Layover in Whitehorse YT

We're staying in Whitehorse for the day because we have to wait until Monday morning to have our knobby tires installed. It's a bit frustrating that we arrived on the 1 day out of 7 when we can't go get our tires, but it gives us a good opportunity to clean up a bit and get some blog posting done.

That beard thing still isn't working out for me.  Can I shave now, Jess?

When we arrived at the campground last night, we were met by a German guy who was very eager to give us his campsite for free. It turns out he wasn't so much eager as he was rushed; he'd just developed an upset stomach (pronounced as a German would - "stum-atch") and was in a hurry to find a place with better facilities than the campground. He couldn't get a refund, so he wanted to be sure someone got his site. We took the site, but managed to pay him for it as well.

Although he was in a hurry, we still ended up chatting for a while with he and his wife. They're both German, and this was something like their sixth or seventh visit to the Yukon! They love it here, and come every other year. They'd found out about a marathon taking place on Sunday, and had just signed up to run a half-marathon and bought some running shoes since they hadn't brought theirs. Dad got pretty excited, and we decided to enter the half-marathon as a team (just over 10km each) since we hadn't been training for running at all.

By the time we'd learned about the marathon on Saturday night, almost everything in town had closed and there was nowhere to get info or sign up. Dad got up this morning and went to find out what he could about the race. Unfortunately, he found the event shortly before it began, and there were no registration slots left. He hadn't had breakfast yet, and there was no time to come back and get me to run the other half of the half-marathon. The organizer invited him to run as a "bandit", but without time for breakfast and some digestion, even that wouldn't have been a good idea. In the end he went for a run while I stayed at the campground and make some blog posts.

Loop de Loop

Here is one of the videos I shot from the back seat of the plane I talked about a few days ago. I wanted to shoot videos of every maneuver, but at the same time I just wanted to look around and enjoy the experience. In the end I took videos for about half the maneuvers, but don't have any for the crazy Death Spirals (my name, not his) he did at the end. Those felt a lot like very quickly losing altitude while spinning out of control, except apparently he was in control the whole time.  A part of me still wonders if it was just dumb luck we pulled out of that...

Baby Face

My wonderful, but sometimes naive, wife thought this trip would be the perfect opportunity for me to finally try growing a beard.  When she says "beard" what she really means is Bradley Cooperesque stubble.  I've tried to explain that I just don't grow enough hair to have any kind of beard.  I don't think 6 weeks is going to help that fact.  Six weeks will simply give me a longer, very patchy beard instead of a short, very patchy beard.  More time != more stubble.  A face full of stubble will never happen.

Here's what about 8 days of "beard" looks like.  Note the distinct "no hair will ever grow here" zones.  Who thinks I should give up this experiment now and save myself further humiliation?

Thanks to all the friends and family who refrained from asking what was wrong with my face, and apologies to the children I've scared.

Saskatoon Layover

This is just a quick update to say we're alive and well, and relaxing in Saskatoon SK.  I had some mechanical problems with the final drive on my bike, but we've got spare parts in hand (with more to arrive at the dealership today) and we'll be attempting a repair later this morning.  If all goes well, we'll be rolling again tomorrow morning.

Ready to Roll

All loaded up and ready to roll

Everything is loaded on the bike, except the computer I'm typing on and the camera that took the picture.  Even the tires I'll be carrying to Toronto are on there, just to let me test how I've anchored them.  Tomorrow morning I'll ride to work all loaded up, and after lunch I'll leave to meet The Dad on the Atlantic coast of New Hampshire.  He'll be riding from New Brunswick, so he's got a full day's ride tomorrow.  That makes it The Official First Day of the Trip, even though we'll be coming to Bellows Falls for the first night.  One last night in my own bed, then my 6 weeks of traveling really begins.

Many people have been asking for weeks if I'm "excited".  I normally answer "yes" because I'm definitely looking forward to the trip, but "excited" really isn't the right word.  I've been too busy trying to wrap up things at work and finish prep for the trip to really get excited.  People also often wonder if I'm nervous.  I am, but not much, perhaps for the same reasons I'm not especially excited.  It certainly doesn't feel like I'm about to leave on a Big Adventure.  Perhaps that's just because I'm going to work in the morning, and sleeping in my own bed tomorrow night.  Still, I can't see myself feeling much different about Saturday either.  I figure I'll have to be on the road several days before it starts to feel real.

