Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – The Man in the High Castle
Mattawa, Ontario – At the Valois Restaurant and Motel, in Mattawa Ontario, churchgoers have flowed in, nearly filling the restaurant. Worship done they sit at tables craving cold meats on over-processed bread, served with a side of fries and consumed with a dash of Sunday morning righteousness. They are looking askance at the stranger in [...]
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Community
Heading out of Trois-Rivieres, the Ducati Multistrada and I arc slightly south and skirt the edges of Montreal. The morning starts with something novel and surprising for a wet-coaster like myself, a new type of rain. I thought I’d seen it all, but Quebec serves up something new – a cool, penetrating drizzle. I’m not [...]
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – On the Run
On the back roads of New Brunswick, the fall colours are gathering; greens transforming to oranges, yellows and golds. They would make a tremendous backdrop, except right now they’re making a tremendous blur. The road quality is horrendous; we’re diving between potholes, ruts, wallows and severe frost heaves that compress the rear suspension and the [...]
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Transitions
Nova Scotia is built for motorcycle touring. I’m sure of it, provided you hit the right speed to skim over the roads of the Sunrise Trail, which run from smooth to brutally potholed. They are gently winding and combined with late fall light and a warm day the ride makes for motorcycling satisfaction.
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Meet the Smallwood
Under pallid florescent light and surrounded by clinical décor, people pace; sallow, tired, arms folded and tense. In the corner a man braced against the wall rocks to-and-fro. Elsewhere, another sits on a metal bench, staring blankly forward at nothingness, his legs in a sewing machine jiggle. At a table a woman works through a [...]
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – The Irish Loop
This is the Newfoundland you’ve seen on every postcard ever sent, craggy red rock coasts, crashing blue waves, white foam, and seabirds mid-glide…
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Cape Spear, NFL
This is it, the end of the road. Literally. After 4801kms of travel from Toronto, the Multistrada is the eastmost motorcycle in North America. Cape Spear is (arguably) the most easterly point on the continent. In the mute of the overcast it is also barren, peaceful and contemplative.
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Sepia and Purple
Sepia tones of sunset have given way to the purples of dusk, casting the rugged moraine into subtle relief. One hundred and seventy kilometers from St. John’s on the highway one, Newfoundland becomes a heartbreakingly and beautifully desolate terrain of glacial erratics and tolts.
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Leif Ericson
Channel-Port-aux Basques, NL – In the deepening dusk light, women shaped like baking-powder biscuits look on disapprovingly, while children on bicycles wave and give a thumbs up. The Multistrada’s basso exhaust note reverberates through the tight winding streets, which serpent across each other in a tangle never un-knotted by city planners.
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – The Cabot Trail
Thwack! Something hits me in the neck, hard. Happens all the time riding, whatever it was probably just bounced off. Three minutes later the rain starts, and I hunch my shoulders against the onslaught and “sting”. Not just “sting”, the kind of sting that sends you careening to the shoulder. The sort of sting that [...]
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Hot and Cold Running Llamas
After a while all the hotels blur together. Amenities begin to lose definition, as long as accommodations are clean, dry and comfortable they serve a purpose. Some are nicer than others, but after a while the running down Deltas meld with the aspiring Days Inns while Best Westerns roam the wilds of variable conditions and service. So, what do you do to stand out? How about hot and cold running llamas? Stonehame Chalets in Scotsburn, NS has it sorted.
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Histories
I know the man’s voice with its lecture hall delivery and resonance. His white hair, with a hint of wild to it. His jutting lower jaw. Here in PEI, nearly the other side of the country the odds of running into an acquaintance should be slim. Yet, despite probability forcing doubt on recollection, I know [...]
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Confederation Bridge
Not even I should be able to get lost on PEI. At 224km long and 64km wide, lost takes a lot of doing on PEI. And yet here I am, subject of my own refusal to u-turn, on a red dirt road that the GPS shows as “almost” connecting to the 13? Or was it the 2? Or the 225? So then, the Ducati Multistrada isn’t an adventure bike… PEI’s dirt roads, a vivid surreal clay red that V. van Gogh would approve of, say otherwise.
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – On Roads
Percé, Quebec, no bones about it; this is a tourist town like so many others, save for coastal splendour that would make a landscape painter weep with frustration at being unable to capture its grandeur and subtlety, and an amazing driveway…
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – The Foam on the Bang
Gaspé Peninsula — Between hotelier Evelyn Pouliot of “Saint-Maxime Petit Hotel” and I, we’ve worked out the literal translation for her restaurant recommendation here in Mont-Louis – “The Foam on the Bang.” Some things sound better in the original we decide, “La Broue dans l’Toupet” is one. Figuratively, it’s a restaurant term for freakishly busy, [...]
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – The Saint Lawrence
In 1535, as part of his second trip to Canada, Jacques Cartier became the first European explorer to sail the inland part of the Saint Lawrence. Later, in 1613, the river served as the primary route the exploration of North America’s, pioneered by French explorer Samuel de Champlain. Those facts from social studies never had [...]
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Poutine
It’s a heart stopping ride, thanks to the diet. Poutine is everything your doctor ever warned you about, but better. French fries, covered in cheese curd and doused in gravy… The gold standard on which all other heart stopping poutine death is based.
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Jail
I’m writing you from Jail. Yes, some would agree that incarceration is long over due thanks to wanton acts of disregard for various social standards, but the details of my megalomania are quite inconsequential…
Ducati: Many Roads of Canada – Prologue
My “cunning plan” to ride the Buell Ulysses across Canada has been shattered in another journalists accident, before the trip proper even started. Luckily, Ducati’s stepped in with a flight upgrade.
North: The KTM Summer of Adventure – 19: Port Hardy to Nanaimo, BC
Is that a bloodstain on the carpet? Last night when the Ferry docked in Port Hardy, at the northern end of Vancouver Island, I found myself casting around for a hotel room, the Thunderbird Inn seemed to fit the bill. The lady at the front desk, congenial, plump and bespectacled, seemed only too willing to [...]
North: The KTM Summer of Adventure – 18: Prince Rupert to Port Hardy, BC
“Wake up” and 4:45 AM are not connected concepts in my mind, unless you’re talking about staggering to the washroom as a matter of necessity. According to BC Ferries, I need to be checked in two hours before the ferry to Port Hardy departs. That means packing the bike, and being at the boat by [...]
North: The KTM Summer of Adventure – 17: Stewart to Prince Rupert, BC
Last night I snuggled into the coziness of the Bayview Hotel, which is part of the Ripley Creek Inn complex. A restored period piece sitting above the Bitter Creek Café, the Bayview Hotel is refreshingly authentic, comfortably homey and decidedly inexpensive, and the café below puts the weak offerings of Bell II’s cuisine to shame. [...]
North: The KTM Summer of Adventure – 16: Telegraph Creek to Bell II, BC
The River Song Café doesn’t open until noon on Sundays and that’s not helping my morning any. I’m a breakfast person and right now my blood sugar level is off, riding feels like the toughest thing in the world. I’m not a morning person, and this morning has had a unique start. A French-Canadian woman [...]
North: The KTM Summer of Adventure – 15: Watson Lake, YT to Telegraph Creek, BC
So KTM, would now be a good time to mention that my off-road history could be measured in quantities prefixed with “mili”? Likely not, because the ride from Dease Lake to Telegraph has me debating subtleties of throttle control like never before. By the way KTM, the fuel injection is a tad jerky at low speed isn’t it? Give there’s a billion-foot drop to the left I’m all about control.
