About 30 Days till Departure

The Weather, what will it be?  This same question arrises every time prior to a journey like we have planned.  At the moment we are very much worried that the pattern of too cold for the season is shifting our plans and may delay our move toward the North.  But we really have very little alternatives if we want to explore the East Coast and the West Coast the same summer.  And since the most places on our journey are situated in the West, to make the Northeastern loop first is almost a given.  Besides the point that the iceberg season in Newfoundland and Labrador typically runs from early spring to early summer, peaking in May and June, not necessarily a time when one is treated with warm temperatures and lots of sunshine.

So this is the balancing act we have to master, and with still some good four weeks to go, we hope for the best, and plan for the worst.

In the meantime, having learned from some friends that camping without the right equipment is not worth the effort, we have added to our equipment one very important piece.  Bright red in color so one can find it in the harshest of storms, in the mist of a rainy morning, in the deepest of snow, the very essential stove top espresso maker.

        

       "Espresso Yourself"           Bicycle Cover w/custom made light strip

Last week we tested our bicycle cover, and with some small modifications it worked very well.  No idea how it will stand the test of 10,000 miles or more, but I figure with sufficient duct tape or tarpaulin repair kits we will be in good shape.  So with all the essentials together, just some fine tuning on one or the other thing, we are almost ready to go.  It's just the weather in the Northeast which has to cooperate a little more.

"There is no such thing as good weather, or bad weather.  There is just weather and your attitude toward it." - Louise Hay, American motivational speaker, 1926 - 2017

Just about 50 days till we start again

It is time again, the travel bug has bitten Elke and me again.

Elke and I have been busy the last couple of weeks with getting our ducks in a row as they say here in the US to ready ourselves for another big trip.  Besides some of the bureaucratic stuff which is due at the beginning of the year like renewing the car and motorcycle registration (here in NC we have to have a State Inspection done, not so in CT), getting insurances renewed, tax papers together for filing before the deadline, some doctor visits and much more, we are also occupied in organizing and checking our equipment for the approximately 8 month long trip.  We also will have no restriction anymore on how long we can stay outside the country as we both are since last year US citizen, and of course I’m retired now as well.  This time we will be traveling with our SUV with the comfort of having a rooftop tent to sleep in, and plenty of stow room in the car.  It will be a change going from two wheels to four as we will sit in an enclosure and are not beaten by the elements no more, but it will allow us to go off grid if we want and to stay in remote areas and explore because we should not have the restriction of a very limited food and water storage as we had on the bike.  We will also have the benefit of having an annex for our rooftop tent which we can unzip and leave behind, drive off with the car, come back, zip it on again and have an additional 130 ft2 living space with 90” headspace.  Quiet some luxury.

Small selection of the “stuff” piling up, but this is not yet “filtered”

As we have some unfinished business in the Northeast our plan is to make our way to Cape Breton to set over to Newfoundland, continue to Labrador, return to Quebec and Montreal, then cross over to the West for another visit to Alaska, before turning South to British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California, then sliding slightly East - Southeast to Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and who knows where the restless mind will drive us. There is only one set date we need to be back, and that is to catch in time a plane to Germany for my mother’s 90th birthday.

So for now its all getting the equipment checked out, last bits and pieces added, maps sorted out and the usual stuff separating the nice to have from the needed stuff.  More difficult then ever before as we have so much more room now, very tempting to sneak something in just for the comfort of having it with you.  But we still have about 50 days left to figure it out.  Can’t wait to have the car packed and head Northeast.

“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” - unknown

Diagnosis, Surgery, and Recovery

 Today the patient was admitted to the Clinic at Harley Davidson of Hartford.  Once with the doctors, the diagnosis was that a small piece of metal had broken out of the front lifter and this part, and/or smaller parts of it went through the system. Cam shaft, lifters, cam casing bore, oil pump, lifter guides all damaged and scorching at major components.  Patient needs a new heart i.e. new engine.  It will be a one to one replacement, 255 cams as I don’t need the speed but the torque, and at least a 30 to 45 day wait till the new engine is factory built.

A little piece of metal, a maximum of damage.  Anyway, we will get a new engine and should be good for another 85k miles or so.  Just not this summer.  So in lieu the convertible will get some more mileage to it, after all, the second best to riding a motorcycle.

