Bike trip

It's been almost two weeks since our last post so I should probably check in.

Last week Heather and the kids went down to visit grandpa and grandma, it sounds like they had a lot of fun and the kids came back a little less behaved, a sure sign of being spoiled. Heather will have to blog about their visit if she wants, because I wasn't there - instead I went on a motorcycle trip with Trevor...





This was supposed to be a motorcycle "camping" trip and we brought our Hennesy hammocks to hang between trees like we did last year. However, a friend and coworker offered for me to use her cabin in Nakusp, BC.

We left late in the day last Thursday and pushed all the way to Nakusp (about 700kms or so). It was dark by the time we made the last leg of our trip and we were concerned about wildlife jumping out on the road. The cabin was in the middle of dense forest, had an unfinished exterior, and the top floor didn't even have windows. It wasn't looking good for us until we checked the main floor and found it was developed and had appliances and running water.








We just hung around the area for the next couple of days. Our trip happened to coincide with the Nakusp Music Festival, which for them seems to be a pretty big deal - the 11th largest in the world according to a guy we talked to while watching a helicopter drop buckets of water on a house fire. I doubt the accuracy of that claim, but it was true that the population of the town had tripled at least. I have never seen so many hippies in my life.





One day we took the trip from New Denver to Kaslo on highway 31A, a ride recommended by the cabin owner (who is also a motorcyclist). We took a quick detour to the ghost town of Sandon. It was a neat place and has a fascinating history, it probably deserves a blog entry all its own. While we were there, we talked with a couple of BMW riders who had just made the trip. They had a fevered look in their eyes and one guy said, "I envy what you are about to experience, this is probably the best motorcycle ride in Canada". I am inclined to agree with the accuracy of that claim. I didn't get any photos because it took all my concentration just to keep up with the twists and turns and at one point, only moments after deciding to slow down, a deer ran right across my path and disappeared into the trees. Yikes, that was a close one.

There were a couple other close calls too: one evening, we rode though a small rock slide of shale that dislodged a couple large rocks that would have taken out a motorcycle had they hit us. It's funny because earlier that day I had seen a few of those "falling rock" signs and was thinking to myself about how I had never actually seen that happen. Also, one night we were turning down the road to the cabin when I noticed a pair of headlights make the turn behind Trevor. For some reason I didn't want the people in that car to know where we were staying so I drove past the cabin's driveway, hoping that Trevor would follow me. We turned at the next intersection and as the vehicle went past, the front passenger yelled something at us (there were people in the back too). Trevor pulled alongside and told me that when he saw them make the turn behind him, he was hoping that I would drive past the cabin too. Who knows?

Anyways, I found a video of highway 31A. It shows what the road and scenery were like but unfortunately the guy that filmed it went a little overboard with his video editing tools:





One evening we were headed up to the Nakusp hot springs when we passed an old-school motor home that was only travelling 40km/h up the hill. Shortly after passing him, we came upon a moose standing at the side of the road. It got spooked when it saw us and started running back and forth - turning suddenly like one of those barrel racing horses. We stopped and watched as it trotted down the middle of the road towards us - it was as big as a horse too. We started moving again when the motor home came into view but the driver caught up to us at the hot springs and struck up a conversation. He was an older guy and he started talking to us about mooses and ended up telling us about failed marriages and his children whom he hasn't talked to for three years. He told us that he just pulls over anywhere and sleeps in his motor home and that he had made the decision to just "live between the cracks". The hot springs were home to a flock of hummingbirds that flitted from poolside feeders. The guy told us that he had heard that hummingbirds migrate by riding on the backs of geese as they fly South. I wanted to believe the accuracy of that claim, because it would make for a neat story. Unfortunately a later Internet search revealed that hummingbirds fly under their own steam to California every year - and they make the trip alone.





The last day of the trip, we woke up early, locked up the cabin and headed to the ferry crossing. We stopped in Revelstoke for breakfast, Golden for a slurpee, and Banff for a gas-station pizza sub (I've always had penchant for them). We parted company at a weigh station outside Calgary (the scale told me that my bike and I weighed 340kg, 10kg more than when our trip began... that's weird that my bike would be gaining weight).

Anyways, the trip was a lot of fun and it was good to get home. Sure, Calgary looked kind of dull after all of the beautiful scenery we had travelled through... but at least we aren't up to our necks in hippies.

(OK, not really a moral to the story, but it'll do)





- C