Blizzard

View of our valley.

AFTER weeks of barely enough snow to shovel, we've been hit pretty hard this past few days. Trevor and I drove to N.B. on Saturday to pick a used KLR 650 at a Moncton dealership for him, 'Stretch' as I refer to him, sits that bike almost like a mini cycle! We barely made it back last Saturday in mid afternoon before the weather stated getting nasty.  That forecast called for 15-20 cm of snow but the wind was blowing so hard I don't think any of it actually hit the ground around my place.

Pretty near Zero visibility.

However, on Tuesday as we were hearing about school closures the white stuff began coming down in earnest.  It blew for the rest of the day and pretty much held out until the wee hours of the morning today.  School, once again cancelled.  The plow went by in the early morning hours clearing a little more than a swath of County Line Road. 

Not cold but certainly blowing.

 I waited until mid morning before going out to see what was up.  Well, turns out there was about 18" on level ground and where it had drifted, as much as four feet of snow.  I fired up my walk behind blower for the first hour, working methodically using the still strong wind to my advantage.  The little Cub Cadet was working pretty hard and as I widened a path about 8' across. I brought out the Big Bear.  Alternating between blowing, shoveling and plowing, it was still a 2 1/2 hour ordeal. 

The temperature was actually fairly mild only about -6C and much of the time I was working with only light gloves and sound protecting muffs on my ears.  There had been no traffic on our road and I suspect not much is moving anywhere except for snow clearing equipment.

Yup... my driveway is under there!

Speaking of which, the procedure is usually a plow truck and then later in the day a sanding truck goes by my driveway.  The plow did his turn very early but the sander just came through shortly after noon.  Surprisingly, at my neighbor's, he got stuck.

It took him about 30 minutes of alternating sanding and coaxing the unit a foot at a time.  He eventually was able to turn about and headed back on his rounds

Getting started at 9 30 this morning.

I watched from my window as the operator shoveled sand/salt under his rear wheels.  No point in going out, there was nothing I could do. 

Amazing what you can do with two small pieces of equipment and some time.

The visibility was near zero this through the day yesterday and into the early morning today as you can see by the photos.  Even now there is some light snow coming down, but given the lack of the stuff over the last three months, we take it as it comes. 

Took him a half hour to get unstuck.

I don't mind working the yard, its good exercise, the air is fresh and after being cooped up for two days, nice to get outside.

Mother Nature!

YOU'D have to be dead not to have heard the various opinions/scenarios/predictions etc on the changing climate.  As humans we have altered the planet in enumerable ways during the last 300 years.



Prior to the Industrial revolution (mid 1700's-mid 1800's and ongoing) mankind has literally come out of the shadows and in many ways dominated our surroundings in ways that were never possible prior.  Energy, population growth, exploration, war, technology just keep on rolling along.  Take this laptop for example, the computing power of this inexpensive 'machine' is phenomenal.  NASA would have killed to have a battery of these machines at their disposal in the 1960's leading up to the moon missions.


Look at any SmarterthanI* phone and what they are capable of doing with the world wide web in the palm of your hand.  Air travel is another one, medical science yet another.  Soon it will be an everyday occurrence, little nanobots running around in our bodies with picks and shovels to clear blocked arteries.  To quote a line I believe from Star Trek TNG, where the good Doctor says to the humans found on a planetoid where they had crash landed 90 years previously... "It's just lung cancer, we'll transport you to sick bay and it will be cured in hours..."  or something to that effect, I truly believe this will happen.  It seems everyday there is some new marvel available that will change the way we think and work.

As for the changing planet... that is ongoing.  There have been violent volcanic upheavals, asteroid collisions, mass extinctions, ice ages and splitting of continents. 

So what else is new...

Just in my little world here on lovely Prince Edward Island two years ago February first, I was out riding my TTR 125 on my grass track, the snow melted in the course of a few days, green grass in our fields, last year I was playing catch up after returning from Phoenix, dealing with mountains of snow and record everything.  Today we were in Charlottetown Brenda and I, and with plus 6C temperatures, steady wind and rain from the south, 90% of the snow we had just a few days ago has melted into the earth. 

TODAY I had a tremendous urge to ride my bike, any bike, anywhere, even in the front yard.  Unfortunately everything is neatly packed away.  Well everything except the Yamaha DT50, which although winterized, being a two stroke engine, could be going in a mere moment... The Polaris Indylite hasn't run yet this winter...

