Cape Breton's Cabot Trail: an ultimate ride?

 I'm currently crossing the Canadian Maritime provinces with my wife.  She's recovering from cancer so a bike trip wasn't in the cards, but I'm using the trip as reconnaisance for future rides.

On our way back to our hotel after a day on the Cabot Trail in northern Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island, a guy on a Honda Repsol race replica blitzed through a row of traffic five cars at a time and disappeared down the road.  The Cabot Trail attracts that kind of rider with its hundreds of kilometres of twists and turns over the Cape Breton Highlands in the north west corner of the province.

Coincidently, while I was out here, Canada Moto Guide did a primer on how to ride the Cabot Trail.  That and the steady stream of bikes making their way up to the remote, north-west corner of Nova Scotia cemented the trail as a Canadian riding icon in my mind.

We were up in Neil's Harbour when a bunch of guys in full leathers wandered in to the Chowder House up by the lighthouse (you can write sentences like that when you're on the Cabot Trail).  The bravest of them was on a Ducati.  I say brave because the road itself is indeed a roller coaster, but it's also pretty rough in places.  I asked them if they could put a knee down or would they knock their teeth out first.  They laughed and said they pick their moments.  The Nova Scotia government does seem to be taking more interest in fixing up the Trail though.

The Cabot Trail traces most of the coast of the north-west side of Cape Breton Island.  This 300km loop takes you up and over the Cape Breton Highlands and through a national park; it's stunnlingly beautiful and it'd be a shame to rush it.  Actually, what would be a shame would be only doing it once while focusing on the road.  The ideal way to tackle the Trail would be to get yourself into one of the many lodging opportunties on the south end of it and then do a day focusing on the road followed by a day focusing on the many stops available.  If you came all the way to the end of the world in Cape Breton and didn't bother taking side roads to things like Meat Cove and Neil's Harbour, you'd be missing some wonderful opportunities.


There are many sections with good pavement and astonishing curves, but there are others where the road hasn't had any attention in some time and Canadian weather has had its way with it.  I was told there were some switchbacks where riders had a hand down on the ground as they came around, but trying to do that in other places would have had you bouncing out of your seat and kissing a guard rail.  Rough or not, if you're used to living on a tiny island with sixty million people on it, you'll find the Cabot Trail frighteningly empty, even in mid-summer.

Having done a lot of miles on Canadian roads now I'd approach it as I do them all: enjoy them while you can but expect them to go to shit at any second.  Something with supension travel and some athletic intention would be a good place to start, it made me miss my Tiger sitting in the garage over two thousand kilometres away in Ontario.  A psychotic mix of power and suspension flexibility like the BMW S 1000 XR adventure sport would be good.  Another angle would be to take one of the newest intelligently suspended sports bikes and see what their CPUs make of it.

This ain't no butter smooth Spanish road, but it's a fearsome thing.  A couple of years ago Performance Bikes put their man John McAvoy on a sportsbike and pointed him at Spain, in the winter.  It was a riot to read him navigating snow storms through France before finding the sweet never-ending summer of Spanish roads at a time when everyone else is huddled in their houses waiting for the snow to end.  Reading Johnny in questionable riding circumstances is never dull.  PB (now a part of Practical Sportsbikes) should send him out to Cape Breton for a tour of the Cabot Trial in the fall.  It'd deliver demanding and stunning riding and photo opportunities that no one in mainstream motorcycle media seems to be aware of.  It'd also give Johnny a chance to practice his Gaelic.

Instead of riding the same old Spanish roads over and over, motorcycle manufacturers should be bringing journalists out to Cape Breton.  A 300km loop on varying road surfaces through stunning, Jurrasic Park quality scenery and some incredibly acrobatic roads would let them assess a bike's real-world prowess without cheating on roads that have never felt the terrifying touch of a Canadian winter!

A Summer Jaunt into the Adirondacks

I'm getting a bit stir crazy riding to the same places over and over.  Reading about Wolfe's run at the Iron Butt Rally this year makes me want to raise my own long distance game with an eye to eventually taking a run at that event.  Who wouldn't want to pass out in a graveyard for half an hour before hitting the never ending road again?

