The
Squamidian Report – July 2 / 11
Issue #475
Including:
The Ontarion
Hi All,
We are back to having not much happening around here these days. In fact, we are starting to get cabin fever. Seems like we can’t even go outside very much. Too cold and damp, we get one nice April day and then its back to February for a week or so. Bummer. Ryan is back for a week during a break in the Adams tour and is doing a snowboarding event up on Whistler. Its hard for them to video the boarders because it is snowing too much. Highway #1 west of Hope got buried under 25ft of mud when a slide came crashing down the mountains side. These slide events usually happen during the endless rains of November and early December. But then we are still having November so I guess that kind of thing should be expected. However, everyone on the west coast has become so acclimatized to endless winter that we walk around in T-shirts when the temp rockets up to 11 degrees. Go figure.
We are managing to get some motorcycle riding in, both solo and with my CMC chapter. I’ve managed to put on about 5000 clicks so far this season, most of them requiring the heated vests. Half of our chapter events have been rained out and that has made it difficult to get members to come out. But the chapter is slowly coming together. Our meets and rides are attracting more members each time. We were lucky to have 2 or 3 turn up a while ago, now we get 7 or 8 so that’s coming along. I’ve got my officers in place and they have all learned the requirements of being road captains. Every organized ride requires 2 road captains, one out front in the lead position and one at the back as tail gunner. Each position has it’s challenges and both require a lot of attention and awareness. Lead bike has to guide the ride formation, controlling lane choice, speed, direction etc. Tail bike must control the traffic behind and protect the rear of the column. Both can be stressful when traffic is heavy and drivers are inattentive and impatient. But it’s a lot of fun and precision formation riding is quite rewarding for the riders.
Something that takes some of the stress out of controlling and protecting a column of riders is the use of radios for communication between the lead and tail bikes. Many of the larger chapters use them and we are starting to as well. There are 2 ways to go with radios, 1 practical, the other not so much. The non-practical method would be the use of wireless radio / headsets. They work very well but are extremely expensive and therefore not a viable option. The way we are starting to incorporate radios is with the use of good quality headsets plugged into inexpensive run-of-the-mill walky-talkies. These two-way can be purchased almost anywhere, have good range and can be replaced easily if lost or damaged. We use hand signals to pass instructions and intend back along through the group so every riders knows what to expect, but radios permit the road captains to communicate both ways instantly, and hand signals do not work for passing information forward.
Our Vancouver chapter of CMC did a ride up the Sea to Sky highway last Sunday. Actually, we rode up to Whistler for lunch, but I digress. One of our members has a video camera (helmet cam) and captured parts of the ride as far as Squamish. He has posted it to YouTube for any and all to see. As you watch the video, you will get glimpses of our incredible scenery and you’ll see what one of our group rides looks like. The rider with the cameral is about 3/4th of the way back in the pack. I’m the lead rider out front. Ryan was tail gunner (and therefore behind the camera) as far as Squamish where he had to tap out because he simply did not have time to do the whole ride. There is a cool thing that happens part way through. We ride about 10k over the limit and yet we are being continually passed by other vehicles. Now it is obviously a clear sunny day and logic says there will be speed checks along the way. Yet, vehicles, including other bikers, are flying past. We came around a curve in Lions Bay through the 60k speed zone and sure enough, there was a radar trap with several cars AND the two bikes that had just passed up pulled over. You can actually hear our camera guy laugh when he sees them. His text reference to ‘Bears’ is for a term referring to police. Watch and enjoy.
doug
****
****
THE ONTARION REPORT
Hello everyone!
Chapter II of the Cap Cod ride!
