Kelly... I'll always be grateful...

It was the summer of 1967, Canada's centennial year... I was twelve. 

What a year that was. 

Tank stickers say "Ban the Bra" and "Shower with a steady, saves water"

Myself and two other boys in the company of Hungarian friends of my folks made an epic road journey from our homes in Edmonton to sunny California.  We had a station wagon packed with camping gear and drove the back roads all the way down.  We passed through Twin Falls Idaho, the salt flats at Wendover Utah/Nevada (it straddles the border) all the way to Disneyland.  On the return leg we tubed the Russian river, chucked rocks into the Pacific off high cliffs, viewed a strange creature in S.F. wearing brightly colored costumes, long hair and 'granny glasses' proclaiming for all to "Make Love not War" 

I remember having to shut the engine down while we coasted long descents in the Mojave, running very short on fuel in the middle of the night.  Then there was the abrupt 'panic' stop downhill in Downtown San Fransisco that dumped everything in the back of the wagon, sugar, coffee, cooler items... into the front of the wagon, what a mess that was!

Granny glasses, bell bottoms and peace signs...

Our driver and his wife had no kids of their own so Laci took the time to teach us three boys about what else... girls.  I came back to Canada a different "man" from that trip.

Which brings me to Kelly. 

Kelly was 15, it was the late sixties, her red hair was long and straight and the bikini was in.  Kelly would lounge out back catching some rays (these were the days before SPF 900) and teasing the hell out of me!  I'd often glimpse a bit of tantalizing flesh that in those days you could not even see in the movies!  She was B E A U T I F U L, gorgeous in fact and I was totally in lust, I mean love, well maybe lust too.  Not only was she friendly and open but she had a boyfriend.  He was the Arthur Fonzerelli of Wellington and district.  He rode a black and chrome HONDA CB 160 with the pipes cut off right where the mufflers would have been.  Now I will tell you that you didn't need a 1200 Harley to rattle the windows, the CB would do it just fine. 

Butch (yes that was his name and in those days it was a tough guys' moniker) would come roaring down our street (133 rd avenue) and screech to a halt in front of her house.  Blue jeans, white T black leather jacket for the cooler days. 

Cigarette pack under the sleeve. 

One of my favorite bikes VX 800 and Krauser bags.

I do not recall even a single time, that Butch would ring the doorbell to her home.  Nope, he'd pull out the smokes, either sit on the bike or the curb and she would bound out, luxurious red hair bouncing after a fresh shampoo... then saddle up.

955 RSi

Butch would flick his butt into the gutter and kick start the twin into life, no electric leg for him!  At night I'd see the flames pop out of the headers as he would shift gears winding that engine to max revs.

22,000 km over 7 months and two years in Europe, riding 'Lil Red'

The following year I convinced (being European and greatly responsible) my parents to buy me a Honda S 90.  It was a 1966 model year, had four speeds and a clutch... more so , it had on the right side of the engine case, a kick starter, just like Butch's!

900 T Bird

I rode the little Honda everywhere from the first sign of thawed pavement till the snow fell in the fall.  She would be the beginning to my many getaways from the complexities of life as I found growing up. 

Since then I have owned many, many motorcycles of every description, from basket case Bonneville's to Venture Royales and BMW's to trials bikes to ice racers to scooters.

7000 feet up the Senator highway from Prescott to Glendale

Much as I was in love with Kelly and in some ways all the incarnations of her down through my years, what I really love more than anything, is sitting on my bike of the moment, twisting the throttle and going, well anywhere...

Old times, good times!

Riding the backbone of Baja CA

PRIOR to moving from Calgary, my home of twenty years, I had amassed a very large magazine collection.  Mostly Motorcycles of course but some airplane mags as well.  Although in my cross country move I gave away thousands of those books ranging from the late 60's to current times.  A box of print could easily weigh in at 40 pounds and I simply did not have the room to move them, so heartbroken... they were disposed of one way or the other.

1990 XT 600 near Mike's Sky Ranch

I did however keep perhaps 500 various issues at random, this at least gives me a cross section of street, dirt, atv, snowmobile and aircraft reading and every now and again I will pull out a couple to read over lunch or late night in bed.

