Mother Nature... who's da boss!

WITHIN twenty minutes of renting a room, off loading the bikes in the rain, turning on the TV... guess what... it cleared up.

Yessiree folks, by 5 30 pm, the sun was shining, hurricane winds had calmed to a whisper, and apart from dripping gear or wet pavement, you would have sworn I was lying to you when I say we saw, pussycats and pooches falling from the sky.

Jokingly (and only as an experiment) I said to Unca Ronnie; with a half enthused voice.

"Hey... let's pack up and go!" 

To say there was no response would be understating the obvious at this point.  I vainly searched the room for a defibrillator (or is that defibrillator?)  Couldn't see one.  Probably non standard issue in these older Mom and Pop places on the WFCT*, thought for a moment performing CPR, but... the thought of anything near mouth to mouth appealed to me about as much as kissing the wicked witch of the west... so I just gave him a kick with my soggy Prexport.  Nada, not even a twitch.  I figured, he was either dead already or just dead tired.  Since my sense of smell is really really bad, I thought I wouldn't even know till morning... when rigor set in.



Oh well, finished putting my gear out, I had a shower to warm up and after a short break, the old man stirred and out of his lips came the words to prove he was not only alive, but well;

"Hey man... let's eat!"

And we did.  A short walk got us a local restaurant of which there are many in Cheticamp, and being the eye-tie that he is, RM ordered hisself a 'za with the works and I had a BLT. 

Ronnie decided to continue (who knows he could have been sleep walking the entire time) and I retired to the room to read a couple of verses from the bible...

We scoured the four or so channels, but could not get a weather report closer than Halifax (bad) or New Brunswick (mucho bad)  Considering it was a tropical depression heading our way, this not surprising.  NB was reporting unusually heavy rain fall, flooding along the St. John river in Woodstock and Fredericton and hi velocity winds throughout.  Local news or weather... Cape Breton, which since the coal mines all shut down years ago, gets about as much air time from Halifax as they have influence in the vote.  About nil!

Had a pretty good sleep, all things considered.  Ronnie snores, loudly, and my sense of hearing is about as acute as my sense of smell, is not, but I am used to such things.  In truth, I've had girlfriends that were louder.  Ummm... snoring I mean.



It was a decent morning as we slowly got our gear together.  One thing about aging is you don't have that same sense of "gotta be there" as when we were younger.  Of course just as we were shifting into third gear and maybe... 150 feet from the longest construction zone of our entire trip put together, with those squiggly canyons, signs warning (us) motorcyclists of treacherous going, sticky wet gray gravel and a whole lotta cars behind us... it began pouring.  'Why God?'  I asked inside my head.  The only answer I got were raindrops the size of grapes, clanking off my lid.  It's amazing how impatient cars get when the occupants are in regulated warmth and the puddles are Loch Ness deep...it is after all, Cape Breton right, New Scotland!  Talk about tailgaters...

We rode south to Margaree Forks where we took 19 all the way to Port Hastings.  Route 19 south here was marvelously smooth, almost slate like... and the weather had improved considerably.   We rode in warmth all the way to the causeway and once over, stopped at a Petro Can to fill up and partake of the ubiquitous Timmy's that are about as common in the Maritime provinces as Newfoundlanders in Fort McMurray!



I was taking a chance and stripped all my wet weather gear but Ronnie being the 'oh so cautious one' left his bright yellow slickers on.  At this point I told him that my 'runs like a Rolex' Triumph had been misfiring all during the day.  My fuel mileage had dropped by about 10 mpg and I could only attribute the problem to some water that had infiltrated some vital electrical component given that the VX was running fine he said, and we had fueled at the same places all along.

Having talked over our options, whether to continue to Truro and the Fundy coast, passing through Bass river, the various Economy's (upper/lower/middle and low income) then Parrsboro and around the coast back to Amherst, or alternatively, taking a right at New Glasgow and heading to Pictou and the PEI ferry, we decided to reserve judgement until the final turn-off before the turn off.

 

 Route 105 is a fine divided highway but of course like all expressways, rather boring to ride/drone along for hours.  Ron in tow, we made our way to the PEI turnoff and decided while traffic howled by us at high speed, to head to the coast and take the ferry back to the Island.  We'd missed a lot of the really crappy weather but there was no guarantee that would continue.  The final decision was made when I told RM that we would be getting to Fundy at high tide and the major allure of that area are the amazing tidal changes that take place every day... as high as 40+ feet!  Only the northern Cortez has tides even close to these and they can range as much as 25-30 feet.





We were first in line at the NFL terminal and met 'tall guy' from Colorado riding a 1200 GS.  He was nearly six foot, thirteen inches, could have played NBA for all we knew, but told us he had sold a software company some years back and he and his wife were retired since.  His idea of a good time was to pack the Beemer, and depart solo for destinations unknown for a month or more.



The good old MV Holiday Island, a boat I was intimately (but not in that way) familiar with, carried us back to home sweet home, Prince Edward Island.  Dinner at Smitties in Charlottetown, a foray west on the PEI Trans Canada, and major construction, and home before dark.  Well that's a misnomer as the skies were so heavily laden, we really were riding in the gloom.



1500 kilometers over 6 days.  Fort Luisburg, the Cape Breton highlands, one moose, one replica skull of a leather-back turtle, one cute old dog (well two if you count Ron), one cute and cuddly cat and the Graham Bell museum later... our east coast trip was over.  Nothing left now but cleaning the bikes and gear, Ronald getting his stuff packed and hopefully... a day ride on my XT's before the old guy winged his way back to the desert.