After making it through the mess in the Hamilton area we managed to find our way to the QEW east of Welland. We had intended to make our way to Lundy’s Lane in the city of Niagara Ontario but wound up coming out mid way between Niagara and Fort Erie onto the QEW. No matter, it just meant that we had to cross into the States at Buffalo rather than directly from Niagara Ontario into Niagara Falls NY. We managed to make it across in just a few minutes. The border guard was friendly but not much help in finding our main route to Boston Mass. Our GPS screwed up before we had even hit Hamilton so we only had Adam’s cell phone to use as a locater for the rest of the ride. We found a gas station directly off the main bridge in Buffalo and fueled up there! A nice older couple directed us to the start of old hwy #20 that would take us directly from Buffalo to Albany NY without hitting any major Interstate Throughways. We got onto #20 and headed east. By this time it was getting on to around 8pm so we decided to stop for the night. We saw a sign for Attica NY and decided to take a short side trip south 5 miles and find a motel in the “Prison” city! When we entered Attica we were surprised to find that it’s not much of a town. There was only one motel that was recommended to us by a guy at the gas pumps. We back tracked about two miles and found the motel he said was a nice clean place run by a lovely friendly couple. Well, I’m sure the guy at the pumps is still laughing up his sleeve over sending us to the biggest dump in Attica! It was up on a steep hill (here we go again with the steep hills) only it was paved so we made it up with no problems. I entered the two-story motel with the burned out sign and half the windows on the upper floor broken. It smelled like an Indian slum and the proprietor was totally rude when I asked if she offered any sort of discount for AAA or Government Discount. She said “I just told you the price is $99.00 and that’s the best I can do, take it or leave it!” I didn’t want to directly say no because it was getting late and we were miles from any other motel I was sure! I told her we were going to get a bite to eat and we’d be back. I went out and told Adam about the condition and attitude and we decided to drive down the road to Burger King and talk about it over food. Adam only had his dark lens on his full -aced helmet so he didn’t want to ride too far in the dark. However neither of us wanted to patronize the dump I had just witnessed! We decided to ride back up to Hwy 20 and go east to the next town. Adam checked on his iPhone and found a motel in the next burg called Avon and the motel was a Travel Lodge. I said “well I’ve stayed in a Travel Lodge before and they’re ok so let’s head there!
We rode for another ¾ of an hour and arrived in Avon. When we pulled into the motel, it was not a “Travel Lodge” from the “Travel Lodge” chain of motels. It was called The Cedar Woods Travel Lodge! It turned out to be run by a little old lady that had built a 16-unit motel on her property probably 50 years ago or more out of cedar logs and boards. We got the last room in the place because there was a film crew in town making a movie and they had the other 15 rooms. It was another rickety place but at least it was clean, I think! We just needed a place to sleep and then we’d get the heck out of there at first light! As it turned out we slept well and in the morning we found a great little restaurant called Pepper’s with the best traditional breakfast we’ve found anywhere and it cost us $7.46 total for two plates of breakfast and coffee and tea! Once again we were back in the saddle and heading for Albany. As we hit the two-lane highway once again we had two riders on the oncoming side wave at us and they were wearing bright yellow rain suits! We decided to stop at the first sporting goods place we saw and buy a pair of cheap rain suits. Our riding gear has removable rainproof liners but we didn’t want to zip them in and let the outer shell of our jackets and pants get soaked! It would be too much of a pain to have to dry them out at the next motel if we got hit with rain! We found a strip mall along the highway that had a sports store in it. After finding rain suits for $79.00 on a rack the clerk asked if we just wanted cheap ones and I said yes. He pointed to a rack further back in the store that had heavy plastic tan coloured two-piece suits for $19.95 on sale for $9.95 and they were just the thing we needed! They were in their own little pouches and fit nicely into our saddlebags. Off we went again and managed to make Albany by 6pm without hitting any rain. In the morning we awoke at our Best Western motel and noted that it had rained over night. I dried off the bikes after we had breakfast and we decided not to put the rain suits on until it looked more like rain. Well, we got about six blocks from the motel and down it came! We pulled over and put the suits on over our riding gear. Neither of us had ever ridden any distance in the rain so it was a new experience for both of us. We talked and decided we were taking too long to get to our destination so we figured we’d try riding the Interstate and see what it was like on bikes! After twisting and turning our way through Albany to the NY Throughway we were once again riding at a good speed. With the rain suits on the ride was actually quite tolerable. Our full faced helmets kept our heads and faces dry and the only part of us that got wet was our feet and hands. The leather boots and gloves didn’t keep the rain out but that too was tolerable! After about 3 hours of wet riding we stopped into a Cracker Barrel restaurant and picked up a souvenir for Carole. The rain had stopped but the sky was still looking pretty dark. The suits stayed on and we continued on the Interstate. We reached Cape Cod by late afternoon and found ourselves a Motel 8 in West Yarmouth. With many kms under our belts that day we were ready for a good meal. We found a pub style pizza joint that claimed to have the best steaks and the best burgers on the Cape. It was only two blocks from our motel. Adam decided to have a steak and I had their “Famous Burger” and they were both very good indeed!