The Water is Life rally helps provide some alternatives, but what I really want to do is an overnight trip to roads both interesting and new.  The Adirondacks are the nearest thing I have to mountain roads anywhere near me beyond Southern Ontario's flat, industrial farming desert.

Operating out of the Hotel Crittenden, I'd be able to leave luggage behind and travel light on the two loop days designed to explore the twisting roads of the Adirondack Mountains.  Hotel prices tend to spike on peak times like weekends, so a mid-week trip should keep costs minimal.  It's a couple of hundred miles south and east, over the US border into New York State and south through the old mountains of eastern North America to Coudersport on the Allegheny River.


Day 1:  Ride to Coudersport:  352kms
https://goo.gl/maps/pGs8DgPVezkTCF6U7

Hotel Crittenden:  https://hotelcrittenden.com/

Interesting Adirondacks roads:  http://www.motorcycleroads.com/Routes/New-York_108.html




Day 2:  Snow Shoe Haneyville Loop:  352kms
https://goo.gl/maps/ixVjPmw6jBJzcHGg8





Day 3:  Hollerback Loop:  384kms
https://goo.gl/maps/13odCYiY5RNSJHAE8





Day 4:  Ride Home:  409kms
https://goo.gl/maps/RbVZd5wx9HQWbqoi7

1497kms (930 miles) in 4 days / 3 nights.
Monday - Thursday (cheapest hotel room rates)
Hotel nights:  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
August 19-22:  USD $238.50 / CAD $313 Single King Room /3 nights

Our King suite is large, nearly 450 square feet. Each of our rooms is uniquely decorated and appointed with a classic theme. Relax on our premium quality king sized mattress and enjoy the historic surroundings. All rooms include a flat screen television, Coffee maker, and free WI-FI. The Bathroom features a Stand up shower with complimentary toiletries and a hair dryer.

Amenities on site (restaurant, bar) and a great downtown location near many other eating options means no need to ride at the end of a long day exploring twisty mountain roads.

The same area is great for autumn colours: 
https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2018/09/pennsylvanian-autumn-colours.html

Sabbatical Rides: Riding the Americas

Previously I've thought about various ways I could do a four years pay over five years and then take a sabbatical year off work and still get paid.  From circumnavigating North America to tracing my grandfather's route through occupied France in 1940 during World War Two, there are a lot of interesting ways I could take a year off with an epic motorcycle ride included.

One of the first motorcycle travel ideas I had was to do the Pan-American trip from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina, from the top to the bottom of the Americas.  This ride is an even more extreme version of the North American circumnavigation as the mileage is mega; over 56,000kms!  At a 400km a day average that works out to 141 days or over 20 weeks making miles every day.  With a day off every week that adds another 3 weeks to the trip.  Fitting it into 24 weeks would mean some rest days and some extra time to cover the border crossings and rougher sections of the trip.

Another way to look at this might be from a Nick Sanders angle.  He did Prudhoe Bay to Ushuaia and back again in an astonishing 46 days.  That's 23,464kms x 2, so 46,928kms in 46 days, or an astonishing 1020kms average per day, including stops for flights over the Darien Gap between Columbia and Panama two times.  That approach (I imagine) gets pretty psychedelic and I might not really get the sense that I'm anywhere doing it that way, but there are certainly ways to tighten up the schedule and move with more purpose if needed.

The actual number of days needed if I ran it over 24 weeks would be 168.  The best time to hit Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean coast of Alaska is obviously during the long days of the northern summer.  If I left home mid-July I'd be up Prudhoe way eighteen days later at 400kms/day.  If I push on tarmac I should be able to get up there by the beginning of August and then begin the long ride south.

A good tie-up in South America would be to follow a bit of the Dakar Rally - this year running in Peru from January 6th to 17th.  After that it would be down south to the tip of South America in their late summer before heading back north.