Yesterday as per usual, I brought up a handful of mags and this morning I'm, engrossed in  a Cycle World dated September 1975.  Among other articles I am reading a track test of the then new Can-Am 125 MX2, a motorcycle I raced during that year under the sponsorship of J.A. Mutton's bulk fuel business in Fort Mac Murray, who were then Ski-Doo snowmobile dealers up in the great white north.  Can-Am of course were the short lived motorcycle division of Bombardier Inc.  Yes it's true, Ski-Doo did make bikes before trikes!

Taking a break to catch up on some light reading. "Now where am I...?"

Re reading this test brings back many memories for me.  I had been involved with the MDRA, MacMurray Dirt Riders since their inception in '72, first as a competitor and ultimately as it's president.

My racing began to take a back seat to organizing as the club matured.  In the early years we rarely had a venue obtaining permits to run races here and there on unused land.  Finally in the late '70's I had through the Forest Service been able to lease a small parcel of land a few miles south of town, when the gun club moved to a new facility.  Now you'd think that in all that wilderness it would be easy to find, say... 10 acres on which to build a permanent race track but of course as I found out first hand, pretty much everything in any direction for a hundred miles was leased to the large oil conglomerates.

Lanti on her DR 650 and Rock on his old XT 500 helmetless no less! near Vallee de Trinidad

Drawing on my very good connections with Keyano College's ( by this time I had been teaching the CSC National Motorcycle Training program successfully in FM at the heavy equipment campus for several years) administrative personnel, I had been successful in having their heavy equipment training division build us a track at no cost.  They graciously hauled out equipment and personnel for a 5 day working week to the track site and moved tons of earth, cleared trees and leveled ground for grandstands and a massive starting line in addition to manually building jumps on the 6 acre facility.



To my knowledge even after leaving FM for the first time in '81 the track (since Named 'Gil Valiant Memorial park,' after a competitor that died in his mid 20's of some fatal disease, and for all I know is now a burnt out chunk of timber!


ALSO in the magazine I came across an interesting article by D. Randy Riggs about a ride he and Editor Bob Atkinson, riding a Kawasaki KZ 400 equipped for touring, (yes boys and girls, in them OLD days, we did in fact ride small displacement motorcycles pretty much everywhere) took south into Baja Mexico before crossing the Gulf of California/Sea of Cortez returning to SO Cal via the mainland. The bike Riggs was riding was not some large tank Husky or Penton (KTM) or even a Honda SL 350, but of all things, a Suzuki RE-5 Rotary!  The RE-5 proved durable, not needing many of the spares Randy had gathered for the trip and even though the ride was on the recently completed and paved Trans Peninsular highway number 1, and not off road brought back memories of my various Baja rides, twelve in total, most alone.

Familiar?  XT 225 above and DT 50 below.

Baja, as I quoted in one of my adventure articles (CB April 2005) was "mesmerizing and addictive, fascinating and unforgiving, dangerous and tranquil..." and judging by the amount of spare parts Randy carried, he knew that well enough.

Just another beautiful day in Baja Sur...

I remember riding much of the Baja Mille race course that trip, passing the SCORE mileage markers for the upcoming race and being passed by buggies and big dirt bikes pre running the 1000, finally dropping down from the Sierra Giganta's into Loreto where I fuel up my 225 Serow next to a group of Americans riding massive, traveling equipped KLR 650's with aluminum hard luggage, camping gear and spares. When I mentioned to one of the riders that it was worth a ride into the mountains for a look at the second oldest mission on the peninsula at San Javier, he says...  

"yeah but that's a dirt road right?"

I, somewhat puzzled answered that it was indeed but compared to some of the roads I had been riding it was like a highway!  He in turn tells me that the furthest they had been off road was at the various Pemex gas stations en route!

Doesn't get much better than this... a 4X4, a trail bike and a kayak and Baja CA

I had a great meal at El Nido ("dos cerveza's por favor senor... mucho fria!") later hauling the Serow into my motel room and having a fabulous mucho caliente shower that pummeled me from head to toe, the first such shower that hadn't been from a sun heated bag in the previous 6 weeks!

Laundry doesn't do itself, even in Baja

You meet the strangest people on the beach, three French girls traveling the world.

