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My friend Marna's mother had a heart attack, so Marna was down staying with her in St Thomas (near London, Ontario) for a couple of weeks. I decided to ride the motorcycle out to see her. I called to say I was coming, and to get directions (from her mom, because Marna doesn't drive and therefore doesn't give directions very well). I told her I had a committee meeting at my house at noon on Saturday, but after the meeting I would ride out, spend the night, and come back home on Sunday.
Friday night, I rode to the shop where I bought my chaps, to have them hemmed. When I bought the chaps, they had told me I should wear them a bit, to break them in before they hemmed them. They had stretched out a bit, so I was glad I had waited. While the shop did the alterations, I had fun looking at all the small leather items. I ended up buying three key chains with 6" leather tassels, one each in purple, blue, and green. When I got home I took the keychains off and attached the tassel parts to the back of my jacket. The one thing I hadn't liked about my jacket was that it was so unremittingly black. (I don't care how fashionable it is to dress all in black, I still think it's boring!) I was pleased to have made the jacket more personal.
Next morning, the meeting got started late, and went overtime. Then I had to load last minute items onto the bike, and put lots of red, orange, and yellow hair ties onto my waist length braid so it wouldn't come apart and get all tangled up. It was after 5pm by the time I left my house in Ypsilanti. I called Marna to warn her I might be a bit late.
I set out down I-94 east towards Detroit. The freeway was quiet, not a lot of traffic, and I was making pretty good time, when suddenly there were all these signs saying "Detour," "All Traffic Must Exit" etc. Construction! Argh! All the traffic was diverted onto Michigan Ave, the old surface street that runs parallel to I-94. Michigan Ave was a parking lot. There I was, stuck in traffic on the edge of Detroit, on Morris the air cooled Maxim. After about fifteen minutes, during which I traveled three whole blocks, I pulled into the parking lot of a Rite Aid pharmacy to let the bike cool down and make a new plan. Some girls were walking across the parking lot, and I turned towards them to ask what they knew of the traffic situation. They spoke first, and asked me if I was a boy or a girl? I laughed, said I was a girl, and one of them said to the other "I told you so!" Unfortunately they were not able to tell me anything about the traffic situation. Neither was an older man who parked next to me with a truck full of brooms.
Well, I didn't want to sit there, and I didn't want the bike overheating, so I took off down a side street. I picked my way through the unfamiliar back streets towards the Ambassador Bridge. I didn't encounter significant amounts of traffic anywhere else. I guess all the cars in town were trapped on Michigan Ave. I passed through some abandoned looking industrial areas, but nothing too dreadful. I went through an area that had lots of interesting storefronts and people on the sidewalks. I passed a big city park where people were playing frisbee. Eventually I saw stores that had signs in Spanish, so I knew I was near the bridge. I found the bridge without any trouble. My mother would have been very upset if she'd known I was riding around downtown Detroit by myself on a motorcycle, so it's a good thing she didn't know.
I filled up at the gas station next to the bridge. It's a HUGE gas station, bigger than all but the largest truck stops. I bet they sell a lot of gas there; gas is so much cheaper on the US side of the border that everyone fills up before crossing. Every one of the paper towel dispensers was empty, and the attendant definitely went to the Dogbert school for self-service attendants; he just shrugged when I asked for paper towel to clean my face shield. At the tollbooth, I had to stop and dig for money for the toll, which gave the sleazy toll collector time to undress me with his eyes and say, "Ooo-ee! Wish I had me a woman who'd take me for a ride on a motorcycle!" Ick. I gave him the $2 and roared off over the bridge. What a creep. I was glad to be heading for Canada; the people working at the gas stations and tool booths are so much nicer.
On the Canadian side, I got through customs without much trouble, except they asked me to tell them my license plate number. I'd never been aware of this when crossing in a car, but apparently they have a mirror positioned to see your license plate. The mirror didn't work to see the plate on the bike, so I scooted forward just a little so the customs guy could see it. I stopped at the money exchange and got an Ontario map.