“Every time we fix something that broken, whether it’s a car engine or a broken heart, than an act of magic.  And what makes it magic is that we chose to create or help, just as we can choose to harm.”  - Charles de Lint, Canadian writer of fantasy fiction, urban fantasy, contemporary magical realism, and mythic fiction

“Broken things can be fixed and healed.  Nothing is too difficult or too dirty to clean.”  -  Marika McCoola, Massachusetts writer for children

Mile 1208 - The End

 After we came home yesterday afternoon and having had engine troubles the morning was occupied with finding a workshop willing to take in a Harley Davidson motorcycle to inspect and perhaps to repair.  As HD is only maintaining one (1)! dealership per province in East Canada anymore, my nearest dealerships would be Halifax, NS or Moncton, NB, or St. John’s in NL.  NL is definitely out of the picture, and the other two are not really an option if we want to go forward with our plans.  I finally get lucky with Cabot Powersports in Sydney, NS here on Cape Breton.  They once had been a HD dealership but fell victim to the corporate cut down.  I limp with my bike to Sydney, having on that 15 mile trip the expected engine hick-ups and all the "exploding" noises with it.  Our camp site neighbor Jim Power from St. John's in NL travels with me to give me a ride back.  We drop off the bike in the trusted hands of the service manager Paul and his team, just to get a couple of hours later a call from Paul to come down to the shop as he has to show me the damage and talk my options.  The bad news is already visible in Paul's face when I enter the shop, and he tells me in short, lifters, cam and who knows what else are gone, metal shavings are covering the shifting sensor.  He doesn't has any parts and repair could take weeks, perhaps even longer.  We may even have to change the engine if it is real bad.  He offers me to store the bike for a couple of days that I can make arrangements in any way I needed.  Out of wheels, Jim drives me to a car rental, just to learn that because of shortages in rental cars, border crossings with rentals are not permitted.  Even going out of the province was already a challenge, but I managed to persuade the girl behind the counter to get a car cleared to leave the province to go to Moncton, NB one way.

Our temporary transport vehicles

But then the real fun started.  Having HOG-Ultra Plus Road America assistance, the service which helped us already a couple of times, I felt pretty confident of getting the bike transported to where I needed it to be.  But this was far away from reality as I ended up in wherever the call center was/is and the girl on the other end hardly speaking proper English had no idea that a Harley-Davidson is a motorcycle and not a passenger car, repeatably asking me how many doors the vehicle had, that Cape Breton respectively Nova Scotia is in Canada, that you can load a motor cycle on a tow truck, and that my contract with them states to have the bike transported free of charge to the next nearest HD dealership.  After a really long, exhausting, and frustrating conversation, and in order to shorten the process in me agreeing to pay upfront the $3,500 for the bike transport we came to an agreement to get the bike towed to Moncton, NB.  All I needed was to confirm through the link in the e-mail she will send me the towing pick-up and destination.  Having a bad feeling about this whole thing, I made several other phone calls and found a U-Haul truck in Antigonish, NS which was free to cross the border into the US (also here the same restrictions as for passenger rentals).  Now I felt more confident since I had control of the situation again, booked the truck and picked it up in Antigonish, NS and drove it back up to Sydney, NS to load the bike.  The cancelation of the Road America towing assistance on the other hand went pretty easy, the guy spoke proper English, clear and understandable, and did the cancelation without a fuss.  The e-mail btw for the towing she had promised never arrived, but she had precautionary already thousand times said she was sorry for the troubles I was having.  Perhaps my experience with her was included in her sorry.

Last breakfast in Cape Breton

The patient is loaded and ready to go to the hospital

Today is Saturday.  Just one week ago we started our trip to Newfoundland and Labrador, and today, seven days later we are loading the bike into a truck and turn our heading back to the US border.  It is an unfortunate ending to a trip we had for so long anticipated and were looking so much forward to.  But machines too have their personalities and regardless of how good you take care of it, bad things may happen.  This year was not meant to be the year for us to reach Newfoundland, so we will try again next year or the year after.  The positive side of all this is that we met very helpful people and made new friends and received invitations to visit.  And that is another strong and good reason to visit Newfoundland.  With mixed feelings and sunshine we leave the camp ground and turn onto Rt. 4 to go South along the Bras d'Or lake to Port Hawkesbury, NS, cross the Canso causeway to Antigonish, NS, continue on Hwy-104 to Truro, NS over to Moncton, NB and head towards the border in St. Stephen, NB / Calais, ME to drop South to Bangor, ME on Rt. 9 and then the usual way via the Interstates I-95, I-495, I-90, and I-91 back home.

"Each machine has its own, unique personality which probably could be defined as the intuitive sum total of everything you know and feel about it.  This personality constantly changes, usually for the worse, but sometimes surprisingly for the better, and it is this personality that is the real object of motorcycle maintenance." - Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Mile 1193

 Today will be a short day trip.  We are visiting the Highland Village, Baile nan Gaidheal near Iona, NS to trace the history of the Gaelic people leaving Scotland in the mid 1700’s to the late 1800’s to start a new, free live, away from the social and economic changes in their homeland.  They landed on the shores of Nova Scotia to find a home where they could live their lives freely, based mostly on the same community groups they were familiar with in their homeland.  Those communities were mostly based on family connections and religious beliefs, knitted together through valuing same community spirits, working hand in hand to build their church, schools, barns, a.s.o.  The Highland Village led us through the language, culture, and rural lifestyle of the Gaelic people in Nova Scotia throughout the 1800’s into the early 1900’s when changes such as the attractions of cities, industrial jobs, and the railroad, and an English-only school system began to make it difficult to continue on with the old way they had.  But the traditions still live on and are present in their music and dance, language, and passing on of the ancestral history.

