Curse weathermen all you want, but never, never laugh at Mother Nature while on a motorcycle. I seemed to always be sliding in behind the rain, but she hit me big with the cross-winds. They�d have put the wenches in the water had I acutally been sailing. But today I would have preferred the calm winds of a damned drifter day as we call them on race day on the Chesapeake. The gusts didn�t always come from the lake side either. Cornering was interesting between the wet roads, rain-slicked paint lines, oil in the center of the lanes, and the gusting winds. Despite being in Canada I wasn�t interested in road lugeing.
At my gas stop in Marathon, ON, I met a guy riding the other way. He was doing his first IBA ride, the BunBurner 1500 and then some. He was riding from Halifax to Thunder Bay to go to a movie with friends from Edmonton and then back home. And my friends think I�m nuts for riding as far as I do. We didn�t introduce ourselves but talked about the important stuff, the weather. He went though wind, rain, and hail between Marathon and Sault St. Marie and confirmed a long held theory of mine. Hail hurts when riding a motorcycle. I hoped I continued to slide in behind the rain and it looked good until Sault St. Marie where Mother Nature looked poised to take another serious shot at my life.
In Sault St. Marie the road turns east again. Paralleling me to the north and ahead of me to the east, and appearing to be moving east, were more lightening ground strikes than I�ve seen in quite a while. I could see the headlines, �Motorcyclist struck by lightening.� Well, I was sure I was going to get wet with 270 miles yet to go to the dry, warm bed in North Bay. With the full moon lighting the sky above and the wet roads I could see that I continued to trail the rain.
Sometimes you just can�t figure how you�ve been living so right to have made it through over 600 miles of wet roads with the rain in sight and never to have gotten wet from above. I pulled into North Bay at 1 am ET, 19 hours 45 minutes and 1052 miles since Eau Claire and 2001 miles in about 44 hours. I was two hours behind schedule due to the wet roads and cross-winds and the sometimes lack of opportunity to pass slower traffic on the two lane transcontinental highway. The scenery was great and I would have liked to have stopped and appreciated it more, but unfortunately time did not allow that today. The eleven hours of fighting the cross-winds had really beaten me up. I decided to get a good night sleep, 5 1/2 hours, and get a 7 am wake-up call even though it likely meant not making the 60 hour goal.
Monday mornings check of the weather presented a freezing 15�. What!! Oh yea, I�m in Canada and that�s 15� Celsius. Some quick math gave me about 58� F so the thermals remained packed. The radar and forecast showed a clear route all the way home.
I still had the previous nights cross-winds for a couple hours, otherwise beautiful weather and everything was going well. Well that is until Pembroke, ON, where it appeared that the entire population of Ontario had been camping that holiday weekend and packed up their mobile homes and trailers to return home at the same time. Suddenly I was down to 40 mph with lines of cars behind the slow moving road elephants. So I started picking off cars a couple at a time and eventually found clean air to continue sailing along before catching up to the next herd.
Finally a turn back towards the States. I�m now cutting south through narrow rural highways which slows me a little as there are now intersections and even a few driveways. But it is not too far til the holiday traffic on the multi-lane divided Hwy 401, talk about contrast. Across the Thousand Islands and into the US. The day is progressing beautifully and uneventfully which I didn�t mind at all. By the time I reach Elmira, NY, I could see I�d have to make pretty good time down Hwy 15 to make it in under 62 hours. The closer I got the better it looked. I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. My clock showed I�d make it with 10 to 15 minutes to spare, but I didn�t note how much the gas pump time was off from my bike�s time. The official start and end time is the time on the printed gas receipt so I�d make sure I use the same pump at the same station.
I turned to make the last stretch on the bypass around Williamsport to find that the troopers have a speed trap working and everyone slows to 45 mph, 10 mph under the limit, aagghh! Get out of their sight and pick-up the pace the last couple miles. Zip into the station and fortunately the same open pump. The short time it takes to fill the tank seems to take forever. Done, printing the receipt, printing the receipt, come on, come on! 6:50 pm. Six minutes to spare after the short 571 mile day and 2572 miles in just less than 62 hours. Huge sigh of relief and an equally big smile. I didn�t make 60 hours, but 62 isn�t bad either. And at this moment not a sore muscle in my body. Sure , I could have gotten a little less sleep each night, but I wanted to still enjoy the ride. I stayed in an Iron Butt Motel once. I haven�t lost enough sense to want to do it regularly. A good sleep and a refreshing shower make the following day much easier and enjoyable.
Returning to the trooper barracks I found a little more resistance this time. This trooper listen very suspiciously but when I showed him the witness form from the other trooper he reluctantly conceded.
Most people I know don�t see the point in a trip like this. They say, �You never get to see anything.� They couldn�t be more off. If I hadn�t done this trip I wouldn�t have seen what I did. Granted it was what you could see from the road and the few times I pulled off. It is also the people you meet, all be it for only a short time, but after hundreds of miles of the road, wind, and my horrible singing, I�m happy to briefly talk to someone. Motorcycle riding isn�t about the destination, but the journey. The destination for my rides is the garage that is ten feet behind me when I start. I just take the long way home.