It's less than 200 miles from Ypsilanti, Michigan, to St Thomas, Ontario, if you take the direct route. I didn't want to take the direct route, though; who wants to spend hours on the 401 crossing the flat empty landscape of southern Ontario? Boring! So I examined the map and decided to take Provincial Route 3. According to the map, Route 3 wound east out of Windsor, through some small towns and along the northern shore of Lake Erie, before turning north towards London. Apparently this had changed since the printing of the map. The provincial government had dropped some or all of the provincial highways into the laps of the local governmental units, and Route 3 had been renamed something different in every area. Each time I crossed a political boundary I saw another sign that said "Effective Jan 1, 1998, 3 has been renamed X" with X being Talbot Trail, or County Road 43, or Main Street, or Essex 3, or whatever. Still, I managed to not lose my way for quite a while. I passed hundreds of greenhouses, and the giant tomato in downtown Leamington (Tomato Capitol of Canada!). I passed through some nice small towns. When Lake Erie appeared on my right, it took me by surprise. Suddenly it was there, without any warning. I rode along the shore for nearly an hour, and during that time I passed no condos, no yacht clubs, no lakeshore cabins, no scenic pull-offs, no souvenir stands. I didn't even pass through any towns. It was just farmland. Canada is similar to the USA in so many ways, and then suddenly it's different.
As the sun got low, the road turned away from the lake, and soon I was in the small market town of Blenheim. I stopped at a little shopping center and got a slice of pizza which I ate sitting on the curb outside. There was a building across the street, some kind of packing plant for fruit. They had a sign painted on the front saying that Blenheim was home of the world champion cherry pit spitter. I guess every town needs some claim to fame.
It was getting dark as I left Blenheim, and this was where I lost the former Route 3. Next thing I knew, I was at an on-ramp to the 401. At this point I knew I had strayed. I decided I'd better just hop on the freeway, because I needed gas, and who knows where I'd find an open gas station away from the freeway? It wasn't too crowded, and I made good time, even though there was the inevitable construction. I stopped at the first plaza I came to, and as I rode down over a 3 inch drop from the pavement of the expressway to the torn up pavement in the plaza, I though "uh - oh!" Getting back over that lip would be a trick, but there isn't any other way out of a plaza than to continue down the freeway. Filing that ominous thought in the back of my mind, I stopped at the pump and filled my tank.
The plaza was crowded, and as I filled my tank a car with two women in it pulled up to wait for my pump. Before I went up to pay, I rolled the bike forward so they could get to the pump. The woman driving the car got out, and asked me if I'd been to the festival. Festival? Was there some kind of motorcycle festival going on in the area? I asked her, "What festival?" She said, "The Women's Music Festival." I said, "Ah, right, the Women's Music Festival! No, I didn't go, though I know people who did." Later, after I'd successfully negotiated the jump back onto the expressway, I thought about this some more, why they'd think I'd been at the Women's Music Festival (are there a lot of bikers there?), when suddenly it dawned. I had blue, purple, and green tassels on the back of my coat, and red, yellow, and orange hair ties. I was a lone biker woman in leather, flying the rainbow flag of gay pride. They thought I was a lesbian! (While the Michigan Women's Music Festival isn't strictly a lesbian affair it's definitely something many lesbians travel to, and it was just winding down.) These women were probably on their way back from the festival themselves, and thought I was a fellow traveler. They were probably pointing me out to each other, and admiring the subtlety of my pride flag. My flag was so subtle I hadn't even noticed it myself!