        A step through time starting in Scotland, about 1780, ....

        ..... ending in early 1900's

 cutting shingles, .....

        .... making batting and wool to spin

In the early afternoon, leaving the village, rain started to set in and we abandoned the plan to take the ferry and run up the west shore of the Bras d’Or Lake.  Instead we traced back the way we came, just to encounter shortly before the camp site some problems with the bike.  Sudden ignition failures and what sounds like loosing one cylinder made us limp to the camp site.  I start to call around for a shop to look at the bike, and for sure change our reservation for the ferry to Newfoundland as the nearest shop after arriving in Channel-Port aux Basques, NL would be St. John’s, NL, about 600 miles away.  So better to get it fixed now than being stranded in Newfoundland.  Tomorrow morning I will try to get the bike to Sydney, NS and then we go from there.

"Eilean grom nam beanntan ard; Tir mo dhuthchais, tir mo ghraidh.  'S iomadh tonn a bhuaileas traigh; Mun narr mi fatt air carachadh." - "This green island of soaring mountains is my beloved country of inheritance.  Manny waves will strike the shore before I find reason to forsake it."  -  Jonathan G. MacKinnon, author and publisher of the Gaelic newspaper

Mile 1106

 After a rather chilly night with temps in the mid-forties we wake up early to a murky morning.  We have a coffee to drive the chills out of the bones and decide to take it easy today.  First we find a post office to send back home some of the too much items we have packed and which are just taking space and adding weight.  We drive through North Sydney, NS and along Rt. 305 to Sydney, NS and further on Rt. 4 to Glace Bay, NS.  Here we pay a visit to the Miner's museum and learn about the dangerous work mining underneath the ocean floor.

Mining Museum, some pieces from above and below ground

    

A lunch box for every miner who died in the 1979 explosion

We continue the afternoon exploring a bit the city of Sydney, do some needed shopping, and explore the harbor front and a couple of must see sights.  The morning haze has given way to some sun, and sitting in one of the many eateries we let the day pass by. 

A thank you to the wartime merchant navy who played a vital role in bringing supplies over the Atlantic to supply the troops.  Many of those left from Nova Scotia and as they were not made for military transport, those convoys of old and dilapidated vessels were considered "tramps", slow convoys (hence the marking SC) to identify them.   Often without warning merchant ships were torpedoed or bombed, and the sudden explosion or burning of ships loaded with ammunition or fuel left many of the sailors to the sea.  Many of those 177 convoys who left Sydney, NS, a total 48 convoys were attacked, and a total of 226 ships were lost through sinking by German U-boats. 

  

A monument in memory of the immigrants to Cape Breton

A fiddle in recognition of the importance the fiddle music played in the heritage of Cape Breton

And another perfect day comes to an end:

"A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for." - Unknown

Mile 1039

 We wake up to another gorgeous morning with blue sky and some cotton balls here and there.  After having a strong breakfast we have the bike filled up and find Hwy-2 again to bring us from Moncton, NB to Truro, NS, continuing onto the Canso Causeway where we depart onto Rt. 19 to find our way up to the Glenora distillery.  I have been looking forward to that visit since the beginning of the Covid pandemic which killed the original plans to come up here to collect some bottles of single malt whisky.  That's right, Glenora is Canada's only single malt whisky distillery.  After having my package wrapped in dimple foil and securely stowed onto he bike we continue a little bit North to join Rt. 30, the Southeastern  section of the famous Cabot Trail until we hit Hwy-105 aturning North again, passing through Baddeck, NS  moving on to North Sydney, NS not Australia.  We find a nice camp site and settle for the day.

Here we learn that the ferry service to Port-aux Basques, NL is since weeks fully booked and people are waiting for weeks to get a place on it.  I get handed a phone number from the owner of the camp site for calling the ferry line directly rather than doing an online booking and we are lucky to secure a berth for Thursday night.

Herewith ends another great day, good riding, nice scenery, ideal weather, nice people along the way, one can not ask for more.

                                    Crossing Canso Causeway

                                            No words needed

Mural and brewery along the way on Rt. 19

 Along the way

Last minute change in equipment, our new lightweight tent from Reactive Outdoor

"I have traveled around the globe.  I have seen the Canadian and American Rockies, the Andes, the Alps and the Highlands of Scotland, but for simple beauty, Cape Breton outrivals them all." - Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-born inventor, scientist and engineer