Now that I live on the far east coast of this huge country, I sometimes wonder if I'll ever be back to Playa Los Cocos or Mulege or San Felipe?

Like I say, 'does it get better than this...'

SUCH fabulous memories!

I sometimes go back to the first installments of this blog which I began writing upon a suggestion from my daughter Holly, a world traveler if there ever was one, as a means of keeping in touch from distant lands with family and friends and I see by the latest numbers, it's been viewed well over 40,000 times!

I've thought about ending it but if I miss a follow-up or update every now and again... I get emails from readers wondering if I'm"okay"?!

Maybe when readership hits 100,000 or I reach a thousand issues, I'll stop.

Then again... maybe not!

Yeah... it's only 110 degrees...

Doc.

Finally!

First glimpse of the bridge! In the distance!!

Close up of the structure

WHILE the rest of Canada has been enjoying summer like weather setting record after record, we here down east have been faced with abnormally low temps. 

Today, for the very first time... I have to say, we were almost warm enough on the Citicom in jeans and jackets.  There are so many things coming up this summer I've been itching to get out and do a little local riding.

Quite a marvel really... the longest Ice Span bridge in the world.

Of course I do remember one May long weekend leaving Fort Mac in the rain which became snow about 20 miles outside the Edmonton city limits and by the time we reached Judy and Dennett's place overlooking the north Saskatchewan river on Ada Blvd, it was like a blizzard.

Thirteen kilometers to New Brunswick

The next three days of our B.C. ride was spent watching TV and questioning how long this blast of winter was going to last?

On the fourth day, dressed in our cold weather gear, the then wife and I headed south to the Crowsnest Pass.  I figured the elevation is generally lower and several hundred miles farther south couldn't hurt.  We got as far as Blairmore if memory serves, only to be ushered off the road which it seems, was impassable.  Fortunately we were able to shack up in a not so cheap Motel.  The next day we waited for the Snow Plows to clear the road and we gingerly headed west on packed snow covered roads.  I was riding a Yamaha XS 750 triple kitted for long distance travel at the time.  I wish I had a photograph for you but this was in the days well before digital camera's.  If I ever find the photo I am talking about in my thousands of prints, I'll be sure to do a follow up.

Anyway... there was no snow today and we left home in nearly double digit weather.  We toured down to Borden on route 10, passing over the old overgrown causeway run up road that was axed in 1969 after 6 years, being deemed as too costly.



Gateway Village, the touristy "New"... Welcome to the Island, somehow seems extremely out of place to me, oh how I remember (and not very fondly either) what is was like back in the '80s heading to the ferry.  Borden at least I can say today, is a much tidier village than I ever remember it being in the hundreds of times I crossed the strait before!

Brenda doing her Abbey Road impression

We rode the Citi 300 to the photo op tourist off ramp where you can take reasonably good photos of the Confederation bridge without causing a traffic pile-up.  Besides a couple of young women, Brenda and I were the only two people there.  The Island doesn't begin waking up from it's winter hibernation until the May long weekend, what we know as "Victoria Day".

Gateway Village itself was mostly a ghost town, although there are no haunted mansions.

Yup, the Lobster Shack.

Most of the many tourist traps are not yet open for business but we did find one sit down diner, most oddly called "The Lobster Shack" pretty dang original I must say, where we had an okay cuz we were hungry meal.  There is no doubt that anyone would mistake this for gourmet dining!

Borden has changed a lot...

By the time we left Borden it had warmed considerably into the teens and for the very first time this year, it actually felt like 'heat'!

In between sitting on the scooter cruising along at 50-60 mph (80-100kph) and wandering around Borden, Mom was answering a flurry of text messages from Anna, who will just about do anything NOT to spend time at school; seems she'd earned herself a 1 day suspension for smoking on the school steps, I must say, a habit we dearly wished she'd not have picked up!  Brenda quipped to me that the "greater" punishment that the school could have inflicted on her, would have been to make her go to school tomorrow!  Being suspended to Anna is simply a bonus!

Mom and daughter texting.

We dawdled on the return so the little princess could have a little time to think about things (I'm kidding of course).  I hooked up with route 10 before taking a local cut-off that quickly turned from bumpy pavement to hard packed clay that dumped us out to the quaint little village of Victoria by the Sea.