At the plaza, I'd examined my map, and decided that I would turn off on Route 4 (assuming it was still Route 4). Route 4 intersected Route 3 just north of St. Thomas, and from there I could pick up Marna's mother's directions. I found Route 4 without trouble, and headed south until I reached Route 3, which actually still had a sign. The directions Marna's mom had given me said that Route 3 and Route 4 combined, and that I should stay on Route 3, that it became the main street of St Thomas. So I continued along the combined Routes 3 and 4. I didn't see Route 3 turn away anywhere, so I figured I must still be on it. I passed a sign that said "Entering St Thomas, population 35,000." Then I drove for about ten minutes through the darkness. I didn't pass a person, a house, or an open business. Eventually I passed a sign that said "Leaving St. Thomas." I knew that I was lost. I stopped by a flashing traffic signal to examine my map. It didn't have any answers for me, but while I was stopped, two or three cars came to the intersection, and they all turned right. I figured they couldn't all be wrong, so I decided to use the Dirk Gently method of navigation. (Lost? Pick a car and follow it!)
Eventually I found myself on a big shopping strip, with lots of traffic. I started looking for a pizza parlor. Places that deliver pizza always have big maps, and they know how to find people's houses. After a short distance, I spotted a Dominos Pizza. I turned into the parking lot, and was surprised to find myself in a small herd of motorcycles. The motorcycle riders were there too, revving their engines, chatting, circling around. I felt a little uncomfortable. Some acknowledgment seemed called for, but I never know what to say or do around other bikers. These riders would probably be friendly. But what if they weren't? What would I say to them if they spoke to me? What if they didn't like disheveled lone women wearing pride flags on old Jap bikes? They were definitely a Harley crowd, and I didn't see any women driving; the only women were some stylish looking passengers. What if they whistled, made dirty jokes at my expense, called me "baby" or were otherwise offensive? I hate situations like that, because I never know what to say. If I don't react to offensive behavior, it sometimes scales up, as whoever it is tries to get a reaction. If I let them know that I don't like it, that's victory for them. If I try to laugh it off, they think I'm condoning it. There were so many bikers, and I'm not that good at dealing with groups, so I decided to avoid the whole situation. I ignored them completely. I didn't look to the left or to the right. I just parked, went into the pizza place, figured out where I was going, and left. They didn't bother me. I'm sad that I couldn't figure out how to deal with them, because I would have liked to have exchanged friendly greetings with them, chatted a little about our mutual hobby or at least exchanged some smiles.
The house was just the other side of downtown, and the road I was on was the main street. So I continued up the road. Unfortunately, I had to make a detour. St Thomas was celebrating the Iron Horse Festival, and several blocks of the main street were closed. There was a big ferris wheel right in the middle of town, and lots of cotton candy stands and beer tents. The streets were full of people drinking and partying. Trying not to hit pedestrians required my full attention. Eventually I found my way around the carnival and arrived at Marna's mother's house. Marna and her mother were relieved to see me; they'd been starting to worry. It was close to midnight, but they'd been waiting to have dinner with me when I arrived. We had Chinese food delivered, and we laughed and talked late into the night.
The next day I set out around mid-morning for home. In daylight, I was able to find my way back along Route 3 without any difficulty. The road went through farm fields, mainly flat, with an occasional ravine or drainage ditch. I passed a marker by one of the drainage ditches that said "Primitive Earthworks." There wasn't any other text, no explanation, just that. I wonder what the primitive earthworks were? I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Were the primitive earthworks discovered when they built the road? How did they know they were primitive earthworks? What are primitive earthworks, anyways? I always wonder about things like that.
I stopped at a convenience store in Blenheim to get gas and pick up something to eat. I decided to carry the food on the bike and stop in a park somewhere to eat it. I had been wearing earplugs all morning, but I didn't put them back in when I left the gas station, because I figured I'd find a park and stop so soon, that it wasn't worth the trouble. Since I didn't have the earplugs in, I suddenly noticed the new noise the bike was making. Oh no!!! I stopped, and tried to find the cause of the noise. It sounded like a car I once had that lost all its oil, like a loud rod knock. I was afraid I'd ridden for miles all unaware of the sound, as my pistons scraped wider channels to move in. The first thing I did was put it on the center stand and check the oil. It was fine, I had plenty of oil. So I started examining the outside, trying to determine the source of the sound. In the background of my mind, I was already trying to think of who might be home that had a key to my house, who I could ask to go get my pickup truck, drive it to Canada, and fetch me home. Thank goodness it didn't come to that, because I spotted the problem. One of the nuts that held one of the four exhaust pipes onto the front of the motor had fallen off. It was this pipe that was making the racket. Wonder of wonders, the nut had fallen and lodged in the curve of the pipes below, so it wasn't even lost! Of course everything in there was too hot to touch, but I used my needlenose pliers to grab the nut from its crevice, and to thread it back onto the stud. Then I tightened it down as much as I could with my crescent wrench. The noise did not entirely go away, but it lessened. I decided that it was OK to continue riding; exhaust noises are not fatal.
