand the Queen smokes and that they have one of only two rare Onyx Electroliers in the world, the other being with the Titanic at the bottom of the North Atlantic. I didn’t know what an electrolier is, let alone that the Queen smokes, so I was learning a lot with my purchase. Old Morris also has an incredibly beautiful, ornate building. It’s worth walking in with the pretension that you are a smoker just to enjoy the sights and smells of this classic tobacco shop.

The last functioning one of its kind, unfortunately, not functioning on the day I visited. (Normally there’s a constant flame for lighting your cigar.)

Next stop was, of course, a pub, to power up in the heat for the final leg of my shopping trip. I reconnected with Marilyn, who was reconnecting in turn with another university friend, so I joined them for a beer before heading off again in search of a satellite tracker. I had in mind to pick up a Garmin inReach Mini. In fact, I’d had this in mind all the way from Montreal and even before leaving but partly didn’t have the time and partly was unsure if I needed it. At $450 plus monthly subscription costs, it’s not cheap, and I figured I’d only really need it if I decided to venture up The Dempster Highway. But that decision was still pending, so this one was too. When I got to Victoria and had a minute to think, I decided it would be prudent to get one, if only to keep open the option to try for my ultimate destination, the Arctic Ocean. Unfortunately, now I had backed myself up against a deadline and there were none in stock anywhere in Victoria—not at MEC, not at Atmosphere, not even at the excellent Robinson’s.

When I got back to our room at The Cherry Tree, I searched online. This must either be a very popular item or Garmin had supply distribution problems under Covid because it was sold out everywhere in Victoria, and an online order shipped to Vancouver would take 2-3 days to arrive—no guarantee that I’d get it in time for my departure north. I tried all the big distributors, even Amazon [gasp!] until, frustrated, I threw my phone on the bed and exclaimed to my wife “F*#k it! I’ll do The Dempster without it!” That probably wasn’t politically wise or the best way to make a life-and-death decision, but in truth I was mostly frustrated with myself. I shouldn’t have dilly-dallied before leaving Montreal and just bitten the bullet on this one. Yeah, it’s half a Grand, but that’s the best money you’ll ever spend when you’re lying in a ditch in the middle of nowhere, concussed and bleeding out. Oh well, I’d have to do it Ted-Simon style.

The next day we left Victoria early. It was a big day because our destination was Tofino. The trip only shows four and a half hours on Google Maps, but we had a deadline because a section of Highway 4 that traverses the island closes for construction 1-4 p.m. each day and we had decided to try to beat the closure. The Malahat Highway was spectacular and I would have liked to have taken the more scenic route along the coast once we got over the pass, but we were on a tight deadline. As is, we only had a short stop at Cathedral Grove before pushing on toward Tofino.

Towering redwoods at the appropriately named Cathedral Grove.

In retrospect, I have to say that the ride across the island was better than Tofino itself. Maybe it’s because I’m not a 20-year-old surfer. Here’s the thing I discovered about Tofino: it’s all about the beach. There’s a small strip of restaurants and bars to fuel up for surfing or to party when the surfing’s over, but not much else. Okay, maybe I’m being a bit unfair; we did see some families there enjoying the beach, and some younger couples, but the average age of tourists there was, I would guess, early- to mid-twenties. Marilyn and I splurged a bit on our accommodations with a room at Middle Beach Lodge, knowing that this was the main destination of our trip. I’m glad we did. It made Tofino wonderful in that we could retreat from the party scene and enjoy the lodge’s private beach and comfortable lobby. We also had a gorgeous view from our balcony and could hear the waves throughout the night. (Better than a sleep app.)

Two nights at Middle Beach and then it was time to head back across the island, but not before checking out Long Beach, hiking Rainforest Trail—a boardwalk that snakes through an old-growth forest—and picking up my pannier sticker in Ucluelet.

As we headed back across the island, I suspect Marilyn might have been feeling the end of her vacation nearing. She’d seen Butchart, and Tofino, two bucket-list items for her, and we were now heading east, not west, so ever closer to Vancouver airport and the flight that would take her back to Montreal. But her trip wasn’t completely over; we still had the beautiful Sunshine Coast ahead of us. We headed toward the ferry terminal at Comox, not knowing that more mechanical drama was just around the corner.