... and again!

Once again, there were some early birds floating around including the second elderly couple we'd seen today walking hand in hand leaning in close to one another.  I wasn't completely convinced it wasn't to supply mutual support to keep from toppling over or maybe, after decades, there were still genuinely in love!  Being a hopeless romantic, I chose to believe the latter.

Low tide at Victoria By The Sea.

Pretty much all the activity in Victoria was in preparation for the beginning of the summer tourist season on, you guessed it, Victoria Day.  Even the ice cream shop was closed but we did manage to take a few photos of the surrounding area.

AT Crapaud, I took the highway 13 cutoff, this road bi sects PEI just about down the middle and is not only very pretty but  carries us past Brook Vale ski hill, which by the way, still had some scattered snow cover and is home to the highest elevation on the Island, just shy of 500 feet.

Wooden bridge at Tryon

I noted coming down the hill into Hunter River, the sign proclaiming H.R. to have been first settled in 1767, Indeed!  I'd bet there were no tourists riding scooters back then...

Hopeful gardener... owner of the Bakery, that's Hunter River in the background.

One of the few original lighthouses left on the Island.

View from the entry to downtown Victoria to the lighthouse

We stopped at our favorite Bakery By the River in H.R., had some pie, while Anna negotiated a later return via text with Mom.  I took 13 north to the cut-off which eventually brought us to Stanley Bridge, a very cute little village with fabulous views of the inlet and bay going all the way to the dunes on the Gulf side.  From here back in 1990, I had ridden a then new Yamaha Waverunner 500, with Holly on the back and Lisa in front of me, all the way to the outer dunes.  I remember being somewhat frightened that day when the placid early waters became quite choppy (three feet) on our return leg and we were in danger of capsizing.  Not generally a problem for a solo adult rider but with two small children would have been problematic to say the least!

Our favorite stop over spot, middle of the Island

We filled up in Kensington, and I will mention at this time that this being my second fill-up on the SYM 300i... I was somewhat disappointed with the fuel mileage.  The tank holds 10 L just over 2 Imperial gallons.  My first fill last week yielded 90 mpg (don't ask me what that is in L per 100km and who in the hell came up with that stupid standard anyway...?  Wouldn't it have made more sense to say km per liter???)

This fill up took 6.27L for a total of 196 km traveled... or in plain English, 88 mpg!

You read it right! 

Actually pretty impressive, and the bridge is nice too!  Scooting together brings a couple closer!

Not bad is it considering we were two up averaging 100 kph and into a stiff breeze much of the day.

We are quite pleased with the SYM, it's pretty much exactly what I thought it would be, with some surprises like the fuel frugality and the power of the 21 bhp 263cc engine.  Just for fun I ran her up to 130 kph at one point but I don't like to travel too fast here, there are lots of little critters, like that red fox that crossed seconds before I passed his trajectory, we had a close look at each other, he was quite stout, in good shape and mature.  I really hate seeing animals domestic or otherwise killed by motorists...

The SYM is back in the garage fueled up and we'll head out again Friday when the weather is reported to look like high teens!

Happy Mother's Day

Okay, so Trevor and I did our MD duties;

"Happy mother's day, see you in a few hours..."

Then we did our husbandly thing, which is to let Mom have her day with the kiddies, after all, that's what Mother's Day is all about, right.

Trev left the machine gun at home this trip.

He showed up on his new camo paint scheme KLR 650 and in dull sunlight but reasonably warm and windy conditions, we set off up my hill north on County Line road.  I had on jeans, boots, a fleece turtleneck zipped up to the hilt and my faithful MSR enduro jacket.  After picking up route 6 in Sea View (yup there is one) we passed the Irishtown road and turned off shortly onto clay hard packed 262.  I often ride this short, wide stretch of country road, it's scenic, has some fairly significant elevation changes and passes through some of the nicest countryside on the Island.     




About halfway to Long River I led Trev up onto the highest piece of land in the entire area.  From atop our hill retreat you can see the sea we call 'the Gulf of St. Lawrence in one direction and an arm of Long River in da udder!  This building (see photo) used to be owned by some Americuns who used it near as I can tell, as an airport for RC planes.  It's been re-painted a dull yellow and appears empty so perhaps it's been sold.  Even RC pilots get too old to fly...