I rode along the road out of Blenheim looking for a park, but I didn't find one. Eventually, I found a spot by the side of the road that wasn't labeled a park, but it looked like one. There were two picnic tables and a porta-john by a little gravel drive. I decided to stop. I sat on one of the tables and ate my sandwich. I was there about a half an hour. Hardly any traffic went by on the road, a couple dozen cars, max. But three of those cars stopped at this pullout, and the drivers visited the porta-john. I guess that when you've got such a long stretch of road with no towns, businesses, or public places of any kind, that porta-john becomes an important amenity!
I rode into Windsor and onto the Ambassador Bridge. There was a serious crush of cars waiting to pay toll, but it moved right along. However, the line was quite long for US customs, on the other side. I had to stop, not far from the top of the bridge, and wait in line. The line moved, not terribly slowly, but not very quickly either. I discovered that I could turn the bike off, put it in neutral, and the slope of the bridge was enough to carry me forward every time the line moved. But it was definitely hot sitting so still in the sun wearing all that leather. I took my gloves off and unzipped my coat. Eventually I got to the customs booth. The harried looking customs official asked me my citizenship. I said US, and he waved me through. It was so fast that I didn't even have time to get my jacket zipped, and I had to go straight onto the freeway or be run over by the car behind me. So I rode off down the freeway with my coat flapping in the wind.
Rather than risk getting detoured off I-94 again, I decided to take I-96 west. By the time I got to Livonia, I'd had enough of the freeway and enough of being slapped by my coat, so I got off the freeway, zipped up the coat, and headed out Hines Drive. Hines Drive goes twenty or thirty miles through a linear park along the Rouge River. It's a lovely winding road with lots of shade, an oasis in the midst of urban sprawl.
At the intersection of Hines Drive and Seven Mile, I saw a motorcycle parked on the shoulder. The rider was standing a few feet off, looking tired. I thought perhaps he had a mechanical failure, so I stopped. After all, we're supposed to look out for each other, right? The bike was a late 70's vintage Honda CB. The rider was perhaps in his late 30's. He was wearing a decrepit looking half helmet covered with stickers, and was dressed in a t-shirt, cutoffs, and gym shoes. I asked if he was all right? He said he was, that he was just resting. Then we chatted a bit about the bikes. He told me he needed to synch the carbs, but he didn't know how. I told him I'd just synched mine the week before, and how the Yamahas require this YICS tool, etc. It was fun to talk about this mutual obsession with a perfect stranger on the side of the road, but then this guy started with what was obviously a bigger obsession for him: He asked me if I knew Jesus Christ, had I been Saved, and did I know that Jesus could help me with the struggles of life. He was very nice about it, and obviously quite sincere, but I'm afraid I just didn't want to be Saved. Rather than be unpleasant to him, I took a different tack. I decided that if he wanted to save my soul, I wanted to save his skin. So I changed the subject to riding leather, and started trying to persuade him he needed some. Every time he tried to get back to Jesus, I took the conversation back to riding leather. Eventually the conversation ground to the kind of halt conversations grind to, when the parties are talking at cross-purposes. We said our goodbyes, and I took my leave and rode on towards home.