The 2019 MotoGP season lands in Texas the weekend of April 12-14, making a nice stop before the final leg home in the spring.  Two weeks before that they are in Argentina.  Trying to connect the two races overland would be an interesting challenge.  It's just over six thousand kilometres north to Cartegena, Columbia and the boat around the Darien Gap, or just over seven thousand heading through the Amazon.  Then another forty-five hundred kilometres through Central America to Texas for the next race.  In a straight run that'd be almost eleven thousand kilometres across thirteen countries in eleven days if I managed to get to Texas for the pre-qualifying.  That'd be a Nick Sanders worthy feat. 

The PanAmerican Trip Tip to Toe and back again in sections:

North America to Prudhoe Bay:  https://goo.gl/maps/RWn36jct6LT2
19,571kms July-August to Prudhoe Bay, August-November to Colon:

South America South:  https://goo.gl/maps/nx4i6MwUqYz
11,106kms  Nov-Jan to Peru for Dakar, Jan to Mar to Ushuai

South America North:  https://goo.gl/maps/P5wQzEND7US2
11,057kms  Via Circuit De Rio Hondo MotoGP race in March.

North America North:  https://goo.gl/maps/4ZAC686McuC2
6,989kms

56,357kms.  @400kms/day average that's 141 days continuously on the road.

Leave July, Prudhoe Bay by end of July, Dakar in January in Peru, Ushuaia in February, Circuit de Rio Hondo for the MotoGP race at the end of March then a hard 11 days north through the Amazon to Austin Texas for the next race in mid-April.  Home by the end of April.   And I'd still have May-August to write about what happened and publish.

Sabbatical Rides: Following Grandad On The British Expeditionary Force

I've previously written about and done a fair bit of digging into my Grandad Bill Morris's World War 2 service in the RAF.  His time spent in France with the British Expeditionary Force before the Nazis invaded in 1940 highlights a forgotten piece of history.  Weeks after Dunkirk had pulled most of the troops out, Bill's RAF squadron was still flying a fighting retreat against overwhelming odds.

By comparing various historical documents I've managed to cobble together the strange course Bill's squadron took during this desperate retreat.  Spending a year following in his footsteps would be a pretty magical experience and a brilliant way to spend a sabbatical away from work.

Conveniently, from a sabbatical time-off scheduling point of view, Bill landed in France in September, 1939 in Octeville and proceeded north to set up an air base in Norrent-Fontes near the Belgian border.  They then wintered in Rouvres and as battle commenced were fighting out of Reims before retreating south and then west around Paris, quickly setting up  aerodromes for his squadron's Hurricanes and then breaking them down and moving on while under constant fire.  They were supposed to get out on the Lancastria in Saint-Nazaire (another forgotten piece of World War 2 history), but Bill was late getting there (operating heavy equipment means you're not at the front of the line).  He saw the ship get dive bombed and sunk - the biggest maritime disaster in British history, with most of his squadron on it.  He spent the next two weeks working his way up the coast before getting out on a small fishing vessel and back to the UK at the end of June, just in time to get seconded to another unit for the Battle of Britain.  Being able to trace Bill's steps would be a powerful journey.

Bill was an RAF military policeman who worked in base security, but his handiest skill was his ability to drive anything from a motorbike to a fuel bowser.  It'd be cool to use the period technology Bill used to retrace his steps through France.

This sabbatical ride would have to happen between July of one year and the August of the next.  Following Bill's time in France I would be landing in Octeville from the UK in September, hopefully on a period bike.  My preferred ride would be a 1939 Triumph Speed Twin, though an RAF standard Norton 16H would be equally cool.

If I couldn't find a period bike I'd try and source a modern descendent of the Triumph or Norton.  Triumph is actually coming out with a new Speed Twin shortly, so that's an option.  Meanwhile, Norton is coming out with the Atlas, which would be a modern take on the do everything 16H.