My plan (?) for the limited time we had, it was after all Mother's Day right, was to zig zag cross country on back paved and unpaved roads some mere tracks to the Devil's Punchbowl.  I wanted to check two things one... what the creek looked like after last winter and what condition the trail going up would be like.

I peeled off my fleece at the 'crick'.



It was fairly warm in the woods, didn't see any trout, but Trevor whom we often refer to as the...
Killer (K L R) Fisherman, thought it would yield a few brookies soon enough.  The signs were down at the Punchbowl, after all it's still not quite spring around these here parts unlike Ron's banana belt out west.  A brightly clad mountain bicyclist came roaring (?) down the hill passing us on the narrow trail heading downhill while we were going up!  Before the hill gets rough and steep, we stopped for a look see, walking about a hundred yards on what turned out to be a muddy, washed out, track.  I thought with my smaller lighter and newly aggressive dual sport tires I could have made it to the top, but Mr. T didn't think his worn rear rubber would have enough bite up that slimy track that by the way, still had run-off from Saturday night's heavy rains. 

We decided to come back another day and give it a go.  I rode this piece last year and even though it doesn't look treacherous, looks can be deceiving.  Most of the falls I take riding off road are generally at low speed trails much like this one.  Getting stalled out while attempting to jump some boulders in a foot deep sand-wash on a dry creek bed back of Phoenix, up some rocky hillside in the Sierra  Giganta mountains or on the trail we were looking at.  Roots of trees poking out of the earth, mud and rocks compound your difficulties.  I broke my ankle on just such an innocuous trail heading up a mountain in Baja some years back. 

Trails like this get lots of respect from the Doctor!

 

While contemplating 'do we or don't we', the bike rider pulled up beside us.  Turns out this male specimen of human fitness, lived in the local area and rode this hill weekly.  We watched him slither his way "up" the track as often paddling the bike as pedaling it. He did make it though, which I think only served to make Trevor mad, vowing to replace his slick with a proper dual purpose knobby soon as possible.



From there Trevor led me back across country roads to Kinkora where Erin was waiting, ummm... patiently?

Being much older than the boy mounting the army shaded KLR... I don't have to answer to a Mom with young children so I went my merry way off to Fernwood for a visit with long time pal Rob.  We sat in awe looking at footage of the Fort Mac Murray fire disaster (an entire city of 80,000 plus evacuated, some hundreds of miles) in the heart of Canada's oil sands region (where by the way I learned my machining trade and lived a total of 15 years) before catching up with bits of our lives since my last stop nearly a year ago. 

It was nearly dark, which doesn't mean much as it was overcast most of the day, by the time I and my Serow rolled into our driveway on C.L. Road. The newly installed gearing proved to relax the engine speed slightly while still allowing me to pull the front end up in low gear if I had to crawl over something. I did however make a note to self; 'adjust gear shifter slightly lower.'

So it was a good day, never a bad thing when you're twisting the throttle in the company of like minded people, just as well as today... it's cold, spitting rain and with a chilly howling wind, that has our tall pines bending at a 45 degree angle!

1 kilometer from my place.  Trout in there!

Even little Willy chose discretion over a romping around outdoors.

Why is it the the weather service can't seem to predict good and happy weather for us outdoor types but have no problem hitting the nail on the head when it's miserable out there?

VTR's and V-8's

LET me make one thing clear right off the bat... we're not talking vegetable juice here.  We're talking engines.

Juice... but not vegetable.

Back in the day when Detroit was actually a working city, and the US automakers were trying to outdo themselves with big engines and lots of barrels in carburetors and wide tires, there was nothing fancy about how they went about building performance.  They didn't use trick valve timing, nor did they have access to computer controlled fuel injection or multiple valves and overhead cams.  Nope, Detroit made SS 396's and Dodge Hemi's the old fashioned way.  BIG displacement, lumpy cams and did I mention displacement?

90 degree DOHC V Twin

In some ways the Honda VTR 1000 I have in my garage (soon to be moving to Corey's garage) was similar to those American muscles cars, built at a time when Ducati 916's were THE exotic high performance motorcycles of the day.  Sure they were way more advanced than any 70's Detroit iron but in many ways, even in the late 90's, they were the antithesis of what we had already learned and accepted by then, was high performance.  Lots of cylinders and high rpm.  Gixxers, RR's and FZ's were the way to fast bikes.