When I got home it was still pretty early in the day, and I wished the trip had been longer. In the time since this trip, I've replaced the gaskets in the exhaust, so the bike is quiet again. I'm hoping I'll have an opportunity to take another longish trip before winter sets in. If not, I'll have to get my "speed and danger" fix on downhill skis until next spring.
Friday night, I rode to the shop where I bought my chaps, to have them hemmed. When I bought the chaps, they had told me I should wear them a bit, to break them in before they hemmed them. They had stretched out a bit, so I was glad I had waited. While the shop did the alterations, I had fun looking at all the small leather items. I ended up buying three key chains with 6" leather tassels, one each in purple, blue, and green. When I got home I took the keychains off and attached the tassel parts to the back of my jacket. The one thing I hadn't liked about my jacket was that it was so unremittingly black. (I don't care how fashionable it is to dress all in black, I still think it's boring!) I was pleased to have made the jacket more personal.
Next morning, the meeting got started late, and went overtime. Then I had to load last minute items onto the bike, and put lots of red, orange, and yellow hair ties onto my waist length braid so it wouldn't come apart and get all tangled up. It was after 5pm by the time I left my house in Ypsilanti. I called Marna to warn her I might be a bit late.
I set out down I-94 east towards Detroit. The freeway was quiet, not a lot of traffic, and I was making pretty good time, when suddenly there were all these signs saying "Detour," "All Traffic Must Exit" etc. Construction! Argh! All the traffic was diverted onto Michigan Ave, the old surface street that runs parallel to I-94. Michigan Ave was a parking lot. There I was, stuck in traffic on the edge of Detroit, on Morris the air cooled Maxim. After about fifteen minutes, during which I traveled three whole blocks, I pulled into the parking lot of a Rite Aid pharmacy to let the bike cool down and make a new plan. Some girls were walking across the parking lot, and I turned towards them to ask what they knew of the traffic situation. They spoke first, and asked me if I was a boy or a girl? I laughed, said I was a girl, and one of them said to the other "I told you so!" Unfortunately they were not able to tell me anything about the traffic situation. Neither was an older man who parked next to me with a truck full of brooms.
Well, I didn't want to sit there, and I didn't want the bike overheating, so I took off down a side street. I picked my way through the unfamiliar back streets towards the Ambassador Bridge. I didn't encounter significant amounts of traffic anywhere else. I guess all the cars in town were trapped on Michigan Ave. I passed through some abandoned looking industrial areas, but nothing too dreadful. I went through an area that had lots of interesting storefronts and people on the sidewalks. I passed a big city park where people were playing frisbee. Eventually I saw stores that had signs in Spanish, so I knew I was near the bridge. I found the bridge without any trouble. My mother would have been very upset if she'd known I was riding around downtown Detroit by myself on a motorcycle, so it's a good thing she didn't know.
I filled up at the gas station next to the bridge. It's a HUGE gas station, bigger than all but the largest truck stops. I bet they sell a lot of gas there; gas is so much cheaper on the US side of the border that everyone fills up before crossing. Every one of the paper towel dispensers was empty, and the attendant definitely went to the Dogbert school for self-service attendants; he just shrugged when I asked for paper towel to clean my face shield. At the tollbooth, I had to stop and dig for money for the toll, which gave the sleazy toll collector time to undress me with his eyes and say, "Ooo-ee! Wish I had me a woman who'd take me for a ride on a motorcycle!" Ick. I gave him the $2 and roared off over the bridge. What a creep. I was glad to be heading for Canada; the people working at the gas stations and tool booths are so much nicer.
On the Canadian side, I got through customs without much trouble, except they asked me to tell them my license plate number. I'd never been aware of this when crossing in a car, but apparently they have a mirror positioned to see your license plate. The mirror didn't work to see the plate on the bike, so I scooted forward just a little so the customs guy could see it. I stopped at the money exchange and got an Ontario map.