I'd arrange to stay in the places Bill did at the same times he did over the winter and spring.  With many days at various locations in rural France, I'd have a chance to find the old aerodromes and make drone aerial imagery of each location, hopefully finding evidence of this war history hidden in the landscape.  I wonder if I'd be able to see evidence of the Lancastria's resting place from the air.  With time to get a feel for the place, I'd write and record the experience as I moved slowly at first and then with greater urgency in the spring around Paris, through Ruaudin, Nantes and Saint-Nazaire before ending the trip in Brest at the end of June when Bill left, almost three weeks after Dunkirk.

The research so far on Bill's World War 2 service in France, the Battle of Britain in the UK and then into Africa!

Living in France for most of a year would offer a cornucopia of travel writing opportunities and the historical narrative I'm following would let me experience a lot of local colour in order to research a fictional novel I've been thinking about writing based on Bill's World War 2 experience.

To get ready for this I'd get Bill's full service record and research the whens and wheres of his experience on the continent during the Phoney War and through the Fall of France.  

When all was said and done I'd pack up the bike and ship it back home to Canada where it would always be a reminder of the year I walked in my Grandad's footsteps.

Research Links to date:

Bill's service record research:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PiN1LBIt0sBOa3uYNF6R7WI-5TP-jgOSPu9lrJlzVuU/edit?usp=sharing
Map of Bill's Squadron movements in France: https://goo.gl/maps/hRr3aRAUFTM2
RAF squadron research: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-XGAS0ajnEVGmJ_8-aATYDJrPWUHoWri8AILsNd1pN8/edit?usp=sharing

We could totally blend.  All of Bill's grandkids in period
kit and riding period vehicles...

Follow Up:  What would be even cooler would be to have my brothers and cousins come along for part or all of the trip.  For the non-motorcyclists the option to drive period trucks and military vehicles would be on hand - though a surprising number of Bill's grandkids ride.

There is an annual D-Day Festival in Normandy in May and June that celebrates period vehicles and dress.  Even if I could get Bill's grand-kids together just for that it would be a memorable event.

Sabbatical Rides: North America

The idea of a year's sabbatical has come up a few times recently.  I'm ten years away from my retirement date.  My job has a four out of five option where my salary is stretched over five years while I'm only paid for four.  It means a slightly smaller paycheque, but then a paid year off at the end of it.

My wife has ideas of going back to school in that year off, but I'm disinclined to take a year off teaching in school to go to school.  What I'd really like to do is the EPIC MOTORCYCLING TRIP with the intent of writing and producing art and photography out of it.  When people do this they typically line up the RTW ('round the world) ride and then spend a lot of time in poor countries making unintentionally Western-superiority statements about how hardy they are and how backwards non-Europeans are.   I'm reluctant to follow that pattern.

We recently spent a summer driving most of the way across North America and back again.  I had a number of moments when I saw North America for what it is:  a place that has almost no human history in it.  At the Canadian Museum of Human Rights I started thinking about how native aboriginal people are to North America (there were lots of displays on how poorly Europeans integrated with the first immigrants to this place).  A few days later at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller I discovered that most of North America's mega-fauna disappeared right after humans first arrived; we're an environmental scurge no matter where we go.  It got me thinking about how North America must have looked before we got here and unbalanced it all.

The Americas were blissfully free of human beings for all bit a trivially small, recent moment in time.  They separated from the massive Pangea landmass between two hundred and a hundred and seventy million years ago, long before anything remotely human walked the earth.  For millenia upon millenia North and South America were unique ecosystems with animals not found anywhere else, all of it safe from the human migration out of Africa two to three million years ago.  Earliest estimates now have humans crossing the northern ice bridge during an ice age about fifteen thousand years ago.  That means that, conservatively, humans (aboriginal and later settlers) have claimed North America as theirs for less than 0.0086% of its existence.

One of the few mega-fauna left after the humans got here.
It's hard not to see a tragic species memory in those eyes.

This framed much of that trip for me.  I kept trying to see the lands we were travelling through without the recent influx of foreign species.  Humans appeared and immediately started filling this place with invasive species from where they came from.  This became especially evident when I was looking into the eyes of a truly native species in Yellowstone Park.