For those of you who've been asking if I'm going to sleep OK the night before: I'm wiped.  I'm gonna sleep like the dead.

5 More Sleeps

I've been meaning to post an update since "7 days to go".  It's now just "5 days to go", and I'm firing this off before heading to bed.  This weekend I:

• changed the motor oil
• installed a camera mount on the bike, and took some very bumpy videos
• installed the rear forward mud guard
• charged up the battery
• put stickers on the panniers (CAN and VT)
• installed Windows on the MacBook via Bootcamp, and set up some software I'd be needing.
• spent way too much time working on my desktop computer, which recently died and holds some files I want. 
• took a nice walk with my wife at sunset to the local ice cream shop.  I'll miss this while away.

My apologies for the extreme camera shake in this video.  The road is much smoother than the video would indicate.  The camera is sitting at the end of a rather long arm, so every vibration is being amplified into some pretty gross movement.  I'll have to work on that somehow.



My desktop died on me last week the day after I copied all my music and all my photos over onto the MacBook we'd be taking on the trip.  It's fortunate I got those files off before it died, but I've been trying to resurrect it before the trip because there are a few more files I'd like to have with me, including the BMW's mileage and service logs.  Today I found the problem: both drives from my RAID 1 array died at the exact same time.  For you non-geeks out there, that's like having both your main and backup parachutes fail... although perhaps a little less lethal.  In this case, I think the first failure caused an event on the 12V line shared by both drives, and took out the second.  This is like the spare parachute getting tangled up in the main parachute, causing you to plummet.  I'm gonna stop with this analogy now, and just show you where the smoke got out.  (Every microchip runs on smoke.  When the smoke gets out, the chip stops working.)

 Redundancy FAIL

I've got an off-site backup of all my important data, although that copy is probably 6 months old.  I think I can get a new control board for one of the dead hard drives so I'll have all my data back eventually, just after the trip.

For now I've got to focus on the trip.  I've one last bit of bike work to do this week, which is changing the gearbox oil.  I plan on getting that done tomorrow night.  I've got a very extensive packing list, as well as a To Do list, but I still can't stop my mind from constantly racing about getting ready, getting ready, getting ready.  I'm normally quite good at not dwelling on things, and it's not like it's keeping me up at night (wait 'till Thursday), but it sure is distracting.

Advent(ure) Calendar

Reason 6,975,129,342,405 why my wife is awesome:
She made me an "Advent" calendar to countdown to the trip!

A couple of week's ago she was all giddy, teasing me that she was making something in her awwww-fice, and I didn't know what it waaaa-uz. She's rarely any good at keeping a secret for long, and it was a month until the trip starts anyways, so she had to give it to me right away!

She'd made a box with 30 doors and compartments to hold a little treat for each day of the countdown. The box is decorated with travel and Alaska themed paper, and road work and camping themed stickers. There are motorcycle helmets by the tents!

My wife = teh awesome.

Memorial Day Weekend Shakedown - Monday

About 500 km (310 miles)

Monday we slept a little late again, knowing we each had plenty of time to get home. Breaking camp took a bit longer than I'd expected, but it always does when you're out of practice. Dad and I had camped well together, meaning we both knew what needed doing and went about it without needing to talk too much. I'm often a creature of habit, and am looking forward to a camping routine.

Despite my love for routine and a penchant for planning, my favorite way to ride is without a plan. When Dad and I left camp I headed west with no plan but to head south sometime after reaching New Hampshire. My routine was determined by whim, the need for gas, and more uniquely the need to detour town parades. I detoured around 3 Memorial Day parades (once with detour signs that did not lead back to the route I had been on), and was somehow caught right in the middle of the parade in Farmington, ME. The police politely stopped me and the Harley rider in front of me just as the parade began marching onto the main drag right in front of us. They hadn't signaled for us to pull over, but once I realized the parade was heading right at us I did the best I could. The Harley guy didn't budge tough, so the driving vets and marching bands had to swing wide around us. They didn't seem to mind; I got lots of smiles, several nods, and a few waves. Everyone seems to like a traveler on a motorcycle.