It's less than 200 miles from Ypsilanti, Michigan, to St Thomas, Ontario, if you take the direct route. I didn't want to take the direct route, though; who wants to spend hours on the 401 crossing the flat empty landscape of southern Ontario? Boring! So I examined the map and decided to take Provincial Route 3. According to the map, Route 3 wound east out of Windsor, through some small towns and along the northern shore of Lake Erie, before turning north towards London. Apparently this had changed since the printing of the map. The provincial government had dropped some or all of the provincial highways into the laps of the local governmental units, and Route 3 had been renamed something different in every area. Each time I crossed a political boundary I saw another sign that said "Effective Jan 1, 1998, 3 has been renamed X" with X being Talbot Trail, or County Road 43, or Main Street, or Essex 3, or whatever. Still, I managed to not lose my way for quite a while. I passed hundreds of greenhouses, and the giant tomato in downtown Leamington (Tomato Capitol of Canada!). I passed through some nice small towns. When Lake Erie appeared on my right, it took me by surprise. Suddenly it was there, without any warning. I rode along the shore for nearly an hour, and during that time I passed no condos, no yacht clubs, no lakeshore cabins, no scenic pull-offs, no souvenir stands. I didn't even pass through any towns. It was just farmland. Canada is similar to the USA in so many ways, and then suddenly it's different.
As the sun got low, the road turned away from the lake, and soon I was in the small market town of Blenheim. I stopped at a little shopping center and got a slice of pizza which I ate sitting on the curb outside. There was a building across the street, some kind of packing plant for fruit. They had a sign painted on the front saying that Blenheim was home of the world champion cherry pit spitter. I guess every town needs some claim to fame.
It was getting dark as I left Blenheim, and this was where I lost the former Route 3. Next thing I knew, I was at an on-ramp to the 401. At this point I knew I had strayed. I decided I'd better just hop on the freeway, because I needed gas, and who knows where I'd find an open gas station away from the freeway? It wasn't too crowded, and I made good time, even though there was the inevitable construction. I stopped at the first plaza I came to, and as I rode down over a 3 inch drop from the pavement of the expressway to the torn up pavement in the plaza, I though "uh - oh!" Getting back over that lip would be a trick, but there isn't any other way out of a plaza than to continue down the freeway. Filing that ominous thought in the back of my mind, I stopped at the pump and filled my tank.
The plaza was crowded, and as I filled my tank a car with two women in it pulled up to wait for my pump. Before I went up to pay, I rolled the bike forward so they could get to the pump. The woman driving the car got out, and asked me if I'd been to the festival. Festival? Was there some kind of motorcycle festival going on in the area? I asked her, "What festival?" She said, "The Women's Music Festival." I said, "Ah, right, the Women's Music Festival! No, I didn't go, though I know people who did." Later, after I'd successfully negotiated the jump back onto the expressway, I thought about this some more, why they'd think I'd been at the Women's Music Festival (are there a lot of bikers there?), when suddenly it dawned. I had blue, purple, and green tassels on the back of my coat, and red, yellow, and orange hair ties. I was a lone biker woman in leather, flying the rainbow flag of gay pride. They thought I was a lesbian! (While the Michigan Women's Music Festival isn't strictly a lesbian affair it's definitely something many lesbians travel to, and it was just winding down.) These women were probably on their way back from the festival themselves, and thought I was a fellow traveler. They were probably pointing me out to each other, and admiring the subtlety of my pride flag. My flag was so subtle I hadn't even noticed it myself!
At the plaza, I'd examined my map, and decided that I would turn off on Route 4 (assuming it was still Route 4). Route 4 intersected Route 3 just north of St. Thomas, and from there I could pick up Marna's mother's directions. I found Route 4 without trouble, and headed south until I reached Route 3, which actually still had a sign. The directions Marna's mom had given me said that Route 3 and Route 4 combined, and that I should stay on Route 3, that it became the main street of St Thomas. So I continued along the combined Routes 3 and 4. I didn't see Route 3 turn away anywhere, so I figured I must still be on it. I passed a sign that said "Entering St Thomas, population 35,000." Then I drove for about ten minutes through the darkness. I didn't pass a person, a house, or an open business. Eventually I passed a sign that said "Leaving St. Thomas." I knew that I was lost. I stopped by a flashing traffic signal to examine my map. It didn't have any answers for me, but while I was stopped, two or three cars came to the intersection, and they all turned right. I figured they couldn't all be wrong, so I decided to use the Dirk Gently method of navigation. (Lost? Pick a car and follow it!)