The next day, Wednesday, I phoned up to Province Town. It’s the town at the very northern tip of Cape Cod and is famous for two things, Whale watching tours and the largest gay population on the east coast of the USA! Both interesting subjects but we were only interested in the Whale Watching aspect of the town’s fame! LOL! The company that we wanted to book the Whale Watching tour with was only booking passage by reservation on the late tour at 4pm and since the tours last 4 hours we didn’t want to be riding home to our motel in the dark. The agent told me that we should come up to P Town and buy our tickets on the dock before noon and we might get on the 12:30 ship. Being it was an hour ride from where we were we figured we’d better just ride up to P Town and get our tickets and then get something to eat before the tour. We arrived in Province Town by 11:30am and by the time we parked and made our way to the ticket booth it was 12:00 noon. They wouldn’t sell us tickets but would put my name on the waiting list and we might get on if we were lucky. It told the lady taking names that we had ridden all the way from Canada to take their tour and really would appreciate it if she could fit us in! I guess she took sympathy on us because after calling only 3 groups of names on the list she called out my name! We had actually been about 20th on the list so she did us a big favour and I thanked her for it as we got our tickets.
They advised us that the seas were rough that day and it was quite cool out on the ocean so to dress warm. We were ready for the cool weather with our riding jackets on. Blue jeans were also fitting for the occasion. Adam had his Canon camera equipment with him with all the lenses so he could get the best pics possible of the whales. I had seen the whales three years earlier when Carole and I were on the tour but was looking forward to seeing them with Adam. This was his first trip to do whale watching so we were hoping for good sightings! It took us an hour to get out to the feeding grounds and when we arrived there were whales all around us. The marine biologist that was on our tour was telling us all about the whales. She was also supposed to do recording of stats on the whales we saw but she was surprised by how many there were and couldn’t keep track of them all. We learned a lot about Humpback whales and their habits. On this particular voyage to view these magnificent animals we truly lucked out! We were fortunate enough to have three pods of whales beside our boat at the same time. The first one had five whales in it and the other two pods each had four adults in them! WOW! Where they amazing and HUGE too! The adult Humpback whale can hole up to 18,000 gallons of water and fish in their mouth at one time! They submerge and blow bubbles in a large circle about 15m across. This scares the small schools of fish or crill and they gather into a tight ball for security. Then, the whale surfaces from beneath the ball of fish and takes the entire mass into it’s mouth. Once they have their catch in their mouth, they close their jaw until the long ( approximately 1 metre in average length) tusk like structures called baleen that hang from their upper jaw close like a curtain in the opening of the mouth. The whale then brings it’s bulging throat up toward the roof of it’s mouth and forces the water out through the hairy covering on the inside surface of the baleen. This acts like a filter keeping the fish in and forcing the water out of the whale’s mouth. They then swallow the ball of fish in one big gulp!
We were witness to this process over and over as Adam snapped picture after picture of these wonderful creatures! The waves were approximately 6 ft swells and the ship was rocking like a bucking bronco! It was very difficult to keep your footing and take pictures at the same time! I wrapped my leg around the end of one of the benches and held onto Adam’s jacket with both hands so he could work his camera to get the shots of the whales in action! It was a thrilling ride to say the least! The biologist was amazed at the quality of the sightings we had on this excursion. She’s been doing this whale work for all of her career, which includes 12 years off Cape Cod and 11 years in Alaska and she stated that she’d never seen such a display by these beautiful creatures. We even got to witness what she described as “Whale Poo” produced by one of the large males in the closest pod to the ship. These pods were nor more than 100 m from the ship. In fact the pod of five whales was almost touching the ship at times! The whales usually don’t poop near the surface because that is where they catch their food. She said they usually do their business at great depths so as not to interfere with their catch! When she pointed out the “Poo” there was a 10m diameter patch of brown water just off the side of the ship about 3m! Of course everyone on board rushed to one side to get a look at the “Poo Patch” and that made the ship list about 20 degrees to that side! Luckily nobody fell over the railing! There were several people that got sea sick and the deck hand was busy with the hose washing all the puke overboard for much of the voyage! They offered free Dramamine to anybody that wanted it as we boarded. Adam and I grabbed a dose of that for sure and it’s lucky we did because we both had to work hard not to be sick! LOL!