View Memorial Day Weekend - Monday in a larger map

Rt 2 is pretty boring through central ME, but once you get west of Farmington it gets a interesting, and by the time you start climbing through the White Mountains in NH it's a downright beautiful ride. I failed to stop for lunch in Gorham like I'd planned (the plan being hatched as I entered Gorham) because, as so often happens, I'm indecisive about where to stop for food so I just keep on riding. I stop for a banana on the side of the road overlooking Mount Washington, considering how it's summit is the site of highest surface wind speed ever recorded. Seems impossible on a day like today. I end up eating at a decent dinner near Twin Mountain about half an hour later.

Headed down I93 through Franconia State Park for a short while, passing Mt. Lafayette which Jess and I climbed last year with our friends Eric and Sybil. It's a nice ride through the steep valley there, but I93 widens out soon enough and gets boring so I bailed as soon as possible and started winding down Rt 3. I let myself get pulled back east a ways and ended up in Laconia for the first time. The weather was hot and sunny, and the whole town seemed to buzz with summer. I thought about pulling over and checking out the lake for a bit, but a Nick in motion will stay in motion, and I just kept rolling. Not long after that the roads got familiar, and I was home.

All in all it was a very enjoyable weekend camping and riding with Dad, and I'm feeling confident in our kit after this shakedown.

Memorial Day Weekend Shakedown - Sunday

About 360 km (225 miles)

Sunday we did the obvious: we rode.

We talked about but decided against packing everything up and loading the bikes for practice. We both agree the loading had gone quite well, and we were happy with our 'systems'. We wanted to ride down to the coast to enjoy the views and hopefully the cool air. We thought about Acadia National Park, but decided on Boothbay Harbor.

Jess and I discovered Boothbay Harbor when we rode from Toronto to New Brunswick (east through the US, west through Canada) in 2005 - me on my Honda VF750 Magna and Jess on her Kawi Ninja 250. 250! It was her first big trip. She's amazing. We camped at Gray Homestead Campground for a night, and enjoyed some fantastic lobster from a Robinson's on the wharf.

The next time we visited was just last fall when I was delivering my Dad's R1200GS to him in New Brunswick. Jess and I had decided to take a few days to get there, so we hit up Whitehorse Gear then headed down to Boothbay for the night, this time staying at Sprucewold Lodge. If you've got a thing for wood grain, you'll love Sprucewold Lodge. The room and bed weren't really impressive, but the atmosphere was great and the buffet brunch was even better.

Anyway, Dad and I had lunch at the Fisherman's Wharf Inn right in the middle of Boothbay Harbor, and enjoyed sitting out on the shaded patio watching families and friends and tour groups come and go on the wharf next door. We then rode down the the southernmost tip of the area, Newagen at Cape Harbor. I forgot all about showing Dad Sprucewold Lodge, so I led us out of town right after that.


View Memorial Day Weekend - Sunday in a larger map

The plan was to ride east on 1 up to Belfast before heading back towards our campsite at Newport, but thankfully we managed to miss Belfast and kept on riding until we reached the rather stunning Penobscot Narrows Bridge and Observatory. I'd happened upon it about 7 years ago before it was opened, and even then I was quite taken with it. It's a gorgeous and elegant structure, with some pretty cool engineering including continuous cables that don't actually anchor in the pylons, and are encased in pressurized nitrogen to prevent corrosion.

We crossed the bridge just to do it, then corrected our course and headed back to camp. The grocery store had just closed when we got into Newport, so we ate at the Pizza Hut. Large Supreme for $10! Cheap and sooo good, even if 1/2 a large was a bit much. I don't have Pizza Hut very often, and it still happily reminds me of being a young teen in Fredericton when Mom would get two medium Pizza Hut pizzas (one Supreme, one half Hawaiian, one half vegi), 2L of Pepsi, and some movies from Blockbuster. That wasn't every Friday - those were special Fridays.

The day's riding had reminded me that I simply cannot wear a bandana in my current helmet. I wore one in my previous Arai Profile e for years and it never bothered me, but since getting my latest helmet a few years ago I'm always left with a wicked headache if I try having anything else besides my head in there. (Earplugs are difficult, the headset nearly impossible, and a bandana can only last a few hours.) After having a headache most of the day, I was happy to be fed and heading to bed. We had another fire, I lost my new bottle of soap by dropping it behind the shower stall liner when I tried to place it on the (non-existant) top ledge, and then bedded down.