Eventually I found myself on a big shopping strip, with lots of traffic. I started looking for a pizza parlor. Places that deliver pizza always have big maps, and they know how to find people's houses. After a short distance, I spotted a Dominos Pizza. I turned into the parking lot, and was surprised to find myself in a small herd of motorcycles. The motorcycle riders were there too, revving their engines, chatting, circling around. I felt a little uncomfortable. Some acknowledgment seemed called for, but I never know what to say or do around other bikers. These riders would probably be friendly. But what if they weren't? What would I say to them if they spoke to me? What if they didn't like disheveled lone women wearing pride flags on old Jap bikes? They were definitely a Harley crowd, and I didn't see any women driving; the only women were some stylish looking passengers. What if they whistled, made dirty jokes at my expense, called me "baby" or were otherwise offensive? I hate situations like that, because I never know what to say. If I don't react to offensive behavior, it sometimes scales up, as whoever it is tries to get a reaction. If I let them know that I don't like it, that's victory for them. If I try to laugh it off, they think I'm condoning it. There were so many bikers, and I'm not that good at dealing with groups, so I decided to avoid the whole situation. I ignored them completely. I didn't look to the left or to the right. I just parked, went into the pizza place, figured out where I was going, and left. They didn't bother me. I'm sad that I couldn't figure out how to deal with them, because I would have liked to have exchanged friendly greetings with them, chatted a little about our mutual hobby or at least exchanged some smiles.
The house was just the other side of downtown, and the road I was on was the main street. So I continued up the road. Unfortunately, I had to make a detour. St Thomas was celebrating the Iron Horse Festival, and several blocks of the main street were closed. There was a big ferris wheel right in the middle of town, and lots of cotton candy stands and beer tents. The streets were full of people drinking and partying. Trying not to hit pedestrians required my full attention. Eventually I found my way around the carnival and arrived at Marna's mother's house. Marna and her mother were relieved to see me; they'd been starting to worry. It was close to midnight, but they'd been waiting to have dinner with me when I arrived. We had Chinese food delivered, and we laughed and talked late into the night.
The next day I set out around mid-morning for home. In daylight, I was able to find my way back along Route 3 without any difficulty. The road went through farm fields, mainly flat, with an occasional ravine or drainage ditch. I passed a marker by one of the drainage ditches that said "Primitive Earthworks." There wasn't any other text, no explanation, just that. I wonder what the primitive earthworks were? I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Were the primitive earthworks discovered when they built the road? How did they know they were primitive earthworks? What are primitive earthworks, anyways? I always wonder about things like that.
I stopped at a convenience store in Blenheim to get gas and pick up something to eat. I decided to carry the food on the bike and stop in a park somewhere to eat it. I had been wearing earplugs all morning, but I didn't put them back in when I left the gas station, because I figured I'd find a park and stop so soon, that it wasn't worth the trouble. Since I didn't have the earplugs in, I suddenly noticed the new noise the bike was making. Oh no!!! I stopped, and tried to find the cause of the noise. It sounded like a car I once had that lost all its oil, like a loud rod knock. I was afraid I'd ridden for miles all unaware of the sound, as my pistons scraped wider channels to move in. The first thing I did was put it on the center stand and check the oil. It was fine, I had plenty of oil. So I started examining the outside, trying to determine the source of the sound. In the background of my mind, I was already trying to think of who might be home that had a key to my house, who I could ask to go get my pickup truck, drive it to Canada, and fetch me home. Thank goodness it didn't come to that, because I spotted the problem. One of the nuts that held one of the four exhaust pipes onto the front of the motor had fallen off. It was this pipe that was making the racket. Wonder of wonders, the nut had fallen and lodged in the curve of the pipes below, so it wasn't even lost! Of course everything in there was too hot to touch, but I used my needlenose pliers to grab the nut from its crevice, and to thread it back onto the stud. Then I tightened it down as much as I could with my crescent wrench. The noise did not entirely go away, but it lessened. I decided that it was OK to continue riding; exhaust noises are not fatal.
