Back to the grind
Jun. 12th, 2005 11:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizillaSo I have checked in to a hotel here near my office, and got my laundry finished so I can go to the office tomorrow without smelling like I just spent the last week on a motorcycle.
Nova Scotia is beautiful. I wished I could stay another week or more, three days wasn't enough to do it right. I am definitely going to visit there again.
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dagibbs and I were to meet up with the V-Strom forum guys at Peggy's Cove. When we got there, there was only one other forum person there. All the others had canceled out over the last few weeks. Ryan from the V-Strom forum was a really good guy, and matched up well with dagibbs and me. They're both slightly faster than I am, but not enough for there to be conflict. Also, like me, Ryan is about 20 years younger than the average V-Strom forum member, and somewhat more footloose. Most of those guys are older and not as flexible. We all ended up riding together for the next two days. Ryan used to live in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, so he knew some great roads, and he'd found some maps from a Canadian motorcycle forum that had other route suggestions, so he served as tour guide and did a great job of it.
The ferry was great anddagibbs and I met several other motorcyclists on there, who we encountered again and again as we wandered the province. It was fun, it was like having friends there already.
Ryan almost hit a black bear. They are hard to see in the dark.
The people of Nova Scotia drive really, really slowly, but they also actively encouraged us to pass, they would pull over, or slow down to let us by, or wave us on obligingly. Cars that had the right of way would stop to make it easier for me to get out of a driveway, which I had a hard time trusting, it was too confusing. I didn't see even the faintest hint of road rage the whole time. It was refreshing. At one point we made a pass that was completely useless, going around a car a half mile before a river crossing where we'd all get on the ferry together anyway. Not only were the people in the car not irritated, they called us over to them while we waited, and gave us free ferry tickets so we wouldn't have to pay.
Apparently the weather was unusually great, all the rain we saw was a quick thunderstorm on Friday while we were in Cape Breton Highlands Park. Just enough to keep the dust down on the gravel road to Meat Cove.
The roads were highly variable. Some were awfully bumpy, and others were smooth. Most of the non-slab roads were reasonably twisty. The new rear suspension on my V-Strom is nice, I'm sure it smoothed out a lot of those roads. Note that this laptop, which I'm typing on now, rode in the luggage all over, through hundreds of miles of frost heaves and potholes, and it's working just fine tonight. :-)
It was good to have the other two along; they kept me hopping and cheerful. It would have been easy to get all melancholy, becauseeck and I had talked a lot about taking a trip together to these places, and made some tentative plans to do it this summer.
The BRP was wonderful as usual. The SME in Tellico Plains went off without a hitch, no crashes or anything, and I didn't see any accidents this year, thank goodness. I'll write more about this later, maybe. It's getting late and I need to look at my email before I go to sleep.
Nova Scotia is beautiful. I wished I could stay another week or more, three days wasn't enough to do it right. I am definitely going to visit there again.
dagibbs and I were to meet up with the V-Strom forum guys at Peggy's Cove. When we got there, there was only one other forum person there. All the others had canceled out over the last few weeks. Ryan from the V-Strom forum was a really good guy, and matched up well with dagibbs and me. They're both slightly faster than I am, but not enough for there to be conflict. Also, like me, Ryan is about 20 years younger than the average V-Strom forum member, and somewhat more footloose. Most of those guys are older and not as flexible. We all ended up riding together for the next two days. Ryan used to live in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, so he knew some great roads, and he'd found some maps from a Canadian motorcycle forum that had other route suggestions, so he served as tour guide and did a great job of it.The ferry was great and
dagibbs and I met several other motorcyclists on there, who we encountered again and again as we wandered the province. It was fun, it was like having friends there already.Ryan almost hit a black bear. They are hard to see in the dark.
The people of Nova Scotia drive really, really slowly, but they also actively encouraged us to pass, they would pull over, or slow down to let us by, or wave us on obligingly. Cars that had the right of way would stop to make it easier for me to get out of a driveway, which I had a hard time trusting, it was too confusing. I didn't see even the faintest hint of road rage the whole time. It was refreshing. At one point we made a pass that was completely useless, going around a car a half mile before a river crossing where we'd all get on the ferry together anyway. Not only were the people in the car not irritated, they called us over to them while we waited, and gave us free ferry tickets so we wouldn't have to pay.
Apparently the weather was unusually great, all the rain we saw was a quick thunderstorm on Friday while we were in Cape Breton Highlands Park. Just enough to keep the dust down on the gravel road to Meat Cove.
The roads were highly variable. Some were awfully bumpy, and others were smooth. Most of the non-slab roads were reasonably twisty. The new rear suspension on my V-Strom is nice, I'm sure it smoothed out a lot of those roads. Note that this laptop, which I'm typing on now, rode in the luggage all over, through hundreds of miles of frost heaves and potholes, and it's working just fine tonight. :-)
It was good to have the other two along; they kept me hopping and cheerful. It would have been easy to get all melancholy, because
eck and I had talked a lot about taking a trip together to these places, and made some tentative plans to do it this summer.The BRP was wonderful as usual. The SME in Tellico Plains went off without a hitch, no crashes or anything, and I didn't see any accidents this year, thank goodness. I'll write more about this later, maybe. It's getting late and I need to look at my email before I go to sleep.
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Date: 2005-06-13 10:15 pm (UTC)< shudder >
And I used to think that hitting a deer would be bad.
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Date: 2005-06-15 03:54 am (UTC)Wow, sensible people and good polite drivers. Cool. Isn't Canada wonderful? What did we put in the water here that ruined us all?