This human free view of the Americas is something we tend to ignore as we're all so busy justifying the pieces of it we divide up between ourselves.  Most of North America's history had nothing to do with us.  There are other parts of the world that have had humans living in them for hundreds of thousands of years, but those places aren't here.

This sabbatical ride would be to circumnavigate North America and try to see the place itself without its invasive and destructive recent history.



The trick would be to time this ride with the weather.  I'd be off work beginning in July and then have until the end of the following August.  Heading east to Cape Spear (North America's easternmost point) would mean avoiding the early winters that hit Newfoundland.  Spending a summer at home would be a nice way to start the sabbatical, then, as my wife heads off to school, I hit the road.  We could arrange meetups when she's off school through the fall.

I'd start in Newfoundland in September and then head down the East Coast to Key West before riding around the Gulf of Mexico to Cancun and then crossing the continent at its narrowest point before making my way up the West Coast.  I'd try to time my pause for the holiday break, servicing and then parking up the bike in storage for a few months in California.

I'd fly back out and release the bike from storage in the late spring and aim to be taking the long road to the Arctic Ocean as the days become infinite over the Tundra.  Ideally I'd be back home by mid-July.

From tropical rain forests to mountains, plains and tundra, this ride would show the staggering range of geography to be found in North America.  At well over thirty-three thousand kilometres, this would also be an epic ride in terms of distance (RTW rides are typically 20-30,000kms).

The only downside would be the cost of travel in the USA and Canada, but there are ways to manage that without breaking the bank.  With the idea of getting to know the North America under the human migration, wild camping as often as possible would be a nice way to get closer to the land and to meet the people from all over Turtle Island who now call it home.

Taking my old Tiger on a North American circumnavigation
would be brilliant!  This old thing would be long distance
ready with only a few upgrades.

With a dearth of freeway travel on this trip, it would be about a lot of coastal roads and staying to the edge of the continent.  With potentially rough roads in the far south and north of the trip, something that is capable both on and off road would be ideal.  It wouldn't need to be a high speed touring cable unit, but it would have to carry the gear for at least occasional wild camping.  There are a number of mid-sized adventure bikes that would fit this need, though I'd be just at tempted to take my current Tiger.  Perhaps I could customize it as a sabre-toothed Tiger in relation to the America's apex predator (made extinct when humans showed up).

Riding tens of thousands of kilometres in a relatively short period of time means some challenging logistics, especially if I want to spend breaks with my significant other.  The ride out to Cape Spear on the easternmost coast is a thirty-two hundred kilometre all-Canadian opening to the trip.  All told, the ride out to Newfoundland and then back to the US border to head south down the Eastern Seaboard is nearly five thousand kilometres.  Breaking the trip into pieces is how I've blocked out the timing of it.

Canada East:  Elora to Cape Spear, Newfoundland and back to St. John, New Brunswick.  Mid-September.  About five thousand kilometres.  With potentially interesting weather (this year the east coast of Canada has been hammered by the remains of hurricanes) even this opening section might be challenging.  With ferries involved, doing an average of 400kms a day seems like an eminently doable thing that would also give me reasonable stopping time so I'm not always rushing past moments of insight.  Five thousand kilometres at four hundred a day works out to twelve days on the road.  Giving myself a fortnight to do that would mean being able to spend a bit of extra time where necessary (hopefully on Newfoundland).

The East Coast:  New Brunswick to Key West.  End of September/early October.  This four thousand kilometre jaunt down the East Coast would be happening in the fall, while dodging hurricanes.  Sticking to the coast would be occasionally tricky in a road system designed to put you onto an interstate, but I'd stubbornly cling to it.  Four thousand kilometres at four hundred a day average is ten days riding south.  I could easily compress that by doing it on freeways, but that's not the point.  Being on back roads gives me a better chance of seeing the place for what it is instead of just seeing the travel industry.  I'd be aiming to get to Key West still fairly early in October and then start my circumnavigation of the Gulf of Mexico.