GANG... it's almost February and as we all know, that's a short month.  At this rate, mild... it will be spring in no time (I can hear your chuckle from my seat in my little den)

I have many plans for 2015, and as they unfold you'll read about and see photos of them coming to life.  I'm working on a Nostalgia trip, no... not riding a YSR

50cc to Toronto like I did in 1989 for the Yamaha conference, but certainly looking at how to do 5000 km out west riding Liz's LS650 Savage.  A bike not all that unlike the BMW I rode to the Island in 1975. 



Then there is long time friend Deryl Thompson who is shipping his Guzzi out here from Edmonchuk/Edmonton and wanting to ride the Cabot Trail in my company.  I would like to load up the soft bags on my venerable and lovable XT 600 for a multi day back road tour of the mainland, there's the D2D rally and Brenda and I on, our week off are looking at a destination or two for ourselves among other things likely riding my Thunderbird as we did on our Lunenburg honeymoon.

Yup... it may be winter officially, but things are heating up around the household...

*coined by me!

HoHo and Ho!

What could be more authentic than this?

LIKE most Canadian motorcyclists (and I suspect those in climates that cool considerably in the winter months worldwide) its that time of year where we reflect back on the summer months past and dream about adventures coming up in the warmer months ahead. 

A few years ago, when I was single, kids grown and was eying Phoenix real estate, I was thinking  

"move to a small town Frank, maybe Okotoks, or Coleman or perhaps even Cranbrook, buy a small house with a big garage and spend four months a year down south."

Seemed do-able and a good idea at the time.  Then boy meets girl at a defunct Smitties, blah blah and fast forward to 2012. Build house on quiet little PEI and write stories. 

Here I am. 

These days Chris, Mike, Melanie and Jamie, Nevin and whomever else I bump into at Tim's, yak about where we are going come summer, what little fantasies we wish to fulfill, maybe thinking about a new Bonnie or V7 or perhaps something exotic like a fuel injected India Enfield Bullet, a misnomer if I ever heard one.  I always have a hard time parting with bikes, but the reality is like women, sometimes they come and go. 

Me, I have several ideas for 2015 and if half of them transpire, I'll be grateful to be thinking about them next winter.

Biggest on my list is a cross country ride on the DL 650 better known as V Strom.  This would be a nostalgia trip for me to commemorate the very first XC ride from west to east in 1975.  In those days there were very few long distance riders, the occasional Beemer or Harley, maybe a Bates or Vetter kitted CB 750 four. None of these massive convoys of cruisers, sports touring bikes, Adventure bikes or Gold Wings.  In fact the Wing wasn't even alive when I bought my R 60.

Too New for a Nostalgia ride?

This "nostalgia ride" is playing like a broken record in my head, after all, we're talking 14000+ kilometers here and maybe 6 weeks.  Trouble is, everyone I know is either in Alberta or B.C. and it would make more sense to fly out to Nisku for a visit with niece (what do you think of this Liz) and ride Kazue's old Savage to the coast and back, then fly home.  Three weeks, 5000km and plenty of nostalgic visits along the way.  Sure it wouldn't be an epic but hey in the years since '75 I've ridden a lot of country much of it foreign and at my age (I just turned 60 this week) do I really have to prove I have the balls to ride nearly 9000 miles in one go?  As if riding a 653 cc single with barely 30 horsepower driving a four speed transmission and a belt to the rear wheel wouldn't take balls to do, right!  The LS 650 was never designed as a long distance bike after all.  It's excellence was riding to the A&Dub for a root bear and fries... 

This would make more sense in the spirit of 1975.

Either way, it will be a fab trip I guarantee me, and I'm sure I'll get 60 smiles per gallon at the very least.  As for nostalgia, the Beemer had 50cc less under the tank, true... one more cylinder, the same number of gears in the box and barely more horsepower, so in some ways it would be a better recreation of the past.

One lung, 4 gears and 28 or so HP.

Knowing you can't live in the past for more than a short moment, I have several other longish distance trips around the Maritime's  to ponder.  I want to ride my old pal XT 600, Big Blue on a multi-day back road adventure around the east coast and maybe do the White mountains on the DL.

Hardly any snow on the ground, January 6th, but brutal and unusual cold for the Island.  I mean today, while waiting to show unit number 2... the Blazer was rocked by stiff cold arctic winds and my brows were pummeled by -20C temperatures.  Even part wild cat furry Phoenix was not keen to venture out!

Even Phx dislikes 20 below!  Who can blame him...

Hopefully it warms up tomorrow.