After being out at the whale site for two hours we finally headed back to port! It was a treat to sit down on the way back after standing the whole time out on the rough sea. The trip back to port took another hour and gave us time to get our stomachs settled once again.
The main reason for the ride was to do a trip together for Adam and I on our bikes since we had talked about it for a few years. The other reasons were to Whale Watch and to visit “Rookies Restaurant” about 30km south of Province Town for that famous Haddock and Chips dinner Carole and I had told Adam about so many times. Adam and I spent an hour walking around P Town and checking out the sites and stores. I bought a “Superman” tee shirt and he bought a tee shirt and ball cap that he liked! Not much room for taking home souvenirs when you’re packing saddle bags! LOL! Anyway, we finally mounted up and headed south to “Rookies”. We were served up a huge portion of Haddock the size of the platter with a mound of chips under it that would choke a horse I’m sure! Adam was totally impressed with the meal and said it was everything Carole and I had said it would be! We decided that we would eat one thing off the menu that we had never eaten before so he picked a serving of Fried Clams! A small order turned out to be about 50 clams! They were amazing but it was all we could do to finish the pile! We thanked the friendly older couple and the cook for their hospitality and hit the road once again! It took us about 40 minutes to get back to out motel. We had the best sleep of our entire trip that night and actually slept a little later than we planned. No big deal, it just meant that we had to have a quick breakfast and get on the road. I wanted to find a bike dealer to buy some chain lube for my bike. Adam’s Yamaha FJR 1300 is shaft drive so the rainwater didn’t bother it. On a chain drive bike you have to keep the chain lubed after every soaking, especially when you’re driving at highway speeds for long periods of time! We found a shop about three blocks from the restaurant and got my chain lube. I re-lubricated the chain and we headed for home. Our first stop was in Albany NY. We decided to take the NY Throughway all the way back to Buffalo and then ride State side to Niagara Falls NY and cross into Canada at the Rainbow Bridge!
We made it to Albany the first day and stayed just outside of the city for the night. The next morning we found a Denny’s for breakfast and spent an hour fueling up for the ride home! We figured it was early so we’d try to make it to Niagara before dark. We actually did arrive on the outskirts of Buffalo by 6pm. The ride was interesting with all the excitement of the idiots merging from our right and seemingly not even noticing we were there! It’s amazing how drivers can look directly at a motorcycle and not even see it! One idiot woman driver swerved out at me and luckily my air horns were loud enough to wake her up! After she slowly reacted to my horn and my evil glare we noticed that she had a pen in her left hand and a large writing pad in the other resting on the steering wheel as well as her cell phone squished between her right ear and shoulder yacking to someone! I’m surprised she didn’t have a coffee in the pen hand as well! What a complete Jerk!
We exited the Throughway onto Niagara Falls Blvd and followed that into Niagara Falls. We stopped at the Military Rd liquor store for some cheap bottles to take home and Adam bought a couple of pairs of shoes at the Military Mall. By this time it was 8:00 pm and we decided to try to make it to Kitchener before dark! We managed to arrive home at 9:30 pm and were happy to be home without having to spend another night in a motel. Carole and Bailey were surprised to see us and we sat and talked until the wee hours of the morning. We left the unpacking until the next day and other than that, took a day of rest!
The trip was absolutely incredible and we intend to do another one before the summer is over! We covered a total of 2,442 km round trip and enjoyed every minute of it! We figure our next ride will be shorter in length. We’re not sure where the next destination will be but we hope to do it soon!
I hope you all enjoyed reading about this one and I look forward to telling you all about the next one!
Thanks for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you all again next week in The Ontarion Report!
Bye for now.. Greg
PS: Something To Think About>
People in Nudist Colonies play volleyball more than any other sport! Hmmm…..? I wonder why?
****
Have a good one..
the doug
The Fine Print!
The articles in these issues are the sole property of the persons writing them and should be respected as such.