The Gulf of Mexico:  Key West, Florida to Cancun, Mexico.  From early October for the month.  The Gulf coast means I'm travelling through some culturally unique places.  New Orleans has long been a desired destination, and Texas is often described as a country in and of itself.  Crossing into Mexico puts this trip well into an adventure mind-set as I'd have to find my way through a unique culture in a language I'm not familiar with.  The fifty-three hundred kilometres of this leg of the trip should take roughly two weeks, but with borders and other hold ups it would probably be better to settle on an end of October arrival in Cancun (giving me 5-6 days of padding in there to let things run at Mexican speed).

Pacific Mexico:  Cancun through Baja to San Diego, California.  This six thousand kilometre leg up the west coast of Mexico and the Baja Peninsula will eventually lead me back to the USA.  If I'm beginning this leg in early November, it should take me fifteen days at my 400/day average to make my way north.  Giving myself the month means extra days, hopefully with a reading week meetup with Alanna somewhere in Mexico for a few days off together in the warm.  Even with that relaxed schedule I should be able to make my way to San Diego, service the bike and put it into storage for a few months before making my way home for the holidays.  A handy winter break means I could collate my photos and notes from part one of the trip.  

West Coast to the Arctic Ocean:  San Diego to Tuktoyaktuk.  This seven thousand kilometre ride to the northern edge of North America would take 18 days, but with multiple ferries, borders and coastal barriers I'd pad some extra time in there.  I'd be aiming for a late June/early July (midsummer, midnight sun) arrival in Tuktoyaktuk on Canada's Arctic coast.  A month back from that would mean flying back into San Diego around the beginning of June and then riding north for many weeks.

From Vancouver Island on north this would be a rough and tumble ride with hundreds of kilometres of gravel roads.  The bike would need to be sorted and ready to take on that kind of abuse.

The Long Way Home:  Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories to Elora, Ontario.  It's nearly seven thousand kilometres diagonally across Canada back home again to finish this trip.  That's another 18 days at 400kms/day.

I'd try to be home by mid-July and enjoy some downtime before getting ready to go back into the classroom.  The first nine hundred kilometres of this trip would be long days on permafrost and gravel, but from the Dawson Highway south it would be back on tarmac and I would be able to make better time.  There is no over land passage that traces the northern coast of Canada through the tundra, so a diagonal slash south and east would be the final leg of this trip.

Wrapping my head around this continent on which I live would not only give me great material for writing, but it would also let me tick off a bucket list item:  complete a truly epic motorcycle journey before I'm too old to manage it.

Finding The Edge

I turn fifty in a few months and the nature of aging occupies my mind.   The increasing worry is that I've done everything I'm going to do of note and the rest is just living in those memories, but I'm not happy with that diagnosis.  The way of things seems to be that as people get older they become increasingly cautious, especially physically, until they are maintaining themselves to death.  If all I have left is a continuous receding of activity into a safety cocoon designed to keep me alive as long as possible, I'm bereft of hope.  If that's the trajectory I need to do something about it because it's causing me a great deal of anxiety.

This isn't so much about thrill seeking as it is about finding meaningful ways to challenge myself.  I'm not looking for overt or pointless risk, I'm looking for ways to engage and challenge myself physically and mentally.  Motorcycling, for me, is a lifeline to that realm of vital engagement - it can turn even a simple commute into an adventure.  To accept the challenge of motorcycling well you need to acknowledge the risks and manage them effectively.  You can't do it with one hand on the wheel and your thoughts elsewhere as so many other road users do; motorcycling well demands that you live in the moment.

The meditative nature of riding can't be overstated, especially in my case.  It's taken me most of my life and my son's diagnosis to realize I don't think like most people.  Whereas others find great traction and joy in social interaction, I've always found it confusing and frustrating.  People are takers who are happy to demand my time, attention and expertise and offer little tangible in return.  I spend my days in this social deficit where many  around me seem intent on using me for what I can do for them but are unwilling to offer anything in return.  The only currency many of them trade in is this slippery social currency, which I find difficult to fathom and so avoid.  Given the opportunity, most people disappoint, and often do it with and edge of cruelty and selfishness that I find exhausting.  Nothing lets me find balance again better than a few hours in the silence of the wind getting lost in the physical and mental challenge of chasing bends on my motorbike; the machine is honest in a way that few people are.