Gotta love it

Back in '98, when I was still in the motorcycle industry working for Bow Cycle in Calgary, I had the pleasure of having one of the first VTR 1000 motorcycles to ride for the summer.  A muscular V twin with four valve heads and DOHC*, it was plenty trick enough, but not in the same league as the inline fours of the day.  The VTR was what we would have called, a "sports touring bike" with the emphasis slightly on the former, although I did ride mine around southern Alberta while equipped with tank and tail bags. 


What the VTR didn't have was a 17,000 rpm red line and 190 horsepower.  What it did have, like my Triumph 955 RSi was slightly less top end power but BIG low and mid-range.  People tend to overlook that torque... and not BHP is the prime mover of weight.  Having a modern sports bike the manufacturers give you electronic throttles, fuel injection, traction control you can adjust for rainy streets, spirited back roads or the race track.

In the mid 80's and 90's, traction control was located on the right handlebar.  Technically it was called "your wrist".

Spring 18 years ago, the Rocky mountains.

Even though the VTR (and TL1000 and 916 Duc) made over a hundred horsepower, they had bucket loads of torque and as I said, torque can be waaay more useful and more fun too than high rpm power-bands. 

Last year as part of a deal on my cargo trailer I took a very pretty VTR 1000 in on trade.  Now this bike is pretty serious kit even for today and should not be operated by in-experienced riders with cloudy brains (remember the traction control in your wrist, well the micro processor for that is under your helmet) but I have to tell you, bikes like this Honda and the Triumph I had in my garage a couple of years back produced torque and gobs of it.  The kind of torque that has you grinning like a stupid idiot with a slightly deranged mentality but only in the sense that you cannot help yourself from smiling your facial muscles into a permanent toothpaste commercial!

There is NO need to rev this engine to it's 9500 rpm red line, No sirree Bob.  Twist the grip at 1500 revs and short shift at 5500... and you will find the scenery rushing by you like a Jean Claude Van Damme action flic.  (also left over from the 90's.) Wanna pass that car, give the handle a little twist.  Wanna pass that Saturn V stupid fast, just twist a little harder!

Touring Turbo

I've had several  turbo charged cars and bikes over the
years.  Yeah I know turbo's are more complex, and yeah, they can be tuned for massive amounts of horsepower but what I always liked about turbo's is the boost they give you pulling up a long hill passing a line of tractor trailers (and or RV's) coming into Revelstoke.  Torque in other words, lots of it.  The kind that Detroit built into all those archaic push-rod V 8 engines that powered some of the quickest cars on the road in ancient history.  I still get a kick whenever I push the gas pedal on our little PT Cruiser Touring Turbo.  






North America is not the land of ultra high speed autobahn/autostrada's.  You can be on I-15 south in, the Nevada desert, but driving your Ferrari at 200 mph will get you thrown in jail. 

GPZ 750 Turbo... "whoosh"

Under there, large amounts of torque!

What we love doing is feeling that arm wrenching stretch as we open the throttle hard down low.

Sure the 955 and the VTR are not cutting edge technology even when new, you could buy a Daytona 955 with almost a hundred and fifty horses as compared to the Sprint I had in my garage making less than 110, but they are basic engines with fewer cylinders less bhp, but solid frames, good brakes if not Moto-GP good, and gobs of usable low down, face muscle exercising, grin inducing FUN motorcycles to ride.  Technology of the 90's meant aluminum frames, multiple brake pistons and tires that could be ridden by normal people with slightly elevated skills and a functioning micro-processor under the HJC.  

If you have experience and some cash, you can get any one of a number of very impressive motorcycles for less money that a cheap used Hyundai.  Forty something, maybe on your second (or third) marriage, kids grown up, a few quid in the bank getting zero interest on the GIC... take the Doctor's advice, live a little, go have some fun on the Sunrise Trail or maybe the Angeles Crest highway (but do it on a week day). 

Does it get much better than this...?

Go on

Even Phoenix knew a good perch to sit on.

 

... I dare ya:)



*Double Over Head Cams