Baxter(d) State Park

Even though it's much closer to Dad than it is to me, I originally wanted to meet up in Baxter State Park for our Memorial Weekend shakedown trip.  I figured some of the more out-of-the-way sites wouldn't be overrun with long weekend campers, the hiking would be good, and there would be tons of dirt roads to practice riding on with the bikes all loaded up.  To my pleasant surprise, there were lots of sites still available in Baxter when I finally got around to checking; so many, in fact, that I took my time calling to make reservations.  I'm eventually talking with a park ranger, and I'm literally starting to say my credit card number when she stops me and says, "oh, I forgot to go over the rules first, just in case."  Just in case what?  Just in case I plan on canceling my reservations at the last minute?  Just in case I plan on feeding the bears?  Just in case plan on hunting endangered species with an assault rifle?  Wrong, wrong, and wrong.  Just in case I plan on doing something really crazy, like showing up on a motorcycle!  Baxter State Park does not allow motorcycles.  Period.

"Why?" I inquire.   

"The roads can be really rough, and some bikes couldn't make it.  Also, there can be noise issues." she informs me.  Now, I know I'm not going to get anywhere arguing with this lady, which I admit to her, but I find it necessary to point out that those issues could very easily apply to many cars.  My bike is make quite specifically for roads exactly like theirs, and is no louder than most pickup trucks.  Those points, of course, were of no matter.  We would not be staying in Baxter State Park for this trip.

Baxterds.

Memorial Day Weekend Shakedown - Saturday

About 438 km (272 miles)

In order to shakedown our packing list and methods for packing the bikes, we wanted to meet up for a few weekend camping trips before we left on The Trip. Unfortunately, I'm using every bit of my vacation (from this year, a week from last year, and two weeks unpaid) just to take The Trip - there isn't an hour left over for anything else. So, we made the most of the Memorial Day long weekend in the US and met up in Maine for three days of riding and two nights of camping.

I'd been busy all week with some repairs to my bike, including repairs to my repairs. (That's another story.) Instead of leaving work early on Friday like I'd once hoped, I left Saturday morning with the aim of meeting Dad at the Sebasticook Lake Campground sometime between 2 and 3. Having packed and loaded the bike Friday night, I got a much needed good night's sleep and left at a leisurely 9:30 Saturday morning.

The riding was good, and uneventful. I'd wanted to throw the bike around some familiar curves on 123 a little east of Alstead, but I was stuck behind a slow pickup truck through my favorite local twisties, so that particular section had to wait for the trip back in a few days. Still, the bike felt fine even loaded down, and even with the new battery I was carrying for Dad unbalancing me to the right.

I made my way across Vermont and New Hampshire on smaller routes, but opted for making good time once I hit I95 in Maine. I pulled off into Saco (near Old Orchard Beach) for lunch and gas, where a Dairy Queen caught my eye (stomach?) with the promise of actual flame broiled burgers and yummy onion rings. The rub? This Dairy Queen only serves ice cream. I briefly consider eating several ice cream treats for lunch before deciding to get gas then decide on lunch. I head next door to a gas station that has a Subway inside. The rub? They have absolutely no seating inside or out. I could easily sit on the curb out front to eat, but I wasn't looking forward to a sub anyways so I decide to eat at Clif bar and roll on. Damn you, Saco.


View Memorial Day Weekend - Saturday in a larger map

The rest of the trip is pretty uneventful, although my new earplugs bothered me quite a bit and I arrived feeling wind blown and with a bit of a headache. The girl at the campground's check in desk tells me my Dad's already there, and that the fees are taken care of. She appears extra careful to remind me the campground has a strict 5 mph speed limit. I s l o w l y make by way to our campsite to find my Dad laid out on his new Therm-a-Rest Neo Air, beside the picnic table.

After chatting about our rides and recent bike mods and repairs, we setup camp. We head to the grocery store to get food for the weekend, including a vegi stir fry for dinner. Unfortunately, I somehow pick a brown rice that takes 40 minutes to cook. That wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't also forgotten the accessory for my JetBoil stove that lets you place a pot on it. Without that accessory, we had to hold the pot over the stove, while stirring the rice for over 40 minutes, so it wouldn't burn, . I = rice fail. Eventually, dinner was yummy.

We threw a disc around until dark, during which time my father discovers, learns, and nearly perfects the flick. I honestly can't remember seeing someone learn it as fast as he did. We should find pick-up games across North America! We had a small fire, left 2/3 of the wood for the next night, and turned it. I was happy to be in a tent, even with all the RVs around, and man is that Neo Air a comfortable ultra-light sleeping pad!