I started riding a motorcycle just over five years ago, after my mother died.  It was a secret as to why motorcycles were forbidden in our family.  A death no one talked about produced a moratorium on riding that prevented me from finding my way to this meditative state for decades.  I didn't realize that the motorbiking gene was strong in my family until I bypassed my mother's fear and found my way back to that family history.  Riding is something we've done for generations, but a single accident produced fear that kept me from what should have been a lifelong passion.  Wondering about what could have been is another one of those traps that people fall into as they get older, but rather than wonder about it I'd prefer to make up for lost time.

There are many aspects of motorcycling that I'd like to try, from exploring the limits of riding dynamics on a track to long distance and adventure travel journeys, or even retracing family history.  Last year I did some off road training and I don't think I've ever seen a photo of me looking happier.  Doing something new and challenging with a motorbike is where I find the edge.  It's also where I find the head-space that eludes me in my very socially orientated professional life.

Unfortunately, I live in the wrong country for exploring the challenges of motorbiking.  Whereas in the UK you can find cheap and accessible trackdays for bikes all over the country, in Canada they simply don't exist.  My only option is to pony up for a thousand dollar course that puts me on a tiny, underpowered bike for one weekend.  In the UK you can green lane and trail ride all over the country, but in Canada that's called trespassing.  We also happen to have some of the highest motorcycle insurance rates on the planet  and one of the shortest riding seasons.  In the UK you can ride virtually the whole year around and the range of biking interests are wide and varied.  In Canada riders are thin on the ground and often interested in aspects of riding that I find baffling.

As I'm getting older I hope I can continue to find ways back to the meditative calm of riding.  It isn't an end in itself, but it sure works as a tool to help me manage my other responsibilities, and as fodder for writing and photography I haven't found much better.  Motorcycling lets me plumb Peisig's depths and clarifies my mind.  Along with that meditative silence, motorcycling also offers a direct line to a thrilling and challenging craft that demands and rewards my best efforts.  Even the most mundane of riding opportunities offers a chance to find that edge, and it's on that edge that I'm able to find my best self, the one I want to hone and improve.  Being able to bring that refined self back into the world doesn't just help me, but everyone that has to put up with me too.

Pennsylvanian Autumn Colours

I've been thinking about an Appalachian ride, but didn't get around to it this year.  So here is a nice travel idea for an end of year ride before the snows fall...


Saturday, October 20:  Ride from Elora to Hotel Crittenden in Coudersport, Pennsylvania (~350kms)
Sunday, October 21:  Cross Fork/Snow Shoe/Jersey Shore loop (~360kms)
Monday, October 22:  Liberty/Hillsgrove/Williamsport (~350kms)
Tuesday, October 23:  Coudersport back home to Elora (~350kms)


Hotel Crittenden is a lovely four star hotel with a pub/restaurant on site.  At this time of year it's only about $150 Canadian a night.  What's nice about returning to the same spot every evening is that I can leave the luggage behind and ride light on the loop days, enjoying the twisty roads without the weight and faff.

The two loop day rides through the Appalachians were generated in Google Maps from Motorcycleroads.com's northern New York State maps.  It's a good site for locating twisties anywhere you want to ride in North America.

All told it would be about 1400kms in four days, but any of the loop days have opportunities to extend or cut short the ride if conditions require it.

One thing to consider when riding this late in the year (within 8 weeks of mid-winter solstice), is that the days are short and getting shorter.  Sunset in northern Pennsylvania in mid-October happens around 6:30pm, so you wouldn't be pushing for 500+km/12 hour days in the saddle  unless you wanted to be out on unfamiliar, rural, mountain roads after dark... in hunting season.

Pennsylvania has some of the largest northern boreal forests in the world.  Most other forests this far north get too coniferous to be colourful in the fall.  From Ontario down through northern New York State and into northern Pennsylvania, it would be a very colourful few days racking up motorcycle miles before the end of the always-too-short Canadian motorcycling season.