I rode along the road out of Blenheim looking for a park, but I didn't find one. Eventually, I found a spot by the side of the road that wasn't labeled a park, but it looked like one. There were two picnic tables and a porta-john by a little gravel drive. I decided to stop. I sat on one of the tables and ate my sandwich. I was there about a half an hour. Hardly any traffic went by on the road, a couple dozen cars, max. But three of those cars stopped at this pullout, and the drivers visited the porta-john. I guess that when you've got such a long stretch of road with no towns, businesses, or public places of any kind, that porta-john becomes an important amenity!
I rode into Windsor and onto the Ambassador Bridge. There was a serious crush of cars waiting to pay toll, but it moved right along. However, the line was quite long for US customs, on the other side. I had to stop, not far from the top of the bridge, and wait in line. The line moved, not terribly slowly, but not very quickly either. I discovered that I could turn the bike off, put it in neutral, and the slope of the bridge was enough to carry me forward every time the line moved. But it was definitely hot sitting so still in the sun wearing all that leather. I took my gloves off and unzipped my coat. Eventually I got to the customs booth. The harried looking customs official asked me my citizenship. I said US, and he waved me through. It was so fast that I didn't even have time to get my jacket zipped, and I had to go straight onto the freeway or be run over by the car behind me. So I rode off down the freeway with my coat flapping in the wind.
Rather than risk getting detoured off I-94 again, I decided to take I-96 west. By the time I got to Livonia, I'd had enough of the freeway and enough of being slapped by my coat, so I got off the freeway, zipped up the coat, and headed out Hines Drive. Hines Drive goes twenty or thirty miles through a linear park along the Rouge River. It's a lovely winding road with lots of shade, an oasis in the midst of urban sprawl.
At the intersection of Hines Drive and Seven Mile, I saw a motorcycle parked on the shoulder. The rider was standing a few feet off, looking tired. I thought perhaps he had a mechanical failure, so I stopped. After all, we're supposed to look out for each other, right? The bike was a late 70's vintage Honda CB. The rider was perhaps in his late 30's. He was wearing a decrepit looking half helmet covered with stickers, and was dressed in a t-shirt, cutoffs, and gym shoes. I asked if he was all right? He said he was, that he was just resting. Then we chatted a bit about the bikes. He told me he needed to synch the carbs, but he didn't know how. I told him I'd just synched mine the week before, and how the Yamahas require this YICS tool, etc. It was fun to talk about this mutual obsession with a perfect stranger on the side of the road, but then this guy started with what was obviously a bigger obsession for him: He asked me if I knew Jesus Christ, had I been Saved, and did I know that Jesus could help me with the struggles of life. He was very nice about it, and obviously quite sincere, but I'm afraid I just didn't want to be Saved. Rather than be unpleasant to him, I took a different tack. I decided that if he wanted to save my soul, I wanted to save his skin. So I changed the subject to riding leather, and started trying to persuade him he needed some. Every time he tried to get back to Jesus, I took the conversation back to riding leather. Eventually the conversation ground to the kind of halt conversations grind to, when the parties are talking at cross-purposes. We said our goodbyes, and I took my leave and rode on towards home.
When I got home it was still pretty early in the day, and I wished the trip had been longer. In the time since this trip, I've replaced the gaskets in the exhaust, so the bike is quiet again. I'm hoping I'll have an opportunity to take another longish trip before winter sets in. If not, I'll have to get my "speed and danger" fix on downhill skis until next spring.
